In this paper, I discuss how using two different data collection methods affect the outcomes of research related to parents’ views on mathematics education. The methods were online surveys and photo-elicitation interviews. The impact of these methods on the outcomes of the study is described using Bruner’s narrative construction. Although the data collection methods enabled parents to describe, share and discuss their children’s engagement in mathematics activities at home and in early childhood institutions, the contexts in which the narratives were produced gave different insights into individual and societal views. Reflections on how the methods provide a foundation for discussions about how data collection can affect what can be said about parents’ knowledge, experiences and views. This has implications for future research on parents’ views about mathematics education for young children.

This paper examines the introduction of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) in Denmark and its potential as a pedagogical tool used throughout Danish education culture and particularly in Danish primary schools. The first active Danish users of and trainers in VTS in the country provide purposive qualitative interview data through structured e-mail interviews focused on their experiences with VTS and their impressions of this pedagogical tool in the Danish education culture context. The analysis of this qualitative data indicates that VTS is highly and widely adaptable to Danish education culture which, like other Scandinavian education systems, is based on bildung didactic principles. In their contemporary manifestation, these principles value the emancipation of the individual and the promotion of democratic learning processes. The introduction of VTS is still a work in progress in the Danish context and is not yet formally used in the school system. However, it is precisely there that a rich vein of opportunities exists for VTS in Denmark.

This paper illuminates how teachers are influenced by age, gender and sexuality in teaching about sex and relationships. In this analysis grounded in feminist theory, age, gender and sexuality are considered to be enacted as doings. Six interviews with teachers working with sexuality education in K-12 schools in Sweden were chosen from of a larger body of material consisting of 21 interviews with professionals engaged in school-based sexuality education. The six interviewees were selected because they explicitly addressed how teachers’ age, gender and/or sexuality come to matter in the classroom. Findings show how male and female teachers organise their teaching in relation to normative expectations of age, gender and sexuality. In sexuality education, the diverse life-courses of (hetero)sexual women offer a wide range of pedagogic possibilities for female teachers to address issues of sexuality, consent and relationships whereas male teachers are constrained to doing safe(r) forms of masculinity by directing attention away from their bodies and experiences. In understanding these results, I argue that the figure of the tant has been key in forming the pedagogic backdrop to Swedish sexuality education, hence embedding a normative ‘who’ in the ‘how’ to teach sexuality education.

Using an intersectional analysis, this article critically analyses implied and expressed norms to identify perceptions of appropriate behaviour in children’s play, and to explore how social communicative arenas such as Internet forums construct knowledge and values. Adults’ responses to an incident that occurred amongst a group of children in Swedish early childhood education as part of free play during the preschool day were analysed. The incident was described in a thread posted on the Familjeliv (Family Life) internet forum. The research questions were: what images of children are prominent in discourse on appropriate behaviour as part of free play; what discursive categorisations of children related to age, gender and sexuality can be identified within this discourse; and how do these categorisations intersect? Netnography provided the method used together with thematic content analysis. Findings reveal two contrasting views: first, the view that four-year-olds cannot commit sexual assault on another person; and second, the view that they can. Young children were constructed either as non-sexual, innocent, curious and playful, or as perpetrators who lack consequentialist thinking. Age was the dominant discursive category utilised in relation to sexuality and appropriate behaviour, followed by gender. 

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.

Practice-near research has been on the agenda in education policy during the last few years in Sweden. The research is supposed to make the academy and school collaborate and the expectations are high. This article aims to give an account of different kinds of expectations of practice-near research, and the underlying perceived problems it is supposed to solve, in the Swedish educational context. Drawing from theories from the research field sociology of expectations and Carol Bacchi’s discourse analytic WPR approach (What’s the problem represented to be?), different kinds of documents on practice-near research were analysed. Five anticipatory narratives about practice-near research were identified: practice-near research for ensuring a school based on ‘scientific knowledge and proven experience’, as a cure of educational research of little relevance, for increasing teaching efficiency, for making teacher education research-based, and for increasing attractiveness of the teaching profession. The article concludes with a discussion of the anticipatory narratives related to discourses of change and education crisis.

Fictionalism confronts the dual epistemological nature of education. In this book, Johan Dahlbeck argues that all education, at bottom, concerns a striving for truth initiated through fictions. This foundational aporia is then interrogated and made sense of via Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of ‘as if’ and Spinoza’s peculiar form of exemplarism. Using a variety of fictional examples, Dahlbeck investigates the different dimensions of educational fictionalism, from teacher exemplarism to the basic educational fictions necessary for getting started in education in the first place. Fictionalism will be a valuable resource for anyone interested in the philosophical foundations of education.

Based on arguments about the need for greater individual freedom,school choice was introduced in Sweden in the 1990s. Swedishmunicipalities  now  set  up  local  school  choice  systems,  whoseorganization varies between municipalities. This study is based oninterviews with three politicians and two civil servants from twoaverage-sized municipalities with different school choice system designsand different political majorities. The aim of this study is to analyze howrepresentatives of Swedish municipalities conceptualize their role andresponsibility in relation to the role of parents in school choice systems,with a focus on school choice from pre-school tofirst grade. Theanalysis is focused on those instances in which parents fail to act as thedesign intended in the school choice system. The analysis shows thatparents trouble the local school choice systems by both being passiveand active when they are encouraged to make a choice.

Who decides where a child should go to school? The answer to this question has changed over the past 30 years in Sweden, a country who has faced extensive neoliberal educational reforms during the past decades (Arreman och Holm 2011; Lundahl m.fl. 2013). Based on arguments about increasing individual freedom, free school choice was introduced in Sweden in the 1990s. Ever since, local authorities in Sweden have been commissioned to organize local school choice markets (Dahlstedt m.fl. 2019). 

Education in democratic societies has always had to deal with the tension between individual freedom and a need for public good (Labaree 1997; Börjesson 2016; Levin 1987). The organization of school choice systems varies around Sweden, and there is not yet a single model in place for how to design school choice systems. This paper contributes with knowledge about how civil servants work to organize school choice in dialogue with local politicians, as well as how they balance between different goals in practice (e.g. goal conflicts can arise between freedom of choice and integration, since a high degree of freedom in relation to school choice generally leads to increased segregation (Trumberg och Urban 2020)). 

Knowledge about what happens in the organization and design of local school choice systems is necessary to understand which values that ​​are prioritized in practice. This paper provides knowledge about what municipalities' organization of school choice means for the Swedish school and the students within these schools. 

The purpose of this paper is to identify and problematize the dilemmas and goal conflicts that emerge as civil servants work with the organization on school choice in Swedish municipalities. 

The paper suggests that the tension between individual freedom and the school as a collective good tends to end up with the officials. This means that questions about conflicting goals concerning school's role in relation to freedom, justice, and equality – questions, that may be considered political by nature – often are handed over to civil servants within the municipal bureaucracy. How civil servants interpret their role and function within municipal democracy, as well as the values ​​they express, is important for the link between education and the public's trust in representative democracy. 

I use the theoretical notion of ‘discretion’ (Brodkin 2020), which pinpoints the extent to which micro-practices of street-level organizations take part in shaping meta-politics. The interest in discretion highlights the importance of zooming in on the practices of civil servants and their level of discretion in enabling educational policies. 

I analyze motives, justifications, and dilemmas related to local school choice organization through interviews with politicians and civil servants in two municipalities with different political majority (one conversative and one liberal-left). The two municipalities have organized their local school choice market differently, with different interpretations and ranking of various selection criteria for the local school choice markets, which provide two contrasting examples for the execution of discretion by civil servants in local school choice systems. 

Municipalities in Sweden have an important responsibility for ensuring 1) equality between schools, and 2) that guardians’ preferences of school choice are met, and 3) that all schools offer equal education, regardless of the children’s socio-economic background. There is a previous lack of knowledge about the level of discretion in how civil servants interpret their role and function within municipal democracies. This paper provides such knowledge, which is important for advancing the understanding of the link between education and the public's trust in civil servants who work with educational policies.

References 

Arreman, Inger Erixon, och Ann‐Sofie Holm. 2011. ”Privatisation of public education? The emergence of independent upper secondary schools in Sweden”. Journal of Education Policy 26 (2): 225–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2010.502701.

Brodkin, Evelyn Z. 2020. ”Discretion in the Welfare State”. I Discretion and the quest for controlled freedom, redigerad av Tony Evans och Peter Hupe, 63–77. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Börjesson, Mikael. 2016. ”Private and Public in European Higher Education”. I Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory, redigerad av Michael A. Peters, 1–7. Singapore: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-532-7_487-1.

Dahlstedt, Magnus, Martin Harling, Anders Trumberg, Susanne Urban, och Viktor Vesterberg. 2019. Fostran till valfrihet : skolvalet, jämlikheten och framtiden. Stockholm: Liber.

Labaree, David F. 1997. ”Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goals”. American Educational Research Journal 34 (1): 39–81. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312034001039.

Levin, Henry M. 1987. ”Education as a Public and Private Good”. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 6 (4): 628–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/3323518.

Lundahl, Lisbeth, Inger Erixon Arreman, Ann-Sofie Holm, och Ulf Lundström. 2013. ”Educational marketization the Swedish way”. Education Inquiry 4 (3): 22620. https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v4i3.22620.

Trumberg, Anders, och Susanne Urban. 2020. ”School Choice and Its Long-Term Impact on Social Mobility in Sweden”. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 0 (0): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2020.1739129.

Based on bioecological systems theory, engagement is the mechanism for children's learning and development. However, children with hyperactive behavior tend to be less engaged in early childhood education and care (ECEC), which might negatively influence their learning and development. On the other hand, social interaction might support children with hyperactive behavior staying engaged in these activities. The current study investigates whether the association between teacher responsiveness, positive peer-to-child interaction (i.e., the quality of peer interaction) and children's hyperactive behavior and engagement levels are transactional. Two hundred and three children aged 1 to 5 in Swedish preschool settings were followed. Data was collected at three points in time between 2012 and 2014. This data was then analyzed to identify associations and how they changed over time. Transactional paths were found between children's levels of core engagement, teacher responsiveness, and the quality of positive peer-to-child interaction. Children's core engagement increases the probability of better quality positive peer-to-child interaction and teacher responsiveness, increasing core engagement over time. Teacher responsiveness and the quality of positive peer-to-child interaction are predictors of reduced hyperactive behavior over time. Meanwhile, children's hyperactive behavior does not significantly influence these two types of social interaction, that is, decreased hyperactivity may not improve social interaction to the same extent as increased engagement. The findings are discussed in relation to how special support for children with hyperactive behavior can be designed, with a focus on increasing core engagement in preschool settings.

In Europe and other parts of the world, many new schools are to be built. In Sweden, for instance, some 1000 new schools are to be built between year 2020-2025. As a response to this need of new school buildings, there are policies emerging. One example is the Swedish National Board of Housing, Building and Planning (SNBHP), who published policy by presenting a digital collection good examples. In this paper we are zooming in on the learning environments in the policy and examining the meaning that is made of the learning environments. With the aid of the practical epistemological analysis (PEA), four the learning environments are identified: 1) general and flexible learning environment; 2) stimulating learning environment with spatial diversity; 3) an exciting learning environment that encourages creativity; and 4) an open learning environment. How these learning environments come about is further analysed with the concept of material classification, which helps identify some of the implications on teaching and learning and how the pedagogical vocabulary and material classification condition behaviours. This is further discussed in terms of what happens when"good learning environments" are made into policy.

Problem-based learning (PBL) has been implemented with different levels of success in first-year engineering education in response to the rapidly growing requirements for a higher degree of learner agency in graduates. This study is contextualised in a systemic problem-based learning environment and explores the sources of first-year engineering students' learner agency development in relation to the main features and skillsets of PBL, such as teamwork, student-centredness, problem orientation and project organisation. Q methodology was employed, including both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis based on a 39-statement Q sample and 102 valid Q sorts. The Q analysis identified four statistically distinct viewpoints on the key sources of learner agency for students: (1) Team dynamism and self-directed learning within the project team, (2) Trust and peer support within the project team, (3) Individual efforts at career readiness and (4) Team efforts at project management. The findings highlight the potential of PBL for offering more and better pedagogical support for first-year engineering students in developing learner agency.

This article is about how negative discourses of teacher education position teacher educators and how they might influence or inspire action. We use self-study methods to investigate the political dimension of teacher education in two national contexts: Sweden and the USA. More specifically, we examine the emotions stirred by the positioning related to being a teacher educator and how those emotions can be used to take a line to and resist boundaries that limit us within the profession in the two contexts. We aim to contribute to the self-study field by emphasizing a political dimension, in addition to the personal and professional dimensions of teacher education more often studied by scholars. Using the concepts of positionality, emotions, liminality, and action, we conclude that the liminal spaces offered us time to think about the emotions we have experienced due to the derisive discourses that position us in negative ways as teacher educators, and with that thinking came opportunities to reflect on our identity as teacher educators and what we look to accomplish as teacher educators. A new understanding of liminality as a space of possibility has boosted us to take action. An important conclusion is that emotional labor can be a hindrance in relation to teacher educator action, while emotions can act as clues for opportunities of growth and action. Telling our stories opened space for us to use our emotions to take a line to and resist the derogatory discourse, engage in the political, and move closer to becoming teacher educator activists.

This paper aims to share new knowledge about tensions in establishing a new school in a marketised educational landscape, with a special focus on teachers’ experiences of enacting a highly profiled vision. The paper is based on a single case study using observations, surveys, interviews and document studies. To cover the complex enactment process, we have created a multilayered enactment triangle to analyse the enactment process of the school and strategies the teachers use to realise the vision. To be able to hold on to the vision when the first generation of students arrive, the teachers in this study connect the vision to a more abstract ‘future school’. Meanwhile, in the daily practice in the ‘present school’, they perceive difficulties in working in line with the vision. The relations between teachers and vision and the relations between teachers and students, respectively, become parallel lines. It seems then, that for visionary work to function from the start in a newly established school, all the relations in the enactment triangle, i.e. between the vision and the teachers, the vision and the students, and the teachers and the students, need to be there.

Traffic is the most dangerous environment for police officers to work in, both in terms of numbers who lose their lives in the line of duty and injuries to both people and vehicles. In addition, driver training is an important part of police training at basic level and in continuing education. However, such training is resource-intensive and certain driver tasks cannot be practiced. In order to create an effective, safe, and secure educational environment, driving simulators were tested as part of the driver training at the Police Program at Malmö University. 83 students who completed the second and then third semester participated in a study where groups that received different types of training and then performed the same examination were compared regarding low-speed maneuvering and driving on country roads. The results show that there are no significant differences in how the students perform on the practical examination depending on whether they trained in the simulator, both in the simulator and in the police car or only in the police car. Implications of the results and future research are discussed.

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. 

This article is a reflection piece on the use of the futures cone and an expanded futures cone (which draws on queer theory) as a tool for dialogue and planning between the supervisor and the doctoral student. I do so by situating the use of this tool in relation to three supervision typologies: the product-orientated,process-orientatedand doctoral student-orientated approaches. I claim that it is an underused and highly versatile tool for doctoral supervision.

Barn lever med större risker än vuxna att drabbas av klimatförändringaroch andra miljörelaterade fenomen. Exempelvisär dödligheten större hos barn som drabbats av malariaoch denguefeber, två sjukdomar vars spridning ökar till följdav klimatförändringarna. I denna bok analyseras olika idéerom vad som utgör den goda barndomen under den tidsperiodsom föreslagits få namnet antropocen: människans epok.Med utgångspunkt i en kritisk tradition och utifrån ett fokuspå hur vuxenvärlden skapar önskvärda barndomar ställer författarenfrågan om vilka ideala barndomar som framträderoch vilka barn som ges plats i antropocen. Genom kritiskaanalyser identieras och problematiseras idéer om barndomari antropocen som oskyldiga, speciella och ansvarsfulla.

I boken studeras vad som utspelar sig i skärningspunktenmellan idéer om barndomar och tillståndet antropocen inomtre olika arenor: politisk klimataktivism, utbildningsforskningriktad mot yngre barn samt litteratur för barn i åldrarna 6–12år med miljö- och klimattema. Författaren argumenterar förvikten av vuxenvärldens roll och ansvar i den antropocenaepoken och att barns liv och tillvaro bör få utgöra startpunktenför beslutsfattande och politik för klimat och miljö.

Boken vänder sig till forskare inom fälten barndomssociologi,grön humanvetenskap och pedagogik, samt till studenter i pedagogik, miljövetenskap och barn- ochungdomsvetenskap.

Although co-creation of artefacts is a common practice in virtual exchange (VE), there are still few studies that explore the connection between collaboration on multimodal texts and student teachers' development of intercultural and pedagogical awareness. Based on a trinational VE, coincidentally developed during the outbreak of the pandemic in March 2020, this case-study explores how COVID-19, as the impromptu context for VE, fostered preservice teachers' intercultural and pedagogical perspectives. Through a multiliteracies approach, findings indicate that co-creation both generated and scaffolded intercultural dialogue and that, the disruption caused by the pandemic was experienced by students as an expansive learning opportunity.

Introduction: Thesis supervision is crucial for the development of students’ research expertise and communication skills so they can think and behave like members of an academic community (Golde, 2010). However, research on thesis supervision has mainly been conducted at doctoral level in Anglophone context with limited attention on cross cultural aspects. Therefore, this project aims to shed light on undergraduate thesis supervision in non-Anglophone contexts. It explores how thesis supervision is experienced by students and supervisors and how feedback provision and feedback uptake are negotiated and used to develop the students’ drafts. This project is conducted as a part of graduate school education, learning and globalisation programme. It focuses on exploring thesis supervision in Sweden and Indonesia to contribute to the discussion on the complexities of language pedagogy in multilingual contexts as a result of globalisation where English is used as an additional language (EAL) (Bianco, 2018), particularly in the expanding circle (Kachru, 1985). It also illuminates the dialogue on thesis supervision related to the identified needs and strategies of academic writing and publication in the diverse linguistic contexts (Canagarajah, 2022). This project also adds negotiation within the Northern and Southern perspectives (see Pennycook & Makoni, 2020) where Sweden is culturally and geographically associated with Northern context while Indonesia is associated with Southern context. 

Method and findings: A multi-case study (Yin, 2018) was carried out to illuminate supervisory practice in Sweden and Indonesia and will be reported in the form of compilation thesis. It involved 39 participants (14 supervisors and 25 students) from one Swedish and three Indonesian universities. Online questionnaire, one-on-one semi-structured interviews, non-participatory observation of video-recorded thesis supervision sessions, and document analysis to students’ drafts were conducted and analysed thematically. The whole project will be seen based on dialogic pedagogical supervision driven by Bakthin’s (1981) dialogism as the main lens. 

For the first article, I took inspiration from Gee’s (2014) discourse model and used systemic-functional linguistics from appraisal theory (Halliday & Maythiessen, 2014; Martin & Rose, 2007) to analyse supervisors’ interviews. The findings revealed that supervisors described experiencing (a)symmetrical relationship with students and colleagues and juggling unwanted supervisory roles (i.e being editor, pseudo-debt-collector, and spoon feeder). In the second article, the interview results between supervisors and students focusing on the feedback provision and supervisory priorities were analysed by using Biesta’s (2009) functions of education, Habermas’ (1984) communicative action theory, and perspectives on academic literacy. The findings indicated that supervisors have different priorities in giving content/form-focused feedback. Students reported having difficulties decoding supervisors' feedback and react strategically to the feedback that is phrased as questions. Students' strategic reactions seemed rooted from their lack of feedback and disciplinary literacies. The third article will focus on how feedback is phrased and negotiated between students and supervisors in video-recorded online supervision sessions. I consider doing conversation analysis by using Activity Theory or Social Presence Theory as theoretical framework. Feedback and suggestions on theoretical frameworks and perspectives to analyse supervision sessions (third article) and students’ drafts (fourth article) are most welcome. 

Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is an inquiry-based pedagogical tool grounded in teacherstudent discussions. It was created originally to improve a participant's ability to interpret, describe, and analyze imagery and do this through active observation and collective discussion. In this presentation, I explore how VTS goes beyond visual literacy and is a highly adaptable elicitation and communication technique for language learning and in developing reciprocally respectful communication skills, which are very relevant for English language teaching in Sweden. VTS could be described as a “meta-visual-lingual” activity as it is the act of talking out load about the thinking inspired by a visual object. And this, especially when part of the activity’s focus is language development. The impact of VTS could be significant in the Swedish education system. It has proven very effective in nurturing the abilities and skills which are valued in Sweden such as those explicated in the compulsory school curriculum. VTS has also proven to be a very efficient technique in language teaching and can directly help to fulfil several of the ambitions of the curriculum and the English language syllabus.

There is a social and political dimension to Spinoza’s theory of affects that is important to highlight for educational purposes. Because all people are always in part passionate (i.e., determined to act by causes that are external to them), it makes no sense to assume that empowerment is ever an entirely individual affair. On the contrary, Spinoza contends that if people want to become more active and more empowered, they need to join with others who are striving for the same thing. Accordingly, ‘the good which everyone who seeks virtue wants for himself, he also desires for other men’ (E4p27d). There are two upshots to this idea that can be addressed in terms of practical (educational) questions. First, it demands that we find out more about how people can be influenced to want the same thing. Second, it means that we need to look closer at how passivity can help bring about activity. Because different people have different ingenium (i.e., affective constitution) it is not a straightforward thing to assume that we would all naturally strive for something similar. At bottom, we all want to become more empowered, but what we take to be empowering may differ widely depending on our past experiences and our culturally encoded patterns of association. The educational concern at the heart of this matter is therefore bound up with the question of how different people can be made to strive for the same thing so as to help them flourish, individually as well as collectively. 

Main points: With this paper we aim to investigate how the relationship between education and emotion can be ethnographically traced through an autoethnography of our parental experience in relation to school marketization. Both authors of this paper have academic backgrounds in critical education studies, and we have previously published on the marketization of education, particularly in Sweden. We have a previous theoretical interest in understanding how ideologies are reinforced and challenged in education, but so far, we have failed to theorize how our experiences as parents of school children might partake in the operation of capitalist ideology in and through education. Thus far, in our previous attempts to understand marketization we have neglected parents’ school-market-anxiety, and our own role as prospective consumers of education within the late modern educational capitalism. We aim to share, critically analyze, and put into context some of the experiences we have had of being approached as consumers of education for our own children and the affective dimensions of these experiences.

Fieldwork methods: We investigate our different experiences and emotions of being addressed as parents on a school market by comparing memories, information from the local school authorities, and advertisements for private schools owned by a venture capital company that we have received in the form of postcards, catalogues, and via digital mails in our roles as parents of school children. 

Analytical methods: We argue for the need of critical concepts from a psychoanalytical (post-)Marxist tradition that can help us understand – and resist – the increasingly strong grip that a that a capitalist ideology has on contemporary Swedish education and its different actors. Our turn to a post-Marxist vocabulary enables us to connect the hyper-abstract impersonal structure of capitalism with our deeply personal experiences of how we come to embody this structure in our role as parents. We do this by critically compare notes of urban parenting in late capitalist educational landscape in the Swedish cities Gothenburg and Malmö, inspired by an autoethnographical methodology (Reed-Danahay, 2009).

Conclusions: The purpose here is to understand and make sense of our feelings of anxiety as inherently shaped by a neutralization of capitalist ideology (see e.g., Bauman, 1999), which we want to resist and move beyond. We specifically lean on the work of Mark Fischer (2009), Slavoj Žižek (2008), Jason Glyson (2021), and Matthew Clarke (2020) to critically examine the seemingly neutral state of (un)conscious parental anxiety in late capitalism.

References

Bauman Z (1999) In Search of Politics. Cambridge: Polity.

Clarke M (2020) Eyes wide shut: the fantasies and disavowals of education policy. Journal of Education Policy 35(2). Routledge: 151–167. DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2018.1544665.

Fisher M (2009) Capitalist Realism : Is There No Alternative? Winchester: O Books.

Glynos J (2021) Critical fantasy studies. Journal of Language and Politics 20(1). John Benjamins: 95–111. DOI: 10.1075/jlp.20052.gly.

Reed-Danahay, D (2009) Anthropologists, Education, and Autoethnography, Reviews in Anthropology, 38:1, 28-47, DOI: 10.1080/00938150802672931

Žižek S (2008) The Sublime Object of Ideology. London ; Verso.

Reflekterande kommentar till temanumret ”Kraftfull professionskunskap i ämnesundervisning”.

”Lärarnas vetenskap” har getts olika namn såsom pedagogik, utbildningsvetenskap, didaktik och pedagogiskt arbete. Artikelförfattaren föredrar didaktik som namn.

Didaktik, inkluderande ämnesdidaktik, kan ses som lärarnas centrala kunskapsområde (bl.a. Sjöström & Tyson, 2022). Kärnan i didaktik är didaktiska teorier och modeller. Didaktiska teorier för lärarprofessionen liksom didaktiska modeller kan ses som en brygga mellan teoretiska perspektiv å ena sidan och undervisningspraktik å andra sidan. Didaktiska modeller bidrar med teorigrundade lärarprofessionsstöd för informerade och reflekterade (ämnes)didaktiska val. De kan även ses som ”organisatör” och förmedlare av ”kraftfull professionskunskap”. Det är dock först vid användningen och i mötet med erfarenheter och praktik som professionskunskapen blir del av ett kraftfullt professionskunnande.

Artikeln innehåller en niofältstabell/karta över ”lärarnas vetenskap”. Ämnesdidaktik, som finns i centrum av tabellen och som fokuserar på innehåll i relation till undervisning, får näring av andra områden av ”lärarnas vetenskap” såsom läroplansteori, lärandeteori, pedagogisk filosofi, utbildningssociologi och metodik.

In this paper, we will propose an idea of education as conversations between friends on matters of common concern. In a scholarly and pedagogical climate of competition, testing and accountability, there seems to be little room for true pedagogical and scholarly conversation. What we aim to develop here, is a vocabulary that is able to capture some educational experiences that are being repressed in the current educational and academic discourse and practice. Starting from our own experiences as higher education workers, we argue for a way of speaking about educational practices that focus on the matters of common concern that gather - and put into conversation - students and teachers. We call this conversation a studious discourse so as to distinguish it from other forms of conversation and outline a definition of the kinds of friendships that potentially revolve around this form of communication. We base our argument on a reading of Jurgen Oelkers and Martin Wagenschein's pedagogical and didactical reflections and propose ultimately that education is not about the inner development of measurable skills or competences, but rather about becoming part of particular forms of communication about matters of common concern.

Documentation as a technology of power in early childhood education and care

Chair(s): Noora Heiskanen (University of Eastern Finland, Finland)

Discussant(s): Kaisa Pihlainen (University of Eastern Finland), Terese Wilhelmsen (University of South-Eastern Norway)

The extent of documentation is increasing in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in the Nordics and plays a key role in its quality work. In addition, documentation has special importance when it comes to early childhood special education as it is seen to safeguard the child's right to support, to raise the quality of ECEC and to create obligations for professionals. Despite its prevalence, the centrality of documentation is a new feature in Nordic ECEC (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2022), reflecting the trend of data-based governance in Global North. This increased focus on data-based governance has been called the governance turn of education (Ball, 2009). During the governance turn, demand for documenting practices, including the production of either written or numerical data, has become a dominant technique of governing (Ozga et al., 2011; Piattoeva, 2018). However, the values hightlighted in Nordic ECEC such as democracy, emphasis on play and the absense of child assessment as a measure of quality are not easily combined with this governance turn (Nordic Council of Ministers, 2022).

In research, traditionally, documentation is often approached as a process of neutral recording of facts, consequently, framing documentation as passive, objective, and innocent (Dahlberg et al., 2007). In addition to its function of recording practices and agreements, documents can also be seen as institutional actors (Ferraris, 2013). This means that documentation is understood having consequences. However, only a little is known about what documentalization actually does in ECEC.

In this symposium, documentation is discussed as a technology of power, possessing multiple possible consequences to children, professionals, and institutions (Miller & Rose, 2008). With theoretical and empirical investigations, we crically examine the predominant understandings of documentation in Nordic ECEC. First, Noora Heiskanen and Maiju Paananen discuss theoretical and methodological approaches used in research about documentation using the two ongoing research projects as a starting point. Second, Linda Palla’s presentation illustrates an empirical research from Swedish ECEC documentation about mapping materials. Third, Karianne Franck’s presentation will investigate the barriers for listening to young children’s views and opinions in expert assessment documents with the help of a study conducted in Norway. Finally, discussants Kaisa Pihlainen and Terese Willhelmsen lead the discussion on documentation as a technology of power in research and ECEC practices.

References

Ball, S. (2009). The governance turn! Journal of Education Policy. 24(5), 537–538.

Dahlberg, G., Moss, P., & Pence, A. (2007). Beyond quality in early childhood education and care: Languages of evaluation. Routledge.

Ferraris, M. (2013). Documentality: why it is necessary to leave traces. New York: Fordham University Press.

Miller, P., & N. Rose. (2008). Governing the present: Administering economic, social and personal life. Polity.

Nordic Council of Ministers (2022). Nordic Approaches to Evaluation and Assessment in Early Childhood Education and Care. Final report.

Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen, P., Segerholm, C., & Simola, H. (Eds.). (2011). Fabricating quality in education: Data and governance in Europe. Routledge.

Piattoeva, N. (2018). Elastic numbers: National examinations data as a technology of government. In Governing by Numbers (pp. 18–36). Routledge.

AbstractSAAC as a special education didactic tool in preschool education

The purpose is to increase knowledge about how SAAC, signing as augmentative and alternative communication, is said to be used by professionals in preschool education. Furthermore, the study aims to shed light on how SAAC can be understood in the light of special education didactics. Didactic questions have guided the analysis: Where and when is SAAC said to be used? Who is/are SAAC said to be used with and for? How and why is SAAC said to be used? The study has been limited to the statements of 30 professionals in a post in the internet forum Facebook’s group “Förskolan.se”. The chosen method is netnography and the analysis is qualitative with special education didactic modelling as theoretical approach.

The results show that descriptions of the use of SAAC can be likened to a multi-voiced approach as SAAC is described as being used in the education in several different ways, in several different situations and in several different environments – with everyone and for everyone. The conclusion is drawn that with special education didactic modeling, SAAC can become a tool broad enough to constitute support in an inclusive way.

Keywords: Didactic modeling; early childhood; netnography; preschool education; special education didactics; Signing as Augmentative and Alternative Communication (SAAC); teaching

The need for speed: Identification of “the deviant” as the ultimate goal for high returns in ECEC

Linda Palla Malmö University

Swedish early childhood education and care (ECEC) is part of an educational system which has a prominent and widespread culture of documentation. Documentation can be viewed as a tool for achieving high quality but can also be considered a technology of power where the primary purpose of education is seen as providing guidance on and assessment of childhood performance based on predetermined goals and outcomes (Moss, 2017). One could call it an investment of early intervention, intended to produce high returns. At the core of these intervention efforts are those who do not live up to the expectations placed upon them. In line with this reasoning, these children need to be identified; and the earlier, the better. Consequently, extra emphasis is put on documentation and assessment of certain children who, for various reasons, are identified as being in need of special education.

Special education is often preceded by some kind of identification process using specific documents; for example, mapping materials. Previous studies (e.g., Heiskanen et al., 2019; Franck, 2021Palla 2018) show multiple challenges, uncertainty, and resistance around special-education-related documents. The studies show that This type of documentation focuses primarily on the individual, rather than on how the education can contribute to development and learning, or how such strategies evolve. Instead, the (perceived lack of) performance of certain preschoolers tends to be assessed and evaluated in the documentation built upon specific norms.

However, there is a limited body of research regarding the mapping material used in the identification processes related to special education. The purpose of this project is therefore to develop knowledge about how “the deviant” is portrayed through the mapping materials that Swedish preschools use in their daily practice. The project is limited to identifying and critically reviewing a base of individual mapping materials commonly used in Swedish ECEC today. Drawing on ideas from Michel Foucault (e.g., 1977), the documentation can be viewed as a technology of power, where the mapping materials are used for making normalizing judgments. The mapping materials will be scrutinized with a particular focus on how the social categories of gender, ethnicity, age, and function appear, and possibly intersect with each other.

References

Foucault, Michel. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Penguin Books.

Franck, K. (2021). The educational context in expert assessments: A study of special education documents of children in ECEC institutions. European Journal of Special Needs Education. 37(5), 819–833.

Heiskanen, N., Alasuutari, M., & Vehkakoski, T. (2019). Recording support measures in sequential pedagogical documents of children with special educational needs. Journal of Early Intervention, 41(4), 321–339.

Moss, P. (2017). Power and resistance in early childhood education: From dominant discourse to democratic experimentalism. Journal of Pedagogy – Pedagogický časopis, 8(1), 11–32.

Palla, L. (2018). Individcentrerad prestation och måluppfyllelse i förskolan?: När åtgärdsprogram blir examinerande dokument och verktyg i specialpedagogiska processer. [Individual centered achievement and goal attainment in pres-chool? When assessment plans become examining document and tools in special educational processes] Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige,

Literature on thesis supervision emphasises collaborative approaches with strong and supportive relationships. Despite an increasing research interest in supervisory relationships, little cross-cultural research has been conducted on supervisory roles and relationships in expandingcircle countries. This study explores how thesis supervisors negotiate different rolesand relationshipsin supervision in English as an Additional Language (EAL) contexts. A multi-case study was employed in three contexts: a Swedish university, two Indonesian private universities, and an Indonesian public university. Semi-structured interviews were conducted withfourteenthesis supervisors. Thematic analysis and systemic-functional appraisal theory were used to analyse the discourse. Our findings revealed that supervisors expressed dealing with (a)symmetrical relationships with students and colleagues, dealing with different supervision roles, and managing priorities relating to intellectual development and instrumental goals. However, these dimensions of supervision were described differently in the three contexts. The Swedish supervisors expressed concernsabouthavingweak authority; meanwhile, the Indonesian private supervisors described frustrated attempts to form a closer relationship with the students, whereas the Indonesian public supervisors reacted to students trying to become too familiar. Furthermore, supervisors in the three contexts had to take different unwanted roles in supervision. The article concludes with implications for understanding situatedaspects ofsupervision.

Research on English as an Additional Language (EAL) academic acculturation has focused on international students as newcomers in English speaking countries and has frequently used a linguistically oriented approach. This research aimed to examine EAL thesis supervision as an academic socialisation practice in non-Anglophone context. We focused on exploring supervisors’ feedback provision priorities and students’ reactions to the feedback in one Swedish and three Indonesian universities. We contribute to the Nordic educational context by shedding light on thesis supervision as part of students’ dynamic academic socialisation. The research was conducted in response to the identified need of new strategies for academic literacy development to manage multicultural assets in the EAL academic writing and publication. We employed a multi-faceted view of academic literacy development, involving both cognitive activities and socially situated practice, integrated with. Biesta’ functions of education and Habermas’s Communicative Action concepts. Semi-structured interview was conducted with thirty-nine participants (14 supervisors and 25 students). The findings indicated different supervisors’ feedback provision priorities. Swedish supervisors explained focusing on content to strive for students’ socialisation and subjectification, while Indonesian supervisors mostly prioritise giving both form and content-focused feedback to target the function of qualification. A few Indonesian supervisors described focusing on socialisation in thesis writing and peer-reviewed publication. While supervisors in both contexts expressed striving for learning orientation through supervision, most students in both contexts described focusing on instrumental goals (finishing their thesis projects and getting degrees). Also, many students explained difficulties dealing with feedback in the form of questions. They indicated resistance to the socialisation process by employing strategic action (deleting or shortening the commented part to avoid further questions and revision). Only a few students viewed question-feedback as a communicative means of learning. Students’ responses signalled a lack of disciplinary literacy through unfamiliarity with research methodologies and theoretical framework that created problems in deciphering the supervisors’ feedback. Since the findings illustrate that students and supervisors have different feedback orientations, we call for increased clarity in communicating aims for thesis supervision. Also, the task of students’ academic literacy development and socialisation cannot fall on thesis supervisors alone. Pedagogical practices through embedded-curriculum programmes are required to foster students’ belonging to academic community and identity adaptation.

It is widely recognized that the Swedish educational landscape has undergone major changes in the past three decades. In fact, Sweden is now commonly referred to as having the most de-regulated school system in the world. The change of the educational landscape has taken place together with a general transformation of the entire welfare system in Sweden, guided by neoliberal ideology in which decentralization and marketization were core features. This restructuring was launched in the early nineties with competition, privatization, accountability, and school choice as steering mechanisms aiming for quality improvement and efficiency.

In this paper, we grapple with our personal experiences of this development by investigating how this educational capitalism have permeated our minds, focusing on the feeling of school-market-anxiety, which we both have experienced in our role as parents. We aim to share, critically analyze, and put into context some of the experiences we have had of being approached as consumers of education for our own children and the affective dimensions of these experiences. When writing this paper, we both merged and compared our different experiences in a style inspired by the feminist premise that the personal is political, and that awareness-rising of ideological oppression can emerge from sharing and discussing personal experiences. We do this by critically compare notes of urban parenting in late capitalist educational landscape in the Swedish cities Gothenburg and Malmö, inspired by an autoethnographical methodology (Reed-Danahay, 2009). The purpose here is to understand and make sense of our feelings of anxiety as inherently shaped by a neutralization of capitalist ideology (see e.g., Bauman, 1999). We specifically lean on the work of Mark Fischer (2009), Slavoj Žižek (2008), Jason Glyson (2021), and Matthew Clarke (2020) to critically examine the seemingly neutral state of unconscious parental anxiety in late capitalism. To put our work in a critical (post-)Marxist terminology we are particularly interested in understanding how we, as parents of school children, are ‘interpellated’ (Althusser, 1971) by the ideology supporting the current reality of late capitalist education.

Our question throughout this paper is: How can school-market-anxiety, from the perspective of parents’ experiences, be conceptualized as a manifestation of ideology, what consequences can be discerned and what can we do about it? We argue for the need of critical concepts from a psychoanalytical (post-)Marxist tradition that can help us understand – and resist – the increasingly strong grip that a that a capitalist ideology has on contemporary Swedish education and its different actors, and increasingly, throughout all Nordic countries.

Both of us have an academic background in critical education studies, and we have previously published on the marketization of education. However, in our previous attempts to understand marketization we have neglected parents’ school-market-anxiety, and our own role as prospective consumers of education within the late modern educational capitalism of Sweden.

Internationally, there is a growing interest in School-Age Educare and the meaning of aesthetic aspects of teaching and learning in educational settings. Even if dancing is beneficial for human wellbeing and can be understood as both a physical activity as well as an aesthetic expression there are few studies that examine dance in School-Age Educare. Dance as an aesthetic expression can be linked to femininity which adds challenges in educational practice. According to UNICEF, dancing is one way for children to develop imagination, creativity, and social skills. Therefore, this study aims to critically examine the prerequisites for teaching and learning dance in School-Age Educare in Sweden. This study sheds light on discursive constructions made by school-age educators when they reason around dance in their education. The empirical material consists of six semi-structured interviews with eighteen educators in sex School-Age Educares in Sweden. Mainly two discourses of how dance is constructed appear in the material. Firstly, a discourse on dance as a joyful “learning” activity. Secondly, a discourse on “teaching” dance by using digital tools. The results show that it is challenging for the educators to encourage pupils while managing the risk that dance as a feminine activity is consolidated. Moreover, in its current form, there is a shortcoming of possibilities for pupils ́to develop their own creativity in dance. Finally, the educators lack the know-how to develop pupils ́ dance skills beyond what they already know.

I detta kapitel diskuteras studenters studieframgång, avhopp och genom­strömning. Vidare är syftet att belysa studenters känsla av tillhörighet i relation till studieframgång och olika möjligheter att minska studentavhopp. Motivet är att en ökad förståelse för studenters känsla av tillhörighet i relation till studieframgång ger stöd åt utveckling av akademiska miljöer och utbildningsprogram som i sin tur stärker inkludering och breddat deltagande.

Syftet med detta kapitel är att diskutera hur förväntningar på handledning och olika handledarkompetenser kan bidra till ett mer inkluderande arbetssätt. Det innebär att vi kommer belysa betydelsen av att klargöra förväntningar på handledning samt hur handledares kunskaper om lärandeteorier, kommunikation, etik, återkoppling och bedömning kan bidra till och stärka adeptens lärande och utveckling inom sitt ämnesområde. Kapitlet bygger bland annat på vår egen forskning (Davidsson & Stigmar, 2021; Davidsson & Stigmar, inskickad) som visar att det finns ett gemensamt innehåll och likartade undervisningsformer i handledarutbildningar för olika yrkesgrupper.

The aim of this scoping review was to identify, synthesize, and report research on reflective collaborative learning through virtual communities of practice (vCoP), which, to our knowledge, is scarce. A second aim was to identify, synthesize, and report research on the facilitators and barriers associated with resilience capacity and knowledge acquisition through vCoP. The literature was searched in PsycINFO, CINAHL, Medline, EMBASE, Scopus, and Web of Science. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews (PRISMA) and Meta-Analyses for Scoping Reviews (ScR) framework guided the review. Ten studies were included in the review, seven quantitative and three qualitative studies, written in English and published from January 2017 to February 2022. The data were synthesized using a numerical descriptive summary and qualitative thematic analysis. Two themes: ‘knowledge acquisition’ and ‘strengthening resilience capacity’ emerged. The literature synthesis provides evidence of a vCoP as a digital space that supports knowledge acquisition and strengthens resilience for persons with dementia, and their informal and formal caregivers. Hence, the use of vCoP seems to be useful for dementia care support. Further studies including less developed countries are, however, needed to enable generalizability of the concept of vCoP across countries.

Den här boken handlar om förskolan som lärmiljö för alla barn och i synnerhet för barn i behov av särskilt stöd. Syftet är att belysa vikten av att upptäcka barn som behöver stöd tidigt, och hur olika insatser kan planeras och organiseras för att gynna delaktighet, engagemang och lärande för alla barn i förskolan. Den bygger på svensk och internationell forskning och fyller ett tomrum avseende kunskap kring barn i behov av särskilt stöd i förskolan och deras aktiva engagemang i förskolans vardag. Boken är indelad i tre delar: 

• Förutsättningar för barns delaktighet och engagemang i förskolan.

• Att skapa en inkluderande lärmiljö i förskolan.

• Tidig intervention och samverkan runt barn i behov av särskilt stöd.

Förskollärare och annan personal i förskolan, specialpedagoger och andra som arbetar med tidigt stöd till barn i förskolan har nytta av boken i sitt arbete liksom lärare och studenter i förskollärarutbildningen. Den är också av intresse för skoladministratörer, politiker och andra som är intresserade av förskolan som lärmiljö för alla barn. 

Den här boken handlar om förskolan som lärmiljö för alla barn och i synnerhet för barn i behov av särskilt stöd. Syftet är att belysa vikten av att upptäcka barn som behöver stöd tidigt, och hur olika insatser kan planeras och organiseras för att gynna delaktighet, engagemang och lärande för alla barn i förskolan. Den bygger på svensk och internationell forskning och fyller ett tomrum avseende kunskap kring barn i behov av särskilt stöd i förskolan och deras aktiva engagemang i förskolans vardag. Boken är indelad i tre delar: 

• Förutsättningar för barns delaktighet och engagemang i förskolan.

• Att skapa en inkluderande lärmiljö i förskolan.

• Tidig intervention och samverkan runt barn i behov av särskilt stöd.

Förskollärare och annan personal i förskolan, specialpedagoger och andra som arbetar med tidigt stöd till barn i förskolan har nytta av boken i sitt arbete liksom lärare och studenter i förskollärarutbildningen. Den är också av intresse för skoladministratörer, politiker och andra som är intresserade av förskolan som lärmiljö för alla barn. 

Denna rapport dokumenterar insikter från följeforskning inom projektet Trelleborg Yrkeskedjor på uppdrag av Arbetsmarknadsförvaltningen Trelleborg. Den belyser undervisning i svenska för invandrare som sökte koppla samman elevers branschpraktik med språkundervisning. 

As the privatisation of the public sector has grown rapidly in Sweden in the last decade, private companies have become an imperative part of education. Private companies sell and deliver consultancy, hardware, software, services, etc. to schools and municipalities. This study examines a growing rate of activities from companies and businesses working within public sectors. It also examines consequences of cooperation between private and public actors. Findings show that multiple actors meet in different forms and with different functions, in multiple ways and with diverse agendas. What can be discerned is strong Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), where actors and networks are linked together, directly or indirectly, in fluid and flexible relations and partnerships. Private actors on educational markets not only becomes edupreneurs but policyneurs, a new concept introduced. As private actors engage in the policy making and the public sphere, a complex and disorganised landscape with new formations of strong actors emerge, entailing a number of consequences. One implication is the establishment of lobbyism in the Swedish educational landscape, with potentially negative consequences for democracy. One conclusion is that new formations of power dissolve the roles and functions of private and public actors within education, with implications on decision-making, transparency, and democracy. 

This research aims to examine government digitalization policies and steering documents in relation to school and visual arts education. We explore how these documents are lived in the everyday practice of two visual arts teachers. We borrow the term unicorn from the field of business finance and computer sciences. The unicorn represents private venture firms with over a billion dollars in valuation (Kotha, Shin & Fisher, 2022). These almost mythical economical values are built on techno-optimism and idealized expectations of a utopic future. 

The theoretical framework is built on Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy of segments. There are three lines in life; the molar line is a rigid line of segmentarity which leads to a calculated future which we as subjects are constantly plotting out with well-determined identities of things, aggregates as gender, social classes etc. The molecular line appears in the actualization of the present and breaks the molar lines. This happens as micromovements, tiny cracks that disorients and deterritorialize the determined identities and aggregates. The molar and molecular lines are constantly interfering and reacting upon each other as currents of suppleness or points of rigidity. The line of flight resists the molar and molecular lines and is rather like an explosion between the molar and molecular lines. More concretely, the molar line is made up by explanations, questions and answers. The molecular line is made up by silences, allusions, and interpretations. The line of flight is like a train in motion; it alter identities or erases them completely. However, the three lines continually intermingle (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987/2004). 

The overarching methodology for this research is cartography. This entails mapping the intersections of digitalization policies, interviews with teachers and photographs of the storage rooms of the visual arts classrooms, and an in-service training day for teachers at teacher training programs organized by the Swedish National Agency for Education. 

As suggested in the title, we find that there is a “unicorn in the room” that needs to be addressed. That is, an administrative authority with techno-optimist approaches concerning a “smart and fast” high technology educational future. This is a molar line made up by already pre-determined futures. The visual arts teacher practice is a molecular line, open for interpretations, misunderstandings, inventiveness because of the lack of resources, and gaps between the policies of the state and its practice in education. 

This research is highly relevant concerning educational digitalization markets and the related situation of digitalization in the subject visual arts education. This research contributes with knowledge on digitalization policies and how they are enacted.

Purpose: This dissertation aims to study how different artefacts used to assess students’ knowledge are perceived by students and teachers. A particular focus is directed towards assessment from a special educational perspective. Two research questions were posed: 1. What are students’ perceptions and experiences of different assessment practices in the classroom? 2. What are teachers' perceptions and experiences of different assessment practices in the classroom?

Sub-studies: The dissertation provides a qualitative synthesis of 5 studies. Study I is a systematic research review with the aim to enhance knowledge regarding low-achieving students’ assessment experiences. Study II, directed at classroom assessment to provide information on how primary school students in Grades 2 and 5 experience classroom assessment in Swedish. Study III A aimed to contribute knowledge about teachers' perceptions of an external assessment assignment. This was, without deepening the alignment between assessment results and teaching, which Study III B aimed to focus on. Study III B is a reanalysis of part of Study III A. In Study IV, the content’s context was communication in mathematics teaching. The results revealed teachers'assessment expressions.

Theory: The theoretical starting point is sociocultural theory. The choice is based on Gipps who highlights the relationship between teaching, learning and assessment, where assessment is perceived to take place in a social context. To understand the different assessment practices that emerge in the thesis, three categories of assessment: inherent, discursive, and documentary, are used. Mediation is used as an analytical tool.

Method: The methodological approach is an interpretive perspective. All five sub-studies are qualitative. The dissertation provides a qualitative synthesis.

Results: The results reveal a difference in the perceptions and experiences about documented assessment attributed to whether, and what consequences a low score may mean for students and teachers. Discursive assessment emerges as part of teaching. Inherent assessment does not really appear in any of the substudies.

Conclusion: It is not the design of the assessment that matters for students'experience, but its contextualisation, how the meaning is mediated by the teachers rather than the assessment design. Students with special educational needs are more concerned about assessment.

Limitation: This thesis can only describe the talk of assessment but does not study the assessment itself.

This paper analyzes how the relation between childhood and nature contributes to the formation of identities though childhood memories written for archival purposes. Archival research lets us consider how written childhood memories of nature are formed, producing social identities through practices of archiving. The archived memories of 50 people in Sweden are analyzed, concentrating on how they described their childhood memories of nature. Understanding memories as performances of identity can give important answers as to how the idealized relationship between nature and childhood is constructed in the specific context of archivation.

Traditionally bilingual Maltese school populations are increasingly linguistically diverse, due to intensified migration flows. To shed light on central issues to be addressed by policy makers, school administrators, researchers and teacher trainers, collective beliefs of Maltese primary school teachers regarding their conceptual understanding and pedagogical actions concerning multilingualism are investigated. Through the application of Q methodology and focus group interviews, data from twenty-one in-service teachers from six different colleges were collected. Using inverted factor analysis, three factors were extracted for each of the components (understanding and pedagogy). Detailed narratives for each group of collective teachers' beliefs were described and supplemented with teachers' validating comments. Findings indicate that having a positive understanding of multilingualism does not necessarily imply positive pedagogical beliefs and vice versa. In Malta's inherently bilingual education system, teachers tend to accept and welcome children's languages in their classrooms and encourage the learning of additional languages. However, possibly due to a lack of adequate training on the subject, there is scepticism regarding whether and how to effectively draw on multilingualism in the classroom. Additionally, the need arises for more teacher autonomy and agency to make decisions regarding classroom language practices, and for a more comprehensive Maltese national language education policy.

Purpose This study determines which aspects of the intended object of learning (planned by teachers during the first phase of a learning study) is made discernible from a learners' perspective. In a learning study, the intended, enacted, and lived object of learning are considered. This study focuses on the learning material used by teachers while designing a lesson. Design/methodology/approach In many learning studies, variation theory is used to design lessons, which predicts difficulties in and possibilities for student learning. The data consisted of a lesson part - instruction through a video-recorded dance choreography - employed to enhance primary school (in a Swedish context, grade 4) students' dancing skills in the subject of Physical Education and Health. The choreography comprised five different sequences, where a variation occurred when the subsequent (new) sequence was applied to the previous movement pattern. The sequences acted as building blocks, where the students' transitions from one movement pattern to another were logical and distinguishable. Findings The results of this study show in what way an analysis of learning material, based on variation theory, can help teachers take into account the level of complexity of the object of learning. The results also identify which parts of a lesson design can be predicted to present a higher degree of challenge and by that more difficult to grasp, especially for students with different educational needs. Originality/value Lessons may be designed based on theoretical assumptions to ensure effective classroom learning and provide guidance to teachers based on student needs.

This paper addresses the rift between the teacher’s sense of self as a causal agent and the experience of being in lack of control in the classroom, by way of Hans Vaihinger’s philosophy of ‘as if.’ It is argued that understanding agential control in terms of a valuable educational fiction—a practical (ethical) fiction in Vaihinger’s vocabulary—can offer a way of bridging this rift and can help teachers make sense of the tension between their felt need to strive for control and their experience of suffering from lack of control. A fiction, it is argued, is different from an illusion in that fictions can be affirmed without being believed. Unlike illusions, valuable fictions can be recognized as fictions and still retain some of their affective power over us, thereby allowing us to act ‘as if.’ In education, this is helpful as it means that we can make use of valuable fictions without assuming that these have to be protected from the critical gaze of non-believers. In fact, we can openly acknowledge that we rely on fictions as this is part and parcel of being a human being with a limited cognitive ability.

Deliberate practice and having a growth mindset have been hypothesized to increase school performance. But previous studies are few, have been limited to very short interventions, and on average resulted in small effect sizes on school performance. This study compared the attitudes, performance, and behavior of 130 7th-grade students taking part in eight 30-minute sessions of deliberate practice and growth mindset over 14 weeks to a same-age active control group. The intervention had no significant effects on attitudes related to deliberate practice, growth mindset, or mathematical performance. However, students who participated in the intervention engaged in more deliberate practice behavior in a mathematics test. We pre-registered our hypothesis and research design at aspredicted.org/13742.

This article examines how environmental design is set in motion as a technique of government in Swedish policy texts issued to advise those who build and plan preschools. Drawing on Foucauldian research on governmentality and Carol Bacchis 'What's the problem Represented to be?' (WPR) approach, five Swedish government policies on how to build and design preschools are examined from a critical perspective. The WPR analysis helps identify how policies produce problems in certain ways and in this case shows how the preschool environment features in policies in accordance with a certain logic. The study shows that the environment is meant to function as a mediator for disciplinary power, to shape children's behaviors in desirable ways without coercion. The article also highlights certain silences in the material, the most prominent of these being the lack of discussion about adapting preschool environments to different needs without labeling children as disabled.