Paperpresentation 20 maj
Cultivating cross-disciplinary communities of practice in higher education: The case of Norwegian early childhood education and care
This presentation explores how to cultivate cross-disciplinary communities of practice in early childhood teacher education (ECTE) programs. The interview study draws on focus-group interviews and individual interviews with 17 early childhood teacher educators and four program leaders at a Norwegian University. Results indicated that coherence and cross-disciplinary in the educational program depended on collaboration and communication within and between different levels of teacher educator communities, from communities within the specific disciplines, within cross-disciplinary courses, across courses running the same semester, and within the overall ECTE program. The study contributes with knowledge on the interplay between formal (e.g. meeting structure and representation, resources, and location) and informal (e.g. strong and weak ties and networks, personal investment, interests and professional identity) aspects within and between these levels of communities.
Presentatör: Terese Wilhelmsen
A thematic analysis of theses in higher education: The case of primary teacher education
Producing a final thesis is an important final examination of a university graduate in higher education. Previous research has often had a focus on the production process, like supervising and students’ experiences, or assessment of quality of theses; this is even more the case regarding research of thesis production in higher education of professions, like teaching. The aim of this study is to analyse the content of 264 theses in teacher education at two universities in Sweden. One important result is that most theses are about a school subject. A common thesis is about learning and instruction in a specific school subject. Regarding the content area, the most common themes at both universities are learning and instruction and classroom management. Other common themes were education policy, special pedagogy and assessment. There are no major differences regarding the topics investigated at both universities, which implies that there exist strong national norms regarding the topics investigated in theses in teacher education.
Presentatörer: Rimma Nyman och Mattias Börjesson