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Den fria fantasins möjligheter och begränsningar. Hur normkritiskt tänkande påverkat några av mina skrivprocesser*
Get PDF”Makten att begära” och ”tvånget att försaka”. Om poesi, klimatkris och lyhörd läsning i Mats Söderlunds Ättlingarna*
Get PDFA Falsificationist Treatment of Auxiliary Hypotheses in Social and Behavioral Sciences: Systematic Replications Framework
No full textAuxiliary hypotheses AHs are indispensable in hypothesis-testing, because without them specification of testable predictions and consequently falsification is impossible. However, as AHs enter the test along with the main hypothesis, non-corroborative findings are ambiguous. Due to this ambiguity, AHs may also be employed to deflect falsification by providing “alternative explanations” of findings. This is not fatal to the extent that AHs are independently validated and safely relegated to background knowledge. But this is not always possible, especially in the so-called “softer” sciences where often theories are loosely organized, measurements are noisy, and constructs are vague. The Systematic Replications Framework (SRF) provides a methodological solution by disentangling the implications of the findings for the main hypothesis and the AHs through pre-planned series of systematically interlinked close and conceptual replications. SRF facilitates testing alternative explanations associated with different AHs and thereby increases test severity across a battery of tests. In this way, SRF assesses whether the corroboration of a hypothesis is conditional on particular AHs, and thus allows for a more objective evaluation of its empirical support and whether post hoc modifications to the theory are progressive or degenerative in the Lakatosian sense. Finally, SRF has several advantages over randomization-based systematic replication proposals, which generally assume a problematic neo-operationalist approach that prescribes exploration-oriented strategies in confirmatory contexts
Gymnasieelevers kontextuella meningsskapande: : agens i teori och praktik
No full textResearch has identified a seemingly puzzling student attitude that indicates a non-appreciative stance toward gaining freedom and room for action in education. Students do not always welcome agentic hallmarks such as legitimately having freedoms, for instance, freedom of choice or decision-making. Instead, they tend to prefer teacher-led guidance and, accordingly, the state of being relationally dependent on the teachers. In this article, we explore the mechanisms for such a student preference and the opposite view, represented by students from the 70s enrolled in the historic Swedish democratic school: the Experimental Gymnasium - Experimentgymnasiet - in Gothenburg.
There is a growing concern for the general tendency to restrain students by monitoring and controlling them closely, during their learning trajectories. The problem is that such a pedagogy might be seen as counter-productive, especially when academic freedom is a part of the learning goal. Hence, we also deal with this issue, as we discuss and illustrate notions of student agency in theory and practice throughout different school contexts and implicated cultures. More precisely, we distinguish between two theoretical concepts of agency in schooling that ultimately result in very different didactic implications. Furthermore, we adduce empirical qualification by providing exemplifying excerpts and a written student report relevant to our theoretical reasoning (i.e., distinct types of student agency in theory and practice). These empirical constructs are derived from two distinct corpus of data through time and space which radically differ from each other in school contexts and the applied pedagogical views. The data sets contain upper secondary students’ own voices, revealing their respective perspectives on participating in the same kind of task: learning to write academically and collaboratively in peer groups about Social Science. One data set is a collection of contemporary students’ video-documented reasoning from three focus groups. The other one is an extract of data derived from a peer group of students who vividly write about their everyday learning experiences in a school journal back in the 70s, as they were enrolled in a democratic, experimental state school (Experimental Gymnasium in Gothenburg, Sweden). Their text contribution aimed to share and inspire other students at the school.
Research focusing on student agency has recently become more common in the current field of Educational Science. However, more research is needed to fully understand the role of students’ actions, needs, and rights throughout different educational contexts. Accordingly, differentiated conceptualizations of student agency should also be addressed. We see a chance to contribute to filling this knowledge gap. This article aims to explore diverse notions of agency that have not yet been explicitly discussed in our national context. Due to the conceptual nature of this paper, our research question addresses the issue of conceptualizing student agency. We examine two contrasting concepts deriving from scholars who engage in Bakhtin-inspired dialogic pedagogy: instrumental vs authorial student agency. These concepts are also rooted in a pedagogical research field oriented to democratic education; dialogic pedagogy influenced by Bakhtin’s dialogue philosophy. The concept of authorial agency is here related to the student group from the Experimental Gymnasium in Gothenburg (it existed 1969-1975). When launching this experimental, democratic school was, above all, to encourage the students to feel free to engage democratically in decision-making about their studies, teaching, and organizational practicalities in developing the school together with the leader and the teachers. By implication, this type of agency concerns creative, new thinking, and person-oriented learning that resonates with the notion of authorial agency, further explicated in our present article.
The other illustrated concept in the present text is instrumental agency. It is explored in the context of students in our current age participating in a research project in which they discussed their writing experiences in focus groups. These writing experiences refer to a school course in doing so-called project work in peer groups, and the task of their performed activity has aimed at writing up an academic text about Social Science. The participating students are enrolled in a conventional, municipal upper secondary school in Sweden, in a program that orients to Social Science. In our interpretation, we link their reasonings to an instrumental agency, representing the idea of a limited agency and creativity in (written) meaning making, including being highly dependent on the teacher. We discuss how they were confined to such a goal-rational student position of educational subordination due to predefined goals and rules dictated from above.
In our final discussion, we problematize why the contemporary student group did not search for full-blown student agency and why the students from the experimental, democratic school in the 70s articulated the opposite. We conclude that there is an analytic need to address the role of contextual premises for didactics when considering the implied links to democracy in practice, the teacher role, student motivation, creativity in learning, and assessment regimes.
Forskning har identifierat en till synes förbryllande företeelse, nämligen den att skolelever inte alltid uppskattar frihet och handlingsutrymme i lärandet. Vidare efterlyses pedagogisk forskning om agens inom ramen för skolans verksamhet. Syftet med denna artikel är således att bidra med kunskap om hur några agensbegrepp kan förstås, och hur de kan synliggöras i relation till den pedagogiska praktiken. Ett särskilt fokus är elevers tillskrivna agens och deras egna berättelser om studieerfarenheter och förhållningssätt i lärandet, närmare bestämt akademiskt skrivande som grupparbete. Med utgångspunkt i tidigare forskning, samt datamaterial med gymnasieelevers yttranden om grupparbete i skrivande, diskuteras två kontrasterande agensbegrepp: instrumentell agens och författaragens. Didaktiska implikationer betänks i sammanhanget. Det är elever från Experimentgymnasiet på 70-talet vs. en konventionell svensk gymnasieskola i samtiden som i detta bidrag får representera skilda konceptioner av agens. I våra illustrationer av dessa teoretiska begrepp menar vi att gymnasieelevernas berättelse vid Experimentgymnasiet exemplifierar författaragens på ett tänkvärt vis. De samtida gymnasieeleverna ger enligt våra tolkningar uttryck för instrumentell agens i de samtalsepisoder som diskuteras och problematiseras
Teknisk, praktisk och frigörande kvalitet i fritidshemmets systematiska kvalitetsarbete
No full textThis article explores which qualities that are made visible in quality development work in school-age educare through an analysis of conversations between researchers and staff in an action research and development project focusing on how quality development work can be based on pupils needs, interests and experiences.
Previous research shows that when national standards in governing documents, intended to increase quality, are transformed in everyday life in school-age educare it is possible that they counteract these intentions since resources and structures needed seldom follow. Both international and national research shows that communication and relationships are important quality indicators. Staffs understanding of their own practice and the staff team’s reflection and communication about it and their setting can contribute to increased quality in school-age educare. The question is what forms of knowledge and knowledge interests are made visible in these reflections?
The staff involved in the project were facilitated in the different processes of exploring their pupils’ interests and needs, planning based on these findings as well as documenting and reflecting on the outcome. The analysis of these collective conversations and reflections shows what is valued and what knowledge building is focusing on, in these particular school-age educare settings, at this particular time. This contributes to the discussion about quality norms for school-age educare, focusing on those qualities in the dialogical and collective processes that the analysis makes visible.
Habermas theory (Habermas, 1968/1971) about technical, practical and emancipatory knowledge interests are used as a tool for analysis to discuss quality. Technical knowledge, in this theory, is based on an analysis of empirical material where the aim is predetermined and the knowledge interest is to improve and control something. Practical knowledge has a historical-hermeneutical frame and develops through meaning making where pre-understanding is made visible. The knowledge interest is to develop consensus among the actors of a specific tradition about how life should be lived by increasing understanding. Emancipatory knowledge is based on transformative reflection, knowledge becomes emancipatory when rules are questioned. The interest focuses on developing self-reflection that sets limitations aside (Habermas, 1968/1971, s. 317) and thereby reflect on that which we otherwise take for granted.
The empirical examples in the article illuminate different forms of quality by making one or intertwined knowledge interests visible. Staff seems to move between these interests depending on which part of the aim of school-age educare that are most valued when talking about their practice. Desire for technical quality seems to lead to control both of participation as well as assessment of individual pupils. Collegial discussions allow for professional meaning making about the motive for actions and their underlying values, thus can be recognised as practical quality. When collective reflections focus on norms and other limitations it seems to motivate for change. It is not until change actually happens though, in staffs work or/and in the conditions of the school-age educare setting, that it may be possible to talk about emancipatory quality in school-age educare.
Quality in systematic development work at these school-age educare settings made it possible to work with the different parts of the aim of the service as well as ensuring that all the children in the specific group had their interests and needs met over time. Conversations and collective meaning making about the aim of school-age educare allowed for an everyday practice that was open to challenging and changing collective norms and structural barriers to collectively build a school-age educare setting together with the pupils (Lager 2020) where a good life could be lived (Kemmis, 2010).I denna artikel utforskas vilka kvaliteter som synliggörs i det systematiska kvalitetsarbetet i fritidshem genom att analysera samtal mellan forskare och fritidshemspersonal i ett aktionsforsknings- och utvecklingsprojekt. Habermas teori om tekniska, praktiska och frigörande kunskapsintressen används som analysverktyg för att diskutera kvalitet. Artikelns empiriska exempel visar på olika former av kvalitet genom att synliggöra olika eller flera sammanflätade kunskapsintressen. Fritidshemspersonalen tycks röra sig mellan dessa kunskapsintressen beroende på vilken del av det komplexa uppdraget som värderas högst i talet om fritidshemmets praktik. Eftersträvan av teknisk kvalitet tycks leda till kontroll både vad gäller deltagande och bedömning av elever. De kollegiala diskussionerna ger utrymme för professionellt meningsskapande om motiven för handlingar och dess bakomliggande värderingar och därmed praktisk kvalitet. Inte förrän förändringar faktiskt sker, i verksamheten och i verksamhetens sammanhang, kan man dock tala om frigörande kvalitet
