Counting game

At last I have completed the first stage of my textbook analysis: I have labouriously counted and typed into the SPSS-matrix how many activities involve what senses, how often the pupils are required to leave their chairs, and how many instructions to talk, write or draw about oneself. That last one gave an avarage of twice a year, including the instruction to write your name on the first page!

It was not always an easy task to classify the activities, and I decided to play nice and include every part of written or readable image in the pupil's book, and every instruction in the teachers' guides concerning the pupils' book, as a separate activity. Hopefully I will find time next week to include all the extra activities in the teacher's guide and other material, for now I have setteled for a qualitative analysis of the extra activities that are significantly different from activities already analysed.

In a separate database I have noted the aims of each activity. Which senses they include, what parts of the body, what learning styles and learning domains (Blooms Taxonomy) they relate to, and how they position the pupil in a basic comminication model. Saddeningly, most tasks simply asked for reproduction of knowledge presented on the previous page.

Inspired på an article by Eva Maagerø, about the compositions of text and image of a five-year-old, I also included the variable modality and registered the task in categories of "1 pure text," "2 text and image," "3 text, image and sound" and "4 other." Other modes include games and childs play, and one instance of pure image. I have treated text instructions read by the teacher, read on tape and read by the pupils as basically the same, as the limits are vague in a group learning to read.

Now, I end my day with the first hour of actual thesis writing. A large and scary step towards my degree.