The aim of this study is to find out what teachers say their primary focus is when planning to teach an object of learning. The study is carried out in two different cultural contexts, Sweden and Hong Kong, and based on the framework of variation theory, which has a two-fold focus, namely both what teachers do and what students learn at school.

Fifteen semi-structured open-ended interviews were conducted with nine Swedish and six Hong Kong teachers in grades 1 to 6. The analysis generated categories inspired from a phenomenographic research approach, where attention is directed towards respondents’ apprehensions of a phenomenon.

The results showed some clear differences in the way teachers from the two countries talked about how they organise and think about planning, which in turn reveals whether their focus is on students’ understanding or on teacher action. The Swedish teachers’ experienced focus is on activities/methods, and they separate activities and methods from the content, while the Hong Kong teachers have the content in the foreground and do not separate content and act.

There can be several different explanations of the differences identified; such as that a too general theoretical and surface awareness of concepts of learning makes it difficult to reach a detailed level of the object of learning, i.e. what it actually takes for students to learn exactly this phenomenon or ability. The Swedish teachers seem to underestimate what it takes to learn due to a theoretical framework. Another explanation of this difference in focus might be that teachers need support from each other to deepen the reflections about the subject, thus achieving knowledge of what it takes to understand the intended object of learning. The Hong Kong teachers report frequent opportunities to discuss and reflect over subject-related matters.

The purpose in this article is to elaborate on how the use of patterns of variation designed by variation theory can challenge and develop the early childhood education (ECE) practice. The analysis is based on six learning study (LS) projects conducted in Swedish ECE. A LS is a systematical, theoretical based de- velopment of teacher professionalism, often in close cooperation with researchers. The projects included 17 teachers, 140 children and 7 researchers. The video documented empirical material consists of 16 analysis meetings, 14 interventions and 407 pre-, post-, and delayed posttests. Each project is a concrete example of the use of patterns of variation to increase early childhood learning. In all cases a tendency of qualitative changes in children’s ways of discerning the object of learning could be noticed. The purpose is to search for how this can be understood from a variation theoretical perspective. The main focus is on changed ways of performing the interventions to search for how patterns of variation were used to create and capture the learning situations throughout the projects. One of our findings is that we have seen that it takes more than one intervention for the teachers to capture which aspects of the object of learning are critical in the targeted group, but as the iterative process allows them to try out the design more than once, they manage to find them. The second finding is that the teachers changed focus from taken for granted assumptions of each child to focusing on their own design to facilitate the child’s learning. Finally, the aspect supposed to be discerned has to vary against an invariant background to be discerned by the chil- dren, and to separate the principle from the representation is needed to be able to generalize their new knowledge.

The Swedish school system offers a curriculum based early childhood education for children aged one to five, and a pre-school class for children aged six. Activities have by tradition been based on play and having fun, thus avoiding structured activities with formal learning objectives. Due to indications that the Swedish pre-school failed to use its resources to stimulate children's learning, the revised curriculum for preschool now contains discernible learning objectives. The aim of the paper is to discuss and exemplify the process of pre-school teachers changed focus during three learning study processes conducted in Swedish pre-school. In total, 13 pre-school teachers working with 95 children aged from two to six and 4 researchers participated. The object of learning in each study were: 1. Geometry (2-3 year-olds), 2. Organic decomposition (4-5 year-olds) and, 3. Twice as (6 year-olds). The empirical material consists of 285 pre-, post-, and delayed post- test interviews with the children, nine planning meetings and nine teaching activities. The result shows that the three learning study processes revealed complications not anticipated when play was used as an, more or less, axiomatic way of framing the teaching activities. During the learning study processes the pre-school teachers awareness of and chosen focus in the teaching activities changed. At the same time a changed focus also could be noticed among the participating children thus making an enhanced learning possible.

Swedish early childhood education (ECE) offers a curriculum-based preschool for children aged one to five, and a preschool class for children aged six years. Activities in these programs have traditionally been based on play and having fun, avoiding structured activities with formal learning objectives. Due to indications that Swedish ECE has failed to use its resources to stimulate children’s learning, the revised ECE curriculum now contains discernible learning objectives. This study analyses the process by which preschool teachers shifted their emphasis when participating in an learning study based on three projects conducted in Swedish ECE practice. In total, 14 preschool teachers, 95 children (2–6-year-olds), and five researchers participated. The objects of learning were: (1) 3D geometrical forms (2–3-year-olds), (2) organic decomposition (4–5-year-olds), and (3) the concept ‘twice as" (6-year-olds). The empirical material comprises 278 pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests, twelve planning meetings, and nine teaching activities. The results indicate that, during the projects, the initial focus on mere play expanded to include a focus on the object of learning. Three modes of change were discerned in how (1) the activities were framed, (2) the learning was perceived, and (3) the learning activities were conducted.

Artikeln presenterar en fallstudie rörande skillnader mellan faktisk och förmodad läsning. För att belysa fallet har tre unga vuxna med dyslexi undersökts då de läst faktatexter med illustrationer varvid deras ögonrörelser spelats in. Deltagarna har även intervjuats kring hur de uppfattar sin läsning. Syftet är att avtäcka eventuella skillnader mellan faktisk och förmodad läsning för denna grupp av läsare då tidigare läsförståelseforskning haft fokus på goda läsare. ”Mixed methods” användes vid analys av data. Studiens utgångspunkter är läsning i flera modaliteter, ’the simple view of reading’ samt läsförståelse som ett samtidigt processande av delar av texten på flera nivåer. Resultatet, som redovisas i tre narrativ, visar att läsmönstren är delvis omedvetna samt att bilderna betraktas slumpmässigt varvid integrering av information försvåras. Resultatet visar också på problem med avkodning något som försämrar processandet av texten på flera samtidiga nivåer. Resultatet antyder att instruktioner i framförallt bildbearbetning är önskvärt för gruppen av läsare

Better understanding of the diverse reading abilities of people with dyslexia is necessary for the design of more effective learning situations, which are vital both to students with dyslexia and to their teachers. Seven individuals with dyslexia currently or formerly in higher education were interviewed about their reading experiences to learn how they themselves understand and describe their reading. The interviews are treated as individual profiles. Although the respondents were adult experienced readers, aware of their impairments, none could identify any strategy for overcoming dyslexia other than investing much time in homework and study. Each profile is unique, yet they share some characteristics, including strong parental support and a refusal to accept the label of ‘stupid’. Teachers need to recognise the diverse effects of dyslexia in order to improve the chances of dyslexic students – especially those who cannot rely upon strong parental support – of continuing to higher education.

In 2004 as many as 25% of teachers in Sweden, Denmark, and England were willing to leave their profession immediately; in the United States much effort has been invested in studying why teachers leave the profession. In this paper, four teachers who left the profession were interviewed from within the life-story tradition. In the narratives, which were rendered in a poetic style during the analysis, colleagues were mentioned both positively and negatively. The theme of having colleagues, and especially trust or mistrust between colleagues, was thus explored. The existence or non-existence of lateral trust between teachers can be connected both to school development and to student learning outcomes.

Multimodal learning materials are frequently met in education assuming enhanced learning outcomes. This study examined whether contrasts in such materials are likely to support reading comprehension for all readers. Young adults (n=46) met either text-only or text+picture material. Participants (19 with low phonological awareness [PA] and 27 controls with high PA) thereafter answered open interview questions to check for reading comprehension. Learning materials were designed to focus readers on aspects critical to understanding the content by the use of contrasts; eye-tracking was used as method. Well-known pictures aided information recall, but contrasts described in the text were most effective for learning.