To Örebro University

In the past two decades, scholarly discourse has consistently emphasised the efficacy of collective efforts in professional development and school improvement. Collaborative endeavours among teachers, where they systematically explore their teaching practices and collaboratively address relevant improvement issues, have proven more effective than individual pursuits in educational change. However, research also underscores the inherent challenges of such collective initiatives, particularly in collegial learning. In a longitudinal study, we adopted a pragmatic perspective to delve into the collective habits of teacher teams working towards establishing collegial learning. The identified collective habits, which revolve around collective participation, the improvement process, and scientific activities, play a pivotal role in either facilitating or hindering the establishment of collegial learning to achieve professional development and school improvement. We posit that a critical exploration of collective habits is imperative for teacher teams aiming to nurture novel and impactful practices. Strategies conducive to teachers' collegial learning encompass fostering pedagogical leadership, cultivating continuity, and embracing scientific rigour in the analysis of classroom data.

Kollegialt lärande för skol- och undervisningsförbättring bygger på flera års praktiknära forskning och annan forskning inom skolutveckling, professionsutveckling och pedagogiskt ledarskap. Den erbjuder pedagogiska teorier, modeller och metoder för kollegialt lärande i ett helhetsperspektiv som stärker alla elever. I boken framträder kollegialt lärande både som ett arbetssätt och ett förhållningssätt, och du som läsare rustas med verktyg för att hantera det kollegiala lärandets möjligheter och utmaningar. Dessa verktyg är vetenskapligt förankrade. Kollegialt lärande för skol- och undervisningsförbättring vänder sig till lärarstudenter, lärare rektorer, kvalitetsutvecklare och skolchefer inom alla skolformer. Boken är lämplig som litteratur på rektorsprogrammet och för lärarutbildningens utbildningsvetenskapliga kärna, framför allt inom områdena utvärdering, utvecklingsarbete och pedagogiskt ledarskap.

This chapter focuses on students’ learning in argumentation that takes place in educational practices. The authors first clarify how an argument can be understood as consisting of different elements when it comes to classroom discussions. Drawing on earlier research, they then clarify questions that are important for teachers to think about in relation to students’ learning, their use of knowledge and the importance of peer interactions. They conclude that argumentation can be a fruitful method in the teaching of complex, value-related issues. In argumentation, the students not only learn and use content knowledge, but also learn how to formulate valid arguments in order to participate in deliberative discussions. The findings show that teachers have an important role to play with regard to the quality and diversity of the deliberation.

In this paper we present and illustrate a framework for analyzing the relation between teachers’ actions and students’ meaning making in mathematics. We adopt a pragmatic perspective on learning, and a methodological approach using already analyzed material, to see whether and how the framework of epistemological move analysis can contribute when analyzing the relation between teachers’ actions and students’ meaning making. The results suggest that epistemological move analysis can be used to identify teachers’ purpose in students meaning making in mathematics, by analyzing students’ responses. Further, it makes it possible to identify what earlier knowledge students use, and how they use it, to re-actualize mathematical objects, relations and concepts.

Projektet KLÖS har undersökt hur lärares kollegiala lärprocesser kan stödjas i syfte att skapa hållbara strukturer för utvecklingsarbete. Målet var att skapa en Örebromodell för kollegialt lärande. En avslutande reflektion kring resultatet är att etableringen av denna modell kräver ett omfattande engagemang och tar tid att få på plats. Det är vår uppfattning att ett flertal aspekter återstår att undersöka. Bland annat är det intressant att undersöka hur arbetet med det kollegiala lärandet fortskrider på pilotskolan. Frågor som är intressanta är: Vilka faktorer har betydelse för att arbetet med kollegialt lärande ska bli permanent och fungera som ett naturligt sätt att arbeta med utveckling av praktiken? Vad blir resultatet av de utvecklingsomgångar som genomförts? Hur följs detta resultat upp och leder det till bestående gynnsamma förändringar? Frågorna handlar om hållbarhet och därmed om hur projektet går från att vara ett projekt som avslutas och glöms bort till att bli ett levande verktyg för utvecklingsarbete som kan göra en verklig skillnad i och för praktiken över tid. Eftersom mycket tid och resurser används till utvecklingsarbete i skolan är det viktigt att det arbete som görs verkligen leder till en konkret och för verksamheten gynnsam förändring. Det innebär att frågan om utvecklings- arbetets hållbarhet är en av de viktigaste frågorna. Det verktyg som utvecklats i projektet och som kommit att symbolisera det kollegiala arbetet på pilotskolan är KLÖS-hjulet. Frågan om hur KLÖS-hjulet 2.0 kan utvecklas och anpassas så att det verkligen blir ett flexibelt och användbart verktyg för att stötta det kollegiala lärandet är kanske den alla viktigaste konkreta frågan. Frågor som är besläktade med frågan om hållbarhet är de som syftar till att undersöka hur det kollegiala lärandet kan bli mer robust. Till dessa hör frågor om hur lärledarens roll kan förstärkas, hur verktyg som stöttar lärares observation och analys av den egna verksamheten kan designas, hur ansvar och engagemang på alla nivåer kan förstärkas och bli synligt samt hur arbetet med kollegialt lärande kan utvärderas. Vi har under projektets gång sett hur lärare behöver stöd i arbetet med att systematiskt identifiera behov i verksamheten för att sedan utforska möjligheter att utveckla och förändra praktiken. Medverkan från forskare som ställt frågor, problematiserat och belyst olika perspektiv har i flera fall varit avgörande för hur ett utvecklingsbehov har identifierats, avgränsats och formulerats som en undersökningsbar fråga. Det är av avgörande betydelse att utvecklingsarbetet inte står och faller med denna medverkan. Verksamheten måste själv ta fram strukturer för hur lärare och lärledare får ett tillfredsställande stöd i sitt utvecklingsarbete så att de har möjlighet att göra kollegialt lärande till en naturlig del av sitt arbete där de känner sig så bekanta med KLÖS-hjulet att de själva kan ställa de frågor som krävs. Således behöver många funktioner, både centralt och lokalt samverka för att vidareutveckla och stötta kollegialt lärande för att utveckla undervisningen i Örebro skolor. 

The purpose is to illustrate a method that facilitates investigations of students’ learning processes in classroom discussions through in situ studies. In environmental and sustainability education there has been a shift to more participatory approaches (see Englund, Öhman and Östman 2008; Huckle 2008). Participatory approaches focus on communication in order to stimulate a critical examination of different views in the debate about different questions and problems relating to the environmental issues. This means a relocation of the process of knowledge and value constitution from before to in the educational event. In this way education is expected to become more democratic and pluralistic. This has led to an increasing interest for student discussions and the importance of argumentation in discussions about environmental and socioscientific issues have been highlighted. The method has been developed in order to conduct investigations of, i) student’s learning progress in terms of the way the arguments are constructed and the knowledge content used, ii) the interplay between the intra-personal and inter-personal dimensions of meaning making, and iii) the role of knowledge in students’ argumentative discussions. The method, called transactional argumentation analysis, TAA, combines a transactional perspective on meaning making based on John Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy (1949/1991) and an argument analysis based on Toulmin’s argument pattern (1958/2003) (see further Rudsberg, Öhman & Östman, 2013). The direction of the students’ meaning making is analysed as the relations construed in and by action. Further, a functional interpretation of Toulmin’s argument pattern is used to clarify the meanings in terms of argumentative elements. The investigated conversations are characterised by a participatory educational practice concerning socioscientific issues. The discussions can be said to be open-ended, even though they follow specific rules for the ‘correct’ way of creating meaning, i.e., how to participate in a pluralistic act of communication about value-related issues. In this way the process is an essential part of the learning content and the examined practice can be seen as a way of learning to ‘live democratically’, which from a theoretical perspective relates to a view of democracy as a communicative activity – democracy as a life form.

The aim is to investigate how encounters with peers affect an individual's meaning making in argumentation about socio-scientific issues, and how the individual's meaning making influences the argumentation at the collective level. The analysis is conducted using the analytical method ''transactional argumentation analysis'' (TAA) which enables in situ studies. TAA combines a transactional perspective on meaning making based on John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy with an argument analysis based on Toulmin's argument pattern. Here TAA is developed further to enable analysis that in detail clarifies the dynamic interplay between the individual and the collective-the intraand the inter-personal dimensions-and the result of this interplay in terms of meaning making and learning. The empirical material in this study consists of a video-recorded lesson in a Swedish upper secondary school. The results show that the analysed student is influenced by peers when construing arguments, and thereby acts on others' reasoning when making meaning. Further, the results show that most of the additions made by the analysed student are taken further by peers in the subsequent discussion. This study shows how an individual's earlier experiences, knowledge and thinking contribute to the collective meaning making in the classroom.

The purpose of this article is to investigate in situ the functions that knowledge has when used by students in argumentative discussions. The study is based on Dewey’s pragmatic perspective of knowledge, which means that knowledge gets its meaning in the activity at hand. The analyses are conducted using Transac- tional Argumentation Analysis, which is a combination of pragmatic meaning analysis and Toulmin’s argument pattern. The empirical material consists of video-recorded lessons from two seminars in a Swedish upper secondary school. The results show that knowledge plays a crucial role in the discussions. Six dif- ferent functions are identified: emphasising complexity, clarifying and correcting, highlighting conflicting interests, providing evidence in a counterargument, predicting the consequences and adding support to an earlier claim. Knowledge also has general functions, such as justifying a claim, and is part of a collective process aimed at understanding the issues discussed. Further, the students use knowledge from different disciplines, such as environmental studies, history, politics, biology and human geography.

The overall ambition with this thesis is to develop knowledge about students’ learning, especially with regard to process and content, when they participate in argumentation. Students’ learning is investigated through in situ studies of classroom practices. The theoretical point of departure is a pragmatic perspective in which learning is understood and investigated in terms of concrete actions. The empirical material consists of video recorded lessons at secondary and upper secondary schools in Sweden. The content of the lessons is argumentative discussions about sustainable development and socioscientific issues. In the first study, the functions that teachers’ actions have for students’ learning processes are investigated using Epistemological Move Analysis. In the second study, an approach is developed and illustrated that facilitates investigations into students’ learning processes in terms of knowledge content and argument construction in argumentation. The method, called Transactional Argumentation Analysis, combines a pragmatic perspective of learning with an argument analysis based on Toulmin’s Argument Pattern. In the third study, the functions that knowledge have when used by students in argumentative discussions are examined. The fourth study investigates the role of peers for students’ learning and how students influence the argumentation at a collective level. Here Transactional Argumentation Analysis is developed further in order to facilitate investigations of the dynamic interplay between the intra-personal and the inter-personal dimensions of learning and the result of this interplay in terms of the knowledge content and arguments that are constructed. The thesis shows how students’ learning can be investigated through in situ studies of educational practices. The methodological contribution of the thesis consists of the development and further elaboration of Transactional Argumentation Analysis. The thesis also contributes with substantial knowledge about students’ learning processes with regard to knowledge content and argument construction when participating in argumentation. Another contribution concerns the functions of knowledge when used by students in argumentation. Finally, the studies show how peers and teachers influence students’ learning, and how students contribute to the shared argumentation in the classroom.