Name of the tool

Logbook

Links to the keystones
Attitudes, awareness and knowledge.

A new national curriculum for compulsory education will be introduced in Sweden 2011. All children’s access to education on different levels is pointed out  as well as teacher’s multicultural competences especially  in terms of attitudes, awareness and  knowledge.

Aim of tool/ Brief overall description

The aim of the logbook: The teacher students are supposed to develop metacognitive awareness of multicultural classroom and intercultural relations at school. By developing knowledge about this area through observations and writing notes in a logbook the student does use her/his learning potential.
Brief overall description
The students are not only making notes mechanically but also supposed to go  back to the notes for analyzing, reflecting  and commenting 

Main methods

Observations and writing logbook

Description of the process and the possible stepping stones

Step-by-step:  Student divides every page in two columns as in figure 1 below. . They write down their experiences from the practice from lessons and from brakes under the two headings. It can be themes like:

1. Observations and notes in a multicultural classroom in different kind of actions. What is happening during the lessons? How are the children cooperating? How are group constellations built? How are the dialogues in the classrooms?
2. Observations and notes during brakes. Different kinds of multimodal methods can be used as photos, videos etc for internal use in group discussions with the pupils. Above questions or extended can be used

Notes from practice/Own comments /questions/reflections

This way to work in dialogue  with the content  with double notes shows two forms of knowledge. On the left side the personal sensitive expieriences through the senses for example listening and seeing. On the right side the student does the connections to the text  and in that way goes through a dialogue directly with the text.  These logbook notes the student have to take to the class , present  to the classmates  and give comments and have an argumentation for her /his personal comments, all connected to the references that have been used. Reflection and evaluation

Instruments

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Equipment

References

Dysthe, O. (2004) Det flerstämmiga kalssrumme. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Polanyi,M.(1958, 1962). Personal Knowledge: Towards a post-critical  philosophy. London: Routeledge & Kegan Paul-

Author
Gunilla Johansson, Marja Liisa Lejon

Institution

Department for educational sciences, Luleå University of Technology