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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the theoretical reflection on learning study as a research approach. The focus is on description and reflection on the methodology of learning study as paedeutic research. This research is for, not on, teachers, i.e. research into problems and challenges faced by teachers in their professional practice. Learning study as paedeutic research is about the content and processes of formation/Bildung in relation to specific learning objects. Its focus is on subject-specific ways of knowing as well as how such knowing is enabled through teaching.

The point of departure is a perspective on research approaches as practices, i.e. as activities with certain aims as well as ways of “making” knowledge. Based on a description of the knowledge machinery in a learning study, i.e. those mechanisms that together generate new knowledge, the knowledge claims that can be made are discussed together with the theoretical underpinning of the arguments. The knowledge machinery is described in relation to how it is organised around the delimitation and analysis of an object of Learning as well as designing and evaluating ways to make the critical aspects of this object of learning visible. As an epistemological underpinning, some aspects of pragmatic philosophical thinking regarding the relationship between theory and practice are outlined. Based on that the research process may be described as a development of means-ends relationships – from unconscious empirical relationships to conscious staging of internal and theoretical relations. Abduction is an important tool for this meaning-making.

Learning study can be described as a particularistic, theory-building research approach concerning the knowing of specific learning objects as well as how they can be taught and learnt. The knowledge that is generated in learning study is theoretical and describes aspects of the teaching and learning of specific objects of learning. The research process can be described in terms of specification where practice is gradually supplied with a more differentiated meaning. A learning study is organised around a specific object of learning that functions as an open and unfolding object of knowledge. It combines a practice-based development of theory with a theory-based development of practice.

The development of the thinking about learning study as research for, rather than on, teachers is paedeutical research. A contribution to reflection on the knowledge machinery and knowledge claims of such research.

Development of autonomous robot manipulator for human-robot assembly tasks is a key component to reach high effectiveness. In such tasks, the robot real-time object recognition is crucial. In addition, the need for simple and safe teaching techniques need to be considered, because: small size robot manipulators’ presence in everyday life environments is increasing requiring non-expert operators to teach the robot; and in small size applications, the operator has to teach several different motions in a short time.

For object recognition, the authors propose a deep belief neural network (DBNN)-based approach. The captured camera image is used as the input of the DBNN. The DBNN extracts the object features in the intermediate layers. In addition, the authors developed three teaching systems which utilize iPhone; haptic; and Kinect devices.

The object recognition by DBNN is robust for real-time applications. The robot picks up the object required by the user and places it in the target location. Three developed teaching systems are easy to use by non-experienced subjects, and they show different performance in terms of time to complete the task and accuracy.

The proposed method can ease the use of robot manipulators helping non-experienced users completing different assembly tasks.

This work applies DBNN for object recognition and three intuitive systems for teaching robot manipulators.

The challenge of writing a historical biography is interesting from several perspectives. The writer primarily seeks to provide a clear picture of the subject without imposing personal biases. Maintaining an objective perspective becomes more difficult when deciding which material to include or exclude. This challenge became very evident when we began to write about Mary Sheldon Barnes. She was a leading educator at the end of the nineteenth century in the United States. It is easy to overlook her writing in educational history, but her impact on teaching methodology is present today in most classrooms. She was a pioneer because she included “sources” or pieces of original documents and pictures in her first textbook entitled Studies in General History. Her educational contributions have been blurred for several reasons which are explored in this research.

Drawing on educational science research and concepts, this paper aims to organize and analyze prior accounting literature on the integration of research into teaching and provides evidence for the relevance of integrating research into constructivist management accounting teaching.

Evidence shall be drawn from the autoethnographic account of a case study, namely, an MiM course in a French business school.

The presentation of qualitative research plays a priming role in collective debates where knowledge is co-produced by the group of students.

The analysis opens up many avenues for future research on constructivist accounting teaching (e.g. teachers’ profiles, cross-cultural comparison) and its consequences.

The case provides examples of how, in practice and beyond general principles, the constructivist teacher adapts to his/her audience and their educational heritage. It also invites a holistic consideration of teaching arrangements, the relationships between their elements and their collective impact on learning.

The case study, the analysis of which draws on educational science frameworks and concepts, provides an in-depth account of research integration into constructivist accounting teaching.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the use of information technology in schools can influence students’ democratic comprehension.

First, two different ideas of democracy are introduced and how these ideas are linked to cognitivistic and social constructivistic learning theories, respectively, is illustrated. Next, a case study is described, where Engeström’s mediational triangle is used for analysing how the use of interactive whiteboards (IWB) influences the teaching of democracy in a fifth-grade school class.

The paper lists a set of preconditions and recommendations for a use of IWB as support for students’ experience of democracy as a way of living.

As the paper focuses on research design and development of didactical designs, future research and articles can further study the effects of the didactical designs and the democratic comprehension supported hereby. The paper is set in a Danish school context.

It is argued that the IWB can be used as support for developing the students’ democratic comprehension by focusing on and, if necessary, changing the elements of the activity system, e.g. the rules and the roles concerning the use of the IWB.

The paper’s linkage of democratic ideas, learning theory and information technology is relevant for researchers. Teachers can use the paper, as it offers didactical principles for using information technology as support for students’ democratic comprehension.

This chapter will show faculty the benefits of using picture postcards in different disciplines for encouraging critical thinking, analysis, and visual literacy in the active learning classroom while helping students to contextualize what they are learning in the course. It will provide strategies for how to teach this material including possible sample worksheet questions that could be used in multiple disciplines. This chapter will present one way that faculty can innovatively use active learning strategies to teach students archival skills, analytical thinking, visual literacy, cultural competency, historical and locational awareness, collaboration with other students, and disciplinary content. Furthermore, it will discuss how this activity is equally well-suited for both innovative active and experimental classroom setups as well as large lecture halls and traditional classroom setups and how modifications can be made for each environment.

Recent initiatives in digital library research have suggested new models for the creation and organisation of digital information and its dissemination to virtual communities. PEN‐DOR (the Pennsylvania Education Network Digital Object Repository) is a digital library designed to provide access to the collective experience of teachers, students and administrators in public schools in building lesson plans and using curriculum materials. Using the WWW as a platform, PEN‐DOR incorporates current research in digital libraries to provide K‐12 educators with access to multimedia resources and tools to create new lesson plans and presentations, and to modify existing ones. Design problems addressed by the project include the design of a distributed, object‐oriented database architecture, the description and cataloguing of multimedia objects, and issues related to usability and training for a geographically scattered user community. Two critical aspects of the organisation of this digital library are the development of a method for the persistent identification of resources, and the design of a record structure based on recent developments in metadata. Resource identification has been achieved by adopting a system‐wide approach with an upgrade path to the emerging URN standards. In designing a record structure, the PEN‐DOR project has elected to use the GEM (Gateway to Educational Materials) metadata standard developed as part of the GEM union catalogue project. Content for the database is solicited from project partners, government agencies and educational resources Web sites, as well as from participating teachers. Once incorporated in the repository, materials can be organised in frameworks that form the basis for lessons, tutorials and presentations. As frameworks are developed, used, critiqueed and modified, they will form a community memory of past experience. Supported by the state’s Link‐to‐Learn programme, the system will function as a resource for educators throughout Pennsylvania.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how students construct narratives of themselves as information seekers in a school context where their descriptions of their information activities are assessed and graded.

Blog posts on credibility judgements written by 28 students at a Swedish upper secondary school were analysed through a bottom-up coding process based in the sociocultural concept of narratives of selves.

Two tensions in the students’ accounts are identified. The first tension is that between the description of the individual, independent student and the description of the good group member. The second tension is between describing oneself as an independent information seeker and at the same time as someone who seeks information in ways that are sanctioned within the school setting.

The study focuses on a specific social practice and on situated activities, but also illustrates some aspects of information activities that pertain to educational contexts in general. It explores how social norms related to credibility judgements are expressed and negotiated in discursive interaction.

The study highlights that when information activities become objects of assessment, careful consideration of what aspects are meant to be assessed is necessary.

The study is based on the idea of information activities as socially and discursively shaped, and it illustrates some of the consequences when information activities become objects of teaching, learning, and grading.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a case study that was conducted in a Japanese elementary school in order to examine what kinds of teachers’ discourse support the professional development of teachers in lesson study.

This research employed an intensive case study design that primarily focused on teachers’ discourse in post‐lesson conferences held at the school. In addition, it relied on a variety of ethnographic data obtained over a two‐year period. To scrutinise teachers’ professional development, the authors selected two cases where the research lessons were conducted by the same teacher.

The teachers’ discourse in the lesson study can be classified into the following six discursive modes: (A) Simple question and answer (B) Is the alternative teaching approach better? (C) What is the best way of teaching X? (D) Did the children learn what the teacher intended them to? (E) Did the teacher teach what the children actually learned? and (F) What did the teacher learn from watching the children learn? The research teacher’s tasks for developing as a teaching professional were elicited from her colleagues’ discourse, which was characterised by the discursive modes (E) and (F).

This study illuminated the nature of teachers’ professional discourse from the viewpoint of discursive modes in a Japanese lesson study. The discursive modes (B), (C) and (D) were classified as problem‐solving discourse in the context of given problems; the discursive modes (E) and (F) were classified as problem‐setting discourse.

The purpose of this paper is to present French Didactique des Mathématiques (DM) to the Lesson Study (LS) community.

This theoretical paper presents the origins of DM in the Theory of Didactical Situations (TDS) by Brousseau. It elaborates about didactical engineering, fundamental situation and other fundamental concepts. It briefly presents other Didactique theories: the theory of conceptual fields, the anthropological theory of the didactic, the joint action theory in didactics and the double approach. It considers importance of the (TDS) and influences over teaching of mathematics. This paper finishes by highlighting the ways Didactique and LS could contribute to each other in a profitable dialogue.

The paper contrasts DM with some LS main features. It highlights the parallels despite fundamental differences in the initial goals of the perspectives. It shows that these differences could lead to productive dialogue by producing more practice-oriented forms of didactical engineering for the first and making teachers’ principles for lessons more explicit for the latter.

The paper presents a very quick overview of the parallels between DM and LS. Additionally, this paper gives many accessible references in English for the reader to explore Didactique further.