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This project aims to explore how engagement and disengagement are conceptualised and measured within learning analytics research.

This study represents the first research effort to explore the transition from traditional teaching into distance teaching in Swedish schools enforced by covid-19. Governments made gradual and injudicious decisions to impede the spread of the pandemic (covid-19) in 2020. The enactment of new measures affected critical societal functions and included travel restrictions, closing of borders, school closures and lockdowns of entire countries worldwide. Social distancing became the new reality for many, and for many teachers and students, the school closure prompted a rapid transition from traditional to distance education. This study aims to capture the early stages of that transition. We distributed a questionnaire to teachers’ (n = 153) to gain insights into teacher and school preparedness, plans to deliver distance education, and teachers’ experience when making this transition. Results show that the school preparedness was mainly related to technical aspects, and that teachers lack pedagogical strategies needed in the emerging learning landscape of distance education. Findings reveal four distinct pedagogical activities central for distance education in a crisis, and many challenges faced during the transition. While preparedness to ensure continuity of education was halting, schools and teachers worked with tremendous effort to overcome the challenges. Results expand on previous findings on school closure during virus outbreaks and may in the short-term support teachers and school leaders in making informed decisions during the shift into distance education. The study may also inform the development of preparedness plans for schools, and offers a historical documentation.

I Sverige gjorde gymnasielärare en snabb övergång till nödundervisning på distans på grund av utbrottet av covid-19, 2020. Denna studie fokuserar på en designbaserad forskningsintervention där professionell utveckling utformades med hjälp av ramverket Adaptation of Blended Learning till uppfylla de nya kraven för undervisning online. 26 lärare deltog i fortbildningsinterventionen, som sträckte sig över sex månader. Data analyserades med hjälp av tematisk analys. Viktiga resultat visar att pandemin har blivit en drivkraft för förändring, men inte för alla. Framväxande metoder inkluderar pedagoger med specialbehov i parallella breakoutrooms, delning av elever lättare för samarbete, vilket sparar tid. Lärare rapporterar också utmaningar, till exempel brist på riktlinjer och konsensus om hantering av frånvaro, fusk och de etiska aspekterna av att få tillgång till elevernas privata hem via kameror. Slutligen kan lärares yrkesmässiga utveckling inspireras av nya erfarenheter nya metoder även efter pandemin. Professionell utveckling under osäkra tider och designprinciper som stöder överföring av interventionen diskuteras. In Sweden, upper secondary school teachers made a swift transition into emergency remote teaching in 2020 due to the outbreak of covid-19. This paper reports on a Design-Based Research intervention in which professional development was designed using the Blended Learning Adoption framework, to support teachers to develop their teaching practices online. Twenty-six teachers participated in the intervention which spanned six months. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. Key results revealed that the pandemic had become an impetus for change, for many teachers, but far from all. Emerging teaching practices in synchronous online learning included: inviting special needs pedagogues in parallel breakout rooms, and grouping and re-grouping students when facilitating varied collaboration. Apart from realising new potentials of online teaching and learning, teachers identified emerging challenges such as: new ways of cheating, ethical aspects of accessing students’ private homes via cameras and a lack of guidelines on managing disengagement. Conclusively, teacher’s professional development and new experiences elicit new practices that could benefit teachers after the pandemic. Professional development during uncertain times and design principles supporting intervention ownership transfer are discussed.

The present research approaches Swedish upper secondary school students’ engagement and disengagement in Technology-enhanced Learning (TEL). To date, research on engagement in TEL have mainly focused on university-level students and have overlooked the dimension of disengagement. The aim of the thesis is to explore how to facilitate students’ academic engagement in TEL by considering both student engagement and disengagement when students learn with digital technologies. While a mixed-methods approach was adopted across all sub-studies, sub-studies I-III emphasised qualitative methods, and sub-studies IV-V were more quantitatively orientated. Results revealed that teachers’ orchestration of digital technologies for learning varied more between the individual teachers than the subjects taught, and that the orchestration of digital technologies and the design of learning activities covaried with the observed and self-reported levels of student engagement. A Design-Based Research intervention showed that teachers could orchestrate digital technologies and design learning activities that increase student engagement in TEL, but may find it challenging to sustain the practice without support. A student evaluation showed that only the students with the highest engagement levels reported interest as their reason to engage. Instead, the most common reasons to engage were related to the social dimension of engagement. Building on the results of this intervention, design principles that facilitate student engagement when designing for engagement in TEL were identified. After the intervention, the focus was expanded to include student disengagement along with engagement and The Learner-Engagement-Technology (LET) instrument was developed using interviews and theory. The LET instrument was tested and validated to reflect multi-dimensional aspects of upper secondary school student engagement and disengagement in TEL. The LET-instrument revealed that low-, average- and high-performance students engage and disengage differently in TEL; that students’ IT skills played a role for engagement in TEL, but are not sufficient to redeem disengagement and that a majority of students use digital technologies to escape when the lesson is perceived to be boring. The results also showed that indicators of disengagement in TEL do not have a natural opposite in the engagement scale; that is; disengagement in TEL is more than the mere absence of, or lower levels of, engagement in TEL. Overlooking disengagement, when students learn with technologies, might fail to uncover critical insights that hinder student engagement. The main contributions of this thesis are: (i) derived design principles and practical insights on conditions related to student engagement and disengagement in TEL that may inform designs of learning activities to facilitate engagement (ii) a methodological contribution that reflects an attempt to combine critical realism and Design-Based Research, and (iii) a theoretical contribution that suggests how engagement and disengagement may be understood and conceptualised in TEL. Future research should explore engagement and disengagement in TEL, relating to the uptake of digital technologies in earlier school years, and other school forms. The thesis is relevant for teachers, decision makers, researchers and others interested in understanding the challenges and possibilities that may affect students in a digitalised school.

Syftet med studien är att dels att förstå hur systematiskt kvalitetsarbete kan se ut på klassrumsnivå och dels vad det innebär att tillämpa det utifrån elevperspektiv, och dels att jämföra hur elevernas måluppfyllelse utvecklats i jämförelse med en kontrollgrupp. Resultatet av detta har fört med sig att examensarbetet bidrar med ett föreslag på hur kvalitetsarbete kan ske på klassrumsnivå; här kallat Co Creative Learning - using IT to Visualise Progression (CIP). Det här är en aktionsforskningsstudie. Den har genomförts med enkäter, fokusgrupper och en tidsserie; i vilken 65 elevers arbeten inom tre skilda områden bedömdes. För att förstärka reliabilitet och validitet valdes en kontrollgrupp, från samma upptagningsområde, som även de haft en legitimerad lärare med motsvarande antal yrkesverksamma år och som även de uttalat arbetat med formativ bedömning och synliggjorda mål. Två skoluppgifter var identiska och därmed kunde de två gruppernas resultat jämföras. För att minimera inverkan av en bedömande lärares närvaro på utvärderingen, samlades eleverna inte till fokusgrupper förrän efter att deras betyg var satta och kommunicerade. Då reflekterade de kring arbetet med ständiga förbättringar, kvalitet, involvering, målförståelse, upplevd progression och IT-användning. Innan denna avslutande diskussion hade de insamlade datamängder analyserades separat. Resultaten visade effekt på både elevupplevelse och progression. De största skillnaderna låg i elevens upplevelse, där förändring påverkas i första hand elevernas engagemang; i vilken utsträckning eleverna var nöjda studenter med sin egen utveckling. I tidsserien, var skillnaderna inte lika markanta som i elevupplevelsen. Den studerade gruppen började på ett något lägre snittbetyg, och avslutade på ett något högre, än kontrollgruppen. Det var främst pojkar som stod för utvecklingen. Detta kan bero på att flickorna redan hade mycket höga genomsnittliga betyg (vilket innebär att det inte finns utrymme för progression). Jämfört med kontrollgruppen, kvarstår de positiva skillnaderna med pojkarna i den studerade gruppen. Slutsatserna är därför att arbetet gynnat progression, men att den största förtjänsten med arbetssättet återfinns i hur eleverna upplever undervisningen. The purpose of the study is partly to understand how systematic quality management can be implemented at the classroom level and partly what it means to apply it from a student perspective, and to compare student progression with that of a control group. As a result of this, this study contributes with a method on how quality management can be implemented at the classroom level. This working method is named Co-Creative Learning - using IT to Visualise Progression. This is an action research study that encompassed questionnaires, focus groups and a time series. Three assignments from 65 students were assessed in the study, out of which two were compared to those from the control group. To enhance reliability and validity the selected control group were from the same catchment area, had qualified teacher with corresponding number of working years who also worked with formative assessment and visualising criteria. Two assignments were identical for both groups, and thus, the two groups' results could be compared. To minimise the effects of the presence of a teacher during evaluation, the students were not brought together to form focus groups, until after the grades were communicated. They then reflected on continuous improvement efforts, quality, inclusion, understanding objectives, perceived progression and the use of IT. Before the concluding discussion the collected data sets were analysed separately. The results showed the difference in both student experience and progression. The main differences lay in the student experience: where change primarily affected the students’ involvement; the extent to which the students were satisfied students with their own development. In the time series, the differences were not as high as in the student experience. The studied group started at a slightly lower grade, and completed at a slightly higher grade, than the control group. It was mainly the boys who accounted for the progression. One reason for could be that the girls already held high average grades (leaving little room for progression). Compared to the control group, the differences with the boys in the studied group remains. The conclusions drawn are thus that the method enhances progression, but that the main benefits are harvested from the enhanced educational experience of the students.

Vår projektredogörelse bygger på hur vi utifrån vårt empiriska underlag, som till stor del består av loggboksanteckningar och samtal med verksamma pedagoger, har skapat ett diskussionsmaterial för pedagoger att använda i den dagliga undervisningen. Syftet med materialet är att belysa begreppen empati och självkänsla och skapa ett forum som inbjuder till såväl samtal som estetiska läroprocesser kring dessa. Diskussionsmaterialet fokuserar på olika känslor, som får uttryck i både bild och text. Förhoppningen är att det vidgade textbegreppet väcker tankar som skapar tillfällen för pedagoger och elever att mötas i dialog, i olika former. Inför vårt projekt har vi läst litteratur gällande empati, självkänsla och estetiska uttrycksformer samt dess betydelse för barn i deras fortsatta utveckling. Vi har även tagit del av forskares teorier inom genren barnbok och kring barns bildskapande. Därefter inleddes skapandet av diskussionsmaterialet med hjälp av inspiration och erfarenheter från såväl ämnesteoretiska studier och vft som det empiriska underlaget. Vi landade i ett material som vi tycker stämmer väl överens med projektets syfte.

As many of our readers can no doubt attest, engaging young learners in online and blended learning can be challenging, and during the height of the pandemic when in lockdown, particularly so. Picture this: a student joined an online lesson in the school library, having been accompanied there by a tutor. Not long after the tutor left him to it, something caught the boy’s attention in the library, so he got up from his chair and went to check it out, completely forgetting about “the lady on the screen.” There his teacher was hollering “come back” to the screen, but what could she do? While adolescents might not run off, teachers often wonder what they are doing behind their screens (Bergdahl, 2022). These experiences, like those of so many (e.g., Bond et al., 2021), show how the critical nature of student engagement in online and blended learning has been highlighted to teachers, school leaders and parents alike (Bond & Bergdahl, 2021). Online, teachers cannot rely on enthusing or motivating students through their personality alone, trusting that their engaged and positive persona will somehow seep through the screen and lead to engagement. Instead, they must continue developing their skills in understanding online engagement and designing engaging learning activities beyond what was learnt during the pandemic (Bergdahl, 2021; 2022), particularly given the move for many schools to continue implementing forms of hybrid, blended and online learning going forwards. Refereed/Peer-reviewed