Anna Vikström

What is Intended, What is Realized, and What is Learned? Teaching and Learning Biology in the Primary School Classroom

Within the framework of variation theory, 7- to 12-year-old students’ ways of understanding cellular respiration and photosynthesis were investigated against the background of their teachers’ teaching. Eighteen students were selected by the teachers and interviewed by the researcher. Lessons were observed and video recorded, and stimulated-recall interviews with the teachers were conducted. The students’ understanding of the function of oxygen and sugar in plants was described in four categories. The study concludes that young students can develop complex understanding if opportunities to learn are presented. The opportunities depended mainly on the language used by the teachers, such as metaphors, pointing out critical aspects of the object of learning. The study has implications for the relationship between teachers’ competence and students’ learning.

What Makes the Difference? Teachers Explore What Must be Taught and What Must be Learned in Order to Understand the Particulate Character of Matter

The concept of matter, especially its particulate nature, is acknowledged as being one of the key concept areas in learning science. Within the framework of learning studies and variation theory, and with results from science education research as a starting point, six lower secondary school science teachers tried to enhance students’ learning by exploring what must be learnt in order to understand the concept in specific way. It was found that variation theory was a useful guiding principle when teachers are engaged in pedagogical design, analysis of lessons, and evaluation of students learning, as well as a valuable tool for adapting research results into practice.

Making PCK Explicit—Capturing Science Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) in the Science Classroom

One way for teachers to develop their professional knowledge, which also focuses on specific science content and the ways students learn, is through being involved in researching their own practice. The aim of this study was to examine how science teachers changed (or not) their professional knowledge of teaching after inquiring into their own teaching in learning studies. The data used in this article consisted of interviews and video-recorded lessons from the six teachers before the project (PCK pre-test) and after the project (PCK post-test), allowing an analysis of if and if then how the teachers changed their teaching practice. Hence, this study responds to the urgent call to focus direct attention on the practice of science teaching. When looking at the individual teachers, it was possible to discern similarities in the ways they have changed their teaching in lesson 2 compared to lesson 1, changes that can be described as: changes in how the object of learning was defined and focused, changes in how the examples that were presented to the students were chosen and changes in how the lessons were structured which in turn influenced the meaning of the concepts that were dealt with. As such, issues for enhancing teachers’ professional learning were unpacked in ways that began to demonstrate, and offer insights into, the extent of their PCK development over time.

Teaching one thing at a time or several things together? – teachers changing their way of handling the object of learning by being engaged in a theory-based professional learning community in mathematics and science

Abstract Twelve lower secondary schoolteachers in mathematics and science were asked to teach a topic of their choice during a lesson that was video-recorded. We were able to analyse 10 of the cases and we found that all of them were similar in one respect: concepts and principles were introduced one at a time, each one followed by examples of the concept or principle in question, apparently to highlight its essential meaning. All the teachers participated in three modified lesson studies with three cycles in four different groups during three semesters. The modified lesson studies were built on a theoretical idea supported by a large number of recent studies. The theory states that new meanings (of concepts and principles, for instance) are learned through engaging with instances of contrasting concepts and principles. The core idea is that new meanings derive from differences, not from sameness. After the three modified lesson studies, the teachers were asked to once again teach the same topic as in the recorded lessons before the lesson studies. The new lessons were also recorded and the analysis showed that there was one thing in common in all cases: all of the 10 teachers dealt with the relevant concepts and principles in relation to each other (i.e. simultaneously) and not one at a time. By thus bringing out the differences between them, their meaning was made possible to grasp for the students. The study lends support to the conjecture that the modified lesson study is a powerful tool for enabling teachers to structure the content of their teaching in accordance with a principle that is more powerful in making learning possible, even if this contradicts their taken-for-granted practice.

Teachers’ solutions: a learning study about solution chemistry in Grade 8

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the collective exploration, process and knowledge production made in a learning study about solution chemistry.Design/methodology/approach – Secondary school teachers conducted a learning study with variation theory as a guiding principle, supervised by a researcher. The relationship between teaching and learning was analyzed and evaluated in a learning study cycle of three lessons.Findings – Critical aspects when teaching solution chemistry were identified, as well as enacted patterns of variation that significantly improved students’ learning. Examples of critical aspects were the particulate character of matter, especially the feature of “empty space” between particles, the connection between macroscopic phenomenon and sub‐microscopic explanations and the difference between answers with everyday language and scientific language.Practical implications – The paper suggests that teachers in a learning study can produce new knowledge as well as use earlier...

Success with succession : an empirical study of small Swedish family firms

Successful succession in small family firms may be a key to sustainability for the individual firm but also to regional growth. This paper examines how leadership succession factors associated to attitudes, norms and perceived behavioural control of leading actors in a small family firm can be related to how well the succession process works and to the firms post-transition performance. We structure factors pointed out in earlier studies according to Ajzens theory of planned behaviour (TpB) where we put forward hypotheses for the three areas. The results based on a survey of 55 small family firms that have experienced a leadership succession show that TpB works well for understanding a successful succession process, but is dismal for understanding post-transition performance. The strongest results are found for aspects linked to perceived behavioural control and attitudes.