The term 'phenomenography' was coined by Marton (1981) to identify an empirical research paradigm... more The term 'phenomenography' was coined by Marton (1981) to identify an empirical research paradigm dating to the 1970s that aims at describing the qualitatively different ways in which people experience or see the same phenomenon. Different ways of experiencing or seeing are differentiated and logically related to one another in terms of which aspects of the phenomenon are being discerned and attended to simultaneously by the experiencer. Two strands or domains of research have evolved out of the phenomenographic research tradition. The first includes development of the variation theory of learning (
When dealing with problems of various kinds, we frequently have to take several features of the p... more When dealing with problems of various kinds, we frequently have to take several features of the problem into consideration simultaneously, such as time and distance in a physics problem, the color of the lips and breathing when making a diagnosis, and distance and wind when kicking a football. This study is about learning to do this with a specific kind of problem. The instructional approach that is adopted gives concrete cases that are then followed by the explicit teaching of general and formalized principles, and a comparison is drawn between two conditions. In one, the students deal with cases that vary in two respects at the same time, and in the other the students first deal with cases that vary in one respect, then with cases that vary in a second respect, and then with cases that vary in both respects at the same time. Both conditions are followed by the same explicit instructions about how to formally deal with this kind of problem. As the first condition represents an atte...
International Journal of Comparative Education and Development, 2016
Purpose – Although researchers have identified correlations between specific attitudes and partic... more Purpose – Although researchers have identified correlations between specific attitudes and particular behaviors in the pro-environmental domain, the general relationship between young people’s development of environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors is not well understood. Past research indicates that geographic context can play a role, while social factors such as age and gender can have a more significant impact on predicting attitudes and behaviors than formal education. Few studies have systematically examined the relationships between education and environmental attitudes and behaviors among youth in Hong Kong. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study comparing secondary school students’ environmental attitudes and behaviors with age and related factors in two international schools and two government schools in Hong Kong. Students’ attitudes and behaviors were compared based on school type (curriculum), while the authors additionally compared the s...
This paper illustrates how teachers make use of a learning theory, the variation theory, as well ... more This paper illustrates how teachers make use of a learning theory, the variation theory, as well as their own professional expertise and collaboration in a learning study (cf. Pang & Marton, 2003) to help students improve their mathematical understanding. A learning study involves a group of teachers who undertake theoretically grounded collaborative action research on their own practice. Unlike design experiments, a learning study emphasises teachers’ involvement in and ownership of the innovative practices that echo the spirit of the lesson study. The major focus of a learning study is on the objects of learning, i.e., on what students are expected to learn, rather than on the teaching arrangements. The results of the learning study reported here show that students belonging to the learning study group outperformed their counterparts in the comparison group. It seems that the variation theory is a powerful tool for improving student understanding. Furthermore, by engaging in syste...
The term 'phenomenography' was coined by Marton (1981) to identify an empirical research paradigm... more The term 'phenomenography' was coined by Marton (1981) to identify an empirical research paradigm dating to the 1970s that aims at describing the qualitatively different ways in which people experience or see the same phenomenon. Different ways of experiencing or seeing are differentiated and logically related to one another in terms of which aspects of the phenomenon are being discerned and attended to simultaneously by the experiencer. Two strands or domains of research have evolved out of the phenomenographic research tradition. The first includes development of the variation theory of learning (
When dealing with problems of various kinds, we frequently have to take several features of the p... more When dealing with problems of various kinds, we frequently have to take several features of the problem into consideration simultaneously, such as time and distance in a physics problem, the color of the lips and breathing when making a diagnosis, and distance and wind when kicking a football. This study is about learning to do this with a specific kind of problem. The instructional approach that is adopted gives concrete cases that are then followed by the explicit teaching of general and formalized principles, and a comparison is drawn between two conditions. In one, the students deal with cases that vary in two respects at the same time, and in the other the students first deal with cases that vary in one respect, then with cases that vary in a second respect, and then with cases that vary in both respects at the same time. Both conditions are followed by the same explicit instructions about how to formally deal with this kind of problem. As the first condition represents an atte...
International Journal of Comparative Education and Development, 2016
Purpose – Although researchers have identified correlations between specific attitudes and partic... more Purpose – Although researchers have identified correlations between specific attitudes and particular behaviors in the pro-environmental domain, the general relationship between young people’s development of environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors is not well understood. Past research indicates that geographic context can play a role, while social factors such as age and gender can have a more significant impact on predicting attitudes and behaviors than formal education. Few studies have systematically examined the relationships between education and environmental attitudes and behaviors among youth in Hong Kong. The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a study comparing secondary school students’ environmental attitudes and behaviors with age and related factors in two international schools and two government schools in Hong Kong. Students’ attitudes and behaviors were compared based on school type (curriculum), while the authors additionally compared the s...
This paper illustrates how teachers make use of a learning theory, the variation theory, as well ... more This paper illustrates how teachers make use of a learning theory, the variation theory, as well as their own professional expertise and collaboration in a learning study (cf. Pang & Marton, 2003) to help students improve their mathematical understanding. A learning study involves a group of teachers who undertake theoretically grounded collaborative action research on their own practice. Unlike design experiments, a learning study emphasises teachers’ involvement in and ownership of the innovative practices that echo the spirit of the lesson study. The major focus of a learning study is on the objects of learning, i.e., on what students are expected to learn, rather than on the teaching arrangements. The results of the learning study reported here show that students belonging to the learning study group outperformed their counterparts in the comparison group. It seems that the variation theory is a powerful tool for improving student understanding. Furthermore, by engaging in syste...
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