The purpose of this study was to identify potential threshold concepts in the music industry as perceived by expert music industry professionals; the data collected may possibly inform postsecondary music industry degree program curriculum design. Threshold concept theory emerged in the early 2000s largely due to the research of Meyer & Land (2003, 2005) as a means to illuminate discipline-specific criteria that irreversibly transform a learner’s positionality within a professional discipline. Through the mastery of a threshold concept, a learner becomes aware of discipline specific norms, and may experience a reconstitution of their own identity as a professional. This is the first study to explore threshold concepts within the music industry. This study is also aimed to contribute to a growing body of research at the intersection of threshold concepts and business education. Utilizing qualitative research informed by phenomenology, semi-structured interviews based on the primary tenets of the threshold concept theory framework were conducted. “Expert” music industry professionals were asked to reflect upon their lived experiences regarding their assimilation into the music industry and maintenance of a sustainable career in the discipline. The data collected were aligned with the threshold concept theory framework in order to illuminate potential threshold concepts specific to the music industry. Results indicate that there exist possible dispositional and disciplinary threshold concepts relative to becoming a music industry professional. The identification, prioritization, and utilization of threshold concepts are applicable to curriculum planning at both the macro- (program creation, execution, and evaluation) and micro- (course creation, planning, instruction, and evaluation) levels for post-secondary music industry education.

It is widely accepted that Higher Education should provide students with a challenging experience. Research on threshold concepts provides a framework for exploring challenging content within a discipline and has contributed to understanding how to support students with conceptual difficulties. However, less is known about how individual students experience challenge and difficulty in their academic studies, in particular how they respond and feel when they become stuck. This study explores students’ experience of challenge, difficulty and stuckness, how they responded and managed challenges and any associated feelings. The study, carried out in a university in the Southwest of England, used a Qualitative Longitudinal Research design to follow 16 students through the second year of a degree for Allied Health Professionals. Data were collected using the semi-structured and email interview methods. Data were analysed longitudinally and cross-sectionally using a constant comparison process. The findings and discussion are presented using a ‘natural’ style which aims to capture the student journey over the academic year. The study found that some form of challenge, difficulty or stuckness was commonplace in the students’ educational experience. The value of challenges which create uncertainty in education is recognised, particularly where students are grappling with boundaries around knowledge. Variation in students’ experiences was partly explained by their ‘spiky profiles’ (influencing factors such as prior education and work experience) and partly by differences in factors relating to strategy use. The students were creative and resourceful in developing a range of specific and generic strategies in several areas: the use of time and space; the management of expectations and acceptance of feelings; and monitoring and reflection. The study adds to current understanding of stuckness through an examination of the liminal spaces students encountered. The discussion argues for a more nuanced and holistic approach to understanding students’ engagement with a complex cycle of challenges and strategy use, which creates a range of expectations, tensions, feelings and opportunities. It identifies implications for Higher Education practice and calls for an understanding of the impact and interconnectedness of factors influencing students. It stresses the importance of providing structures for students to explore how they learn and develop their academic practice, in addition to discipline specific knowledge and skills.

[pt] De acordo com o Tribunal Superior Eleitoral, de 2014 a 2018, o número de jovens eleitores com idade entre 16 e 17 anos decresceu mais de 14 por cento no Brasil. Esse aparente desinteresse dos jovens é preocupante, posto que o fortalecimento da democracia está diretamente ligado ao nível de formação política das pessoas. Este panorama desperta a seguinte questão: como a educação política nas aulas de geografia escolar contribui para o empoderamento dos estudantes através do aperfeiçoamento da cidadania? Diante disso, nesta dissertação objetiva-se analisar o potencial da educação política em tornar o conhecimento geográfico poderoso no Ensino Básico. Os procedimentos metodológicos basearam-se em estudos de cunho teórico acerca dos seguintes temas: práticas políticas brasileiras; letramento político; conceitos liminares; política nos currículos escolares; e o conhecimento poderoso relacionado à Geografia. Baseou-se também na aplicação de questionários a estudantes do Ensino Básico visando identificar o nível de conhecimento sobre política; o grau de importância dado à política como contributo para transformações espaciais; o grau de importância dado a possibilidade de estudarem política na escola; e o nível de conhecimento sobre as funções no Sistema Político Brasileiro. Alguns resultados mostram que: 96 por cento conhecem nada ou pouco sobre política; apenas 37 por cento consideram que a política contribui para transformações espaciais; 84 por cento acham muito importante ou importante estudar política na escola; e houve desconhecimento quase total sobre as funções de vereadores, deputados, prefeitos etc. Acreditamos que esta pesquisa possa fomentar discussões e ações pedagógicas para a promoção do conhecimento sobre política nas aulas de geografia escolar. / [en] According to the Superior Electoral Court, from 2014 to 2018, the number of young voters aged between 16 and 17 years decreased by more than 14 percent in Brazil. This apparent lack of interest on the part of young people is worrying, since the strengthening of democracy is directly linked to the level of people s political education. This panorama raises the following question: how does political education in school geography classes contribute to the empowerment of students through the improvement of citizenship? Therefore, this dissertation aims to analyze the potential of political education to make geographic knowledge powerful in Basic Education. The methodological procedures were based on theoretical studies on the following themes: brazilian political practices; political literacy; threshold concepts; politics in school curricula; and the powerful knowledge related to geography. It was also based on the application of questionnaires to Basic Education students in order to identify the level of knowledge about politics; the degree of importance given to politics as a contribution to spatial transformations; the degree of importance given to the possibility of studying politics at school; and the level of knowledge about the functions in the Brazilian Political System. Some results show that: 96 percent know nothing or little about politics; only 37 percent believe that politics contributes to spatial transformations; 84 percent think it is very important or important to study politics at school; and there was almost total lack of knowledge about the functions of councilors, deputies, mayors, etc. We believe that this research can foster discussions and pedagogical actions to promote knowledge about politics in school geography classes.

As writing about writing (WAW) research enters its "second wave," characterized not only by an increase in data-driven studies that theorize and assess the effectiveness of WAW curricula (Downs) but also by an increase in its prominence and adaptation, particularly among emerging writing studies scholars and teachers (e.g., Bird et al.), a space has opened for more and varied types of research, especially empirical research, to determine its effectiveness and to produce more solid recommendations for training and curriculum development, especially for those who are new to the field. This case study, which highlights how a novice teacher responds to a new teaching experience, aims to address the dearth of empirical research on WAW curricula and to aid other graduate instructors interested in teaching WAW or program administrators interested in implementing WAW. The study reports results from data collected (e.g., interviews, in-class observations, teachings logs) on the experience of a second-year MA graduate student in composition and rhetoric as he taught a WAW-based curriculum in a first-year composition (FYC) class in the beginning of 2016. His twenty students were also research subjects, but only a small portion of their data is reported here. The instructor's experience, chronicled in narrative form, began optimistically, though with a hint of skepticism, and ended in discouragement and even pessimism. These results were largely unexpected due to the instructor's confidence with and knowledge of WAW history, assumptions, and pedagogy and experience teaching FYC. However, his struggle with the approach reveals and confirms several important points for anyone hoping to teach or implement WAW. Particularly, new WAW instructors need sustained training, support, and mentoring to help them properly temper their expectations for the course, correctly and usefully interpret their experiences teaching WAW, successfully transfer prior teaching knowledge and methods to the WAW classroom, and ultimately find their place in WAW instruction.

As writing about writing (WAW) research enters its second wave, characterized not only by an increase in data-driven studies that theorize and assess the effectiveness of WAW curricula (Downs) but also by an increase in its prominence and adaptation, particularly among emerging writing studies scholars and teachers (e.g., Bird et al.), a space has opened for more and varied types of research, especially empirical research, to determine its effectiveness and to produce more solid recommendations for training and curriculum development, especially for those who are new to the field. This case study, which highlights how a novice teacher responds to a new teaching experience, aims to address the dearth of empirical research on WAW curricula and to aid other graduate instructors interested in teaching WAW or program administrators interested in implementing WAW. The study reports results from data collected (e.g., interviews, in-class observations, teachings logs) on the experience of a second-year MA graduate student in composition and rhetoric as he taught a WAW-based curriculum in a first-year composition (FYC) class in the beginning of 2016. His twenty students were also research subjects, but only a small portion of their data is reported here. The instructors experience, chronicled in narrative form, began optimistically, though with a hint of skepticism, and ended in discouragement and even pessimism. These results were largely unexpected due to the instructors confidence with and knowledge of WAW history, assumptions, and pedagogy and experience teaching FYC. However, his struggle with the approach reveals and confirms several important points for anyone hoping to teach or implement WAW. Particularly, new WAW instructors need sustained training, support, and mentoring to help them properly temper their expectations for the course, correctly and usefully interpret their experiences teaching WAW, successfully transfer prior teaching knowledge and methods to the WAW classroom, and ultimately find their place in WAW instruction.

A recurring question in science and engineering education is why the students do not link knowledge from theoretical classes to the real world met in laboratory courses. Mathematical models and visualisations are widely used in engineering and engineering education. Very often it is assumed that the students are familiar with the mathematical concepts used. These may be concepts taught in high school or at university level. One problem, though, is that many students have never or seldom applied their mathematical skills in other subjects, and it may be difficult for them to use their skills in a new context. Some concepts also seem to be "too difficult" to understand. One of these mathematical tools is to use Laplace Transforms to solve differential equations, and to use the derived functions to visualise transient responses in electric circuits, or control engineering. In many engineering programs at college level the application of the Laplace Transform is considered too difficult for the students to understand, but is it really, or does it depend on the teaching methods used? When applying mathematical concepts during lab work, and not teaching the mathematics and practical work in different sessions, and also using examples varied in a very systematic way, our research shows that the students approach the problem in a very different way. It shows that by developing tasks consequently according to the Theory of Variation, it is not impossible to apply the Laplace Transform already in the first year of an engineering program. The original aim of this thesis was to show: how students work with lab-tasks, especially concerning the goal to link theory to the real world how it is possible to change the ways students approach the task and thus their learning, by systematic changes in the lab-instructions During the spring 2002 students were video-recorded while working with labs in Electric Circuits. Their activity was analysed. Special focus was on what questions the students raised, and in what ways these questions were answered, and in what ways the answers were used in the further activities. This work informed the model ”learning of a complex concept”, which was used as well to analyse what students do during lab-work, and what teachers intend their students to learn. The model made it possible to see what changes in the lab-instructions that would facilitate students learning of the whole, to link theoretical models to the real world, through the labactivities. The aim of the thesis has thus become to develop a model: The learning of a complex concept show how this model can be used as well for analysis of the intended object of learning as students activities during lab-work, and thus the lived object of learning use the model in analysis of what changes in instruction that are critical for student learning. The model was used to change the instructions. The teacher interventions were included into the instructions in a systematic way, according to as well what questions that were raised by the students, as what questions that were not noticed, but expected by the teachers, as a means to form relations between theoretical aspects and measurement results. Also, problem solving sessions have been integrated into the lab sessions. Video recordings were also conducted during the spring 2003, when the new instructions were used. The students' activities were again analysed. A special focus of the thesis concerns the differences between the results from 2002 and 2003. The results are presented in four sections: Analysis of the students' questions and the teachers' answers during the lab-course 2002 Analysis of the links students need to make, the critical links for learning Analysis of the task structure before and after changes Analysis of the students' activities during the new course The thesis ends with a discussion of the conclusions which may be drawn about the possibilities to model and develop teaching sequences through research, especially concerning the aim to link theoretical models to the real world. / En stående fråga som lärare i naturvetenskapliga och tekniska utbildningar ställer är varför elever och studenter inte kopplar samman kunskaper från teoretiska kursmoment med den verklighet som möts vid laborationerna. Ett vanligt syfte med laborationer är att åstadkomma länkar mellan teori och verklighet, men dessa uteblir ofta. Många gånger används avancerade matematiska modeller och grafiska representationer, vilka studenterna lärt sig i tidigare kurser, men de har sällan eller aldrig tillämpat dessa kunskaper i andra ämnen. En av dessa matematiska hjälpmedel är Laplacetransformen, som främst används för att lösa differentialekvationer, och åskådliggöra transienta förlopp i ellära eller reglerteknik. På många universitet anses Laplacetransformen numera för svår för studenterna på kortare ingenjörsutbildningar, och kurser eller kursmoment som kräver denna har strukits ut utbildningsplanerna. Men, är det för svårt, eller beror det bara på hur man presenterar Laplacetransformen? Genom att låta studenterna arbeta parallellt med matematiken och de laborativa momenten, under kombinerade lab-lektionspass, och inte vid separata lektioner och laborationer, samt genom att variera övningsexemplen på ett mycket systematiskt sätt, enligt variationsteorin, visar vår forskning att studenterna arbetar med uppgifterna på ett helt annat sätt än tidigare. Det visar sig inte längre vara omöjligt att tillämpa Laplacetransformen redan under första året på civilingenjörsutbildning inom elektroteknik. Ursprungliga syftet med avhandlingen var att visa hur studenter arbetar med laborationsuppgifter, speciellt i relation till målet att länka samman teori och verklighet hur man kan förändra studenternas aktivitet, och därmed studenternas lärande, genom att förändra laborationsinstruktionen på ett systematiskt sätt. Under våren 2002 videofilmades studenter som utförde laborationer i en kurs i elkretsteori. Deras aktivitet analyserades. Speciellt studerades vilka frågor studenterna ställde till lärarna, på vilket sätt dessa frågor besvarades, och på vilket sätt svaren användes i den fortsatta aktiviteten. Detta ledde fram till en modell för lärande av sammansatta begrepp, som kunde användas både för att analysera vad studenterna gör och vad lärarna förväntar sig att studenterna ska lära sig. Med hjälp av modellen blev det då möjligt att se vad som behövde ändra i instruktionerna för att studenterna lättare skulle kunna utföra de aktiviteter som krävs för att länka teori och verklighet. Syftet med avhandlingen är därmed att ta fram en modell för lärande av ett sammansatt begrepp visa hur denna modell kan användas för såväl analys av önskat lärandeobjekt, som av studenternas aktivitet under laborationer, och därmed det upplevda lärandeobjektet använda modellen för att analysera vilka förändringar som är kritiska för  studenters lärande. Modellen användes för att förändra laborationsinstruktionerna. Lärarinterventionerna inkluderades i instruktionerna på ett systematiskt sätt utifrån dels vilka frågor som ställdes av studenterna, dels vilka frågor studenterna inte noterade, men som lärarna velat att studenterna skulle använda för att skapa relationer framför allt mellan teoretiska aspekter och mätresultat. Dessutom integrerades räkneövningar och laborationer. Videoinspelningar utfördes även våren 2003, då de nya instruktionerna användes. Även dessa analyserades med avseende på studenternas aktiviteter. Skillnader mellan resultaten från 2002 och 2003 står i fokus. Avhandlingens resultatdel består av: Analys av studenternas frågor och lärarnas svar under labkursen 2002 Analys av de länkar studenterna behöver skapa för att lära Analys av laborationsinstruktionerna före och efter förändringarna Analys av den laborationsaktivitet som blev resultatet av de nya instruktionerna, och vilket lärande som då blev möjligt Avhandlingen avlutas med en diskussion om de slutsatser som kan dras angående möjligheter att via forskning utveckla modeller av undervisningssekvenser för lärande där målet är att länka samman teori och verklighet

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Professional competencies are explicitly identified in the primary learning outcomes for science and engineering degrees at many tertiary institutions.  Fulfillment of the requirements to equip our students with these skills, while formally acknowledged as important by all stakeholders, can be hard to demonstrate in practice.  Most degree awarding institutions would have difficulties if asked to document where in degree programs such competencies are developed. The work in this thesis addresses the issue of professional competencies from several angles.  The Open-Ended Group Project (OEGP) concept is introduced and proposed as an approach to constructing learning environments in which students’ development of professional competencies can be stimulated and assessed.  Scholarly, research-based development of the IT in Society course unit (ITiS) is described and analyzed in order to present ideas for tailoring OEGP-based course units towards meeting learning objectives related to professional competence.  Work in this thesis includes an examination of both the meanings attributed to the term professional competencies, and methods which can be used to assess the competencies once they are agreed on. The empirical work on developing ITiS is based on a framework for educational research, which has been both refined and extended as an integral part of my research.  The action research methodology is presented and concrete examples of implementations of different pedagogical interventions, based on the methodology, are given.  The framework provides support for relating a theoretical foundation to studies, or development, of learning environments.  The particular theoretical foundation for the examples in this thesis includes, apart from the action research methodology, constructivism, conceptual change, threshold concepts, communities of practice, ill-structured problem solving, the reflective practicum, and problem based learning. The key finding in this thesis is that development and assessment of professional competencies is not a pipe dream.  Assessment can be accomplished, and the OEGP concept provides a flexible base for creating an appropriate learning environment for this purpose. / <p>Felaktigt tryckt som Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology 738</p>

Research has shown that there are gaps in knowledge between newly hired and experienced professionals and that some of these gaps are related to concepts, such as the concepts of object orientation. This problem, and the fact that most computer science majors want to work in the software industry, leads to questions regarding why these gaps exist and how students can be better prepared for their future careers. Against this background, this thesis addresses two theme-based perspectives that focus on students' views of concepts in Computer Science. The first theme-based perspective investigated the existence of potential Threshold Concepts in Computer Science. Such concepts should be troublesome, transformative, irreversible, and integrative. Qualitative methods have been mainly used and empirical data have been collected through semi-structured interviews, concept maps, and written stories. The results identified two Threshold Concepts, suggested several more, and then described the ways in which these concepts have transformed students. The second theme-based perspective took a phenomenographic approach to find the variation in how students understand concepts related to the software profession. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews. In one study the interviews were held in connection with role-playing where students took on the role of a newly hired programmer. The results show a variety of ways to experience the addressed phenomena in the student collective, ranging from superficial views that often have a practical nature to more sophisticated understandings that reflect a holistic approach, including a professional point of view. Educators can use the results to emphasize concepts that are important from students' perspectives. The phenomenographic outcome spaces can help teachers to reflect upon their own ways of seeing contrasted with student conceptions. I have indicated how variation theory can be applied to open more sophisticated ways of seeing, which in this context stresses the professional aspects to help students prepare for becoming professional software developers.

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