30 October 2020

LiU was the institution of higher education that received the greatest amount when the results of the annual grant awards in educational sciences were announced by the Swedish Research Council. The research projects concern everything from reading and physical contact in preschools to reading difficulties and visualisation in the natural sciences.

An arm wearing a black shirt and a watch is pointing to math problems written with black pen on a whiteboard

Seven research projects at Linköping University received funding: six project grants and a grant for a workshop. 

Ulf Träff in the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning is professor of psychology and conducts research into children and maths. His project has received SEK 6 million. 

“This is just great! We plan to investigate whether a special app, which is both interactive and adaptive, can help five- and six-year-olds to develop numerical skills”, he says. 

The aim of the project is to increase our knowledge about how didactic tools should be designed, and what they should contain to help children learn as much as possible. 

“This is important, since deep and broad numerical skills are necessary for the children’s further mathematical learning”, says Ulf Träff.
Five other researchers received project grants. Asta Cekaite Thunqvist, professor in the Department of Thematic Studies, received nearly SEK 6 million for a project looking at the perspectives of children and teachers on physical contact in preschools. Konrad Schönborn, senior lecturer in the Department of Science and Technology, and Åsa Elwér, senior lecturer in the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, were each awarded more than SEK 5.9 million. Konrad Schönborn will conduct a project entitled “Tracking carbon: can adaptive visualisation make systemic thinking in the natural sciences easier?”, while Åsa Elvér will study automatic text adaptation for pupils with various types of reading difficulty. 

Jonas Hallström, professor in the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, has been granted over SEK 5.7 million to study models and modelling as a basis for STEM teaching in Sweden, while Anna Martín-Bylund, senior lecturer in the same institution, receives just over SEK 4.5 million for the project “At the Heart of Reading”. 

Finally, LiU has also been granted an award that will partially fund a workshop. Professor Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren, from the Department of Health, Medicine and Caring Sciences, has received SEK 140,000 kronor for the workshop “New perspectives on interprofessional education within the healthcare system: development of an international research initiative”.

The Swedish Research Council awarded just over SEK 169 million for the period 2020-2024 in this funding round.

Translated by George Farrants

 
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