Abstracts - Earli

Students’ stories as a promoter of developmental transfer between work and educationAnneli Sarja, Institute for Educational Research, FinlandSirpa Janhonen, University of Oulu, FinlandThe purpose of this paper is to describe how the narratives of social work students promotedevelopmental transfer between work and education in Finland. Students’ stories were based ontheir experiences during their practice period in child welfare work/family work. The stories gavestudents (N=6) and their teachers (N=4) a possibility to share their experiences, ideas andknowledge base concerning current practice in family work. The data were collected in seminarsessions (20 min per story) that were videotaped and transcribed in 2005. According to thefindings, the students’ stories helped them and their teachers to discuss the same topic. Three typesof narratives emerged during the seminars: 1. how to discuss a difficult topic with the client(focusing on early intervention), 2. how to set limits for an aggressive child, and 3. how to developshared responsibility concerning problem behaviour in a child. The study suggests that there is aneed to develop collaboration between the multiprofessional team and families around thequestions that emerged from the students’ narratives. Moreover, we suggest that students’narratives are a good method of bringing forth new ideas for developmental transfer whenintegrating higher education, working practice and research.Where is the threshold in understanding the concept of evolution?Charlotte Taylor, University of Sydney, AustraliaThreshold concepts include instances of ‘significantly changing the way of thinking’, and a focuson the integrative nature of knowledge (Meyer and Land 2005), and can be identified in all areasof biology (Taylor 2006. An understanding of evolution is clearly transformative (Entwistle perscomm.) in that it requires both a fundamental change in the way we think about living systems anda sophisticated integration of knowledge within biology. This study focused on students who werefirst encountering concepts fundamental to biology, at a level where thresholds concepts should bemost evident. The aim of this study was to carry out a detailed analysis of first year studentresponses to a question about evolution, to identify the defining characteristics of the thresholdconcept. A hierarchical scale of understanding was developed to score the answers, based on theSOLO taxonomy (Biggs and Collis, 1982). While the prestructural, relational and extendedabstract categories were clearly identified in student responses, a problem arose in categorizingresponses at the multi-structural level of understanding. We hypothesized that this indicated theexistence of a threshold at this level, and a re-analysis using a phenomenographical approachallowed us to create categories of understanding in which each higher order category is inclusiveof all lower order categories (Marton 1994). Such a building of understanding mirrors thetransformation and integration of ideas inherent in crossing thresholds (Meyer and Land 2003).The analysis produced distinctly different categories of understanding, which take into account theessential features of evolution. These categories give a picture of the ‘critical aspects’ which makeup the threshold concept (Cope 2006), and using these critical aspects we can now design learningmaterials and activities which specifically show students how to make links and see relationships.– 221 –