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.

De olika områdena i den utbildningsvetenskapliga kärnan förstås i det här kapitlet inte som isolerade från varandra, utan som delar som hängerihop och flätas samman. I kapitlet finns det företrädesvis inslag av de utbildningsvetenskapliga områdena läroplansteori, didaktik och bedömning. Mendet finns också spår av vetenskapsteori och skolväsendets historia, inklusiveinslag av demokrati, likvärdighet och barns rättigheter

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.

This presentation highlights the methodological part of a doctoral project which intends to study cultural conceptions of the student among educators within teacher training for early childhood education (TTECE). The presentation aims to discuss the insider and outsider position occupied by the researcher in critical ethnographic research in order to contribute to the discussion about critical theory and critically oriented studies in a Nordic context. When and why does it become a challenge to be an insider? Where, when and how are boundaries set up between the researcher and the research subjects? When does such boundaries become limiting and when do they provide opportunities? What does being an active part of the empirical production in critical ethnography (CE) imply for the research? 

CE is a theory-informed methodological approach which, in this doctoral project, departs from a pragmatic and critical perspective in which higher education is, or should be, understood as a practice built upon deliberative democracy and communicative action as important prerequisites for creating good education for all (Habermas, 1996;Englund, 2008). The fundamental purpose of CE is to question what becomes normalized within a field of study and to consider, or suggest alternatives to, what appears given or natural in such a field (Thomas, 1993;Madison, 2012). The critical approach of CE provides the researcher with a possibility to take an active part in the field, to influence it in certain directions and to question culturally accepted norms within it. Simultaneously, the informants are continuously invited to participate in and contribute to the creation and interpretation of the empirical material. 

The empirical material was collected during a five-month long fieldwork at a Swedish university that provides TTECE. Data was gathered through participant observations of formal and informal every-day collegial work, semi-structured conversations and group-sessions. The empirical material consists of fieldnotes, transcripts from recorded conversations, documents and webpages. 

Being an insider turned out to be an advantage in relation to understanding the circumstances of educators’ sayings and doings, to access the field of study and to gain trust from the informants. At the same time, to assume the role as an outsider can be preferred in some situations due to e.g. the degree of commitment at the field. Being open and transparent with my interpretations of the empirical material has enabled me to have discussions with the informants in a way which have given the informants opportunities to provide more nuanced interpretations. In some sense, seemingly insignificant situations puts the insider/outsider position into play and affects the investigation and its results. To balance the insider/outsider position requires a continuous pursuit of reflexivity through every part of the research process.

Englund, T. (2008) The university as an encounter for deliberative communication, Creating cultural citizenship and professional responsibility. Utbildning & Demokrati, 17(2), 97-114

Habermas, J.(1996). Kommunikativt handlande: texter om språk, rationalitet och samhälle. (2. uppl.) Göteborg: Daidalos.

Madison, D.(2012). Critical ethnography- method, ethics, and performance. SAGE

Thomas, J.(1993). Doing critical ethnography. Newbury Park: Sage.

YouTube has become the number-one outlet for children’s programming and video entertainment (Ahn, 2022). In Sweden, children spend several hours a day on the platform (Statens medieråd, 2021:58). 60 % of children aged 9–12, and 80% of Swedish teenagers follow a YouTuber or influencer (ibid:83). This form of micro-celebrity constitutes an important part of children’s media culture and everyday life, contributing to commodification and commercialisation of childhood. YouTubers are not only singers, gamers or entertainers, they are “promotional intermediaries” (Jaakkola, 2020:239). Youtubers make a living from advertising products through sponsoring agreements (influencer marketing), or from advertising their own products and brands, in the form of merchandise (“merch”).

Even though the YouTuber is a widely popular phenomenon, we still know surprisingly little of it from a child perspective. There is a lack of in-depth knowledge on how the child audience perceives and engages with Youtubers as commercial actors (Jaakkola, 2020). In light of this, the aim of the present paper is to further our understanding of how children appropriate sponsored content and merch within the context of the para-social relation between child and Youtuber.

To study children’s appropriation of sponsored content and merch among Youtubers, we draw from an interview study with 19 Swedish children aged 10-13. The results reveal how children’s meaning-making mainly centered around the relevance or irrelevance of this media content within the context of their everyday lives, and their moral economy (Silverstone, 1994) was an integrated part of their discussions. Children also expressed how they engaged in financial and moral support in order to enable Youtubers’ content creation, for instance by purchasing merch or sponsored products, hence positioning themselves as active agents within the commercial media logic.

References

Ahn, R. J. (2022). Exploration of parental advertising literacy and parental mediation: Influencer marketing of media character toy and merchandise. Journal of Advertising, 51(1), 107-115.

Jaakkola, M. (2020). From vernacularized commercialism to kidbait: Toy review videos on YouTube and the problematics of the mash-up genre. Journal of Children and Media, 14(2), 237-254.

Silverstone, R. (1994). Television and everyday life. London: Routledge.

Statens medieråd (2021). Ungar & medier 2021 En statistisk undersökning av ungas medievanor och attityder till medieanvändning. [Young people & media 2021 A statistical survey of young people's media habits and attitudes towards media use.]  Availible at https://www.statensmedierad.se/rapporter-och-analyser/material-rapporter-ochanalyser/ungar--medier-2021 

In this essay, we argue that Rousseau’s lawgiver is best thought of as a pedagogical fiction. It is fictional as it reflects an idea that is entertained despite its contradictory nature, and it is contradictory in the sense that it describes “an undertaking beyond human strength and, to execute it, an authority that amounts to nothing” (II.7; 192). Rousseau conceives of the social contract as a necessary device for enabling the transferal of individual power to the body politic, for subsuming individual wills under the general will, and for aligning the good of the individual with the common good. For the social contract to be valid, however, it needs to be preceded by a desire to belong to a moral community that can induce people to join willingly, and that will grant legitimacy to the laws established. If the social contract is the machinery that makes the body politic function, the lawgiver is “the mechanic who invents the machine” (II.7; 191). In this paper we will look closer at the pedagogical functions of Rousseau’s mythical lawgiver by first examining the relationship between the social contract, the general will and the lawgiver. Then, we aim to flesh out a pedagogical understanding of the figure of the lawgiver by way of the two educational dimensions of accommodation and transformation. Finally, we will argue for the importance of understanding Rousseau’s lawgiver as a fictional device allowing for the fundamental and enduring educational task of balancing between the preservation and renewal of society. 

Time för abduction: The carrying capacity of experience in research and education

The article aims to reason with the continuous philosophy of Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) and argue about a pedagogy for strengthening our ability to diversify and bring forth our experience in knowledge production. The carrying capacity of experience as a basis for reasonable abductions and change is the main argument of the article. Besides this the ambition is to highlight the capacity of abduction as a method to process diverse knowledge practices and make use of pluralistic thus common experiences to produce fair ideas for the future. The temporal attitude of the abductive researcher counteracts the idea of absolute knowledge and reminds us of our tendency to ignore what we actually know, not the least doubt. Thus, the abductive attitude approves of doubt as a wake-up call and starting point for learning, and the acknowledgement of this is by Peirce’s general logic also consistent with a trust in a continuous human and worldly becoming. To further illuminate the educational points of abduction, an ongoing project in higher education is described as a concrete example of abductive, thus experience-based, successive, and common learning. The continuous research/education project unfolds and finds its direction through the triadic abductive process of inference; notifying and acknowledging qualities of past experience, critically comparing qualities to general ideas, and guessing upon new relations or hypothesis about fair future conduct.

This article investigates whether there is any place for the school of thought that is known as analytic philosophy of education in the aftermath of postmodernism, and whether analytic philosophy of education can be treated as a ‘method’, among other alternative ‘methods’, that can be applied regardless of what kind of ‘-ism’ or ideology one embraces. An additional aim is to suggest some important questions for analytic philosophy of education to take into consideration. We argue that conceptual engineering may be a promising avenue for analytic educational theory if it is used with a critical intent that is more heuristic and inconclusive than prescriptively ideal.

The focus in this study is methods for screening young children’s, subitizing abilities. Subitize is in this project defined as identifying the number of things in a setsimply by quickly looking at them and without counting them one by one. The aim of the study is to compare two different screening instruments for identifyingchildren’s subitizing abilities, individually and in groups of children, in a Swedish preschool class context. In total, data from 44 children is collected, who havetaken one group test (Ability to Quickly See Quantity - AQSQ), and an individual test (Number Set Test - NST). The research question was if the children’sresults correlate with each other, or not, no matter of test conditions (individual/group). The results show a moderate to strong positive correlation, usingPearson and T-test Pair Samples Correlation (r=.559 p=

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. 

This paper concerns a doctoral project focusing on educators’ cultural conceptions of the student within teacher education for early childhood education (TEECE) at a Swedish University. As a part of the project this specific paper explores how educators do education through negotiations in the processes of planning, discussing and constructing the different parts of the TEECE, focusing on the role of deliberative communication in these processes. As an educator in higher education (HE) in general and professional (teacher) education in particular, one can speak of limitations for the possibilities of educating autonomous future professionals, when instrumental rationality is highly valued (Ball & Olmedo, 2013; Bornemark, 2018; Biesta, 2011). HE and teacher education are commonly considered to be limited by a neoliberal governance which limits educators’ possibilities for educating future professional teachers (Lenz Taguchi, 2005; Levinsson, Norlund & Beach, 2020). The neoliberal governance is criticized and problematized, not least in relation to give the students space to be and act (Ibid.). Based on this, educators have a complex role to navigate this landscape of different interests of what HE is and could be.

Habermas theory of democracy (Habermas, 1996a; 1996b) is an important departure point for the project. Based on this theory, the necessity of communicative action, deliberative democracy and the concepts of private and public good (Dyrdal Solbrekke & Sugrue, 2020) is put in the foreground. Communicative action is expressed as a necessity to underline the subjects’ part in a democratic society (Carlheden, 2002) and one can say that this is a theory in which the private and public sphere is linked together. It means that the private autonomy and the public are each other's prerequisite (Ibid.). Based on this theoretical perspective, the paper focuses on the educators in the process of planning, discussing and constructing the TEECE, and discusses what good education is and could be in HE and TEECE. Englund (2008) and Dyrdal Solbrekke & Surgue (2020) argue for the need of HE to be that public spere where deliberation is an aim and where public debate is desirable.  

In this paper, autonomy is an important concept when understanding educators’ role as subjects at universities. One fundamental aspect for understanding how education is done and discussed among the informants/educators is that “[f]reedom is rather something that needs to be realized in a social community” [my translation] (Carlheden, 2002:50). Deliberative communication (Englund, 2006) is recognizable for its focus on for pluralistic communication including “[…] listening, deliberating, seeking arguments and valuing, coupled to a collective and cooperative endeavor to find values and norms which everyone can accept, at the same time as pluralism is acknowledged.” (Englund, 2008:103). This concept makes it possible to explore how educators handle their autonomy when doing education and if there is room for deliberative communication. The concept also underlines educators’ autonomy in the organization of TEECE.  

Method

A five-month long critical ethnography (CE) was completed at one university hosting TEECE. The ethnographic fieldwork was carried out in various collegial contexts among a group of educators and their everyday, formal and informal work. The fieldwork includes observations of collegial settings, for example, teacher team meetings related to courses or the program as a whole; conversations with educators, both formal and informal; group discussions; documents and policy documents such as education plans, course plans and study guides; websites, where the TEECE programs are presented at different universities. Which situations and settings to focus on in the observations was quite quickly identified due to the researcher’s experience from the field. In parallel with observations and informal conversations, conversations of a more formal nature were carried out. Primarily, field notes were used to collect empirical material, but it also includes recordings from the formal conversations and written reflections submitted to me based on group discussions among the informants. In the field of CE there are different traditions and ideas on what CE entails (se for example Tomas, 1993;Carspecken,1996;Willis & Tondman, 2000; Beach & Vigo-Arrazola, 2021;Madison, 2011). However, one common idea is that CE enables the researcher to study power as an obvious part of all social relations. The ambition is to undress this power and power imbalance in order to question the power relations, contribute to change and adopt an emancipatory interest of knowledge (Habermas, 1996a; Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2008). The aim for me as a researcher in this project was to take part in the environment and the language at the field of study. The informants and their interactions were of interest as well as the rhythm of the field itself. Observation of the field can be seen as a prerequisite in ethnographically oriented studies (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2019;Coffey, 2018; Crang & Cook, 2007) where the culture is in focus and CE enables the researcher to take an active part in the field and to question what can be perceived as culturally accepted norms. In parallel to this active role, the informants were continuously invited to contribute to the creation of the empirical material. The material was not collected but rather created together with and in interaction with the field (Ibid.). The researcher's role as well as the informants, has thus been important in the construction of the collected material (Beach & Vigo-Arrazola, 2021; Tomas, 1993; Willis & Trondman, 2000).

Expected Outcomes

At the time of writing this abstract the analysis is not fully completed but is intended to be, by the time for the presentation. However, preliminary results shows that educators are balancing their right for good working conditions with their pedagogical intentions, in favor of their own needs and working conditions. The educators negotiate what kind of requirements and perspective they can, should and wish to have in relation to for example policy documents and different kinds of IT-systems. This is probably the most common context when deliberative communication appears. Other aspects that are discussed, but not at all in that extent, are pedagogical visions, intentions and or strategies. The results also shows that different circumstances condition what kind of communication becomes possible. Deliberative communication is not always possible due to time where for example, deadlines and bureaucratic praxis are in the foreground. For example, the need to be careful with one's own time and one's own energy is very prominent and frequently used. And it is something that they argue from when they express limitations in relation to time. On a general level, the results show how educators’ room for action and their possibilities for deliberative communication, are two main factors that condition how educators do education and how they negotiate the education they are working with. The results will contribute a perspective on how and in what way educators’ autonomy and room for action appears in their doing of education and when navigating what HE is and could be.

References 

Alvesson, Mats & Sköldberg, Kaj (2008). Tolkning och reflektion: vetenskapsfilosofi och kvalitativ metod (2:a uppl.). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Ball, Stephen J & Olmedo, Antonio (2013) Care of the self, resistance and subjectivity under neoliberal governmentalities, Critical Studies in Education, 54(1), 85-96. Beach, Dennis, & Vigo-Arrazola, Maria Begoña (2021). Critical Ethnographies of Education and for Social and Educational Transformation: A Meta-Ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 27(6), 677–688. Biesta, Gert (2011). God utbildning i mätningens tidevarv. (1. uppl.) Stockholm: Liber. Bornemark, Jonna (2018). Det omätbaras renässans: en uppgörelse med pedanternas världsherravälde. Första upplagan Stockholm: Volante. Carlheden, Mikael (2002) Fostran till frihet - Skolans demokratiska värdegrund ur ett habermasianskt perspektiv. Utbildning & Demokrati 2002, 11(3), 43-72. Carspecken, Francis Phil (1996) Critical Ethnography in Educational Research, A Theoretical and Practical Guide, London: Routledge. Dyrdal Solbrekke, Tone & Sugrue, Ciaran (2020) Leading higher education as and for public good: Rekindling education as praxis. London: Routledge. Englund, Tomas (2006) Deliberative communication: a pragmatist proposal, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 38(5), 503-520. Englund, Thomas (2008) The university as an encounter for deliberative communication, Creating cultural citizenship and professional responsibility. Utbildning & Demokrati 2008, 17(2), 97–114 Habermas, Jürgen (1996a). Kommunikativt handlande: texter om språk, rationalitet och samhälle. (2. uppl.) Göteborg: Daidalos. Habermas, Jürgen (1996b). Between facts and norms: contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. London: Polity Levinsson Magnus, Norlund Anita & Beach Dennis (2020) Teacher Educators in Neoliberal Times: A Phenomenological Self-Study. Phenomenology & Practice, 14(1), 7-23. Madison, D. Soyini (2011). Critical ethnography, method, ethics, and performance. SAGE Taguchi, Hillevi Lenz (2005). Getting personal: how early childhood teacher education troubles students' and teacher educators' identities regarding subjectivity and feminism. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 6(3), 244-255. Thomas, Jim (1993). Doing critical ethnography. Newbury Park: Sage.

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.

Reformering av lärarutbildning och skola behöver baseras på breda politiska överenskommelser snarare än ideologisk färgade enmansutredningar, skriver Hanna Sjögren, och uppmanar regeringen att återgå till dens svenska traditionen av breda parlamentariska utredningar (red.).

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.

The concept of connective memory highlights how memories are shaped by connections between people, objects, media, and institutions. It derives from the growing discussions on how technological and digital developments affect contemporary memory culture and, in particular, from Andrew Hoskins’ conceptualization of a “connective turn” and a “new memory ecology.” Connective memory is both a methodological and an analytical tool as it inspires memory studies to explore memory by tracing and analyzing how different interactional trajectories intersect with and compete against each other. The concept is thusly designed to challenge ideas of “individual memories” and the binaries of individual and collective and active and passive. Even though the concept of connective memory is closely tied to technological and digital developments, it is important to note that it inspires memory research to investigate both online and offline connections. Connective memory has also been an influential concept in José van Dijck’s more wide-ranging conceptualization of a “culture of connectivity.” Her conceptualization not only engages with remembering but also deals with the connected society as a whole, and it provides a critical perspective on technology and social media platforms.

In times of democratic decline, unanimous choices and approaches and the idea of a singular best practice may be less conducive to democracy and sustainability. Therefore, the aim of this study is to suggest a multivocal approach to education and teaching by studying the question of what may characterise teaching in preschool for a sustainable future. The knowledge contribution and originality of the article is evident in the introduction, method, and results. In abductive analyses, models can summarize what we need to know and teach in pursuit of the creation of open life chances for every child. The results show that didaktik models are open and can provide support for teachers and leaders to consider and base informed decisions on, as well as to motivate their didaktik choices based on scientific foundations and proven experiences. Multivocal didaktik mo-delling intends to open up teaching—cultivating collaboration in preschool for a sustainable future in a world of change. In conclusion, we recommend cultivating an orientation (1) between knowledges, values and didaktik/education/special education in the pursuit of the creation of conditions for good education for all children; (2) between teaching realities and scientific foundations, which are founded in a critical–reflective didaktik, with a choice of direction in relation to an uncertain future; and (3) between continuity, progression and teaching adventures—which can include consolidating, deepening, broadening, raising, and cultivating knowledge and values for multivocality, democracy and sustainability in teaching realities. In the future the concept of multivocal didaktik modelling can be studied in relation to complex teaching realities as in a teaching universe or a teaching multiverse.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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,

Mot bakgrund av kunskapsläget är vi förvånade över att regeringen och Sverigedemokraterna avser att driva igenom att Sverige ska genomföra en folkräkning utifrån nya metoder, skriver Baki Cakici, lektor vid IT-universitetet i Köpenhamn, och Hanna Sjögren biträdande lektor i pedagogik vid Malmö universitet.

Even though research on digital citizenship has expanded considerably during the last decade (Öztürk, 2021), there is still a limited body of research on teacher education and digital citizenship, especially when it comes to pre-service teachers’ ideas of how to teach digital citizenship in primary school (Lauricella et al., 2020; Richardson et al., 2021; Öztürk, 2021). This paper therefore aims to contribute with research on teacher education and digital citizenship through exploring how pre-service teachers reflect upon and make didactic choices when designing digital citizenship education for primary school pupils, in the context of a university course centered on critical, safe, responsible, and creative use of digital media (Hobbs, 2011; Öztürk, 2021).

The paper uses philosophical, pedagogical, and didactical perspectives (Bergson 1907/2007; Sjöström & Tyson, 2022) to 1) define some challenges and opportunities in designing digital citizenship education in teacher education, and 2) perform a qualitative text-analysis of 50 student papers in which pre-service teachers designed and motivated project-based teaching promoting digital literacy within Swedish leisure-time centers (children aged 6-12 years).

Preliminary results point towards both challenges and opportunities specifically concerning taking into account children’s own meaning-making processes in the design of digital citizenship education. Results also show how a majority of the pre-service teachers included safe and responsible use of digital media in their project proposals and motivated their didactic choices based on children’s use of social media and their mediatized everyday lives. They constructed original learning activities in which, for instance, teachers and pupils jointly create TikTok videos and discuss what constitutes responsible online communication.

This paper is relevant to Nordic educational research as it advances both philosophical and didactical understanding of digital citizenship education in teacher education. The paper thereby contributes with knowledge on both practical and theoretical challenges and opportunities of digitalization and technologies in education.

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.

Abduktionens successiva, öppna hållning är inte självklart kompatibel med på förhand teoretiskt avgränsade och målstyrda forskningsprojekt, men kan verka inom dessa för teoretiskt och metodologiskt nytänkande. Ambitionen med den här artikeln är att beskriva abduktion och argumentera för dess plats i samhällsvetenskaplig forskning med stöd i Charles Sanders Peirces idé om kunskap som ett socialt och kontinuerligt element. Artikeln utgår från Peirces treställiga tankelära och den kontinuerliga rörelsen mellan känsla och idé för att särskilt betona känslans betydelse för människans lärande. Hennes förmåga att uppmärksamma förnimmelser av betydelse för ny kunskapsbildning knyter Peirces tankelogik till abduktion och forskarens sensitiva uppmärksamhet på omvärldens fenomen. Några för abduktionen specifika kännetecken, såsom uppmärksammandet av det märkliga, frågans successiva uppkomst, och den lekfulla spekulationen, beskrivs för att sedan iscensättas och exemplifieras i ett forskningsexempel. Den lekfulla och öppna hållningen till trots visar exemplet att abduktion öppnar upp för grundade riktningar och hypoteser. Med stora rörelser prövas generella begreppp för sin kapacitet att belysa kvaliteter av betydelse för barns sociala och påtagligt rörliga kunskapsbildning. Tillsammans bildar begreppen grund för förklaringar eller möjliga abduktioner om pedagogiska tillfällen. 

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

This literature review describes and analyses 19 peer-reviewed scholarly articles published between 2015 and 2020 that focus on the notion of the Anthropocene in early childhood education. The review is guided by two pairs of analytical concepts stemming from environmental history and the sociology of childhood. The results of the analyses are presented under the themes ‘entangled children of the Anthropocene’ and ‘extraordinary children of the Anthropocene’. These two categories of children recur in the reviewed articles, and a discussion follows about how these children pose different challenges to the purpose of education in the Anthropocene. The review concludes by noting research gaps in the current literature that would benefit from further analysis in future studies in the early childhood education field.

 Abductive analysis in collaborative research: A focus on didaktik1 models in preschool

Abductive analysis is linked to the concept of abduction, which focuses oninterpretive processes that create meaning, moving between empirics andtheory on encountering unexpected results. In addition to the fact thatabduction can deepen and change current research in pedagogy and didaktik,abduction can also constitute an approach that is related to democracy.Shedding light on abductive analysis in collaborative research is important inthat it regards all participants in collaborative research as knowledge users andpotential knowledge developers, potentially leading to multivocal traces in theanalysis. In this way, the possible multivocality of collaborative research holdsdemocratic potential. In addition, democracy can be found in abductive analysis that results in didaktik models that unite multivocal practices and theories.In this context, there is a need for abductive studies conducted over longperiods of time in collaboration between, for example, preschool teachers,leaders and researchers.The article provides examples of abductive analysis tried out incollaborative research in two large-scale research and development (R&D)programs. The programs were implemented over a six-year period, with twoconsecutive three-year periods between 2016-2018 and 2018-20212. Theempirical data in the R&D programs were generated over long periods of timeand assessed against several theoretical perspectives, in line with abductiveanalysis.There is a shortage of abductive studies focused on practice-based didaktikmodels in preschool. This article gives examples of abductive analysis thatresult in "multivocal didaktik modeling". Multivocality entails multiple voicesbeing included in both practice and theory. In the R&D programs, the participants were involved in question formulation, method design, datageneration, co-exploratory conversations, and analysis. Didaktik models canbe both verbal and graphic. Two classic didaktik models are didaktikquestions and the didaktik triangle. The models can provide support forteachers and leaders to make didaktik choices.This article reveals the contribution of abductive analysis to thedevelopment of multivocal practical-theoretical models in collaborativeresearch. The purpose is to provide knowledge about abductive analysis incollaborative research, with a focus on didaktik models in preschool.When teaching was written into Sweden's governing document for preschool in 2010, an uncertainty emerged as to what teaching could mean inpreschool. In response, it was determined that education and teaching shouldrest on a scientific basis and proven experience. It turned out that there wasa deficit of both teaching-oriented, Nordic research and of proven experienceof teaching in preschool. A mismatch emerged between governing documents, research and practice. This mismatch was a driving force behind theR&D programs in which preschool teachers and leaders, from 18 municipalities and school authorities, raised questions about what characterizesteaching in preschool.Abduction, as described in the article, requires that we pay attention tonuances in empirical material and try approaches that in being multivocal atboth the action level and the (meta) theoretical level are democratic in nature.In the complex reality of teaching in a preschool, a multivocal rather thanunilateral approach favors nuance over reduction and creates conditions forcontributing knowledge at both the action and the (meta) theoretical levelabout the complex nature of reality. In other words, the logic of abductioncan add a critical, nuanced and openly change-oriented dimension to didaktikcollaborative research within the framework of democracy.The contribution of this article lies in abductive analysis having been triedout and proven to be feasible in large-scale R&D programs over a six-yearperiod. Abductive analysis in collaborative research makes it possible togenerate research findings that include empirical examples, proven conceptsand didaktik models. Having the abductive analysis replicated in two R&Dprograms strengthens credibility, generalizability and usability. All in all, theabductive analysis resulted in “multivocal didaktik modeling”, which could berelated to democracy.

NOTES1In this article the German word “didaktik” (with use of the letter k) is used, whichis common in continental Europe and the Nordic countries. This term is distinctfrom the Anglo-Saxon word “didactics,” which refers to a narrow way of teaching,for example, learning-outcome oriented teaching. In the article, collaborative research refers to research conducted in R&D programs(ibid). The article uses the third-person plural “we” instead of “I” to emphasize thatdidaktik models have been tried out in collaboration.

2 The article has been written within the framework of the R&D programs Teachingin preschool (Undif) and Multivocal teaching in preschool (Fundif) in acollaboration between 18 Swedish municipalities, the independent Institute forinnovation, research and development in school and preschool (Ifous) and MalmöUniversity (Mau). The study was co-financed by Mau and the 18 municipalities. Theresearch group thanks everyone who participated and contributed with funds,materials and views in analysis and discussions. The peer-reviewed article in thisthemed issue is based on a scientific report that was reviewed by Professor StigBroström at Aarhus University in Denmark (Vallberg Roth et al., 2021).

In his article ‘An Ameliorative Analysis of the Concept of Education’, Jack Marley-Payne sets out to provide an ameliorative analysis of the concept ‘education’. Marley-Payne draws an important distinction between what he labels the ‘Broad’ and the ‘Narrow’ account of education. His conclusion is that an ameliorative conceptual analysis of education favours the narrow account. The main argument is that a narrow approach, tightly connected to formal schooling, provides a better basis for pursuing an egalitarian agenda. Contrary to Marley-Payne, I will argue that an amelioration of the concept education need not favour either a wide notion or a narrow notion. I believe that there are other alternatives to choose from, that in fact leads to an amelioration of what education can and ought to mean. The problem with Marley-Payne’s conclusion is thus, not only that it builds upon a false dichotomy but also that it is not emancipatory enough. We need an amelioration that is inclusive rather than exclusive. 

Artikeln baseras på en delstudie i ett FoU-program1 som syftar till att beskriva och vidareutveckla kunskap om vad som kan känneteckna undervisning i förskola. Programmet och delstudien genomförs i samverkan mellan förskollärare, ledare och forskare. Medverkande utprövar fyra teoriinformerade undervisningsupplägg varav föreliggande artikel fokuserar ett didaktiskt och poststrukturellt informerat upplägg. Artikeln vägleds av frågan: Vad kan känneteckna innehåll i undervisning utifrån ett didaktiskt och poststrukturellt informerat undervisningsupplägg med fokus på musik och matematik i förskolan? Artikeln syftar specifikt till att pröva begreppen ”lyssnandets didaktik” och ”rytmatik”. En didaktiskt orienterad abduktiv analys har genomförts. Resultatet öppnar för att den innehållskombination som begreppet rytmatik erbjuder kan prövas som alternativ till mer ämnesinriktad musik- och/eller matematikundervisning där grundtonen för flerstämmig undervisning är lyssnandets didaktik. 

Due to the pandemic situation in 2020 the ERME summer school (YESS10) was designed for an online format using a conference system. Our design choices were based on previous experiences with YESS and the use of the research pentagon as a tool to think about research. This paper elaborates theoretically and empirically the specification of the concept of instrumental orchestration of the pentagon use through its rhythmic implementation into the summer school. Research results indicate that this specification had two main effects: The students described their instrumentation of the pentagon as a structuring tool in various ways. The most relevant pentagon use for the students' experience of growing expertise was listening to and observing how the others used the pentagon.

Immigrant parents' views about mathematics education are rarely investigated, yet these are likely to affect their relationship to early childhood education and care (ECEC) and potentially their adopted country. In this study, Polish parents, who had immigrated to Norway, were surveyed about their views about mathematics education for young children, including what was made available in ECEC institutions in Poland and in Norway. We investigated whether the responses showed that parents' views about what is mathematics in early childhood and how it should be taught or learnt could be related to parents' considerations of the power and authority linked to their position as immigrants. The results have implications for multicultural ECEC and policy makers.