Search results for "Sociocultural perspective"
showing 8 items of 8 documents
Children’s Engagement with Mathematics in Kindergarten Mediated by the Use of Digital Tools
2013
The purpose of this chapter is to study children’s engagement with mathematics in kindergarten mediated by digital tools within the context of interactive whiteboard (IWB). Our study reports from a research project aiming at analysing in what ways digital tools may nurture children’s appropriation processes relative to mathematics. In adopting a sociocultural perspective on learning and development, observations together with video recordings have been analysed. Our study shows that the children make sense of the digital tools and are able to apply the tools purposefully due to the interaction with an adult within the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The children externalise their reason…
Nordic PISA 2000 in a sociocultural perspective
2004
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international study coordinated by governments of participating countries, through the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Dev...
Reconsidering off-task: a comparative study of PDA-mediated activities in four classrooms
2010
Mobile technology is ubiquitous and diverse and permeates many aspects of daily life at home, during leisure activities, and in public spaces. The study presented here is of two sixth grade classes in Michigan, USA and two seventh grade classes in Norway. The students and the teachers in these four classrooms were equipped with mobile technologies (PDAs). We found that the students’ PDA-mediated actions in the classroom were not exclusively used for the tasks and activities set by the teacher, but that the students also used the PDAs on their own initiative – so-called ‘off-task’ activities. We analyze the findings by reconsidering off-task activities from a sociocultural perspective.
Reasoning with paper and pencil: The role of inscriptions in student learning of geometric series
2009
The purpose of this article is to analyse how students use inscriptions as tools for thinking and learning in mathematical problem-solving activities. The empirical context is that of learning about geometric series in a small group setting. What has been analysed is how students made use of inscriptions, self-made as well as those provided by text books and teachers, and the role these inscriptions played in the coordination of students’ learning/communication. Through the use of inscriptions (made on the chalkboard and with paper and pencil), the students externalised their thinking while engaging in mathematical reasoning on the topic of geometric series. The inscriptions were significan…
Exploring and Reshaping Learners’ Beliefs About the Usefulness of Corrective Feedback : A Sociocultural Perspective
2016
A number of studies have shown that learners’ beliefs about the usefulness of corrective feedback for improving their L2 (a second or a foreign language) use influences the extent to which learners can utilize that same feedback. It seems, then, that changing some of these beliefs could benefit the L2 learning process. The present article reports on two small-scale studies, both drawing on a sociocultural perspective on the development of beliefs. Changes in learners’ beliefs about corrective feedback were observed both within a period of six months (Case study) and over the course of one research interview (Group study). The studies exemplify how the interplay of one’s own and other’s expe…
Engaging with mathematics in the kindergarten. Orchestrating a fairy tale through questioning and use of tools
2013
ABSTRACTThe aim of this study is to analyse how a kindergarten teacher orchestrated a mathematical activity involving a fairy tale. Taking a sociocultural perspective on learning and development, naturally occurring talk-in-interaction has been analysed in order to scrutinise the subtleties of the orchestration. The fairy tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears was used both as context for the activity, but also as a means through which mathematical concepts were engaged with. The analysis shows that the orchestration bears characteristics of questioning and use of tools such as voice, facial expressions, and concrete materials. The orchestration is also characterised by sincere planning in adv…
Introducing Dialogic Teaching to Science Student Teachers
2011
It is commonly believed that science teachers rely on language that allows only minor flexibility when it comes to taking into account contrasting views and pupil thoughts. Too frequently science teachers either pose questions that target predefined answers or simply lecture through lessons, a major concern from a sociocultural perspective. This study reports the experiences of science student teachers when introduced to the Communicative Approach to science education drawing on dialogic teacher-talk in addition to authoritative teacher-talk. This approach was introduced to the students in an interventional teaching program running parallel to the student teachers’ field practice. The pract…
‘Because I point to myself as the hog’ : interactional achievement of moral decisions in a classroom
2016
Abstract Drawing on the conversation analytic and sociocultural perspectives, this study investigates children's situated moral negotiations in classroom peer interaction in the absence of a teacher. The conversation analytic methodology is used to operationalise some of the key elements of the sociocultural perspective on moral development. In this way, this study enables readers to observe and study the semiotic, conversational and interactional mediations of moral functioning in real life, with the example of children's moral practices. The empirical analysis is based on video-recorded sequences in which primary school children work with the rules of a counting rhyme which is banned by t…