Students' Choice of Post-Compulsory Science: In search of schools that compensate for the socio-economic background of their students     

Per Anderhag  Patrik Emanuelsson  Per-Olof Wickman  Karim Mikael Hamza 《International Journal of Science Education》2013,35(18):3141-3160

It is commonly argued that socio-economic inequalities can explain many of the differences in achievement and participation in science education that have been reported among countries and among schools within a country. We addressed this issue by examining (a) the relationship between variables associated with socio-economic background and application frequencies to the Swedish Natural Science Programme (NSP) in upper secondary school and (b) whether there are lower secondary schools in Sweden that seem to compensate for these variables. Data from Statistics Sweden (SCB) covering the whole population of 106,483 ninth-grade students were used to calculate the probability for each student to apply to the NSP. Our results indicate that the variables, such as parental educational level and grades, have explanatory power, but with varying effect for different subpopulations of students. For example, grades in mathematics have a greater impact than grades in science for females' choice of the NSP. The opposite holds for male students. Out of 1,342 schools, 158 deviated significantly from predicted, that is, the students in these schools applied to the NSP in greater or lesser extent than expected. The number of deviating schools is greater than predicted by pure random variation. This suggests that variables of socio-economic background are only a partial explanation of the application frequencies, and that the deviation needs to be investigated further. Our findings suggest that in order to understand why schools deviate positively and so compensate for the socio-economic background of their students, we need to study their practices more closely.  相似文献   

Developing Attitudes towards Science Measures     

Per Kind  Karen Jones 《International Journal of Science Education》2013,35(7):871-893

In this study, we describe the development of measures used to examine pupils’ attitudes towards science. In particular, separate measures for attitudes towards the following areas were developed: learning science in school, practical work in science, science outside of school, importance of science, self‐concept in science, and future participation in science. In developing these measures, criticisms of previous attitude studies in science education were noted. In particular, care was taken over the definition of each of the attitude constructs, and also ensuring that each of the constructs was unidimensional. Following an initial piloting process, pupils aged 11–14 from five secondary schools throughout England completed questionnaires containing the attitude measures. These questionnaires were completed twice by pupils in these schools, with a gap of four weeks between the first and second measurements. Altogether, 932 pupils completed the first questionnaire and 668 pupils completed the second one. Factor analysis carried out on the resulting data confirmed the unidimensionality of the separate attitude constructs. Also, it was found that three of the constructs—learning science in school, science outside of school, and future participation in science—loaded on one general attitude towards science factor. Further analysis showed that all the measures showed high internal reliability (Cronbach’s α > 0.7). A particular strength of the approach used in this study was that it allowed for attitude measures to be built up step‐by‐step, therefore allowing for the future consideration of other relevant constructs.  相似文献   

The Uses of the Term Hypothesis and the Inquiry Emphasis Conflation in Science Teacher Education     

Jakob Gyllenpalm  Per‐Olof Wickman 《International Journal of Science Education》2013,35(14):1993-2015

This paper examines the use and role of the term ‘hypothesis’ in science teacher education as described by teacher students. Data were collected through focus group interviews conducted at seven occasions with 32 students from six well‐known Swedish universities. The theoretical framework is a sociocultural and pragmatist perspective on language and learning, introducing the notion of pivot terms to operationalise language use as a habit and mediated action. We describe three different customs of using the term ‘hypothesis’ within four cultural institutions that can be said to constitute science teacher education in Sweden. Students were found to habitually use the term hypothesis as meaning a guess about an outcome. This is contrasted to the function of this term in scientific research as a tentative explanation. We also found differences in how this term was used between the pure science courses given by the science departments of universities and science education courses taken only by teacher students. Findings also included further support for school students hypothesis fear reported in an earlier study. It is discussed how these findings can obstruct learning and teaching about the nature of scientific inquiry. Constructivist theories of learning are suggested as a possible origin of these problems. The findings are also related to curricular reform and development.  相似文献   

Establishing Assessment Scales Using a Novel Disciplinary Rationale for Scientific Reasoning     

Per Morten Kind 《科学教学研究杂志》2013,50(5):530-560

  相似文献   

Students’ Choice and Social Selection     

Per F. Laursen 《Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research》2013,57(4):279-291

In democratic countries, students make individual choices of courses of higher education; psychological theories have tried to explain the logic of these choices. The “flow” of young people into different courses of education and different parts of the labour market can also be viewed as a social process which can be studied sociologically. But both the psychological and the sociological theories are incomplete. The article tries to integrate the two kinds of theories using inspiration from the “structuration theory” of A. Giddens. Empirical support to the theory is given through a sketch of the history of the Danish admission policy and as a review of a survey of the choice of higher education by Danish students. The article concludes with proposals for further research.  相似文献   

School Health Promotion to Increase Empowerment,Gender Equality and Pupil Participation: A Focus Group Study of a Swedish Elementary School Initiative     

Katja Gillander Gådin  Gaby Weiner  Christina Ahlgren 《Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research》2013,57(1):54-70

A school health promotion project was carried out in an elementary school in Sweden where active participation, gender equality, and empowerment were leading principles. The objective of the study was to understand challenges and to identify social processes of importance for such a project. Focus group interviews were conducted with 6 single-sex groups (7–12 year olds) in grade 1–2, grade 3–4, and grade 5–6 on 2 occasions. The analysis used a grounded theory approach. The analysis identified the core category “normalization processes of violence and harassment.” It is argued that school health promotion initiatives need to be aware of normalization processes of violence and, which may be counter-productive to the increase of empowerment and participation among all pupils.  相似文献   

Coping by Copying? Higher education institutions’ student recruitment strategies     

Frølich  Nicoline  Brandt  Synnøve  Hovdhaugen  Elisabeth  Aamodt  Per Olaf 《Tertiary Education and Management》2009,15(3):227-240

Growing national and international competition for students puts pressure on higher education institutions (HEIs) to develop marketing and student recruitment strategies; these are also driven by financial stress caused by performance-based funding mechanisms. In this paper we explore Norwegian HEIs’ student recruitment strategies. What type of student recruitment strategies do HEIs develop? How are the strategies linked to the institutions’ student market position? We combine qualitative research strategies including in-depth interviews and document analysis with quantitative analyses of the student market positions of different types of institutions in Norway.

  相似文献   

Trajectories in teacher education: Recognising prior learning in practice   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Per Andersson  Kristina Hellberg 《Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education》2009,37(3):271-282

This article analyses the trajectories into teacher education of a group of child minders who are studying to become pre-school teachers. The specific focus is what impact their prior experiences and learning from pre-school have on their trajectories, and how these experiences and learning are recognised in the first year of teacher education. A situated learning perspective is applied, with a focus on participation and trajectories in the two communities of practice in which teacher education is situated – the university and the pre-school. The data consist of transcribed interviews with ten student teachers, and additional data are gathered from stakeholders in the program. The results show that prior experiences and learning are given implicit and indirect recognition. In the practice of the pre-school, the trajectory means a shift in identity, from child minder to student teacher and pre-school teacher. In the practice of the university, prior experiences and learning help students in their trajectories from peripheral to fuller participation.  相似文献   

Analysis of students' assessments in middle school curriculum materials: Aiming precisely at benchmarks and standards     

Luli Stern    Andrew Ahlgren 《科学教学研究杂志》2002,39(9):889-910

Assessment influences every level of the education system and is one of the most crucial catalysts for reform in science curriculum and instruction. Teachers, administrators, and others who choose, assemble, or develop assessments face the difficulty of judging whether tasks are truly aligned with national or state standards and whether they are effective in revealing what students actually know. Project 2061 of the American Association for the Advancement of Science has developed and field‐tested a procedure for analyzing curriculum materials, including their assessments, in terms of how well they are likely to contribute to the attainment of benchmarks and standards. With respect to assessment in curriculum materials, this procedure evaluates whether this assessment has the potential to reveal whether students have attained specific ideas in benchmarks and standards and whether information gained from students' responses can be used to inform subsequent instruction. Using this procedure, Project 2061 had produced a database of analytical reports on nine widely used science middle school curriculum materials. The analysis of assessments included in these materials shows that whereas currently available materials devote significant sections in their instruction to ideas included in national standards documents, students are typically not assessed on these ideas. The analysis results described in the report point to strengths and limitations of these widely used assessments and identify a range of good and poor assessment tasks that can shed light on important characteristics of good assessment. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 39: 889–910, 2002  相似文献   

Measuring learning outcomes          下载免费PDF全文

Joakim Caspersen  Jens‐Christian Smeby  Per Olaf Aamodt 《European Journal of Education》2017,52(1):20-30

The growing interest for measurement of learning outcomes relates to long lines of development in higher education, the request for accountability, intensified through international reforms and movements such as the development and implementation of qualifications frameworks. In this article, we discuss relevant literature on different approaches to measurement and how learning outcomes are measured, what kinds of learning outcomes are measured, and why learning outcomes are measured. Three dimensions are used to structure the literature: Whether the approaches emphasise generic or disciplinary skills and competence, self‐assessment or more objective test based measures (including grades), and how the issue of the contribution from the education program or institution (the value‐added) are discussed. It is pointed out that large scales initiatives that compare institutions and even nations seem to fall short because of the implicit and explicit differences in context, whilst small‐scale approaches suffer from a lack of relevance outside local contexts. In addition, competence (actual level of performance) is often confused with learning (gain and development) in many approaches, laying the ground for false assumptions about institutional process‐quality in higher education.  相似文献