Olsson, L.E., Dahlgren, G. & Wen, Q. (1995) A comparative study of Swedish and Chinese children's conceptions of reading. Paper presented to the 6th EARLI Conference, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, August 26 - 31.

This paper presents the findings from a comparative study of Swedish and Chinese children's conceptions of reading. 53 Swedish children were interviewed individually at the end of their schooling in kindergarten and 50 Chinese children at the beginning of the first year of their primary education. The second round of interviews was held one year later, i.e. at the beginning of the second year of their primary education. The questions for the two rounds of interviews were the same. The major questions included:
1. How do they perceive their process of reading?
2. Why do they want to learn to read? and
3. How do they see their learning of reading?
The data analysis will focus on similarities as well as differences in the conceptions of reading of the two groups of subjects. It is well known that the Swedish and Chinese people have radically different written language systems: the former employs an alphabetical system while the latter has a pictographic- ideographic system. Furthermore, they have different cultural values of reading and different ways of teaching reading. A comparison of the changes in their conceptions of reading after one year's primary education will therefore be worth examining. The method used in data-collection and data-analysis is in line with the basic principles of phenomenography. (Author s abstract).

Ottosson, T. & Aberg-Bengtsson, L. (1995) Children's understanding of graphically represented quantitative information. Paper presented to the 6th EARLI Conference, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, August 26 - 31.

Many children have problems understanding graphic representations. This fact, however, is seen by many teachers more as a problem of teaching methods than as a problem concerning children's understanding on a more fundamental level. Despite common use of graphic representations of quantitative information in various contexts, the knowledge about how such representations are conceived, that is, what meaning they have for the beholder, is rather limited. This, together with the pedagogical implications of the results, constitutes the research problem upon which the present project is focusing. Data has been collected by semi-structured interviews of 60 students (8-17 years), focusing upon the interpretation of a set of maps and charts describing socio-economic aspects of an imaginary world. The data analysis thus far has been directed at identifying both different ways of understanding basic principles of graphic representation, and different understandings of the represented content (i.e. 'facts' about the imaginary world). In the presentation of the results, the different conceptions identified will be described, and their relationships to each other discussed. (Author s abstract).

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T, U, V, W, Z.