Growing demands on evidence-based teaching, combined with increasing business involve-ment, constitute a transformation of education in which research and research collaborations have become commodities and selling points for companies. This article, building on interviews with 30 Swedish edupreneurs, explores how the discursive trope of the Triple Helix organises collaborations between the business sector, research, and school. In what ways do people in edu-business use research and research collaborations and what kinds of values do they expect to produce through different practices? The study identifies five approaches to research - philanthropists, influencers, ambassadors, brokers, and engineers - and describe the edupreneurs' manifold ways of using, relating to, and translating research into sellable products. Using the theoretical lens of assetization, we show how different values are produced: (1) economic - strengthening the company's brand; (2) pedagogical - changing teaching practices; (3) political - lobbying for policy change and changing public conversations; (4) academic - defining useful research and funding research, and (5) social - building networks. We conclude that the striving for Triple Helix collaborations preserves the entrepreneurial right to define useful research and providing legitimacy through the power of research, an important asset on the edu-market.

This study focuses on what people working in edu-business want to achieve. The aim is to explore (1) how the edu-business sector is discursively constructed as a work-place and part of the education system, and (2) how this discourse is organized within an affective economy - that is how the valuation of emotions distinguish what are considered as 'good' or 'bad' subjectivities, practices, and institutions. The analysis draws on interviews with 22 people working in Sweden's edu-business sector. The results illuminate three discourses: a bureaucratic, an entrepreneurial, and a profit discourse. Emotions attached to the bureaucratic discourse are anxiety, guilt, and boredom. Connected to the entrepreneurial discourse are joy, creativity, and well-being. Shame and pride are attached to the profit discourse. The affective economy constructs the business sector as desirable and the public sector as its opposite. Studying 'the bright side' of neoliberalism helps us to understand its power.

Vad är egentligen nyttig, relevant forskning? Vilken forskning kommer samhället bäst till gagn? Hur kan forskare inom det pedagogiska fältet bäst ta sig an olika samhällsutmaningar?  Frågan är egentligen helt rimlig med tanke på den enorma mängd och bredd av samhällsutmaningar som står till buds. Men hur står det till med svaren i dagens skolforskning och -debatt?

Sewage management is crucial to the functioning of cities, yet, in the global North, seldom acknowledged in public. Wastewater infrastructures are mainly hidden underground and human excrement is considered a private matter. However, to make sanitation stay invisible, its dysfunctionality (e.g., leaking pipes, aging wastewater plants) is sometimes in acute need of being highlighted. Moreover, the work essential to keep the infrastructures maintained needs to be recognized and compensated for. Based on interviews with actors in the sewage management sector in Sweden, news articles, and public information campaigns, the present article explores how political action and public engagement are mobilized through moves between visibility and invisibility. The analysis focuses on four different modes of problematization: inproblematization, problematization, deproblematization, and unproblematization. Inscribed in the research fields of urban infrastructures and public engagement, the article sheds light on how the public secret of managing feces is upheld, through balancing acts such as creating discursive space, negotiating infrastructural disruptions, making problems treatable, and individualizing solutions. These different modes of problematization are crucial to achieving the right public attention and political measures. 

Avloppshantering är en infrastrukturell fråga med avgörande betydelse för såväl vardagsliv som miljön. Men infrastrukturerna är sköra, och människors beteenden kan orsaka att de brakar samman. Medborgarna måste uppfostras, men samtidigt är avföring ett känsligt ämne och toalettbeteenden privata. Hur kan VA-branschen informera om sådant vi inte vill tala om och dessutom styra konsumenters toalettvanor i en tid präglad av det fria valet? Artikeln handlar om hur humor fungerar neutraliserande och möjliggör information om kiss och bajs. Informationen använder sig av rim, lek och komik för att på ett explicit sätt uppfostra vuxna människor, disciplinera deras handlingar och skapa önskvärda subjekt. Detta sker genom att avdramatisera det intima toalettbeteendet men även själva styrningen av människor. I denna genre är pekpinnar vanligt förekommande i form av en slags metaironisk styrning, det vill säga med ett ironiskt förhållningssätt till själva ironin. Toaletthumorn är övertydlig propaganda, och därmed ofarlig för det liberala subjektet. 

With schools and universities closing across Europe, the Covid-19 lockdown left actors in the field of education battling with the unprecedented challenge of finding a meaningful way to keep the wheels of education turning online. The sudden need for digital solutions across the field of education resulted in the emergence of a variety of digital networks and collaborative online platforms. In this joint article from scholars around Europe, we explore the Covid-19 lockdowns of physical education across the European region, and the different processes of emergency digitalization that followed in their wake. Spanning perspectives from Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Nordic countries, the article's five cases provide a glimpse of how these processes have at the same time accelerated and consolidated the involvement of various commercial and non-commercial actors in public education infrastructures. By gathering documentation, registering dynamics, and making intimations of the crisis as it unfolded, the aim of the joint paper is to provide an opportunity for considering the implications of these accelerations and consolidations for the heterogeneous futures of European education.

As many studies have illustrated, education systems all over the world have been subjected to neoliberal politics and commercial agendas. Not at least is this taking place in the Nordic countries. The present paper seeks to understand these transformations from the perspective of the people working in the Swedish edu-business sector; that is, in commercial companies selling products and services to educational institutions. What do they want to achieve – for themselves, for school and for their companies – and how is that related to how it feels to work in school versus in edu-business? The aim is to explore (1) how the edu-business sector is discursively constructed as a workplace and part of the education system and; (2) how this discourse is organized within an affective economy; that is, how the valuation of emotions distinguish what are considered as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ subjectivities, practices and institutions. 

The paper builds on 22 interviews performed in a larger ethnographic study, in which we followed the work of education companies in the Swedish education market. The companies operate within different business areas, such as the production and retailing of teaching materials, in-service teacher-training, consulting services, and digital education products. The analysis of interviews is approached from Ahmed’s notion of “affective economies”. This concept makes it possible to understand how feelings are culturally valued and capitalized on. Hence, the study contributes with knowledge on how neoliberal policies, subjectivities, and affects interplay.

From the interviews we conclude the that reasons for working in edu-business relate to career opportunities, but also to personal well-being and to aspirations to do good for school or for a company. Two main discourses – the entrepreneurial and the bureaucratic – organize how the interviewees make sense of working in the business sector. These discourses constitute each other as opposites, forming a crisis narrative of a bureaucratic school system stretched to its boundaries by administration, versus a flexible, joyful private sector. The bureaucratic discourse reflects the ‘dark side’ of neoliberalization – which is taking place in school and is attached to feelings such as boredom, anxiety, and guilt. The entrepreneurial discourse represents the “bright side”, opening possibilities for individuals to work in the private sector and is attached to emotions such as joy, creativity, and well-being. Also, a profit discourse organizes the talk, addressing the role of economic gains and how that is connected to feelings such as shame, but also pride. The affective economy constructs the business sector as desirable and the public sector as its opposite. 

We argue that studying the affective economy of neoliberalism helps us to understand why the business sector is a luring workplace. Studying not only the problems, but also the possibilities, of neoliberalism helps us to understand its power. Thus, we can engage deeper in the forces that are upholding the system. Some of the forces are political or economic, others are emotional. Most of them are both. 

Growing demands on evidence-based teaching and an increasing business involvement together constitute a double-sided transformation of compulsory education in which educational research has become a commodity and a selling point for commercial companies. Thus, new intersections – or Triple Helix – between business sector, research and school are emerging as an asset within business contexts.  The aim of the paper is to explore in what different ways, and with what different motives, do people in edu-business use research, and what kinds of values do they expect to produce through the use of research? The paper builds on interviews with 30 Swedish edupreneurs, i.e. people working within edu-business such as ed-tech .

From an analysis the interviews, five different approaches are identified, describing the edupreneurs’ manifold ways of using, relating to, and translating research into sellable products. The different approaches are categorized as Philanthropists, Influencers, Ambassadors, Brokers, and Engineers. Using the theoretical lens of assetization, we show how different values are produced through these different approaches. The value could be (1) economic – strengthening the company’s credibility and brand; (2) pedagogical – changing teaching and learning practices; (3) political – lobbying for policy change; (4) academic – defining useful research and (5) social – building networks.  However, there are also similarities regarding the different approaches; they all emphasize that Triple Helix collaborations ought to be naturalized, however preserving the entrepreneurial right to define useful research and meanwhile providing legitimacy through the power of research – an important asset on the edu-market. A remaining question, then, is what ‘research use’ becomes in school, when its existence and dissemination is translated through commercial interests? What does it mean for an education system struggling to become ‘based on science’?  

The study is relevant in a Nordic perspective (and beyond) since Triple Helix collaborations, evidence-based education and a growing edu-business are cultural and political phenomena travelling across national borders. Considering that, we claim that there is an urgent need for a discussion on how they are played out in the context of Nordic welfare states. 

In the beginning of the pandemic, ed-tech business companies mobilized to "help" schools. Through a crisis, this business sector flourished in a disaster capitalism. However, also researchers capitalized on the crisis. This short piece reflects upon how the pandemic opened up possibilities for different actors within education.