bioCEED news

bioCEED congratulates PhD Torstein N. Hole!

Torstein N. Hole successfully defended his doctoral dissertation “Learning through practice in biology education” at the University of Bergen on April, 25th 2019. We warmly congratulate him with his achievement and new title!

bioCEED’s second candidate to complete a PhD degree will be remembered as “the undercover pedagog“, the one “who studied biologists who study biology“.

In his thesis, Torstein investigated learning through practice in higher education, principally among biology students. In his first paper, he followed 15 students participating in a 9 day-long field excursion in Svalbard. Using ethnographic techniques, he examined student’s working practices and identified important ways in which student learn from their field experience. In his second paper, he investigated the ways biology students who experience work placement describe their development of personal epistemologies. To do so, he analysed data collected from the blog posts that these students wrote and published on biologipraksis UiB as their practice period went on. Finally, in the third study, Torstein investigated learning in work placements not only in an integrated Master’s program in biology (Aqua Medicine), but also in Music Performance Education and Teacher education. This work, performed under the project “Sammen for bedre læring”, allowed for broader understanding of work placements in higher education.

You can read a short summary of Torstein’s work here (in Norwegian).

We would like to thank the opponents Professor Anne Line Wittek, University of Oslo and Professor Roger Säljö, University of Gothenburg for an enlightening discussion during the defense, and the Evaluation Committee coordinator Associate Professor Anne Bjune for excellent work.

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