Artikeln utgår ifrån kunskapsområdet specifika matematiksvårigheter och reflekterar och problematiserar hinder och möjligheter i relation till tvärvetenskaplig samverkan mellan utredningspraktik och matematikundervisning i en svensk kontext. De hinder och möjligheter som framträder visar på ett behov av en tvärvetenskaplig samverkan med förståelse för olika perspektiv. Parallellt finns även ett behov av ett förbättrat kunskapsläge på svensk nationell, regional och kommunal nivå inom vård och skola avseende specifika matematiksvårigheter för att kunna erbjuda adekvat stöd. Artikeln synliggör kunskapsbristen kring pedagogiska och didaktiska anpassningar grundat i förebyggande insatser som kan stödja elevernas hälsa och välmående. 

The role of health in teacher education is a subject of discussion and development. Prioritizing health in teacher education may be of importance, especially given the increasing awareness of mental health and other health-related challenges that students may face. The strong correlation between health and learning also underscores the importance of a more explicit focus on health in teacher education. Health in teacher education is a multifaceted and important aspect that encompasses various dimensions of well-being. It is not limited to physical health but also includes mental, emotional, and social well-being. The role of health in education is to ensure that students are provided with an environment that supports their holistic development and prepares them to lead healthy and fulfilling lives. While children and school students show increasing challenges related to health, we also see that teachers report high levels of work-related stress and that many leave the profession prematurely. Research indicates that a part of this is due to inadequate preparation in teacher training for the reality of being a practicing teacher. Health should be integrated into teacher education in a way that equips teachers to support students' physical and mental health while providing high-quality education. It has been argued for decades that health education (HE) should be anchored more firmly in school curricula. Nevertheless, only a few countries have introduced HE as a stand-alone school subject.

The role of health in today's teacher education can vary depending on the education program, schools, and institutions. However, in general, health is an important aspect of teacher education and teaching. Some considerations are:

-          Health as a subject: Teacher education may include subjects related to physical, mental, and social health to teach teachers how to promote healthy habits and well-being among students.

-          Health-promoting school environment: Teacher education can also focus on creating a health-promoting school environment where both physical and psychosocial aspects of students' well-being are considered.

Purpose and expected outcomes of the workshop: We want to open up a dialogue about the role of health in today´s teacher education. What is health and health-promotion in a school context and how can teachers work to promote health? What are teachers’ responsibilities and how can teacher training equip teachers to support students’ health? We hope that this workshop will open up for a genuine discussion about health and its’ role for teachers and teacher training. We also want to investigate opportunities to arrange further workshops and initiate research collaborations.

Since the turn of the millennium, a new phenomenon has arisen on the global stage, as girls have increasingly begun to raise their voices. In an effort to achieve new philosophical understandings of contemporary childhoods in a post-truth era, the present article examines this Girl Rising movement from an existential perspective. In doing so, the article aims to problematise children’s right to be heard and listened to, as enshrined in Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. More specifically, the article explores children as rights-holders and their rights-subject position and how these positions are supported (or not) by adults in different ways. Throughout the analysis, Greta Thunberg is used as a case study to illustrate the phenomenon under study. This new movement highlights children’s right to be heard as a valuable right. The defence of this view relies on the claim that at the heart of adult’s acknowledgement lies the uniqueness of each child and the implications of this uniqueness. Taking into consideration the realisation of children’s rights, powerful stakeholders who seek to silence children’s voices are also identified, as are worldwide adult acknowledgements intended to empower girls to exist ‘in’ and ‘with’ the world in a ‘grown-up’ way.

How teachers relate to their students when they teach can contribute to a deeper and more coherent relational understanding of teaching as an interpersonal profession. This article presents a key indicators' taxonomy of relational teaching. Within the theoretical perspective of teaching called Pedagogical Relational Teachership a taxonomy to inquiry the relational dimension of the teaching profession is developed. The concept of relational teaching is categorised into a model under the themes of Tact and Stance and then further organised into six smaller units. These six relational key indicators can be used by empirical researchers to capture and illuminate the ongoing relational processes between teachers and students on a micro-level, as well as support pre-service and in-service teachers to create sustainable and trustful relationships with their students. Finally, the article discusses how this nuanced taxonomy can be applied in practice and research to cultivate the relational proficiencies of teachers in the twenty-first century.

Contemporary relational theorists offer an alternative vision of pedagogy in a concerning era of teacher accountability. Internationally, teachers experience challenging educational environments that reflect troubled social histories across differences of socioeconomic class, race and ethnicity, gender, and ability status. Climate change, civil and economic instability, and war add global pressures that bring immigrant and refugee students into classrooms around the world. In the United States, histories of slavery, genocide, and indigenous removal continue to resound through all levels of education. Putting the teacher-student relationship at the heart of education offers a way to serve all students, allowing them to flourish in spite of the many challenges we face in the 21st century.

Relational pedagogy is inspired by a range of philosophical writings: this article focuses on theorists whose work is informed by the concept of caring, as developed by Nel Noddings, with the critical perspective of Paulo Freire, or the ethics of Emmanuel Levinas. Although these approaches to ethical educational relations do not necessarily mesh together easily, the tensions among them can bear fruit that informs our pedagogy. After outlining the theoretical contours of relational pedagogy, we will turn to more recent empirical work in the field. New studies help us understand how to turn theory into classroom practices that will benefit all students.

This is a presentation of an interdisciplinary project to investigate how diagnosis of specific mathematical difficulties and pedagogical and didactic actions for students who meet the diagnostic criteria for the diagnosis of dyscalculia (World Health Organization, 2022) can be developed and linked together to result in a more equal and health-promoting life situation for this group of students. 

The Relational Dimension of the School Leader Profession 

An ethnographic study was carried out at the Oak school, situated in a segregated area in Sweden, where the school leader and the teachers handle major pedagogical and social challenges. With a clear focus on changes in teaching and learning, the school leader decided to face the challenges by developing a distributed leadership (Gronn, 2000), which needs to be based on trust (Liljenberg, 2016). Viewing leadership from a relational perspective enables the visualisation of interpersonal relationships (Gergen, 2009). With a focus on school development, the aim of the study was to explore the complexity in developing a distributed leadership over time. From a relational perspective (Ljungblad, 2021) a specific aim was to explore how the school leader relate to her personnel, face to face, in everyday practice, which is presented in this presentation. The school leader was shadowed one day a week during a year, enabling a profound data production. The field work consisted of observations of spontaneous meetings with the personnel. An observation scheme based on pedagogical tact (Ljungblad, 2023) was used for detailed observations of the interaction in scheduled meetings. In the end of the day the school leader participated in meaning making dialogues (Ljungblad, 2016) about events during the day. Furthermore, 32 semi-structured interviews with the school leader and the teachers were conducted. 

The Key Indicator Taxonomy of Relational Teaching (Ljungblad, 2022) was used as an analytic tool for analysing the school leader’s way of relating to the personnel on a micro-level. The Taxonomy consists of six key indicators and the characteristics of each key indicator were analysed. The results are presented under the themes incalculable tact, con-tact, pedagogical tactfulness, responsible considerations, curiosity and pathfinder. A general pattern in the results highlight a school leader’s tactful balancing act in developing the school organization, with the necessity to constantly balance organizational factors and interpersonal values. Over time, in the collaboration between the school leader and the personnel a trustful climate emerged. At the same time the school enhanced its performances. Hence, the results underline the importance of trusting leadership, which creates opportunities for teachers to act and operate freely, face new challenges, grow and contribute to the school to their full potential. To conclude, the results give insight into that a relational leadership has to be lived every day, face to face. In line with this insight, the findings elucidated the vulnerability within interdependent professional relationships where the school leader and the personnel mutually needed to find ways to trust each other while working in the incalculable processes of school development. 

References

Gergen, K. (2009). Relational Being: Beyond Self and Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gronn, P. (2002). “Distributed leadership as a unit of analysis.” The Leadership Quarterly, 13(4), 423–451.

Liljenberg, M. (2016). “Teacher leadership modes and practices in a Swedish context – a case study.” School Leadership & Management, 36(1), 21–40.

Ljungblad, A-L. (2023). The Relational Dimension of the Teaching profession. NY: Peter Lang.

Ljungblad, A-L. (2022 accepted). Key Indicator Taxonomy of Relational Teaching, Journal of Education for Teaching.

Ljungblad, A-L. (2021). “Pedagogical Relational Teachership (PeRT) – a multi-relational perspective.” International Journal of Inclusive Education, 25(7), 860–876.

Ljungblad, A.-L. 2016. Takt och hållning – en relationell studie om det oberäkneliga i matematikundervisningen [Tact and Stance – A relational study about the incalculable in mathematics teaching]. PhD diss., Gothenburg Studies in Educational Sciences, 381. Gothenburg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. 

In The Relational Dimension of the Teaching Profession, we follow four teachers who meet their students in a particularly evolving way. Deploying what is described as pedagogical tact and stance, the author has filmed teachers in order to observe how they create pedagogical meeting spaces wherein the teachers and students meet as people, thus developing an understanding of trustful, relational teaching in practice.The relational dimension of the teaching profession is something that has hitherto played a hidden role in teacher education. Nevertheless, well-functioning teacher-student relationships are a fundamental part of successful teaching. Including a multi-relational perspective on teaching and education (Pedagogical Relational Teachership, or, PeRT) as well as a taxonomy with an observation scheme for student teachers and researchers, this book is aimed at teacher students at undergraduate and advanced levels and is also suitable for teachers in practice.

In the field of relational pedagogy (Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004) there is an existing problem; there is theory, mostly of philosophical nature, but it does not yet have an empirical confirmation. Hence, there is a lack of theories that can be applied in practice. This presentation is a theoretical contribution which problematises how the relational dimension of the teaching profession can be explored in a more systematic way. Based on a theoretical perspective on teaching called Pedagogical Relational Teachership (Ljungblad 2021) a new theoretical model is presented. It is a relational taxonomy consisting of analytic tools to inquiry the relational dimension of the teaching profession. The concept relational teachership is categorised into a model under the themes of Tact and Stance and then further organised into six smaller units. By using such relational analytic tools, the ongoing relational processes between teachers and students can be captured and illuminated, and support teachers to create trustful relationships to their students. The relational taxonomy can contribute to a deeper understanding of teachers´ relational capabilities and capacities and their professional development throughout their careers. The taxonomy is also an innovative model for higher education, since it mediates teacher activities based on empirical research about how successful teachers relate to their students, which is presented in a visible way for student teachers to perceive. Finally, the presentation discusses how this nuanced taxonomy can be applied in practice and research and cultivate teachers’ relational proficiencies in the 21st century. Bingham, C., & Sidorkin, A. (2004). No education without relation. Peter Lang. Ljungblad, A-L. (2021). Pedagogical Relational Teachership (PeRT) – A multi-relational perspective. International Journal of Inclusive Education. 25,(7), 860-876.