In the Borderland between Academic and Professional Discourse - Academic writing in Final Degree Thesis in Early Childhood Teacher Education

Author(s):

Inger Erixon Arreman(presenting / submitting)Per-Olof Erixon(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

10. Teacher Education Research

Format:

Paper

Session Information

10 SES 04 A,

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

09:00-10:30

Room:

VII. Előadó [C]

Chair:

Paul Flynn

Contribution

In the last decades, new fields in higher education (HE), including teacher education, in Sweden and in other countries (Australia, England, New Zeeland) (Ivanič, 2004; Macken Horarik et al., 2006) are struggling to meet academic demands of writing. In Sweden, since the early 1990s the final student thesis is a general requirement for a professional higher education degree; in the last decade the student thesis in teacher education(TE) is under increased pressure of academic research orientation (Bergqvist, 2000; Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, 2013; Råde, 2014). Currently, one of the major professional programmes in the Swedish university is pre-school teacher education (Statistics Sweden, 2013). Since the 1970s early childhood teacher education includes the two programmes for pre-school and the leisure centre which, with a longer tradition of pre-school teacher education, are conducted closely side by side.

The quality of HE programmes, including teacher education programmes, is increasingly ranked by the State by detailed ‘measurement' of the academic and professional underpinnings of the programmes. This includes analyses of course syllabi, literature, proportions of academic staff holding a PhD and teachers’ relation to the professional field, including the quality of the student thesis. A national assessment on undergraduate student final degree theses, conducted in the mid 2000s, revealed particular concern about the quality of academic writing in TE programmes aimed at the early years of schooling and childhood, compared to the nursing programme and the ‘non-programme’ disciplines of psychology and business studies (Forsberg & Lundgren, 2006). However, there is little research which is specifically concerned with student teachers’ academic writing in early childhood programmes (Erixon Arreman, I., Erixon PO, forthcoming).

Against this backdrop, this presentation concerns academic writing of students in Swedish early childhood teacher education, which for about four decades is included in the university. The study is conducted within the research project ‘Struggle for the text’ which is financed by the Swedish Research Council (2012-2015). We explore more current, distinctive features of the final degree thesis in early childhood programmes. The study is situated within a context of academic and professional demands of early childhood student teachers. The early childhood programmes have a clear professional orientation; they are nationally framed by specified aims, or ‘expected outcomes’ regarding the acquisition of knowledges and hands-on abilities for professional needs; professional demands are additionally clarified in national curriculum for early childhood education. The knowledge structure of early childhood TE is constructed by accumulation of knowledge in different fields, broadly including early literacy, early mathematics, sociology and psychology (Erixon Arreman & Erixon, forthcoming).

Method

For the purpose of the study we use both a quantitative and qualitative approach. Quantitatively, we draw on empirical data including titles and abstracts of the total number of 75 of final degree theses, written by 101 student authors, which were successfully completed between 2011 and 2014 at a Swedish university. Qualitatively, drawing on Dos Santos (1996) we use text analysis. We scrutinize titles and abstracts with focus on aims and purposes, research questions, content domains and perspectives provided by the empirical data. Further, for the titles we map thematic focus and for the abstract we analyse rhetorical structures (including five so-called rhetorical Moves).

Expected Outcomes

Three broad content domains emerge in the student theses; social issues, pedagogical issues and spatial and physical issues. The research was usually ‘situated’ by referring to students' perceived need to explore and understand social and/or pedagogical issues which had emanated from practical experience in the field or in relation to policy documents. Almost all theses had a qualitative approach, the majority drew on empirical data collected in ‘real-life context’ of early childhood settings. The most frequent method was qualitative interviews, directed to early childhood practitioners, sometimes combined with observations or questionnaires. The overall majority of the student theses explored a phenomenon from the perspectives of the professionals in the field. The abstracts further indicated that student teachers were cautious in their claims on basis of their study. In about a tenth of the student theses Move 1, or 'gap-spotting’ (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2013) in relation to previous research was used to formulate research questions, while the construction of research questions in connection to the early childhood environment meant dominance of Move 2. Hence, the semantic gravity (Maton 2009) of the student theses in the corpus in strong, i.e. it is closely related to the ‘real-life’ context of acquisition and use of knowledges and professional experiences. Thus, the striving of student teachers to adopt an academic discourse is deeply nourished by professional discourses in the field. We further interpret an overall alignment of the student thesis to ‘real-life’ contexts and to state policies, as an expression of the students’ perceived need to give voice to professional practitioners’ perspectives. Further, while not explicitly expressed in the student theses, it could be argued that the majority of these were conducted within a hermeneutical tradition, as often used in social science to understand practice (see Tully, 1998).

References

References Alvesson, M.;Sandberg, J.(2013).Constructing Research Questions. Doing Interesting Research. London: Sage Publications. Bergqvist, K. (2000). Examensarbetet: Ett bidrag till vetenskaplighet i lärarutbildningen? Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 5 (1), 1, 1–18. Erixon Arreman, I., Erixon P-O (forthcoming).Teacher educator discourses on academic writing in Swedish Early Childhood Teacher Education. Education Inquiry. Forsberg, E., Lundgren, U.P. (2006) Examensarbetet i den nya lärarutbildningen. Stockholm: Swedish National Agency for Higher Education. Dos Santos, Mauro Bittencourt (1996).The textual organization of research paper abstracts in applied linguistics. Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse, 16 (4), 481-499. Härnqvist, K. (1999). En akademisk fråga – en ESO-rapport om ranking av C-uppsatser. Stockholm: Ministry of Finance. Ivanič, R. (2004): Discourses of Writing and Learning to Write. Language and Education, 18 (3), 220-245. Macken-Horarik, M., Devereux, L., Trimingham-Jack, C., & Wilson, K. (2006). Negotiating the territory of tertiary literacies: A case study of teacher education. Linguistics and Education, 17(3), 240-257. Maton, K. (2009). Cumulative and segmented learning: Exploring the role of curriculum structures in knowledge-building. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30(1), 43–57. Råde, A. (2014). Final thesis models in European teacher education and their orientation towards the academy and the teaching profession. European Journal of Teacher Education, 37(2), 144-155. Statistics Sweden (2013). Higher Education. Students and graduates at first and second cycle studies 2011/12. Stockholm: UKÄ & SCB. Swedish National Agency of Higher Education (2013). Assessing Outcomes. Experiences from the Swedish Model. Stockholm: Swedish National Agency of Higher Education. Tully, J. (1989).Wittgenstein and political philosophy: understanding practices of critical reflection. Political Theory, 172-204.

Author Information

Inger Erixon Arreman (presenting / submitting)

Umeå university

Per-Olof Erixon (presenting)

Umea University

UMEA

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