Efter Bolognareformen 2007 blev den svenska högskolesektorn föremål för en ny form av styrning av undervisning och lärande. Med utgångspunkt i Blooms taxonomi, SOLO-taxonomin och Biggs modell constructive alignment gjordes undervisningen mål- och resultatstyrd på ett sätt som skulle vara säkert, transparent och utvärderingsbart. Detta antogs erbjuda både lärare och studenter en hög grad av klarhet kring kursers innehåll, krav, förväntningar och utfall. Det nya idealet har tagit sin mest konkreta form i kursplanen, som nu utformas minutiöst i enlighet med constructive alignments regler och logiker.

Syftet med denna studie är att – utifrån en närläsning av Biggs modell, kursplaner och programmatiska texter från svenska universitet – analysera detta fenomen som en styrningsteknologi. Med Michel Foucaults maktanalytik (analytics of governmnet) och Carol Bacchis WPR-ansats som teoretiska och metodologiska utgångspunkter syftar studien till att analysera den vision av undervisning och lärande – samt den sammanflätade subjektstyrningen – som konstitueras i projektet constructive alignment.

This article examines early childhood educational space as a technology of government through Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia. Drawing on this concept, the analysis juxtaposes and interrogates different perspectives on space, thereby advancing its conceptualization as an object of critical inquiry. The analysis is based on nine contemporary research articles focusing on children and processes of subjectification in early childhood education. These studies are examined as empirical cases in which knowledge and power are produced, negotiated, and contested. The analysis shows that the preschool functions as a site of overlapping yet distinct spatial arrangements. Such a heterotopic configuration enables multiple—and at times contradictory—processes of subjectification, through which children are simultaneously constituted as autonomous agents and regulated learners. Thus, mobilizing the concept of heterotopia makes it possible to analyze constructions of space not merely as context but as a dynamic site that actively participates in the reproduction and transformation of power relations in early childhood education.

Research topic/aim: Following the Bologna reform in 2007, higher education in Sweden became a target for a new kind of governing of teaching and learning. Based on Bloom’s taxonomy, the SOLO taxonomy and Bigg’s concept of “constructive alignment”, teaching andlearning became goal-oriented in a way that was supposed to be secure, transparent and possible to evaluate, thereby helping both teachers and students to attain a high level of clarity about the contents, requirements, expectations and outcomes of any particular course given at the university. The purpose of this paper is, to study this phenomenon as a technology of government.

Theoretical framework: Theoretically I draw from the work of Michel Foucault and the concept of governmentality and what Mitchel Dean (2010) has described as "an analytics of government". This theoretical framework has four interlocking dimensions which very briefly can be described as: 1. Problematization (or visibilities), 2. The practices and techniques of governing that emerge in relation to the problematizations, 3. The forms of knowledge that have been erected by governmental practices, techniques, and relationships of various sorts, 4. The subjectivities, or identities, produced by certain problematizations, forms of knowledge and specific techniques of governing. I also draw on Carol Bacchi's (2009) WPR-analysis for problematization.

Methodological design: These dimensions described above are intimately connected to methadological issues. Broadly speaking, the method is geared towards analyzing the general logic and rationality of the texts studied, to identify discursive regularities, patterns, and key themes (Kendall & Wickham, 1999). Certain questions about governing the subject thus come to the fore; such as: What is the problematic of governing, that which is questioned and should be changed? Which subjectivities seem to be desired or undesired? Through which means, or what methods and techniques, are these subjectivities to be shaped and what style of governing is involved in this? (Axelsson & Qvarsebo, 2017; Dean, 2009).

Expected conclusions/findings: CA rests on the idea that the learning process that the student should go through can be written out in detail through course syllabus. It is a management of learning in which the learning sought by the student is assumed to be identical to that of the syllabus. This can be questioned. Unexpected learning and subjective learning are thus overshadowed in this type of management of learning. CA presents a learning that wants to create security and eliminate cognitive and emotional insecurities in the students. It has an appearance of rationality and predictability and seeks to eliminate elements of uncertainty in the learning process. Students are assured that if they familiarize themselves with the syllabus, the criteria and forms of assessment, learning will follow as a natural consequence. All of this can be problematized and questioned.

Relevance to Nordic educational research: Since the CA thinking has become almost hegemonic at European universities, includig the Nordic Universities, I think that the relevance för Nordic educational research is quite obvious. This study can be part of a process of questening certain things that are taken for granted within Higher education but that are not neccesarily helpful for substantial teaching and learning.

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

In just a little over 100 years, children's living conditions together with the very notion of childhood have changed dramatically in the Western world. Child labor has been banned and institutions for care and schooling have become the primary life world of children rather than the farm and the household. Children are today perceived as individuals in their own right, as maturing through various developmental stages, and as having certain undeniable social and legal rights in relation to both parents and society. This development can of course be thought of in terms of humanitarian progress. But alongside this development we can also observe an increase in the monitoring and governing of children's lives, to the point that childhood can be thought of as ‘the most intensely governed sector of personal existence’ (Rose, 1999: 123). Against the backdrop of humanistic development on the one hand and an increasing governing of childhood on the other, this chapter explores the historical transformations of childhood through the lens of a few overarching themes: industrialization and urbanization, children's path into public life and citizenship, changed notions of the child's nature and being, and the scientification of the child.

In recent years, many programs and manuals for ‘norm criticism´ have been produced for schools in Sweden. In this article, I situate norm criticism and norm critical pedagogics within discourses of values and norms, legal rights and policies through a close reading of the material produced for the Swedish pre-school. I explore the targets, modes, and techniques of governing the child through norm critical programs and practices. I give special attention to the moral regime inscribed in the norm critical project and how the desirable and undesirable subject is constructed. By problematizing norm critical pedagogics, the article propositions them (contrary to its advocates’ claims) as doing much more than widening social norms, creating tolerance for diversity, or furthering freedom and authenticity. Norm criticism attempts to reshape power-relations, assert the moral authority of professionals, and produce a state-approved social subject.

This article examines the dominant discourses of behaviour and discipline in the debate on schooling and the conduct of school pupils in Swedish professional teacher journals between 1946 and 1962, the formative years of the Swedish comprehensive school. Drawing from the theoretical framework of discourse, governmentality and the fabrication of the subject developed by Michel Foucault, the fabrication and governing of the school pupil is highlighted and analysed. The findings of the study are related to historical research of the period as well as Foucauldian studies where a historical shift of perspectives on discipline and behaviour in the school have been proposed. The result is a detailed analysis of the fabrication and governing of the subject within the dominant discourses of behaviour and discipline during the period, as well as a critical nuancing of the idea of this historical shift.