Individual learner, peer group and teacher roles in fostering autonomous language-learning behaviour

Julkaisumaa: Bulgaria

”Kielestä kiinni”. Kuudesluokkalaisten maahanmuuttajaoppilaiden suomen kielen tason vaihtelut

Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää, minkälaista vaihtelua esiintyy maahanmuuttajaoppilaiden suomen kielen taidoissa peruskoulun kuudennella luokalla. Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on myös selvittää, minkälainen yhteys taustamuuttujilla (sukupuoli, äidinkieli, maahantuloikä, maahantulon syy, maassaoloaika ja vanhempien koulutausta) ja opetusjärjestelyillä, kuten perusopetukseen valmistavalla opetuksella, suomi toisena kielenä -opetuksella ja oman äidinkielen opetuksella, on suomen kielen taidon tasoon. Lisäksi tutkimuksen tavoitteena on selvittää oppilaan käyttämän kielen (suomen kieli ja äidinkieli) yhteyttä suomen kielen taidon tasoon. Tutkimusmetodina toimi mixed methods -tutkimus, ja tutkimuksen lähestymistapoja olivat kvantitatiivinen survey-tutkimus ja kvalitatiivinen sisällön analyysi. Tutkimukseen osallistui 219 maahanmuuttajaoppilasta 20:stä Turun koulusta. Tutkimusaineisto kerättiin Turun erityisopettajien ja suomi toisena kielenä -opettajien laatiman kielitestipaketin avulla. Oppilaan suullista ja kirjallista tuottamista arvioivat lasta opettavat opettajat eurooppalaisen viitekehyksen kielitaitotasojen kriteereitä käyttäen. Oppilaat arvioivat omaa äidinkielen ja suomen kielen taitoaan. Lisäksi oppilaat ja vanhemmat täyttivät tutkijan laatimat taustatietolomakkeet. Kielitestien tulosten mukaan oppilaista yli puolella oli tyydyttävä suomen kielen taito. Kaikista neljästä kielellisestä osiosta maahanmuuttajataustaiset oppilaat menestyivät parhaiten rakennekokeessa ja sanelussa, kun taas kuullun ja luetun ymmärtämisen tulokset olivat heikompia. Opettajien arviointien perusteella oppilaiden suulliset taidot vastasivat keskimäärin itsenäisen kielenkäyttäjän osaajan tasoa (B2) ja kirjoittamistaidot kynnystasoa (B1). Oppilaiden suomi toisena kielenä -arvosanan keskiarvo oli 7,26. Suomessa asumisen kestolla, maahantulon syyllä, äidinkielellä, maahantuloiällä, ja vanhempien koulutaustaustalla oli tilastollisesti merkitsevä yhteys suomen kielen taidon tasoon. Mitä kauemmin oppilaat olivat asuneet Suomessa ja mitä nuorempina he olivat tulleet Suomeen, sitä paremmin he menestyivät kielitesteissä. Paluumuuttajat menestyivät kielitaitotehtävissä kaikkein parhaiten ja pakolaiset heikoiten. Somalinkieliset erottuivat muista kieliryhmän edustajista heikoimpina suomen kielen taidon tasoltaan. Venäjänkieliset ja vietnaminkieliset saavuttivat parhaat tulokset kaikissa mittareissa. Erityisesti äidin korkeampi koulutustaso oli yhteydessä oppilaiden korkeampaan suomen kielen taidon tasoon. Oppilaat arvioivat suomen kielen taitonsa omaa äidinkieltään paremmaksi puhumisessa, lukemisessa ja kirjoittamisessa. Parhaiten eri mittareissa menestyivät oppilaat, jotka eivät olleet osallistuneet perusopetukseen valmistavaan opetukseen eivätkä erilliseen suomi toisena kielenä -opetukseen. Omaa äidinkieltään enemmän opiskelleet menestyivät kielitaitotehtävissä paremmin kuin vähän aikaa omaa äidinkieltään opiskelleet, mutta yhtä hyvin kuin ne, jotka eivät olleet opiskelleet omaa äidinkieltään lainkaan. Oppilaat, jotka puhuivat kaveriensa kanssa sekä omaa äidinkieltään että suomen kieltä, osoittautuivat kielitaidon tasoltaan paremmiksi kielitesteissä ja opettajien arvioinneissa.

“Till gruvhålet som suger och skrämmer” : en studie i Nils Bolanders predikan under åren 1940–1950

The aim of this thesis is to examine the preaching of Nils Bolander during the years 1940–1950. Nils Bolander (1902–1959) was a Swedish minister, later bishop, in the Church of Sweden. Bolander experienced his breakthrough as a preacher and a poet during the years 1940–1950, when he was a pastor of the Engelbrekt congregation in Stockholm. One characteristic of Bolander’s poetry as well as of his sermons is a rich and poetical language. At the same time he also had a clear agenda with his sermons with regard to their contents. The primary research question of this thesis is: What was Bolander’s purpose with his sermons? In this context, two secondary research questions were asked: 1) In what way does the poetical language support and assist the purpose of the sermons? 2) How is Bolander, as an individual and a preacher, engaged in the language and the contents of the sermons? The research material of this study consists of 152 hand-­written sermon manuscripts from church services held by Nils Bolander in Stockholm during the period in question. The method of the study is qualitative research with an abductive approach. Content analysis has formed the primary tool. With regard to the main research question, the purpose of Bolander’s sermons, my study indicated that the purpose was to rouse the listeners from their routine-­like faith and push them towards commitment and active service for God. In Bolander’s theology I found strong influences from Pietism but also some traits usually associated with the theological profile of the Oxford Group. Despite these influences, Nils Bolander’s theology is mainly founded on the Lutheran interpretation of faith. With regard to the secondary research questions concerning the poetical language as well as the role of the preacher my study concludes that the language, the individual and the contents were all connected in Bolander’s preaching and formed a whole that spoke to the audience in various ways.

A study of the abilities in oral language comprehension of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination - Portuguese version: a reference guide for the Brazilian population

We analyzed the performance of 162 normal subjects, subdivided into groups according to age and schooling, in the oral comprehension tasks of the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination translated and adapted to Brazilian Portuguese to obtain a profile of performance for the Brazilian population, as well as cut-off scores for each task, and to determine the best combination of tasks that distinguish normal from aphasic subjects, as a guide for clinicians. The normal subjects were compared to 69 aphasics. Age alone influenced the performance in the designation of actions (subjects above 70 years showing the worst performance); schooling alone influenced the comprehension of forms, colors and numbers (subjects with less than four years of education showing a poorer performance). Both age and schooling influenced the performance in Body Part Identification (BPI) and Complex Ideational Material (CIM) with mean values of 70.5 ± 3.3 (Word Discrimination, WD), 18.9 ± 1.4 (BPI), 14.7 ± 0.9 (Commands), and 10.3 ± 1.7 (CIM) for the whole sample; the cut-off scores obtained were 65 (WD), 17.5 (BPI), 14 (Commands), and 9.5 (CIM) for the whole sample. Logistic regression showed that the combination of BPI + Commands + CIM was the most efficient in differentiating normal subjects from aphasics, with 72.5% sensitivity and 97.6% specificity. However, for low-education subjects, BPI and Commands were sufficient for this differentiation (75.7% sensitivity and 84.7% specificity). The main contribution of this study was to provide reference values that are far more representative of our population to be used by health professionals in Brazil, taking into account cultural differences.

Profile of the Brazilian scientific production in multiple sclerosis

This paper analyzes the profile of the Brazilian output in the field of multiple sclerosis from 1981 to 2004. The search was conducted through the MEDLINE and LILACS databases, selecting papers in which the term "multiple sclerosis" was defined as the main topic and "Brazil" or "Brasil" as others. The data were analyzed regarding the themes, the state in Brazil and institution where the papers were produced, the journals where the papers were published, journal's impact factor, and language. The search disclosed 141 documents (91 from MEDLINE and LILACS, and 50 from LILACS only) published in 44 different journals (23 of them MEDLINE-indexed). A total of 111 documents were produced by 17 public universities, 29 by 3 private medical schools and 1 by a non-governmental organization. There were 65 original contributions, 37 case reports, 20 reviews, 6 PhD dissertations, 5 guidelines, 2 validation studies, 2 clinical trials, 2 chapters in textbooks, 1 Master of Science thesis, and 1 patient education handout. The journal impact factor ranged from 0.0217 to 6.039 (median 3.03). Of 91 papers from MEDLINE, 65 were published by Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria. More than 90% of the papers were written in Portuguese. São Paulo was the most productive state in the country, followed by Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and Paraná. Eighty-two percent of the Brazilian output came from the Southeastern region.

The importance of package design to Japanese consumers: The role of visual and informational elements of package design in decision making

The importance of package design as a marketing tool is growing as the competition in retail environment increases. However, there is a lack of studies on how each element of package design affects consumer decisions in different countries. The objective of this thesis is to study the role of package design to Japanese consumers. The research was conducted through an experiment with a sample of 37 Japanese female participants. They were divided into two groups and were given different tasks: one group had to choose a chocolate for themselves, and the other for a group of friends. The participants were presented with 15 different Finnish chocolate boxes to choose from. The qualitative data was gathered through observation and semi-structured interviews. In addition, data from questionnaires was quantified and all the data was triangulated. The empirical results suggest that visual elements strongly affect the decision making of Japanese consumers. Image was the most important element which acted as both, a visual and an informational aspect in the experiment. Informational elements on the other hand have little effect, especially when the context is written in a foreign language. However, informational elements affected participants who were choosing chocolates for a group of friends. A unique finding was the importance of kawaii (cuteness) to Japanese consumers.

Scientist-friendly policies for non-native English-speaking authors: timely and welcome

That English is the lingua franca of today's science is an indisputable fact. Publication in English in international journals is a pre-requisite for a research paper to gain visibility in academia. However, English proficiency appears to be taken for granted in the scientific community, though this language can be a hurdle for a number of authors, particularly from non-native English-speaking countries. The influence of English proficiency on the publication output of Brazilian authors has never been assessed. We report our preliminary data on the relationship between the English proficiency of 51,223 researchers registered in the CNPq database and their publication output in international journals. We have found that publication rates are higher for those authors with good command of English, particularly written English. Although our research is still underway and our results are preliminary, they suggest that the correlation between written English proficiency and research productivity should not be underestimated. We also present the comments of some Brazilian scientists with high publication records on the relevance of communication skills to the scientific enterprise.

Portfolio as an Indicator of Young Learners’ English Proficiency in Mainstream Language Instruction (EFL) and Bilingual Content Instruction (CLIL)

Tämä soveltavan kielitieteen ja kielitaidon arvioinnin toimintatutkimus tarkasteli kieliportfolion ominaisuuksia ja mahdollisuuksia nuorten oppijoiden englannin kielen arvioinnissa kahdessa eri oppimiskontekstissa: englanti oppiaineena (EFL) ja kaksikielinen sisällönopetus (CLIL). Tutkielman itsenäiset, kahteen eri englannin kielen rekisteriin (arkikieli ja akateeminen kieli) kohdistuneet portfoliokokeilut olivat erillisiä tapaustutkimuksia. Molemmat portfoliot perustuivat väljästi Eurooppalaiseen kielisalkkumalliin, ja ne olivat osa tutkielmantekijän luokkaopetusta ja -toimintaa. EFL -portfoliokokeilu 9-10-vuotiaille kolmasluokkalaisille toteutettiin marraskuun 2011 ja toukokuun 2012 välisenä aikana, kun CLIL -portfoliokokeilu n. 7-9-vuotiallle ensimmäisen ja toisen luokan oppilaille kesti kaksi lukuvuotta 2012–2014. Molemmissa kokeiluissa myös oppilaiden vanhemmat kuuluivat tutkimusjoukkoon, samoin CLIL -portfolion toteutuksessa avustaneet ja opettajanäkökulmaa edustaneet opettajaopiskelijat. Portfoliokokeilun aloitti myös kaksi muuta CLIL -opettajaa, mutta kumpikin kokeilu päättyi alkuvaiheeseensa. Tarkemman tarkastelun kohteina olivat tutkimuksen osallistujien kokemukset ja mielipiteet portfoliokokeiluista. Erityisesti tavoitteena oli selvittää, miten informatiivisena englannin kielitaidon indikaattorina kieliportfoliota pidettiin. Myös kehitysehdotuksia kerättiin. Trianguloitu aineisto koottiin sekä puolistrukturoiduin kyselyin että vapaaehtoisin teemahaastatteluin, jotka äänitettiin. EFL -aineisto koostui 18 oppilaskyselystä, 17 huoltajakyselystä ja 7 oppilashaastattelusta. CLIL -aineistoon sisältyi 19 oppilaskyselyä, 18 huoltajakyselyä, 7 oppilashaastattelua ja yksi opettajaopiskelijoiden (N=3) ryhmähaastattelu. Aineisto analysoitiin pääosin kvalitatiivisin menetelmin temaattisen sisältöanalyysin keinoin, mutta myös laskien frekvenssejä ja prosenttisosuuksia. Osallistujien mielipiteet ja kokemukset olivat hyvin samankaltaiset ja positiiviset kummassakin portfoliokokeilussa. Merkittävä enemmistö sekä oppilaista että huoltajista koki, että portfolion avulla on mahdollista osoittaa englannin kielitaitoa ja sen kehittymistä. Oppilaat kuvailivat portfoliotyötä hauskaksi ja kivaksi, ja heidän mielestään portfoliotehtävien pitäisi olla tarpeeksi haastavia, sisältää taiteellisia ja luovia elementtejä sekä kohdistua tuttuihin, mielenkiintoisiin aiheisiin. He totesivat, että portfolion avulla voi oppia lisää kieltä. Vanhempien mielestä portfolio kertoo koulun vieraiksi jääneistä oppisisällöistä, auttaa ymmärtämään lapsen ajatusmaailmaa ja motivaatiotasoa sekä paljastaa heidän kielitaidostaan uusia ulottuvuuksia. Opettajaopiskelijat havaitsivat, että portfolion avulla voi tutustua oppilaiden kieli- ja kulttuuritaustoihin sekä kartoittaa heidän kielellisiä tarpeitaan. Tämän tutkielman teoreettisen tarkastelun ja tulosten mukaan kieliportfolio tukee erinomaisesti uuden Perusopetuksen Opetussuunnitelman (NCC 2014) tavoitteita ja arvioinnin uudistuspyrkimyksiä sekä lainsäädännön arvioinnille asettamia edellytyksiä. Portfolio on erittäin suositeltava nuorten oppijoiden kielitaidon arviointimenetelmä perinteisten rinnalle.

Efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy in reducing psychiatric symptoms in patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillator: an integrative review

This article is a systematic review of the available literature on the benefits that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) offers patients with implanted cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) and confirms its effectiveness. After receiving the device, some patients fear that it will malfunction, or they remain in a constant state of tension due to sudden electrical discharges and develop symptoms of anxiety and depression. A search with the key words “anxiety”, “depression”, “implantable cardioverter”, “cognitive behavioral therapy” and “psychotherapy” was carried out. The search was conducted in early January 2013. Sources for the search were ISI Web of Knowledge, PubMed, and PsycINFO. A total of 224 articles were retrieved: 155 from PubMed, 69 from ISI Web of Knowledge. Of these, 16 were written in a foreign language and 47 were duplicates, leaving 161 references for analysis of the abstracts. A total of 19 articles were eliminated after analysis of the abstracts, 13 were eliminated after full-text reading, and 11 articles were selected for the review. The collection of articles for literature review covered studies conducted over a period of 13 years (1998-2011), and, according to methodological design, there were 1 cross-sectional study, 1 prospective observational study, 2 clinical trials, 4 case-control studies, and 3 case studies. The criterion used for selection of the 11 articles was the effectiveness of the intervention of CBT to decrease anxiety and depression in patients with ICD, expressed as a ratio. The research indicated that CBT has been effective in the treatment of ICD patients with depressive and anxiety symptoms. Research also showed that young women represented a risk group, for which further study is needed. Because the number of references on this theme was small, further studies should be carried out.

Nichesourcing The Uralic Languages For The Benefit Of Linguistic Research And Lingual Societies

The emerging technologies have recently challenged the libraries to reconsider their role as a mere mediator between the collections, researchers, and wider audiences (Sula, 2013), and libraries, especially the nationwide institutions like national libraries, haven’t always managed to face the challenge (Nygren et al., 2014). In the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages, the National Library of Finland has become a node that connects the partners to interplay and work for shared goals and objectives. In this paper, I will be drawing a picture of the crowdsourcing methods that have been established during the project to support both linguistic research and lingual diversity. The National Library of Finland has been executing the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages since 2012. The project seeks to digitize and publish approximately 1,200 monograph titles and more than 100 newspapers titles in various, and in some cases endangered Uralic languages. Once the digitization has been completed in 2015, the Fenno-Ugrica online collection will consist of 110,000 monograph pages and around 90,000 newspaper pages to which all users will have open access regardless of their place of residence. The majority of the digitized literature was originally published in the 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union, and it was the genesis and consolidation period of literary languages. This was the era when many Uralic languages were converted into media of popular education, enlightenment, and dissemination of information pertinent to the developing political agenda of the Soviet state. The ‘deluge’ of popular literature in the 1920s to 1930s suddenly challenged the lexical orthographic norms of the limited ecclesiastical publications from the 1880s onward. Newspapers were now written in orthographies and in word forms that the locals would understand. Textbooks were written to address the separate needs of both adults and children. New concepts were introduced in the language. This was the beginning of a renaissance and period of enlightenment (Rueter, 2013). The linguistically oriented population can also find writings to their delight, especially lexical items specific to a given publication, and orthographically documented specifics of phonetics. The project is financially supported by the Kone Foundation in Helsinki and is part of the Foundation’s Language Programme. One of the key objectives of the Kone Foundation Language Programme is to support a culture of openness and interaction in linguistic research, but also to promote citizen science as a tool for the participation of the language community in research. In addition to sharing this aspiration, our objective within the Language Programme is to make sure that old and new corpora in Uralic languages are made available for the open and interactive use of the academic community as well as the language societies. Wordlists are available in 17 languages, but without tokenization, lemmatization, and so on. This approach was verified with the scholars, and we consider the wordlists as raw data for linguists. Our data is used for creating the morphological analyzers and online dictionaries at the Helsinki and Tromsø Universities, for instance. In order to reach the targets, we will produce not only the digitized materials but also their development tools for supporting linguistic research and citizen science. The Digitization Project of Kindred Languages is thus linked with the research of language technology. The mission is to improve the usage and usability of digitized content. During the project, we have advanced methods that will refine the raw data for further use, especially in the linguistic research. How does the library meet the objectives, which appears to be beyond its traditional playground? The written materials from this period are a gold mine, so how could we retrieve these hidden treasures of languages out of the stack that contains more than 200,000 pages of literature in various Uralic languages? The problem is that the machined-encoded text (OCR) contains often too many mistakes to be used as such in research. The mistakes in OCRed texts must be corrected. For enhancing the OCRed texts, the National Library of Finland developed an open-source code OCR editor that enabled the editing of machine-encoded text for the benefit of linguistic research. This tool was necessary to implement, since these rare and peripheral prints did often include already perished characters, which are sadly neglected by the modern OCR software developers, but belong to the historical context of kindred languages and thus are an essential part of the linguistic heritage (van Hemel, 2014). Our crowdsourcing tool application is essentially an editor of Alto XML format. It consists of a back-end for managing users, permissions, and files, communicating through a REST API with a front-end interface—that is, the actual editor for correcting the OCRed text. The enhanced XML files can be retrieved from the Fenno-Ugrica collection for further purposes. Could the crowd do this work to support the academic research? The challenge in crowdsourcing lies in its nature. The targets in the traditional crowdsourcing have often been split into several microtasks that do not require any special skills from the anonymous people, a faceless crowd. This way of crowdsourcing may produce quantitative results, but from the research’s point of view, there is a danger that the needs of linguists are not necessarily met. Also, the remarkable downside is the lack of shared goal or the social affinity. There is no reward in the traditional methods of crowdsourcing (de Boer et al., 2012). Also, there has been criticism that digital humanities makes the humanities too data-driven and oriented towards quantitative methods, losing the values of critical qualitative methods (Fish, 2012). And on top of that, the downsides of the traditional crowdsourcing become more imminent when you leave the Anglophone world. Our potential crowd is geographically scattered in Russia. This crowd is linguistically heterogeneous, speaking 17 different languages. In many cases languages are close to extinction or longing for language revitalization, and the native speakers do not always have Internet access, so an open call for crowdsourcing would not have produced appeasing results for linguists. Thus, one has to identify carefully the potential niches to complete the needed tasks. When using the help of a crowd in a project that is aiming to support both linguistic research and survival of endangered languages, the approach has to be a different one. In nichesourcing, the tasks are distributed amongst a small crowd of citizen scientists (communities). Although communities provide smaller pools to draw resources, their specific richness in skill is suited for complex tasks with high-quality product expectations found in nichesourcing. Communities have a purpose and identity, and their regular interaction engenders social trust and reputation. These communities can correspond to research more precisely (de Boer et al., 2012). Instead of repetitive and rather trivial tasks, we are trying to utilize the knowledge and skills of citizen scientists to provide qualitative results. In nichesourcing, we hand in such assignments that would precisely fill the gaps in linguistic research. A typical task would be editing and collecting the words in such fields of vocabularies where the researchers do require more information. For instance, there is lack of Hill Mari words and terminology in anatomy. We have digitized the books in medicine, and we could try to track the words related to human organs by assigning the citizen scientists to edit and collect words with the OCR editor. From the nichesourcing’s perspective, it is essential that altruism play a central role when the language communities are involved. In nichesourcing, our goal is to reach a certain level of interplay, where the language communities would benefit from the results. For instance, the corrected words in Ingrian will be added to an online dictionary, which is made freely available for the public, so the society can benefit, too. This objective of interplay can be understood as an aspiration to support the endangered languages and the maintenance of lingual diversity, but also as a servant of ‘two masters’: research and society.

Edistyneen oppijan suomen konstruktiopiirteitä korpusvetoisesti: avainrakenneanalyysi

Ensikielen jälkeen opittavan kielen tutkimusta ja suomi toisena kielenä alaa sen osana ovat koko niiden olemassaolon ajan hallinneet samat peruskysymykset: millaista oppiminen on eri vaiheissa ja eri ympäristöissä, sekä mikä oppimisessa on yleistä ja toisaalta mikä riippuu opittavasta kielestä ja oppijoiden kielitaustasta. Sähköisten oppijankielen tutkimusaineistojen eli korpusten lisääntymisen myötä tutkijat voivat aiempaa helpommin tutkia näitä ilmiöitä määrällisesti ja tarkastella oppijankielen sisäistä vaihtelua ja sen suhdetta tyypilliseen ensikieliseen kielenkäyttöön kielen eri osa-alueilla käyttöpohjaisesti eli todelliseen kielenkäyttöön pohjautuen. Tekninen kehitys on tuonut mukanaan aineisto- eli korpusvetoisuuden kaltaisia uusia tapoja lähestyä tutkimusaineistoa, jolloin tyypillisiä tutkimuskysymyksiä ”Miksi?” ja ”Miten?” edeltää kysymys: ”Mikä?”. Tässä väitöskirjassa tarkastellaan edistyneiden suomenoppijoiden kirjoitettua akateemista kieltä ja suhteutetaan suomen oppimiselle ominaisia seikkoja käyttöpohjaisen mallin perusolettamuksiin. Aineisto on suomea toisena kielenä käyttävien opiskelijoiden tenttivastauksia, ja se on osa Edistyneiden suomenoppijoiden korpusta. Tutkimus on osin metodologinen, sillä väitöskirjassa esitellään ja siinä sovelletaan uutta korpusvetoista avainrakenneanalyysi-menetelmää, jonka avulla aineistoa lähestytään ilman hypoteeseja siitä, mitkä kielen ilmiöt ovat ominaisia edistyneelle oppijansuomelle. Tutkimus kuuluu kieliopin tutkimuksen piiriin, ja se nojaa kognitiivisen konstruktiokieliopin ajatukseen abstraktiudeltaan vaihtelevista konstruktioista kielijärjestelmän perusyksiköinä. Tulokset puoltavat menetelmän sovellettavuutta kielen oppimisen tutkimukseen, sillä sen avulla kyettiin tunnistamaan konstruktioita, jotka erottavat edistyneitä oppijoita ensikielisistä kirjoittajista (esim. modaaliset verbiketjut), eri ensikieliä puhuvia suomenoppijoita (esim. konjunktiot) sekä konstruktioita, joiden käyttö muuttuu ajan kuluessa (esim. preteriti ja preesens). Monet havaitut erot ovat akateemisen kirjoittamisen erityispiirteitä, mikä tukee ajatusta kielen käyttö- ja kontekstikohtaisesta oppimisesta. Tuloksia voidaan yhtäältä soveltaa akateemisen kielitaidon opetuksessa. Toisaalta menetelmää voidaan käyttää kielenoppimisen tutkimuksen ohella uusien näkökulmien kartoittamiseksi erilaisten tai eri-ikäisten tekstien tyypillisten ominaisuuksien ja erojen tutkimuksessa.

Standing before a sentence : Moore’s paradox and a perspective from within language

Med avstamp i ett satsbegrepp som inspirerats av Ludwig Wittgenstein, där sats och kontext betraktas som internt förbundna och där den verkliga användningen av en sats är central för dess mening, visar avhandlingen hur filosofers olika uppfattning om den filosofiska terminologins roll och möjligheter har följder för deras sätt att uppfatta och behandla filosofiska frågeställningar. Moores paradox fungerar som testfall. Denna kända filosofiska frågeställning har diskuterats sedan 1940-talet och kretsar kring hävdandet av satsen ”Jag tror att det regnar och det regnar inte”. Problemet är att det vore märkligt för en talare att hävda satsen om sig själv: det verkar finnas ett logiskt hinder för att hävda en sats även om den är välformad, kunde vara sann och inte på ett entydigt sätt innehåller en kontradiktion. Moores paradox behandlas genom att granska några lösningsförslag (framförda av bl.a. G.E. Moore, J. L. Austin, J. Searle) och de uppfattningar om språket som de förutsätter. Genom att kontrastera dessa med ett användarperspektiv där språkets användning i meningsfulla sammanhang förväntas spela en central roll i behandlingen av paradoxen visar författaren hur också den intellektuella kontext inom vilken en filosof betraktar paradoxen spelar en avgörande roll för vilka mått som krävs för att upplösa den. Istället för att föreslå en egen lösning presenteras en behandling av paradoxen genom en diskussion och utredning av de grundvillkor som leder till att den uppstår. Här intar satsbegreppet en central plats. Avhandlingen är författad inom traditionen efter den senare Wittgenstein (närmare bestämt den gren som ansluter sig till en s.k. terapeutisk filosofisyn) men går i dialog med filosofiskt arbete som ligger utanför traditionen. Författaren strävar både till att medla mellan, sammanföra och särskilja olika temata som behandlats på ett sätt inom traditionen och på andra sätt utanför den och använder sig här av metaforen att filosofera inifrån i kontrast till utanför språket. Avhandlingens huvudsakliga bidrag är till metafilosofin genom dess fokus på filosofins metod. ------------------------------------------------------------ Mooren paradoksi on tunnettu filosofinen ongelma, josta on keskusteltu 1940-luvulta alkaen. Paradoksin keskeisenä osana esiintyy väitelause ”Uskon, että ulkona sataa, mutta ulkona ei sada”. Ongelman lähtökohta on, että olisi merkillistä jos puhuja esittäisi lauseen itseään koskevana väitteenä: väite näyttää olevan loogisesti mahdoton esittää, vaikka se on hyvinmuodostettu, mahdollisesti tosi, eikä yksiselitteisellä tavalla sisällä kontradiktiota. Tässä väitöskirjassa Mooren paradoksi esiintyy esimerkkinä filosofisesta ongelmasta, jossa mm. lausekäsitteellä on keskeinen rooli ja jonka avulla voidaan muodostella ns. kielensisäinen filosofinen näkökulma. Mooren paradoksia käsitellään tarkastelemalla muutamia ratkaisuehdotuksia (mm. G.E. Mooren, J.L. Austinin, J. Searlen esittämät) ja niitä kielikäsityksiä joita nämä ratkaisuehdotukset edellyttävät. Asettamalla vastakkain ratkaisuehdotukset ja käyttäjänäkymä, jossa kielenkäyttö mielekkäissä konteksteissa asetetaan keskeiseen asemaan paradoksin käsittelyssä, kirjoittaja osoittaa miten myös paradoksin filosofisen tarkastelun intellektuaalinen konteksti on hyväksyttävien toimenpiteiden löytämisen kannalta ratkaisevaa. Uuden ratkaisun sijaan kirjoittaja ehdottaa paradoksin terapeuttista käsittelyä: keskustelua ja selontekoa niistä perusehdoista, jotka johtavat sen syntyyn. Tässä käsittelyssä lausekäsite on keskipisteenä – erityisesti Ludwig Wittgensteinin inspiroima lausekäsitys, jossa lauseen mielekkyyden kannalta sen todellinen käyttö mielekkäässä kontekstissa on ratkaiseva tekijä. Väitöskirja liittyy myöhäisiwittgensteinilaiseen perinteeseen, johon kuuluu ns. terapeuttinen filosofiankäsitys, mutta teos keskustelee myös tradition ulkopuolisten ajattelijoiden kanssa yrittäen yhdistää, sovitella ja myös eritellä teemoja, joita käsitellään yhdellä tavalla tradition sisällä ja toisella tavalla sen ulkopuolella. Väitöskirjan pääasiallinen panos sijoittuu metafilosofiaan, koska sen mielenkiinnon kohteena ovat erityisesti filosofian menetelmät.

Socially shared metacognitive regulation during collaborative learning processes in student dyads and small groups

Traditionally metacognition has been theorised, methodologically studied and empirically tested from the standpoint mainly of individuals and their learning contexts. In this dissertation the emergence of metacognition is analysed more broadly. The aim of the dissertation was to explore socially shared metacognitive regulation (SSMR) as part of collaborative learning processes taking place in student dyads and small learning groups. The specific aims were to extend the concept of individual metacognition to SSMR, to develop methods to capture and analyse SSMR and to validate the usefulness of the concept of SSMR in two different learning contexts; in face-to-face student dyads solving mathematical word problems and also in small groups taking part in inquiry-based science learning in an asynchronous computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. This dissertation is comprised of four studies. In Study I, the main aim was to explore if and how metacognition emerges during problem solving in student dyads and then to develop a method for analysing the social level of awareness, monitoring, and regulatory processes emerging during the problem solving. Two dyads comprised of 10-year-old students who were high-achieving especially in mathematical word problem solving and reading comprehension were involved in the study. An in-depth case analysis was conducted. Data consisted of over 16 (30–45 minutes) videotaped and transcribed face-to-face sessions. The dyads solved altogether 151 mathematical word problems of different difficulty levels in a game-format learning environment. The interaction flowchart was used in the analysis to uncover socially shared metacognition. Interviews (also stimulated recall interviews) were conducted in order to obtain further information about socially shared metacognition. The findings showed the emergence of metacognition in a collaborative learning context in a way that cannot solely be explained by individual conception. The concept of socially-shared metacognition (SSMR) was proposed. The results highlighted the emergence of socially shared metacognition specifically in problems where dyads encountered challenges. Small verbal and nonverbal signals between students also triggered the emergence of socially shared metacognition. Additionally, one dyad implemented a system whereby they shared metacognitive regulation based on their strengths in learning. Overall, the findings suggested that in order to discover patterns of socially shared metacognition, it is important to investigate metacognition over time. However, it was concluded that more research on socially shared metacognition, from larger data sets, is needed. These findings formed the basis of the second study. In Study II, the specific aim was to investigate whether socially shared metacognition can be reliably identified from a large dataset of collaborative face-to-face mathematical word problem solving sessions by student dyads. We specifically examined different difficulty levels of tasks as well as the function and focus of socially shared metacognition. Furthermore, the presence of observable metacognitive experiences at the beginning of socially shared metacognition was explored. Four dyads participated in the study. Each dyad was comprised of high-achieving 10-year-old students, ranked in the top 11% of their fourth grade peers (n=393). Dyads were from the same data set as in Study I. The dyads worked face-to-face in a computer-supported, game-format learning environment. Problem-solving processes for 251 tasks at three difficulty levels taking place during 56 (30–45 minutes) lessons were video-taped and analysed. Baseline data for this study were 14 675 turns of transcribed verbal and nonverbal behaviours observed in four study dyads. The micro-level analysis illustrated how participants moved between different channels of communication (individual and interpersonal). The unit of analysis was a set of turns, referred to as an ‘episode’. The results indicated that socially shared metacognition and its function and focus, as well as the appearance of metacognitive experiences can be defined in a reliable way from a larger data set by independent coders. A comparison of the different difficulty levels of the problems suggested that in order to trigger socially shared metacognition in small groups, the problems should be more difficult, as opposed to moderately difficult or easy. Although socially shared metacognition was found in collaborative face-to-face problem solving among high-achieving student dyads, more research is needed in different contexts. This consideration created the basis of the research on socially shared metacognition in Studies III and IV. In Study III, the aim was to expand the research on SSMR from face-to-face mathematical problem solving in student dyads to inquiry-based science learning among small groups in an asynchronous computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environment. The specific aims were to investigate SSMR’s evolvement and functions in a CSCL environment and to explore how SSMR emerges at different phases of the inquiry process. Finally, individual student participation in SSMR during the process was studied. An in-depth explanatory case study of one small group of four girls aged 12 years was carried out. The girls attended a class that has an entrance examination and conducts a language-enriched curriculum. The small group solved complex science problems in an asynchronous CSCL environment, participating in research-like processes of inquiry during 22 lessons (á 45–minute). Students’ network discussion were recorded in written notes (N=640) which were used as study data. A set of notes, referred to here as a ‘thread’, was used as the unit of analysis. The inter-coder agreement was regarded as substantial. The results indicated that SSMR emerges in a small group’s asynchronous CSCL inquiry process in the science domain. Hence, the results of Study III were in line with the previous Study I and Study II and revealed that metacognition cannot be reduced to the individual level alone. The findings also confirm that SSMR should be examined as a process, since SSMR can evolve during different phases and that different SSMR threads overlapped and intertwined. Although the classification of SSMR’s functions was applicable in the context of CSCL in a small group, the dominant function was different in the asynchronous CSCL inquiry in the small group in a science activity than in mathematical word problem solving among student dyads (Study II). Further, the use of different analytical methods provided complementary findings about students’ participation in SSMR. The findings suggest that it is not enough to code just a single written note or simply to examine who has the largest number of notes in the SSMR thread but also to examine the connections between the notes. As the findings of the present study are based on an in-depth analysis of a single small group, further cases were examined in Study IV, as well as looking at the SSMR’s focus, which was also studied in a face-to-face context. In Study IV, the general aim was to investigate the emergence of SSMR with a larger data set from an asynchronous CSCL inquiry process in small student groups carrying out science activities. The specific aims were to study the emergence of SSMR in the different phases of the process, students’ participation in SSMR, and the relation of SSMR’s focus to the quality of outcomes, which was not explored in previous studies. The participants were 12-year-old students from the same class as in Study III. Five small groups consisting of four students and one of five students (N=25) were involved in the study. The small groups solved ill-defined science problems in an asynchronous CSCL environment, participating in research-like processes of inquiry over a total period of 22 hours. Written notes (N=4088) detailed the network discussions of the small groups and these constituted the study data. With these notes, SSMR threads were explored. As in Study III, the thread was used as the unit of analysis. In total, 332 notes were classified as forming 41 SSMR threads. Inter-coder agreement was assessed by three coders in the different phases of the analysis and found to be reliable. Multiple methods of analysis were used. Results showed that SSMR emerged in all the asynchronous CSCL inquiry processes in the small groups. However, the findings did not reveal any significantly changing trend in the emergence of SSMR during the process. As a main trend, the number of notes included in SSMR threads differed significantly in different phases of the process and small groups differed from each other. Although student participation was seen as highly dispersed between the students, there were differences between students and small groups. Furthermore, the findings indicated that the amount of SSMR during the process or participation structure did not explain the differences in the quality of outcomes for the groups. Rather, when SSMRs were focused on understanding and procedural matters, it was associated with achieving high quality learning outcomes. In turn, when SSMRs were focused on incidental and procedural matters, it was associated with low level learning outcomes. Hence, the findings imply that the focus of any emerging SSMR is crucial to the quality of the learning outcomes. Moreover, the findings encourage the use of multiple research methods for studying SSMR. In total, the four studies convincingly indicate that a phenomenon of socially shared metacognitive regulation also exists. This means that it was possible to define the concept of SSMR theoretically, to investigate it methodologically and to validate it empirically in two different learning contexts across dyads and small groups. In-depth micro-level case analysis in Studies I and III showed the possibility to capture and analyse in detail SSMR during the collaborative process, while in Studies II and IV, the analysis validated the emergence of SSMR in larger data sets. Hence, validation was tested both between two environments and within the same environments with further cases. As a part of this dissertation, SSMR’s detailed functions and foci were revealed. Moreover, the findings showed the important role of observable metacognitive experiences as the starting point of SSMRs. It was apparent that problems dealt with by the groups should be rather difficult if SSMR is to be made clearly visible. Further, individual students’ participation was found to differ between students and groups. The multiple research methods employed revealed supplementary findings regarding SSMR. Finally, when SSMR was focused on understanding and procedural matters, this was seen to lead to higher quality learning outcomes. Socially shared metacognition regulation should therefore be taken into consideration in students’ collaborative learning at school similarly to how an individual’s metacognition is taken into account in individual learning.

Tekstuaalisessa liikkeessä : Textual trails : transmissions of oral and written texts : the 11th Conference of the European Society for Textual Scholarship 30th of October − 1st of November 2014

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