This book studies creativity in its own right in the search for a creativity science. If we assume that creativity can best be described by constraint theory, the complexity and paradoxes of creativity can be reduced by dividing it into manageable sections. The model is tested and evidenced by numerous historical cases of pioneering work within the three intellectual fields: science, art, and technology. The model guides non-specialists from the many disciplines studying creativity and demonstrates the first principles of creativity science. Going all the way back to Aristotle, the author makes the basic ideas of the original founder of creativity science accessible and up to date with current research.

What is aesthetic education good for in pedagogical regards and how can it be compared with the competencies that intercultural education aims at? Our main argument in the article is that the core of intercultural competencies consists of a number of overlapping modes of knowledge, skills and capabilities such as active empathy, critical approach to hidden colonial and racial heritages, dialogic relationships with the world and the other, as well as openness to experiences that are radically different from one’s own. We regard these skills, competencies and knowledge as main elements of “educating responsible citizens.” This article is a joint product of researchers working within different disciplines and with different knowledge interests. They share an interest in the question of if and how aesthetic education can lead to the particular intercultural competence of educating responsible citizens.

I ett tidigare nummer av Pedagogisk Forsknings i Sverige (vol 20, nr 3-4, 2005) om temat “Högre Utbildning och professionell verksamhet” pekar redaktörerna Sven Persson och Anders Olsson på en rad nya tendenser inom forskningen om professioner och professionalitet. Den viktigaste utmaningen är den personliga kunskapsaspekten. Även om det otvivelaktigt är så att professioner är makrosociologiska och därvid också kollektiva och strukturella fenomen – som existerar utanför och är oavhängiga den enskilde individen, både historiskt och nationellt – krävs en lång erfarenhet och oftast någon form av högre utbildning för att kunna inträda i rollen som professionell yrkesutövare.

A core problem of social constructivist theories of knowledge is the lack of theoretical clarity about the role of knowledge constraints and how they are overcome in practice, by what type of social agency. Knowledge constraints are both special - rules constituting and/or regulating such distinct intellectual fields as science, art and technology - and general - laws working across the nature/culture divide. In order to sort out this complexity of knowledge constraints in science, we need to start by recognizing the existence of knowledge constraints in the first place. Advance of knowledge is not contingent, as claimed by the Strong Program inaugurated by David Bloor. The latter reduces the problem of knowledge constraints to reputational work. But reputational work is what all humans engage in; this is one reason why networking is so crucial for the human species. Moreover, it requires the special form of communicative competence, talk, which only humans possess. It is also because humans can talk that they have managed to invent the coherent argument, the core of the special constraint that constitutes science, giving it a law-like character. Arguments are both competitive and cooperative at the same time, reputational work contains both elements. This strongly social element of science is missing in Latour's concept of the social. Latour reduces the social (both networking and agency) to naked competition. But the model for this thinking is not sociology, it is literature. As a social construction it possibly reflects the psychological effect of the French system of elite education.

En viktig uppgift för tidskriften Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige är att fungera som samlingsplats för att definiera och utveckla pedagogikämnet betraktat som vetenskaplig disciplin. Allt sedan Durkheim (1922/1965) – som ursprungligen själv var professor i pedagogik innan han bytte ämnesidentitet till sociologi och ifrågasatte om pedagogik kan sägas utgöra en självständig vetenskaplig disciplin – har frågan om pedagogikens vetenskapliga status förblivit omstridd och oavklarad. Det visar sig dock då vi jämför med andra vetenskapliga discipliner att dessa långt ifrån är så enhetliga som vi vanligen förknippar med en vetenskaplig disciplin.

Begreppet "mediering" eller "medierat lärande" används allt oftare i svensk pedagogisk forskning, men på att motsägelsefullt och förvirrande sätt. Begreppet tycks stå för helt olika saker som har olika pedagogiska konsekvenser. I detta introducerande kapitel diskuteras hur en pedagogisk teori om kunskapsfältet "medierat lärande" skulle kunna struktureras på ett bättre och tydligar sätt. För detta syfte har jag använt mig av Ragnar Josephons teori om konstnärligt gestaltande och Austin & Searles språkhandlingsteori

The concepts of "mediation" or "mediated" learning is used more and more often in swedish pedagogical research but in an inconsistent and confusing manner. The concept seems to mean many diffrent things and has many different pedagoogical implications. In this introducing chapter I discuss how a pedagogical theory about the knowledgefield "mediated learning" could be stuctured in a better and mor rigorous manner, For this purpose i have leaned on RagnarJosephson´s theor of artistic creation and Austin & Searle speech act theory

This sociological collection advances the argument that the concept of a `turning point´expands our understanding of life experiences from a descriptive to a deeper and more abstract level of analysis. It addresses the conceptual issue of what distinguishes turning points from life transitions in general and raises crucial questions about the application of turning points as a biogrphical research method. Biography and turning points in Europe and America is all the more distinctive and significant due to its broad empirical database. The anthology includes authors from ten different countries, providing a number of contexts for thinking about how turning points relate to constructions of meaning shaped by globalisation and by cultural and structural meanings unique to each country. The book will be useful across a wide rangev of social sciences and particularly valuable for researchers needing a stronger theoretical base for biographical work.

The chapter frames and highlights the advances represented in the anthology Biography and Turning Points in Europe - theoretically and methodologically. It reveals the importance of integreting the notion of "event" into our comprehension of narrative - and understanding that we are not necessarily speaking of institutionalized or ritualized life courses, but turning points granted or constructed by the individual. It builds an analysis of narrative devices (for example the narrator/ character divide, the structurating factor of time and the myths and modes of narration) to illustrate the contributions in the text. It also points to the enduring sociological promise of turning points as a tool for deconstructing narratives that the subjects confer with meaning.

The chapter describes a research project on artistic career patterns in Northern Jutland, Denmark. It discusses how the interpretative work of a biographical researcher might change over the course of time, as more and more layers of interpretation are identified. Such layers need to be gradually unpacked by the researcher, as they are not immediately visible. One of the main obstacles for such a multilayered interpretative work seems to be the problem of incommensurability of or movement between alternative paradigms that Thomas Kuhn discovered. Such incommensurability makes the translation of discourse or movement from one paradigm to another difficult. Incommensurabilities can be found both within the narrated stories or interviews, different available theoretical and methodological approaches and between current theory and the empirical material itself, suggesting that interpretative work is a higly complex activity which needs to be studied for its own sake.

In the article a new educational concept is presented with the purpose of renewing education in corporate entrepreneurship from a theoretical point of view. The article presents the results so far from the attempts to develop a research based concept for corporate entrepreneurship education with a focus on field work as the core of a practical training period. The idea is that the role of "stranger" should enable the student to 1) identify obstacles for innovations within a company 2) become aware of ones own competences which might be useful to remove some of these obstacles. The educational concept is developed from theoretical studies, analyses and pracital experiences with entrepreneurial education and similar activities. The developent of the concept has been supported by the Cultural Ministry of Denmark and has been tested by an experimental course. The development of the course has been supported by the Oresund Entrepreneurship Academy