Dear colleagues,
A warm welcome to a Research Clinic organized by the Learning, Culture and Interventions (LECI) research community (http://www.helsinki.fi/leci) on Friday 25th of September at 9-11 AM.
The seminar will be held via zoom:
https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/63539633759
This event is open for all faculty members. For doctoral students to note, this seminar is part of the SEDUCE doctoral courses (SED-916) and you’ll gain study credits by attending.
We will begin the seminar by discussing experiences about conducting research in these exceptional circumstances during the pandemic. Then, two members of the LECI-research community will present their work: Mareike Bacha-Trams (Post-doctoral researcher, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki) and Selma Koyuncu (PhD candidate, Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki). The titles and the abstracts of the presentations:
Mareike Bacha-Trams: Studying news evaluation and news sharing, peer feedback and media literacy in adolescents
Abstract: Humans are inherently social creatures; we evolved to live in groups and our brains have developed to thrive in social environments. We are not only able to understand others thoughts, emotions, opinions and values, we also wish to synchronize with others and to be understood and respected. In consequence, the opinions of others influence our thoughts, evaluations and beliefs. Social and neurocognitive mechanisms such as novelty seeking, awareness for potential dangers or the need to belong are powerful target points, which could be triggered to propagate information, true or false. Particularly, social media exploit these mechanisms as they directly offer tools for social interaction such as sharing and liking messages received by others. Although such features seem to mimic social behavior in real life and may activate brain areas of reward, mentalising, self-referential cognition, open questions remain in how news are evaluated and shared in different social contexts. Particularly adolescents are exposed to a multitude of news in social media, while their brains are still maturing. The goal of this project is to reveal the neural mechanisms underlying the interactive process of news evaluation and sharing and to investigate the impact of group feedback in order to develop a teaching concept to support students in improving their media literacy. For that purpose, research fields of neuroscience, psychology, and education are combined to study social interactions of news sharing in adolescents. Within this research project, we hope to better understand underlying principles and mechanisms when adolescents interact with news in different media and develop strategies to support adolescents in critically evaluating news.
Selma Koyuncu: Enhancing Children's Participation in Early English Language Classrooms Through Peer Interaction
Abstract: This study investigates children's participation in early English language classrooms, with a particular focus on peer interaction. Through the sociocultural perspective, we approach learning as socially co-constructed. Our qualitative data comprise 3300 minutes of video data from classrooms, with a sample of 125 children and 3 teachers in 6 schools. Transcribed peer interactions were analyzed through interaction analysis to investigate children's participatory acts and language learning; and researcher's field notes and video recordings were analyzed qualitatively to explore teachers' roles. The results illustrate that the teachers used a variety of tasks to support children's peer interaction in the classrooms. The findings also highlight that peer interaction creates opportunities for children to engage with the target language through turn-taking, content selection, vocabulary learning and when instructing each other. The study contributes to increased understanding on the importance of the role of teachers in supporting children's language learning through enhanced peer interaction, and thereby their participation in the classroom dialogue. The findings, tangible results from peer interaction as a way of constructing children’s rights and participation in early language classrooms, could additionally contribute to a better understanding on regulations and pedagogies to be developed.
Everyone interested is very welcome to join the Research Clinic!
Kind regards, Anu Kajamaa & Kristiina Kumpulainen