Det råder delade meningar om digitaliseringen och AI:s allt större utrymme iskolan. Inte sällan leder det till en tämligen polariserad debatt där mänskligavärden ställs mot ekonomiska. I föreliggande artikel problematiseras detta utrymme med utgångspunkt i specialpedagogik, kopplat till tre övergripande teman:digitalisering, AI och maskininlärning och lärarrollen. De frågor som artikeln merspecifikt kretsar kring är: Vilka problem finns det med externa aktörer och enökad digitalisering inom det specialpedagogiska fältet? Vad händer med denspecialpedagogiska professionen i en skola som alltmer präglas av AI? Det är enexplorativ studie som tar sin utgångspunkt i ett Foucault-inspirerat angreppssättför att analysera de konsekvenser som AIed har inom utbildningsområdet.Materialet består av intervjuer, tidningsartiklar, inslag från SvT och företagenshemsidor och rapporter. Resultaten pekar mot att EdTech-industrin får konsekvenser för lärarrollen, inte minst i samband med den specialpedagogiskaprofessionen. I många avseenden är det oklart vem – skolan, forskningen ellerföretagen – som styr vad som händer på såväl policynivå som i det individuellaklassrummet och för den enskilda individen. Det väcker i sin tur en rad frågorkring AI och etik.

Throughout the 20th century, the nature of intelligence has been a hot topic and an intensely debated issue. It is the measuring and testing of intelligence, in particular, that has aroused the strongest reactions from defenders and protesters alike. The discussion on intelligence tests have frequently revolved around questions such as whether these tests will lead to an increased social mobility and liberation or, on the contrary, to exclusion and discrimination of certain groups. The focus of the present article, however, is not the consequences of intelligence testing but rather the debate concerning the testing within the research community. This debate is approached from three different perspectives: a historical perspective, a psychological perspective, and a perspective allowed for by discourse analysis. Having done this, I discuss one other tentative way of dealing with intelligence testing that does not necessarily have to involve narratives of liberation or of oppression. This is done with the help of Michel Foucault’s concept ‘governmentality’.

I den svenska skolan har det under senare år blivit allt vanligare att eleverna får utvärdera sig själva. Denna utvärdering, som inte sällan sker med hjälp av föräldrar och lärare, mynnar ofta ut i mål som: ”att mungiporna ska vara uppe”, ”att inte ha en tråkig inställning”, ”att jobba på att bli en bättre kompis”, ”att vara trevlig mot alla” och ”att vara sig själv”. Denna, med Åsa Bartholdssons ord, vänliga maktutövning kan analyseras i termer av styrning (Bartholdsson 2008; se även Vallberg Roth 2009). Hur de framtida medborgarna ska styras i önskvärd riktning är ett problem som de flesta samhälle har att ta ställning till. Över tid har denna styrning tagit olika former och präglats av olika rationaliteter. Under de senaste två hundra åren, i samband med demokratins framväxt, har samhällena i väst fått en liberal styrningsform. Det är en styrningsform som inte ska blandas ihop med liberalism som en politisk filosofi eller som en samhällstyp. Istället ska det ses som en formel för maktutövning, en styrningsrationalitet, där styrningen flyttar fokus från stat till samhälle. Ett annat sätt att uttrycka det är att gränsen mellan stat, ofta förknippat med tvång, och samhälle, ofta förknippat med frivillighet, har blev allt mer otydlig. Staten har blivit en institution inom samhället som likt andra institutioner kan användas som styrmedel (Nilsson 2008:131–134; Rose 1995a:41). Demokratins genombrott beredde vägen för en rad olika sociala reformer, dessa var emellertid inte villkorslösa. Detta ställde samtidigt nya krav på medborgaren. Det var först under 1800- och 1900-talet som statens makt – via olika institutioner – blev grundmurad. I detta arbete var folkskolan liksom värnplikten en viktig kugge för att skapa enhet. Genom dessa fick folket – främst då samhällets oroshärdar: fattiga barn och unga män – en klar föreställning om sin nationella tillhörighet. Utan detta hade det varit omöjligt att genomföra den typ av demokrati som skedde i början av 1900-talet (Liedman 2003:422). Den liberala styrningskonsten fungerade bäst i demokratisk tappning. Maktens spridning krävde en befolkning fostrad i ett demokratiskt tankesätt, inte minst behövdes det för att motivera de fattiga att tänka och handla långsiktigt och moraliskt (Cruikshank 1999:49). I det här kapitlet diskuteras den liberala styrningsformen, i en svensk kontext under den tidigare halvan av 1900-talet. Diskussionen kommer att föras i relation till tre centrala områden: den tidiga välfärdsstaten, skolan och expertens ökade inflytande i formandet av den framtida medborgaren. Men först något mer om själva styrningsbegreppet.

För ungefär hundra år sedan fanns en livlig diskussion kring samma rättigheter till utbildning för alla. Kraven ökade på en gemensam bottenskola. En sådan skulle göra det möjligt att nå samhällets topp oavsett social bakgrund. Utbildningsmeriter skulle väga högre än att komma från "rätt" landsända. Men hade verkligen alla kapacitet att tillgodogöra sig undervisningen? Och kunde man låta unga välja livsväg på egen hand? Artikelns centrala frågor är hundra år gamla, och trots det oerhört aktuella.

Temp agencies’ steady incursion into education staffing: School, marketing, and supply teachers. Many schools have become dependent on staffing agencies to meet temporary staff needs. Supply teaching staff hired via these agencies have become important for schools’ activities and budgets, attracting extensive criticism. The teachers’ unions have been harsh critics of the staffing industry’s burgeoning role in education. The staffing agencies themselves believe that they can complement and help schools. This article presents an exploratory study of schools’ external staffing, seeking to better understand the phenomenon in relation to school marketing. Drawing on interviews and textual analysis, and using a genealogical approach, the article addresses questions such as: What types of problems and opportunities arise in connection with the external sourcing of school staff? The results identify divided opinions about whether these staffing agencies are cost-effective, and about the extent to which they advance or impede pedagogical development, competence, and security in schools.

Around the year 1900, there was an emerging scientific interest in man and human behaviour. Among other things, this interest involved a concern about the quality of the population, especially regarding children. A whole scientific movement, the Child Study Movement, emerged in both the United States and Europe, revolving around this interest in children. Different experts were united in their concern about the state of the population of children and developed a variety of models and methods to improve the characteristics and health of children. One category concerned the experts in particular: the misbehaved. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective on biopower, this article explores how psychiatry played an important role in sorting and categorizing schoolchildren in the early welfare state during the interwar years. Society demanded new ways of controlling the population, and biopower which is about administering the population and maximizing vitality became a central element of this governing. This article is a contribution to the history of biopower, and this topic is discussed with the emergence and establishment of child and school psychiatry during 1910-1955 serving as an example. In this article, it is argued that the involvement of psychiatrists occurred in three steps: as a part of creating and defining new categories of "problem children" within the school system, due to influence from the mental health movement with the establishment of advisory clinics and, finally, through hospitalization and specialization in the 1940s.

In the context of compulsory schooling in Sweden, this article discusses the shift from what was often called "the Tattare problem" to, later, "the Gypsy question." The article frames the discussion with reference to Michel Foucault and his concepts of discipline power and pastoral power. The central question addressed is how the schools dealt with students from these groups. Children, especially their care and handling, were an important focus of welfare politics in Sweden. This meant that childhood was a significant field of governance, which became obvious in schools' work with "Tattare" and "Gypsy" children. This article highlights how the tone towards these groups changed, especially in the 1940s. Over time, these students were seen as more malleable by institutions and their agents, which exerted pastoral power by guiding and leading them in order to shape the minds of these future citizens.

In this article, I discuss how Foucault may help us to reach a different understanding of special education. This article primarily draws on two analytical tools from Foucault’s ‘toolbox’: genealogy and governmentality. These tools are used to analyse three different cases of intelligence testing from the debate concerning the Swedish school organization in the early twentieth century. It is possible to see intelligence-quotient (IQ) testing as an overarching tool for controlling social behaviour. Intelligence-quotient testing was an important tool of power, with the aim of establishing certain regimes of truth on a societal as well as on an individual level. This article shows through a Foucauldian analysis that we should be careful in interpreting this entirely as an expression of state power from above or as different experts’ intentions. Rather, by using a genealogical approach, we can attempt to (re)write the history of interpretations, or problematizations, and then we can utilize a perspective of governmentality that focuses on the techniques and their effects.

At the beginning of the 20th century it was seen as a democratic right to educate each individual based on their natural ability, but relationships between the individual and society were not without problems. Different talent categories were seen to be adapted for different social tasks. As a way of bridging the opposition that could arise between the individual’s educational wishes and society’s interests it was a central task of the school to lead the pupils to come to the decision themselves to want to make the right choices depending on ability and capability. From the 1920s onwards elementary schools were given a more important role in guidance and vocational training of the pupils. The modernisation of society demanded a modernising of the individual and thus new steering techniques were required. There was a fear that the less talented would develop asociality, criminality and a hostile attitude to society if they did not receive a suitable education. It was seen as waste of time for the individual and a waste of money for the State to allow less talented children to study further at higher forms of school. At the same time it was therefore essential to establish those that were more suited to higher and more theoretical types of schooling. The discussion about talent mainly dealt with the concept of democracy and that which was defined as best for society – and with that, everyone. But how was a divided school justified in a democratic society that built on meritocratic ideals? What methods were used to forming and steering future citizens in the desirable direction? How were they made to making the “right choice” of education, and how were people who were not capable of this treated? Theoretic inspiration has been derived from Michel Foucault and Mitchell Dean, which gives a starting point that emphasises the connection between the formation of knowledge and power.

I föreliggande beskrivning presenteras översiktligt aktuell forskning med utbildningsvetenskaplig relevans vid Malmö högskola. Beskrivningen behandlar pågående eller nyss avslutade forskningsprojekt, avhandlingsarbeten och licentiatuppsatser, och vilka forskare och lärare som ägnar sig åt sådan forskning och vid vilka institutioner som dessa hör hemma. Beskrivningen genomförs mot bakgrund av Malmö högskolas ansökan om examenstillstånd för den nya lärarutbildningen och syftar till att visa på en samlad bild av utbildningsvetenskaplig forskning och de inriktningar som är centrala inom detta område. Vidare visar framställningen på forskningsbasen för utbildning på grundnivå.

Utbildning brukar ses som lösningen på en rad olika problem i samhället, allt från sociala orättvisor till att servera näringslivet med adekvat arbetskraft. Få ämnen i den samhälleliga debatten väcker så starka känslor som utbildning gör. Inte sällan diskuteras utbildningen och dess roll med överhettade politiska och ideologiska tongångar.

Research topic/aim

In the School Inspectorate's report "Extensive invalid absences" from 2016, an increase in students' invalid scattered absences as well as morelengthy absences are highlighted. The latter, the cases that the school or social services cannot handle, usually end up at Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (BUP). According to Ek (2018), it often leads to diagnosis and to many students being treated with drugs. There is thus a risk – or chance depending on how one chooses to interpret the absence – that the psychiatric perspective tends to become the dominant explanatory model.

Theoretical framework

Psycho-culture is placed at the theoretical center of this study. Inspired by Pietikäinen’s (2007) use of the term to designate the spread ofpsychodynamic thinking, we will use it as a more general term that signifies a way of thinking formed by language and ideas coming frompsychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

Methodological design

 School’s mental health service are intended to help students to manage schooling, but they also fill a function of helping schools and teachers to manage problematic situations connected to students. However, previous research has shown that what is deemed as problematic in schools is historically contingent and related to institutional arrangements and ideals, and also changes over time (Axelsson 2020; Blythe Doroshow 2019;Larsson 2017; Stewart 2016; Hendrick 2003). Technologies of dealing with students with ascribed mental health problems have been created anddeveloped under certain historical circumstances but once institutionalized they might for a long time influence not only practice, but also howstudents and problems are being understood (Rose 1996).

Expected conclusions/findings There are, and have been, varying motives for students to not attending the school's compulsory education. But also the explanations for students' absence have varied over time – everything from parents need for childrens’ labour at home to school fatigue, environmental damage, or that theyrather want to work and neurotic school refusal have come to the fore. Clearly, school absence has since long been a difficult question for school authorities to handle.

Relevance to Nordic educational research

In this paper, we present a few illustrative examples from an empirical material from the 1950s and 1960s, consisting of acts over students who were considered to have a problematic absence. What type of absence is considered as truancy? What kinds of intervention are taken, pedagogical, psychological, social, medical? What professions are being engaged in these cases? And what changes over time can be seen? By answering these questions, we aim to critically examine the emerging influence of a psychiatric perspective when children and young people do not come to school.

In this article, we follow the trails of 20th-century psychologist Henry Herbert Goddard’s influential study of the Kallikak family. Goddard’s study is treated as a scientific story with two interlocking dimensions: One is the actual story of the Kallikak family, with literary elements such as setting, plot, and characters. The other dimension is the broader eugenic discourse, a powerful scientific narrative that calls for action in relation to society and the population. The purpose of the article is twofold. Firstly, to analyze the forming and articulations of this story and to explore some of the consequences for governing the population that it has made possible. Secondly, to explore some aspects of what a Foucauldian analytics of government can contribute with in relation to Goddard’s work and the eugenic discourse from the early 20th century to today.

This article explores the role of psychiatry in the sorting of school- children in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden from 1920 to 1950. Whereas the role and rise of educational psychology and IQ-testing in the differentiation processes in schooling have been examined through earlier research, the role of psychiatry in the interprofessional collaboration has so far been largely unexplored when it comes to the Scandinavian case. In line with Michel Foucault, the article regards these professional efforts as part of the biopolitics, where psychiatry amongst other disciplines engaged in the development of means to involve strategically in the life of schoolchildren and their families, as part of shaping the future of the population. We argue that psychiatric sorting activities related to schoolchildren did not solely take place through IQ-testing in schools, but involved classification of children through a range of measures in various settings. We further argue that these processes took place due to local agents and initiatives in a broader context of interprofessional collaborations between psychia- trists, psychologists, and teachers, rather than top–down processes initiated by the state. The analysis in the article draws on different sources of the period: journals, articles, and monographs from the key- agents of the period.

During the last decade, the “failure” of the Swedish educational system has been frequently reported in the public debate. Due to this, a large edu-political apparatus has been implemented in a tremendous pace, for instance teacher legitimation and new curricula. Aside from these politically organized reforms, we can see a growing apparatus of “helping” actors, changing the educational landscape in Sweden as well in Europe. On the international arena McKinsey & Company, the OECD and Pearson Education are examples of big international edu-business, influencing national school systems all over the world (Gorur, 2011; Tröhler, 2009). Meanwhile, there is an emerging field of “helping” actors on a national level, for instance The Confederation of Swedish Enterprise´s (CSE) and private companies’ support of the teacher education Teach for Sweden, learning game developers, companies organizing and assessing schools, homework companies, teaching materials developed by Non Governmental Organizations. These actors come into being in a discourse of knowledge-based economy (Ball, 2012; Lawn & Grek, 2012) and a school crisis. School’s failure becomes translated into an underused potential to foster employable, internationally competitive and flexible citizens, inviting different actors, often lacking formal educational expertise, to “help”. The discourse of a Swedish schools crisis has come into being through a set of neoliberal ideals shaping common sense ways of imagining and practicing schooling (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Savage et al, 2013), such as “transparent” testing and rankings (Ball, 2012; Connell, 2013) with certain implications on educational system as well as other sectors of society, producing strategies, activities as well as subjectivities (Simons & Masschelein, 2008; Popkewitz, 2011; Serder & Ideland, 2015). As well, in the heart of neoliberalism lies the idea that individuals are free, but also obliged, to create their life trajectories through informed choices and life-long learning (Kaščák & Pupala, 2011). This opens up for edu-business activities also in students’ leisure time. In a recently started project we study “helping” actors and practices on a national level to show a Swedish example of the current transformation of education in Europe. We look at the phenomenon as an actor-network unfolding outside the formal edu-political systems, in a myriad of connections (Fenwick, 2011). The marketisation of education and the impact of knowledge economy have been extensively studied on a macro-level, with a neoliberal agenda pointed out and criticised for everything from school profits to emerging poverty (Connell, 2013). Here we leave the well-studied macro-level for near-sighted investigations of how the educational crisis in the knowledge economy unfolds in an unruly landscape outside formal educational systems. The purpose of the overall project is to study with what aims, under what conditions, in what forms and with which consequences non-educational actors engage in Swedish schools. This will be done through exploring enactments and negotiations of the discourse of Swedish school in crisis in and through contexts and activities outside the formal edu-political system. However, this specific paper presents results from the first part of the project, a pre-study in the shape of a network analysis built on netographic and ethnographic investigations of different actors in the external network. The questions are: How are edu-political discourses translated and materialised through different practices and negotiations in the network? What kinds of different actors are trying to “help” Swedish school and how are they linked to each other? What kinds of problems are they offering solutions to and with which means? In what ways do they legitimate their “help”? The study contributes to the understanding of politically un-governed enactments of the well-described marketisation of school, how the marketization in combination with an experienced crisis open up for new actions and actors.

Det är affärslogiken som styr när statistik om skolor och betyg nu ska sekretessbeläggas. Samtidigt visar detta hemlighetsmakeri tydligt att friskolan blivit norm och att andra värden felaktigt får stå tillbaka, skriver forskare.

This article explores how a growing apparatus of edupreneurial actors offers solutions for the current ‘school crisis’ and how these commercial actors become taken for granted in the public school system. The Swedish case is interesting, as it involves a once-strong welfare state that is now associated with both the neoliberal discourse of competition and the outsourcing of policy work. Two examples – research-based education and the digitalization of education – serve to illustrate how a crisis narrative is translated into edupreneurial business ideas and how companies become established in the edupreneurial market through ‘public/private statework’. Bacchi’s notion of problematization is used to analyse processes through which the crisis has become a hegemonic truth and thus an obvious object for (business) intervention. In addition, this study shows how the commodification of school limits what becomes the ‘research base’ for schooling. The results point to the importance of how the problem is constructed and what is represented (or not) in this problematization process, for example, how critical research is left out. Another important conclusion is that the crisis narrative and policy reforms nurture the existence of these private companies.

Research topic/aim: According to current debates, Swedish schools are experiencing severe problems: decreasing results in international large-scale assessments, increasing segregation, and not preparing students for job markets. This discourse has enabled an apparatus of commercial actors, ‘edu-preneurs’, offering solutions. This paper explores what happens when governing and practicing of education becomes distributed on commercial actors. The aim is to shed light on how educational policy is moved, translated, and fixed in entanglements of public and private rationalities and what this means for understandings of knowledge, teaching, and learning. Theoretical framework: We understand this growing apparatus of edu-preneurs as a result of that a shift in the responsibility of Swedish schooling is taking place (Ball, 2009). ‘Statework’, in terms of educational governance, is now carried out through an assemblage of public and private actors. This shift is understood in a historical context of neoliberalism. With Ball’s (2009) words we can call it a ‘recalibration of the state’, through which the organization of public institutions has changed – but also the meanings and practices of schooling as well as possible subjectivities for teachers and students. Methodological design: Empirically, the paper illuminates what we call the public/private statework through entering three different policy fields: research-based education, digitalization, and entrepreneurship. The data consist of a nethographical mapping of edu-preneurial companies and a close-up analysis of how three companies make themselves up as normalized educational actors. The analysis employs actor-network theory to explore of how the idea of schooling is constructed on the edu-preneurs’ websites through, formulating problems and solutions and enrolling a range of actors into the governing and practices of education. Findings and conclusions: The edu-preneurs made up themselves as taken for granted as actors, first, as defining problems: the Swedish school system is in crisis and in need for help. This is done through explicitly relating to a narrative of teaching as outdated, educational research as ‘fuzzy’ and unpractical, and schools distanced from ‘reality’ and the labour market. In the companies’ solution to this problem, they become important actors through talking about structured work, practical solutions, and modern (digital) ways of teaching. They enrol ‘friends’ into the assemblage in the shapes of education superstars, partner companies, technological devices, and policy bodies. We suggest that the companies translate the idea of schooling and carry with them epistemic implications, as well as a cultivation of desirable subjectivities. Understandings of what is useful ‘research’ as well as ‘important knowledge’ are claimed and limited. Teacher subjectivity is characterized as flexible and effective and the student subjectivity as entrepreneurial. The ideas of what knowledge is, and how teaching and learning should ‘happen’, privilege ‘business-like’ methods. Relevance to Nordic educational research: The Swedish case is interesting in a wider Nordic context since it sheds light on on-going processes in the Nordic countries through which the welfare state is transformed into a market. References: Ball, S. J. (2009). Privatising education, privatising education policy, privatising educational research: network governance and the ‘competition state’, Journal of Educational Policy, 24(1), 83-99.

Background: As an answer to a discourse on a Swedish school in crisis a large edu-political apparatus has been implemented. Arguments on e.g. decreasing results, segregation, and equal opportunities has reinforced a number of actors to enter the educational field – actors here called “edu-preneurs” (Rönnberg, 2017). The actors offer a multitude of products and services and essential parts of everyday schooling thus become outsourced on external actors using education as an arena to reach the core of the society – the children. This process, nurtured by political reforms such as the possibility to profit on public funds (Jober, submitted) has “re-calibrated” the Swedish school – from a government-dominated and unified educational system to an unruly free market (Ball, 2009; Hamilton, 2011). This market and its edu-preneurs will be investigated in the project ‘Education Inc.’, funded by the Swedish Research Council (Ideland, Axelsson, Jobér & Serder, 2016). The project aims to study how private actors and logics change the conditions for what counts as good education. Three forms of commodification of education, outlined by Molnar (2006), will be studied: (1) actors selling to schools; (2) actors selling in schools; and (3) actors buying for schools. In order to create a baseline for the Education Inc. project this paper describes one the first sub studies. This sub study aims to scrutinise foremost actors selling toschool when presenting themselves and engage with the school community at a school fair. Research Questions: The overarching aims of the Education Inc. project is to study under what conditions, in what forms and with which consequences ‘edu-preneurial’ actors engage in Swedish schools. This particular sub study focus on with what objectives do edu-preneurial companies, NGOs and their employees engage in Swedish school. Objectives: The aim of this sub study is to conceptualise and analyse processes on how good intentions and altruistic objectives are used as arguments to justify actors’ place in education. An earlier pre-study (Jobér, submitted) showed that tutoring companies, actors in the educational market, used arguments regarding children with special needs to justify their presence and actions. This pre-study raised a number of questions: Will the companies, whatever good intentions, overlook profit? Are arguments regarding children with special needs used as a lever for businesses to survive and profit rather than to help? Similar has been showed elsewhere (Dovemark & Erixon Arreman, 2017), therefore we claim there is a risk that actors in the educational market will not consider all children as profitable enough. There is therefore a need to scrutinize if money spent (through public funds) will increase profits and exclusion rather than to support inclusion, and in addition, if students with low exchange value fit into a neoliberal market. Theoretical framework: We argue that processes in Sweden, which is a traditionally strong and well-trusted welfare state, have become entangled with neoliberal rationalities (see e.g. Dahlstedt, 2009) and that ways of imagine and practice schooling today are shaped by neoliberal logics (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). The neoliberal state has opened up for a commodification of education (Steiner-Khamsi, 2016) and educational reforms become a way to make up a specific kind of subjectivity (Ong, 2007). The marketization of education is thus not only about earning money, but also about making up meanings and practices of schooling and a certain kind of ideal citizen (Olmedo, Bailey & Ball 2013). This is what Ong (2007) conceptualizes as a neoliberalism which concerns how possible and desirable subjectivities are produced. The questions are what kind of objectives the actors put forward and how this correspond with what kind of desirable subjects that are produced in this neoliberal logic. Method: The sub study presented here will take a closer look at the actors selling to school when they attend a large school fair, SETT, which will take place in Sweden in April. In a pre-study to the larger ‘Education Inc.’ project this kind of educational ‘trade fairs’ has been identified as one of the spaces where policy becomes translated and turned into business ideas (Ideland et al, 2006). Observations will take place at this fair by four researchers. The observations will be written down using an observation scheme. The observations will also include photographs of the showcases and the messages that can be found there. In addition the research team will gather advertisement such as flyers and follow ongoing twitter flows. These data will be reflected on within the research group and finally analysed employing an analytical framework developed from the work by Callon (1986, used by, e.g., Hamilton 2011). The aim with this analysis is to more carefully explore how a problem is articulated through the actors and their relationships i.e. the problematisation moment in Callons work (1986). Callon proposes that translation of actions and actors analytically can be studied as four different moments: Problematization, Interessement, Enrolment, and Mobilization. It is the first step, the problematization moment and how a problem is articulated through the actors and their relationship that is in focus here. The problematization is the moment when actors (such as those the selling to schools at the school fair) or clusters of actors articulate a problem. It often involves a focus on a particular goal or a problem to be solved where the actors locate themselves as gatekeepers and problem solvers. Within the problematisation moment, the analysis can show what problems actors enhance (for example, in schools or in society), how do they want to solve these problems, and the argument that makes them indispensable to the problem and action. With this framework we can thus scrutinise with what kind of intentions and objectives these actors engage in Swedish school. Expected Outcomes: The hypothesis is that the observations conducted at this school fair and its following analyses will give insights in with what objectives and intention edu-preneurial companies, NGOs and their employees engage in Swedish school. Building on a pre-study (Jobér, submitted) and earlier research (e.g. Dovemark & Erixon Arreman) the hypothesis is also that the actors will bring forward a number of altruistic arguments. These might regard supporting the society to decrease widening socioeconomic gaps, including children with special needs, opening possibilities to equal opportunities for all, and reaching out to students living in rural areas of Sweden. However, as shown in above earlier studies, these are complicated arguments, given for example that a number of initiatives in the educational market, such as private tutoring, is not used at all by those with low incomes (Björkman, 2014, 21 November). There are reasons to believe that the expected outcomes from this pre-study not only will show what kind of altruistic objectives the actors use to justify their presence but also bring forward initial data that in forthcoming studies can be used to identify if the actors in educational market desire profits rather than inclusion and equal opportunities for all. References: Ball, S. (2009). 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The project aims to understand under what conditions, in what forms and with which consequences non-educational actors engage in schools. It explores how a discourse of Swedish school’s failure is translated in and through different contexts and activities outside the formal edu-political system; “school’s external actor-network”. We ask what it means that parts of education are distributed to diverse actors on a non-regulated, unruly market.

In liberal, democratic and capitalist societies today, we are increasingly invited to disclose our innermost thoughts to others. We are asked to turn our gaze inwards, scrutinizing ourselves, our behaviours and beliefs, while talking and writing about ourselves in these terms. This form of disclosure of the self resonates with older forms of church confession, and is now widely seen in practices of education in new ways in nurseries, schools, colleges, universities, workplaces and the wider policy arena. This book brings together international scholars and researchers inspired by the work of Michel Foucault, to explore in detail what happens when these practices of confession become part of our lives and ways of being in education. The authors argue that they are not neutral, but political and powerful in their effects in shaping and governing people; they examine confession as discursive and contemporary practice so as to provoke critical thought.International in scope and pioneering in the detail of its scrutiny of such practices, this book extends contemporary understanding of the exercise of power and politics of confessional practices in education and learning, and offers an alternative way of thinking of them. The book will be of value to educational practitioners, scholars, researchers and students, interested in the politics of their own practices.