Public Defence: Charlotte Beal

Charlotte Beal will defend her PhD degree in pedagogical resources and learning processes in kindergarten and school. The topic of her thesis is about video dialogues in higher education: a new type of hybrid and video-based learning activity to develop shared understanding of knowledge .

30 Oct

Practical information

  • Date: 30 October 2025
  • Time: 10.00 - 15.00
  • Location: Vestfold, A1-30 Larvik and Zoom
  • Download calendar file

    • Link to digital participation (Zoom)

    Programme

    10.00 - 10.45 Trial lecture: Ecologies of learning and knowledge creation in higher education

    12.00 Public defence: Video Dialogues in Higher Education: A design-based research study of pre-service teachers’ co-construction of shared knowledge 

    Assessment committee

    • First opponent: Professor Emeritus Kai Hakkarainen, University of Helsinki
    • Second opponent: Professor Mona Lundin, University of Gothenburg
    • Administrator: Professor Lars Frers, University of South-Eastern Norway.

    Supervisors

    • Main supervisor: Professor Magnus Hontvedt, University of South-Eastern Norway.
    • Co-supervisor: Associate Professor Marit Skarbø Solem, University of South-Eastern Norway.

    Public defence host: Vice-Dean for education and academic quality, Tonje Stenseth, University of South-Eastern Norway

Any questions?

Charlotte Beal is defending her dissertation for the degree philosophiae doctor (PhD) at the University of South-Eastern Norway.Portrett av Charlotte Beal.

The doctoral work has been carried out at the Faculty of Humanities, Sports, and Educational Science.

You are invited to follow the trial lecture and the public defence.

Summary

This thesis presents a new hybrid and video-based conversational practice for higher education called video-based mind maps, which challenges traditional understandings of classroom talk. Through a design-based research study, I have developed and tested a group and whole-class level instructional design over time, with three different classes of pre-service teachers in pedagogy to support their conceptual understanding and dialog about course literature ahead of oral exams. The thesis provides new insight on how students co-constructed shared knowledge through video dialogue, and how such practices can be researched and understood. 

In today’s knowledge society, information has become widely available, and students need to practise how to make sense of and construct both their own and shared understanding of the knowledge they encounter. The study’s findings show that working with video dialogues can afford students opportunities to develop shared understanding of knowledge and work in-depth on their conceptual understanding. Synchronous and asynchronous peers as conversational partners drove the activities onwards and students positioned themselves towards the knowledge presented by peers in video dialogue as fluid, dynamic and open for debate. Findings also show that creating and receiving video responses with the aim of advancing knowledge proved demanding for the students; nevertheless, they could resolve such issues by supporting each other and taking a collective approach to the group activities. 

The thesis provides insight into how video dialogues can advance knowledge across time, space, and technological organization. The notion of nonlinear meaning making and dialogic knowledge creation are promising theoretical avenues to understand this and similar practices. I also introduce methodological and analytic approaches for examining hybrid conversational practices, through video observation and interaction analysis. For researchers and educators working to support students’ construction of knowledge at group and whole-class levels, I also present the design principles for the video-based mind map activity, and an account of how this design was iteratively developed and refined across implementations