Ingrid Pramling

Conceptions of knowledge, professionalism and contemporary problems in some professional academic subcultures

ABSTRACT The paper reports some results of a longitudinal interview investigation on the general and specific effects of higher education on the way some central phenomena are conceptualised by students of medicine, business administration and engineering. There is evidence that different types of professional education nourish different conceptions about what constitute important problems in the different areas. There is a tendency for business administrators to ‘decontextualise˚s their conceptions of what make up important problems in the economic life, i.e. to abandon the more politically oriented issues about the global and/or national distribution of material welfare in favour of a more efficiency-oriented perspective. The development goes in the opposite direction among students of engineering who tend to emphasise the social and environment consequences of technological development. The three groups also have qualitatively different conceptions about the relationship between their formal education ...

Learning about "The Shop": An Approach to Learning in Preschool.

Abstract An approach based on relating to childrens lived experiences in order to change their understanding of particular aspects of the world around them is illustrated. In the example presented, the approach was used in two preschool groups learning about “the shop” and was compared to two groups with traditional teaching of the same theme. In total, 70 children aged 5 to 6 years and their teachers participated in the investigation. The children were interviewed three times about “the shop”: before the teaching started, immediately after, and 3 months later. The results show that children from the experimental groups developed their understanding of relevant aspects of the theme to a far greater extent than children from the control groups.