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Previous research shows that pupils’ participation in educational activities increases when they are allowed to use several forms of expression. Furthermore, digital media have become increasingly prominent as “carriers” of meaning in chemistry education. Based on that, this paper aims to explore ‘what is happening’ and ‘what is possible’ when six-year-old pupils participate in multimodally designed learning activities and create digital animations of water molecules and phase changes of water. This study is qualitative and draws on the frameworks of social semiotics and Designs for Learning, DfL, where teaching and learning are seen as a multimodal design. The Learning Design Sequence model, developed within DfL is used as a basis for the lesson design and as an analytical tool. The analyzed data were generated by filming when pupils participated in multimodal learning activities, created digital animations, and participated in meta-reflective discussions regarding their digital animations. The main findings are that multimodally designed lessons can increase pupils’ meaning making in chemistry, that the creation of digital animations may both increase pupils’ participation and support their meaning making, and that meta-reflection of pupils’ representations is an important part of the lesson design.

This paper aims to explore how pupils' positioning, competencies and meaning-making emerge in hybrid learning activities when they create digital animations in different subjects. Children of today have never lived in an analogous world but in a hybrid reality where the physical and the digital are so intertwined that they cannot be separated (Wernholm, 2020). The qualitative project draws on the frameworks of social semiotics (Kress et al., 2001) and Designs for Learning (Selander, 2008), where teaching and learning are seen as a multimodal design. As part of the Design for Learning framework, the Learning Design Sequence model is used as an analytical tool. Data has been generated by filming when pupils, in pairs or small groups, create digital animations in different subjects. The children’s digital animations were also used to get them to tell their stories about what they had done and what their intentions behind certain actions were (cf. Wernholm & Reneland-Forsman, 2019). The researchers were sensitive and paid particular attention to the children’s nonverbal communication to ascertain genuine consent to participation. Preliminary results indicate that when pupils participate in hybrid learning activities by creating digital animations together, they position themselves in relation to each other and the tablet. Furthermore, they draw on their previous experiences and competencies to make meaning. Thus, this project contributes by providing implications for the early years of schooling by showing how the use of digital tools can put a variety of children’s competencies into play and support their meaning-making in different subjects.

Challenges previously identified in teacher education in Sweden include: i) a gap between theoretical education provided by universities and the practical experiences encountered during teaching practice in schools, and ii) a lack of teaching methodologies in general, especially those involving digital tools. Despite research indicating that collaborative creation of digital animations by students can facilitate participation and cooperative learning (Ebbelind et al., 2023; Patron et al., 2024; Wernholm et al., 2023), these challenges persist. This developmental project aims to address these issues by introducing students to a theoretical model for designing learning activities and providing them with opportunities to utilize this model in planning, implementing, and evaluating learning activities involving digital tools.The theoretical model utilised in this project is the Learning Design Sequence (LDS)-model (Selander, 2008), which is developed within the Designs for Learning theory that in turn is theoretically connected to a social semiotics perspective of multimodality (Kress, 2010). Teacher students, university teachers and in-service teachers participate in this developmental project. Initially, university teachers and in-service teachers attended a lecture and a workshop. During this workshop, they were given the opportunity to engage in the same activity, to create a digital animation, that the teacher students are later offered to participate in. Subsequently, students utilised the LDS-model to plan, implement, and evaluate a learning design sequence with pupils. Finally, the students wrote individual reflections and shared and discussed their experiences with their peers. Following these activities, interviews were conducted with the university teachers, in-service teachers and the students to explore their experiences. Additionally, the students were asked for consent to share their written reflections with the researchers. The participating university t

VI LÄRARE DEBATT: Regeringens uppdrag till Skolverket – att göra utbildningen i förskolan skärmfri – riskerar att ge negativa och allvarliga konsekvenser, särskilt för barn som är i störst behov av att möta en digitaliserad värld med stöd av utbildade förskollärare och barnskötare. Det skriver 27 barn- och förskoleforskare i ett gemensamt upprop.

Ej belagd 20240828

This study focuses on how teachers' work-related boundaries are challenged in relation to students' parents. Historically,good relationships between teachers and parents have been regarded as a success factor for students' school results. This isalso how parents' involvement in their children's education often has been discussed in research. In recent years, however,teachers' parental contacts in Sweden have come to be discussed as problematic for teachers. The teachers' union reportsthat teachers feel that parents make unreasonable demands (Lärarförbundet 2020); e.g., attempt to control teachers byexpressing opinions on their grading, or show what is perceived as excessive solicitousness for their own child. Teachersdescribe this as a problem that has intensified over time (Hedlin & Frank, 2022). Against this background, the aim is tocontribute knowledge about teachers' work-related boundaries in relation to parents and how these are maintained andchallenged.Theoretical frameworkIn this study, boundary theory is used to identify how teachers' work-related boundaries are created and maintained(Aronsson, 2018). Boundless work can mean freedom and be experienced positively. At the same time, it can contribute tofeeling the demand of always having to be available, which might be stressful. Individuals can use strategies to safeguardtheir private life by trying to keep work and leisure separate, segmentation. A segmenting strategy can mean not answeringe-mails at home. Other strategies can be about reducing the friction between work and leisure, integration. Betweensegmentation and integration, there is a spectrum with great variation.Female teachers are more exposed to parental demands, because teachers' work is associated with norms of femininity inthe form of expectations to provide care, and prioritise the needs of others (Widding, 2013). Therefore, boundary theory iscombined with Connell's (2009) gender theory, which describes how the verbal, bodily and materia, Lärares gränslösa föräldrakontakter; hur en arbetsmiljörisk i lärares arbete kan hanteras och avgränsas.

VI LÄRARE DEBATT: Regeringens uppdrag till Skolverket – att göra utbildningen i förskolan skärmfri – riskerar att ge negativa och allvarliga konsekvenser, särskilt för barn som är i störst behov av att möta en digitaliserad värld med stöd av utbildade förskollärare och barnskötare. Det skriver 27 barn- och förskoleforskare i ett gemensamt upprop.

Syftet med studien är att problematisera fritidshemslärares perspektiv på stöd till elever i fritidshem. Följande frågeställning vägleder studien: Vilka diskurser framträder i lärares tal om undervisning av elever i behov av stöd i fritidshem? Studien utgår från socialkonstruktionistisk teoribildning och använder diskurs-analysens metodologi eftersom den möjliggör att undersöka vilka normer och värden som finns invävda i lärares tal, genom att studera hur fritidshemslärare skapar verklighet i fokusgruppsamtal. Studiens foucaultinspirerade analyser avser att öppna upp för reflektion och alternativa sätt att tänka och tala än de som ut-märkt sig vara dominerande när det gäller undervisning av elever i behov av sär-skilt stöd. I analysen identifieras fyra diskurser: talet om värderelationell under-visning, talet om undervisning av elever i behov av särskilt goda relationer, talet om undervisning i en komplex vardag och talet om undervisning av elever i behov av särskilt stöd. I en empirisk modell illustreras hur diskurserna förhåller sig till när fritidshemslärare ger uttryck för att ett värderelationellt förhållningssätt är i förgrund respektive i bakgrund, samt när undervisningen tar utgångspunkt i ett barnperspektiv eller närmar sig barns perspektiv. Fritidshemslärare framträder som nyckelpersoner i arbetet med elever i behov av stöd eftersom de har kunskap om hur elever framträder i olika undervisningskontexter.

The focus of this article is on digital tools as part of mathematics education with six-year-olds. More explicitly, we study how the creation of digital animations, as a part of working on a problem-solving task, enables young students’ learning of combinatorics. In the article, the creation of digital animations implies that the students re-design, that is, recreate their solution procedure with a digital application. The aim with letting the young students create digital animations is diverse. We presume that such work enables problem solving as well as the learning of combinatorics, but also that it has potential to enable creativity and agency in learning. Video-documentations from three classrooms where students work on the problem-solving task were analysed from a multimodal perspective where teaching is seen as a design process. In that process, the teacher designs learning activities that give students access to different resources for their meaning making process. The results show that working with digital animations, when integrated in a learning design sequence, amplify students’ learning of combinatorics.

This article discusses play as hybrid, where play activities with digital and analogue tools are so interlaced that they are one common play activity: a playground which is both physical and digital. With four empirical examples from two research projects the article wants to illustrate hybrid play which is rather unexplored. With the purpose to problematize and contribute to the discussion of children's hybrid play by using a theoretical model research questions are: How is children's hybrid play expressed in preschool and what the obstacles and opportunities with the hybridity for children's play? The theoretical model presents five concepts of relevance for understanding children’s hybrid play (multimodal participatory literacies, performing self, explore, contribute and connect) in preschool. The article concludes with a new definition of hybrid play and suggest that digital play is always hybrid. The multimodality means that children are allowed to participate in more ways, hybrid play requires children to connect. Educators can both enable and hinder hybrid play, enabling by for example using creative apps, allowing digital tools as a natural part of free play and recognizing children's narratives.

The present study aimed to explore ‘what’s happening’ and ‘what’s possible’, when young pupils jointly create multimodal texts in small groups. This was achieved by studying the process when pupils in a grade 2 classroom (i) created handwritten fairy tales, (ii) drew images, and then, (iii) transformed them into animated multimodal texts using a digital application during three small-group activities. Data comprises video recordings, pupils’ multimodal texts (writing and drawings), teaching materials, and lesson plans. This qualitative case study focuses on one group of three pupils aged 8–9. The study is theoretically grounded in the designs for learning perspective, with the Learning Design Sequence Model utilized as an analytical tool. The teacher’s design for learning—including her planned activities and the resources made available to the pupils—appeared to have a major impact on what happens and what becomes possible for the pupils in their design for learning. The teacher’s design also influenced what competencies the pupils could (and chose) to draw upon in the different activities. An important result was that the pupils positioned themselves and each other in quite different ways during the small-group activities, which partly could be explained by the different affordances of the resources provided, as well as the teacher’s design. The detailed descriptions of how the pupils’ positioning changed in relation to the teacher’s design for learning and the available resources add valuable knowledge to the field of educational research.

The use of computers and other digital tools such as tablets, smartboards and game consoles is rapidly becoming a reality in early-childhood educational settings and the early years of schooling. Thus, an important question is what potential digital tools and digital resources has - when integrated in educational practices - to increase pupils’ meaning making. Therefore, the aim of this project is to explore ‘what’s happening’ and ‘what’s possible’ when pupils (6–8 years) are part of teaching and learning practices involving digital tools, in this case when jointly creating multimodal digital animations to communicate ideas and tell stories in the subjects Mathematics, Science, and Swedish.The theoretical base is Designs for Learning (DfL) (Björklund Boistrup & Selander 2022), where teaching and learning are seen as a form of multimodal design. According to that perspective, the teacher designs learning activities, giving the pupils access to different resources to enable meaning making, while the pupils’ meaning making process is seen as a kind of re-design, based on, e.g., available resources, interests and previous experiences. In our analysis, we utilize the Learning Design Sequence (LDS) model, developed within DfL. To enable fine-tuned detailed analysis of pupils’ multimodal interaction, classroom activities with pupils working in pairs were video-recorded. Moreover, the pupils’ multimodal texts (writing, drawings, digital animations, etc.) were collected. The analysis revealed, e.g., that the different material resources provided in the teachers’ design for learning (e.g., paper, pencils, crayons, or digital tools) to a great extent steered what happened and became possible for the pupils in terms of negotiating, contributing, making suggestions, and making conscious choices of signs to use in their multimodal texts (both paper-based and digital).

Research show that the use of computers and other digital tools such as tablets, smartboards and game consoles is rapidly becoming a reality in early-childhood educational settings and in the early years of schooling in Sweden. Thus, an important question is what potential digital tools and digital resources has to increase pupils’ meaning making when integrated into educational practices. Therefore, the aim of this project is to explore ‘what’s happening’ and ‘what’s possible” when pupils in small groups create digital animations together. The theoretical base for the project is Designs for Learning (DfL), according to which teaching, and learning are seen as a form of multimodal design: the teacher stages, or designs, learning activities, thus giving the pupils access to different resources that enable meaning making, and the pupils in turn re-design their learning based on their previous knowledge, interests and experiences. As part of the DfL framework, a model – Learning Design Sequence (LDS) – has been developed for teachers to use to plan and evaluate their teaching, and for researchers to use as an analytical tool in research studies.This project is carried out in three currently running studies in which the creation of digital animations when learning different subjects is studied, based on LDS. The chosen subjects are Swedish, Mathematics and Science. The project adheres to the ethical considerations regarding informed consent, anonymity, and the right to withdraw participation from the study without giving a reason. Data has been generated by filming when pupils create digital animations together. In one of the studies the pupils’ talk about their digital animations were also filmed. Thereby, fine-tune details of pupils’ multimodal interaction could be captured and analyzed. Also, pupils’ multimodal texts (writing, drawings, digital animations), teaching material and teachers’ lessons plans were collected. The results also indicate that the highest level, Ej belagd 240903, Digitala verktyg och digital kompetens i förskolans- och skolans undervisning

In this essay, the compensatory mission of the Swedish school-age educare is discussed, focusing specifically on school-age educare centers in areas with socio-economic challenges. This is made in the light of narratives of principals and school-age educare staff and in relation to the Official Reports of the Swedish Government (SOU 2020:34; SOU 2022:61), which proposes a free of charge school-age educare for all children aged 6–9 years. Both the official reports and the narratives contain several examples of how school-age educare centers can be valuable in a variety of ways for the children growing up in areas with socio-economic challenges. On the one hand, the potential of a traditional school-age educare pedagogy, where children can develop the fundamental democratic values on which the Swedish society is based, is described. On the other hand, it becomes clear that free school-age educare for all children also could lead to negative consequences. If resources aren’t provided, in form of better premises and more staff, the centers can only in the best-case scenario provide child minding. Overall, a picture of the school-age educare centers’ potential emerges, but also what kind of resources that might be required for this potential to be realized. In conclusion, the essay reflects upon how the compensatory mission can be understood in a time where children’s free time is described as more and more problematic., Projekt: Det (o)likvärdiga fritidshemmet

Vi förskole­forskare som särskilt fokuserar på digitalisering reagerar starkt på den bild av digitalisering i förskolan som dominerar i media. Det skriver flera debattörer.

Det finns i samhället en romantiserad bild av lek och barndom. I denna essä problematiseras bilden av den romantiska leken och vi argumenterar för ett nytt sätt att förstå barns lek där samtidskontexten och omvärlden har en stor betydelse., A romanticized ideal of play and childhood appears to be common today. This essay problematizes this romanticized picture of play and argues for a new way of understanding children’s play where the contemporary context and the sociocultural environment are of significant importance.

Ej belagd 20240822, Vetenskapliga grund och framkomliga farleder – praktikutvecklande forskning i rörelse, som i sin tur är en del av Utveckling, lärande, forskning (ULF)

In a project with an overall aim to explore ‘what’s happening’ and ‘what’s possible’ in terms of how pupils made meaning about different subject content and what signified their interaction with each other and with the tools provided, we let young pupils create multimodal texts in small groups in different subject areas. In one sub-study, we analysed how the pupils positioned themselves and each other (e.g., by taking leadership over one’s peers, or by refusing to take part in the activity) through their multimodal interaction when jointly creating fairy tales by use of different tools, such as papers, pencils and crayons, or a digital application for making animations. In the study, we followed the process when pupils in a grade 2 classroom during three different small-group activities i) created handwritten fairy tales, ii) drew images, and then, iii) transformed them into animated multimodal texts by using a digital application. Data was generated through video-recordings, pupils’ multimodal texts (writing and drawings), teaching materials, and lesson plans. The study is theoretically grounded in the designs for learning (DFL) perspective and the Learning Design Sequence Model was used as an analytical tool (see for example Björklund Boistrup & Selander 2022, Kress & Selander 2012, Selander 2008). One aspect of the model concerns how students are positioned and how they position themselves during the teaching and learning activities. The teacher’s design for learning - including her planned activities and the resources made available for the pupils - appeared to have a great impact on what happened and what became possible for the pupils in their design in learning and what competencies the pupils could (and chose) to draw upon in the different activities. An important result was that the pupils positioned themselves and each other in quite different ways during small-group activities, e.g., if someone took a leading position while others acted as followe

This paper aims to explore how well-designed multimodal teaching affects pupils' meaning-making and ‘what’s happening’ and ‘what’s possible’ when pupils create multimodal digital animations of water molecules and phase changes of water. Previous research has shown that pupils’ participation in educational activities increases when they are allowed to use several forms of expression (Petersen, 2020). The project is qualitative and draws on the frameworks of social semiotics (e.g., see Kress et al., 2001) and Designs for Learning, DfL (Selander, 2008), where teaching and learning are seen as a multimodal design. The Learning Design Sequence model, developed within DfL is used as an analytical tool. Data has been generated by filming when pupils, in pairs or small groups, create digital animations in Chemistry. Afterwards, the children while showing their digital animations were asked about what they had been doing and what their intentions behind certain actions had been (cf. Wernholm & Reneland-Forsman,2019). The project adheres to the ethical considerations regarding informed consent, anonymity, and the right to withdraw participation without giving a reason. The researchers were sensitive and paid particular attention to the children’s nonverbal communication to ascertain genuine consent to participation. Preliminary results indicate that well-designed multimodal activities where pupils both create and reflect upon their digital animations appear to contribute to increased meaning-making in Chemistry. Thus, this project contributes with implications for early years of schooling by showing how using digital tools can create conditions for children’s participation and meaning-making in Chemistry., Digitala verktyg och digital kompetens i förskolans- och skolans undervisning

Ej belagd 20231114

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Kapitel i rapport

Kapitel i rapport

The aim is to investigate how digital play with animations may contribute to children’s (six-year-olds) learning of combinatorics, in this case how three toy bears can be arranged in a row on a sofa (i.e. permutations for n = 3). English (2005) showed that a well-organised and meaningful context facilitates young children’s possibilities to explore combinatorial situations. This study builds on Palmér & van Bommel (2020) who investigated the role of and connection between systematization, representation and digital artefacts in children’s work with combinatorial tasks. Their study showed that the use of digital artefacts may enhance children’s understanding of combinatorial problems. This study builds on designs for learning (Kress & Selander 2010), including multimodal theories. A central model is the Learning Design Sequence (LDS) model. The study is qualitative in nature, combining the LDS model with multimodal analysis. Activities, in three different classrooms, where the children worked in pairs with the combinatoric task with paper/pens and with creating digital animations were video documented. Video-documentations (150 minutes) from three pairs of children were analysed qualitatively according to the LDS model focusing on the children’s understanding of the mathematical content. The study conforms to the ethical regulations for research in Sweden. All participating teachers, children, and guardians approved their participation. Creating digital animations enhanced the children’s understanding of combinatorics. The digital animations were more systematic with more permutations than the paper and pencil documentation. The study contributes with implications for how digital play with animations can be integrated in early mathematics education., Ej belagd

This article contributes with knowledge on the methodological and ethical challenges entailed in research on children’s roles in a rapidly changing digitized world. The theoretical framework comprises children’s perspectives, children’s agency and Dewey’s notion of experience. Three sub-studies investigated how different methods affected the relationship between researcher and informant and whether these methods gave the children power and influence over their participation in the research process. The methods tested were a) individual interviews based on an interview guide, b) individual interviews during which children’s multimodal representations (saved on their mobile phones/iPads) served as starting points, c) group interviews and d) video-recorded play sessions with groups in Minecraft followed by individual video-stimulated recall. What emerges is a challenge in the form of a paradox: the more influence the children are allowed to influence the process, and the more nuanced and multidimensional that the data obtained is, the more often questions arise regarding ethics, integrity, and research ethics. By discussing ethical guidelines for research in relationto the Convention on the Rights of the child, this article contributes with knowledge valuablefor the research field investigating children’s perspectives on participation in a hybrid reality.

The aim of this article is to propose a theoretical framework for understanding children’s learning at play in a hybrid reality. Metasynthesis is applied as a method for examining children’s meaning making activities when playing in a hybrid reality. The data consists of 41 peer-reviewed articles. Through qualitative content analysis previous theoretical frameworks and theories are validated or extended and finally outlined as a theoretical framework. Five essential concepts for interpreting and understanding children’s learning at play in a hybrid reality are identified and proposed: performing self, exploration, contribution, connection and multimodal participatory literacies. The framework is not fully applicable on digital play activities focusing on ‘skill and drill’; rather, the framework should be applied on digital play activities where the outcome is not clear. In these kind of play activities, children can explore and make use of their imagination when creating multimodal representations together with their playmates.

In this presentation, we describe an interdisciplinary research project in educational science from a philosophical point of view. The project aims to study the mechanisms behind an educational intervention (FonoMix) that is expected to positively affect phonological awareness in children during their first school year (at age 7 in Sweden). In this project, we propose to integrate neurophysiological measures – in the form of event-related potentials (ERP), behavioral measures – in the form of standardized tests, with ethnographic methods – in the form of classroom observations and interviews, in order to develop a theory of the mechanisms that connect FonoMix to its effect on phonological awareness. Phonological awareness (e.g., Torgesen, Wagner, and Rashotte 1994) is a theoretical term in linguistics and educational research used to describe a set of skills related to the capacity of identifying, distinguishing, and manipulating phonemes (examples of such skills are rhyming and alliteration) and is a robust predictor of reading development (e.g., Gathercole, Willis, and Baddeley 1991).FonoMix is a training program that utilizes a phonological, multi-sensory methodology for teaching reading by connecting visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic senses and by concretizing the relationship between phonemes and graphemes. Evidence suggests that FonoMix has a positive effect on phonological awareness (Fälth, Svensson, and Ström 2020). In our project, we attempt at explaining how, i.e., through which mechanisms, the program generates its effect. Our methodology consists of three parallel lines of investigation. The first consists of a study designed as a randomized controlled trial (RCT) based on a set of standardized tests, measuring the children’s phonological awareness and word decoding skills. The second consists of electrophysiological recordings of participating children to investigate the intervention’s effects on the neural processing of rhyming. Finally, the third lin, Ej belagd 220201

The aim of this study is to contribute with knowledge about children’s out-of-school learning in digital gaming communities. Since girls’ gameplay is underrepresented in research (cf. Ito et al. 2019), this study explores girl’s participation in Minecraft communities, guided by the question: What characterizes learning in girl’s out-of-school Minecraft communities? This study answers to Halverson’s (2012) call for a shift in research perspective on education by paying less attention to ‘what works’, and more attention to ‘what’s happening’ and ‘what’s possible’. Thus, learning will be explored by studying girl’s situated learning in Minecraft, chosen mainly for its complexity insofar as it offers children the opportunity to compete, play and/or design new worlds. Data were generated through interviews, video-recorded play sessions and video-stimulated recall. Multimodal interactional analysis was applied in order to analyze children’s actions via mediation, seeking representations as signs of learning. The components of Wenger’s Social Theory of Learning were used as a basis when exploring learning in children’s out-of-school digital gaming communities. Five significant themes were identified: learning as experiencing, learning as belonging, learning as performing, learning as struggling and learning as enacting participatory identities. The main findings are presented in a tentative conceptual framework, that visualizes the characteristics of children’s out-of-school learning. The conceptual framework can assist stakeholders who are interested in connecting children’s out-of-school learning experiences with supporting, challenging and problematizing children’s learning in school. The framework can also be used by policymakers in discussions on children’s learning as it reflects what education might look like when the focus is shifted from ‘what works’ to ‘what’s happening’ and ‘what’s possible’.