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Jonas von Reybekiel TrostekSenior lecturer

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Acceptance as a Normative Aspect of the Process of Coming to Understand Emotionally Charged Concepts

    2016. Jonas R. Trostek. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 60 (4), 381-398

    Article

    Previous research on how students' acceptance of emotionally charged theories relates to their understanding is based on the measurement of acceptance and understanding as two separate variables. As an alternative, the present study takes a qualitative approach with the aim of exploring what 24 upper-secondary school students accept when they come to understand the concept of gender and how to justify gender-related statements. The results show how the students accept ideas about social structures, power, and emancipation, as well as ideas about essences, individual independence, and a natural order. As for their justifications, they accept ideals of equality and objectivity. By assuming that the ideas have positive connotations for the students, it becomes possible to understand them as engaged in negotiating norms that are brought to the fore in the interviews.

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  • Between the modelling and the engineering of learning

    2019. Jonas R. Trostek. Journal of Further and Higher Education

    Article

    The aim of this study is to explore Swedish preservice teachers’ performance in coursework essays about their observations and analyses of teaching situations. A total of 38 essays were analysed using practical inferences in which the students’ written utterances were interpreted as a means to an end. The results show that, in addition to the students who conducted their analyses in accordance with the normative way of understanding the task, there were students who engaged in ‘alternative performance’. This was done by negotiating the content of the course and explaining the observed actions of teachers in terms of the course’s theoretical perspectives. The results also indicate that, in addition to an analytical interest in understanding and explaining learning, the very engineering of learning becomes a prominent concern in students’ essays. It is argued that students who do not distinguish between these approaches face problems related to reductive and circular reasoning. To address these problems, it is suggested that educators mobilise students’ critical thinking and self-reflection, which may involve exceeding the administrative boundaries that frame single courses and unveiling the very foundations of teacher education.

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  • Values in political science students' contextualizations of nationalism

    2015. Linda Murstedt, Jonas von Reybekiel Trostek, Max Scheja. Journal of political science education 11 (2), 126-140

    Article

    Recent research on conceptual change has argued that it is insufficient to assume that prior knowledge is the only aspect relevant in order to explain the conceptual change process. In addition, “warm constructs” such as emotions, epistemological beliefs, and values have been proposed to play a determinative role. In this study, we aim to further the understanding of the qualitative aspects of such constructs. By investigating how 20 science students interpret Michael Billig’s critical theory of nationalism in written exam papers, we explore how values are involved in university students’ meaning making of nationalism. The results indicate that students in different ways bring alternative values, such as togetherness, pride, and personal identity, in their reasoning, and these become a significant aspect of their meaning making in political science. This suggests that the students enter the classroom with their own ideas and principles of what is “good” or “right” when “practicing political science.” The study thus provides an example of how conceptual change involves accepting prescriptions of a certain intellectual activity.

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  • Normativa aspekter av individers begreppsbildning

    2014. Jonas von Reybekiel Trostek, Max Scheja, Ulla Riis.

    Thesis (Doc)

    The cognitive models that research on conceptual change has generated have been the subject of criticism, suggesting that these reflect an unrealistic view of learning as an overly “cold” and isolated process. Accordingly, representatives of this criticism suggest that research on conceptual change should investigate to what extent the cold cognition relates to “warm” affective constructs. In the present thesis, the warmth is not considered as prior to conceptual change, but is inferred from the very process of conceptual change itself. The aim is to investigate and describe how this warmth – in terms of normativity – is expressed in conceptual change and how individuals, in these processes, emerge as subjects in their interchange with the environment. This is done by exploring what students do when they make meaning of gender and nation in interviews and exam papers. The results show that the students mainly relate to two different norm-systems, including six normative aspects of conceptual change. The first system includes the goal to challenge or emancipate, the means to problematize, and engagement in the interviews or exams. Furthermore, it includes critical theory as an ideal, social structures and power as values, and me as a social being and actions as part of a tradition as what to make meaning of. The second system includes the goal to preserve, the means to claim how it “is”, and engagement in the interviews or exams. Furthermore, it includes psychological/biological reductionism as an ideal, essences and a natural order as values, and me as an individual and actions as an outcome of intentions as what to make meaning of. By understanding what the students do as interfering with these normative aspects, it becomes possible to understand them as negotiating norms that are brought to the fore. With this, “coldness” appears to be a misleading epithet of conceptual change. 

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