This paper presents the findings of a study investigating School-Age Educare (SAE) teachers’ conceptions of care and care practices and how these conceptions of care and actual practices relate to pupils’ needs. The study is based on observations and interviews with two experienced SAE teachers and one young teacher in a Swedish SAE centre, working with pupils between 9–11 years old. The study was undertaken between March 2018 and April 2019, and provides insight into different forms of care and caring practices. The study also shows that pupils nowadays, according to the teachers, have needs that were previously met by their families. The teachers’ conceptions of the importance of a well-functioning group and pupils’ needs to be able to share their feelings, dreams and worries and to value each other’s differences were also salient findings of the study.

Abstract

The central concern of this thesis is to discuss interpretations of learning in educational research. A point of departure is taken in core epistemological and ontological assumptions informing three major approaches to learning: behaviourism, cognitive constructivism and socioculturalism. It is argued that all three perspectives provide important insights into research on learning, but each alone runs the risk of reducing learning and interpretations of learning to single aspects. Specific attention is therefore given to Intentional Analysis, as it has been developed to account for sociocultural aspects that influence learning and individual cognition. It is argued that interpretations of learning processes face challenges, different kinds of holism, underdetermination and the complexity of intentionality, that need to be accounted for in order to make valid interpretations. Interpretation is therefore also discussed in light of philosopher Donald Davidson’s theories of knowledge and interpretation. It is suggested that his theories may provide aspects of an ontological and epistemological stance that can form the basis for interpretations of learning in educational research. A first brief sketch, referred to as ‘epistemic holism’, is thus drawn. The thesis also exemplifies how such a stance can inform empirical research. It provides a first formulation of research strategies – a so-called ‘interpretative holism’. The thesis discusses what such a stance may imply with regard to the nature and location of knowledge and the status of the learning situation. Ascribing meaning to observed behaviour, as it is described in this thesis, implies that an action is always an action under a specific description. Different descriptions may not be contradictory, but if we do not know the learner’s language use, we cannot know whether there is a difference in language or in beliefs. It is argued that the principle of charity and reference to saliency, that is, what appears as the figure for the learner, may help us decide. However, saliency does not only appear as a phenomenon in relation to physical objects and events, but also in the symbolic world, thus requires that the analysis extend beyond the mere transcription of an interview or the description of an observation. Hence, a conclusion to be drawn from this thesis is that the very question of what counts as data in the interpretation of complex learning processes is up for discussion.

In this paper, we are mainly concerned with coherentism as an approach to ethical dialog in school. We have two different but connected aims with the paper. The first aim is to say something about general philosophical questions relating to coherentism as a theory in metaethics, and especially in relation to value education; the second aim is to explore some possible implications of coherentism as a method in studying the enterprise of discussing ethical issues and questions with children as well as the study of the actual ethical discussion in school. Furthermore, we evaluate the connection between a coherentistic approach to justification and the methodological parts of a Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, approach to ethics in school. Related to this, we scrutinize what implications this has for evaluating ethical learning within Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, as well as implications for evaluation of the Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, approaches as methods for dealing with ethical matters in school.

The aim of this paper is to outline the disposition and results of a short-time pilot study (Backman, 2009) of pupils’ ability to express ethical arguments and of the role of pictures in ethical argumentation. There were 18 pupils, in the ages 7-8 years, that participated in the study, which was carried out in a school in the northern part of Sweden. In this paper, we begin by giving a short description of some relevant statements in the Swedish national curriculum and put this in relation to some previous research on philosophical inquiry with children. Then we continue by describing some of the project’s influences from philosophical practice and theoretical groundwork. After this, some methodological concerns and ethical considerations are referred. Finally, some results of the study are described and shortly discussed.

Conceptual change is described as a multifaceted process involving restructuring and reorganization of already embraced beliefs. Twenty-nine preschool children were interviewed about their conceptions of the earth every year from the year they were four to the year they were six years of age. For the children the incentive for changing ideas about the earth was their processing of incoherencies.  The children processed a lot of conflicting information. However, there does not appear to be any major conflict that causes the process of conceptual change to occur. This process is affected by incoherencies revealed in a relation between three entities, that is, two or more different facts or conceptions that conflict when related to one specific context. Conceptual change involves a simultaneous processing of information and complex conceptions, on the one hand, and revisions and changes at a model level on the other.