his paper reports on a two-year project focusing on health com-municators working with refugees in Sweden. By employing parti-cipatory action research and the theory of practice architectures, the study examines a health information practice for newly arrived refugees and highlights its potentials and constraints. The joint meetings that occurred between the participating researcher and the health communicators during the project were the primary source for collaboration, development, and data collection. The findings show that perceptions of limitations due to existing power structures initially hindered the group from experimenting with new activities for the groups of refugees. However, as the communicators gained experience, the conversations in the joint meeting practice changed, which facilitated the action research process. By challenging common working methods, which were initially perceived as causes for concern, the communicators recog-nised that the concretisation of the health information they wanted to convey could also function as a useful pedagogical tool. The analysis shows that, despite constraints during the working process, the participatory action research practice created a democratic work process which empowered all participants. Collective talks in the communicative space nurtured an architecture that generated new ideas and made it possible to leave the classroom-based teaching situation for new ways of learning about health and physical activity. The findings also show that participatory action research made the communicators aware of their capacity to imple-ment change by offering various movement-based activities that benefited the participating refugees and increased their agency and empowermentT

The Education Inc. research project uncovered the use of lobbying by private entities in the Swedish school system, which was unexpected and raised concerns. While lobbying in the EU is well-researched and regulated, the study of lobbying in education in Sweden and other countries remains uncertain. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of lobbying in education on an international level, including how it is defined and utilized. This knowledge will inform a forthcoming larger qualitative study. This study includes a literature review using scoping review as a method and a content analysis of 52 articles related to lobbying within education. The main findings show that research in this field is primarily focused on the Global North, and there is a significant lack of research from other regions. Additionally, there is no prominent figure or strong research group within the field. The selected articles primarily address the efforts of interest groups to empower vulnerable groups, with topics such as social justice, civil rights, activism, minority groups, literacy, and reading skills frequently explored. The most significant result of this study is however the lack of systematic and fundamental research on lobbying in education. This is concerning because private actors have a significant influence on education through lobbying, informing policy directions and decisions, despite the potential impact on fragile democratic procedures and core institutions in society.

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. 

The overarching aim of the present study is to investigate such an invisible object; namely, schoolbags and how their contents function in the lives of pupils between the privacy of the home and the societal world of schools. A sociomaterial approach is used to understand schoolbags as objects that enable certain actions and norms. The uniqueness of the study calls for a more basic approach on the analytical level, carefully investigating and describing the content of the schoolbags as well as their context seeing them as frozen moments of processes. The data material consists of photographs depicting contents of 16 German satchels, which were analysed alongside a description of exterior appearances of schoolbags and the material context of the classroom. The findings show that the function of the schoolbags exceeds their obvious transportation purposes, and that they are complex, entangled objects in the construction of "schooling" and "the pupil".

There are objects that are so strongly attached with a situation that they become hard to distinguish from the situation itself. They “become invisible”, although crucial for the emergence and the actual becoming of the situation.

The overarching aim is to investigate such an invisible object, i.e., schoolbags and how their contents function in the lives of pupils. Of special interest is the connection between the privacy of the home and the public, societal world of school and classroom. Whilst earlier studies have focused on ergonomics this study aims at contributing to an understanding of the complex functions of schoolbags, providing new perspectives on their pedagogical and social role.

Socio-materialist theory is used as an ontological stance understanding schoolbags as objects that establish and maintain actions and norms in a given social context. The uniqueness of the study calls for a more basic approach on the analytical level, carefully investigating and describing the content of the schoolbags as well as their context, i.e., the German school system. The study’s original point of departure has been a genuine curiosity for and interest in the school bag’s (educational) place particularly in the German context.

The study is thus deeply rooted in the data material which consists of photographs of the contents of 16 German satchels provided by middle-school pupils. The contents were unpacked, carefully arranged and photographed by helpers at the school. The resulting photographs are carefully analysed alongside a description of exterior appearances of schoolbags as well as the material context of the classroom based on results from earlier research, both by the involved researchers and others.

Findings show that the function of the schoolbags exceeds their obvious transportation purposes, and that they are a complex, entangled object in the construction of “schooling” and “the pupil”. At the same time they contain anchors to the private family lives of the pupils, and such time that are intimate and deeply personal. The findings call for more research on invisible items within education and the role they play when transporting not only pens and paper but norms and values.

This paper explores educational trade fairs as part of the contemporary networked governance of public sector education. The focus is on the forms and functions of network governance in educational trade fairs and how different powers of private and public networking actors and ideas are played out, including the wider implications for education. Based on an event ethnographic case study of a Nordic educational technology fair, the study identifies three significant forms of how network governance powers are constituted: through consensual culture, blurred public-private actor roles, and market individualised addresses. Together this network governance has de-politicising effects that mask power imbalances and evoke democratic challenges for public sector education. The paper discusses how diffused market networking powers shape a national public education sector, and the forms of resistance and responsibilities within such governance. The merits of in-depth process-based event ethnography, which includes social media data, are raised and problematised.

This chapter gives an intimate account on the research process when participating in and gathering data at a four-day school development trip to London, England, arranged by a large private educational technology company from Sweden. Using a sociomaterial perspective and the war paint metaphor the chapter reflects on ethics, alcohol, clothes and identity discussing camouflage, appearance and disappearance. The chapter shows how researchers and participants appearances are multiple and contingent, always relational and never completely in their own hands. It also shows that these processes are linked to policy processes. Moreover, the chapter displays a new layer in policy networking within education whose informal characteristics are different from traditional policy networking used to be studied in earlier research.

In this paper we re-turn(Barad, 2014) parts of the diffractive analyses conducted in a research project on science and gender in preschool (Günther-Hanssen, 2018, 2020; Günther-Hanssen, Danielsson, & Andersson, 2020). In our first re-turning, we explore how a swing and scientific phenomenain the data co-created the knowledge construction in entanglements with the researcher. To do this, we engage with how embodiment and re-actualized experiences of swinging came to matter. We then re-turn how certain events in the data are alwayspart of other events,both in time and space. For this task, we elaborate with writing different situations from the data through one another. As we continue re-turning the analysis, new diffraction patterns emergewith each turn. By the end of the paper, our diffractive writings and readings have been re-turned into explanations of how pendulums can be usedtothink-withand approach gendering in preschool.

The digitalization of the school has been an ongoing process for over 50 years. Often, investments in digital technology have been argued for in relation towards the future, mainly to a future society and working life where new knowledge (linked to the new digital technology) is needed. However, the expectations associated with digital technology have rarely been met and the recurring initiatives have, after evaluations, been followed by a debate on failure, which is not infrequently directed at the school and its staff (Eriksson- Zetterqvist et al., 2006). The concept of disruptive innovation taken from marketing theory has been used by Christo Sims (2017) to describe this phenomenon. There are signs that AI in education (AIED), is the next major digital innovation directed to schools, discursively described as a disruptive innovation with great potential for improving, changing and streamlining education (Sims, 2017). This presentation reports from a literature review that aims to explore the discourses that surround AIED and the hopes that are put into education through AIED. The review will focus on research from the last decades in the area of AIED, to investigate hopes and anticipations tied to AI and what problems AI should solve in education. Methodologically, the literature review will start with a systematic analysis of peer-review articles that will quantify the articles in different categories. The articles will thereafter be analysed with a theoretical framework labelled by Bacchi (2012) as a “What’s the problem represented to be” – analysis. Expected finding could be related to the fact that digitalisation of education has more than many other fields within been influenced by corporate edu-businesses (Ideland, Jobér, & Axelsson, 2021; Player-Koro, Bergviken Rensfeldt & Selwyn, 2018; Williamson, 2015). One hypothesis is therefore that financial arguments could be found rather than possibilities for AIED to increase equality, democracy, and diversity (Dixon-Román et al., 2019; Hsratinksy et al., 2019). E.g., have democracy become a commodity to trade within the ed-tech business? The results from the analyses will be related to the Nordic context and the Nordic steering documents and what they state regarding digitalization in general and AIED more specifically. The conclusion focuses on what kind of narratives that are brought forward in order to identify further research needs but also discuss how this shape and form the future ed-tech field.

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

Den utbildningsvetenskapliga kärnan är gemensam för alla lärarstuderande i Sverige och ska innehålla de grundläggande kunskaper och färdigheter som blivande förskollärare och lärare behöver. Den fungerar därmed som en gemensam bas och utgör i förlängningen grunden för ett gemensamt professionsspråk.

Antologin beskriver en bred palett av teorier och perspektiv från olika kunskapsdiscipliner, däribland sociologiska, psykologiska, didaktiska, pedagogiska och naturvetenskapliga kunskapsområden. Boken diskuterar också hur vetenskap kan läsas och förstås i ett kapitel som behandlar vetenskaplig läskunnighet. 

Kursboken Vetenskapliga teorier för lärare riktar sig i första hand till lärarstuderande, men kan med fördel läsas också av aktiva lärare och VFU-handledare. Teorier är redskap både för vetenskaplig kunskapsproduktion och för att tolka och förstå såväl kunskaper som egna erfarenheter. På så sätt är teoretiskt kunnande en väsentlig del i det som lärare i en utbildning som ska vila på vetenskaplig grund och beprövad erfarenhet behöver erövra. 

I denna antologi har vi samlat en mängd teorier som är betydelsefulla för förskolans och skolans verksamhet, och i synnerhet de som gäller undervisning, fostran och barngruppens eller klassrummets ledarskap. I det här kapitlet beskriver vi de olika funktioner som teorier oftast har i det utbildningsvetenskapliga fältet och ger en introduktion till boken och hur du som läsare kan närma dig olika teoriers begreppsväldar. 

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

During the 00s, the hiring of private tutors became a common and profitable practice in Sweden. The aim of this article is to illuminate educational policy space and policy processes through the case of private tuition practice in Sweden. The article offers a critical analysis and illuminates discourses that build up a private tuition network with shared ways of acting and talking, contributing to policy in the making. The data foremost consist of newspaper articles, interviews and websites and were analysed with network ethnography and the What’s the problem represented to be? approach. The analysis shows a network involving human and non-human actors highlighting an education that is in a crisis – a message underpinned with assumptions that suit the network’s needs, thus becoming indispensable for actions. The network occupies space, and through problematisation, determine what is considered to be significant in education and society, in Sweden as well as elsewhere.

Description of the symposium A general aim for school systems around the world is to prepare future citizens to participate in and contribute to society. In most western countries, this is upheld and developed within notions and practices of democracy and citizenship. Consequently, there is a close relationship between education and democracy. In times of increased global movements and diversity among students, issues of democracy therefore gain further attention, becoming a high-stake concept, recently seen in for example the new OECD framework on Global competence. At the same time, marketisation and privatisation of education rapidly change the foundations of schooling (Ball, 2009; Rizvi, & Lingard, 2010). This could be understood as parts of global transformations and trends that in many cases are supported by neoliberal visions, visions that reshape educational systems (Beach, 2010; Popkewitz, 2008). This rearrangement influences all parts of schooling and creates consequences on many levels. To name a few, the rearrangement involves profitable businesses, competitive and governing structures, digitalisation, rearranging of decision-making and responsibility, and renegotiation of discourses, positions and processes (Ball, 2009; Bunar, & Ambrose, 2016; Dovemark & Erixon Arreman, 2017; Verger, Lubienski, & Steiner-Khamsi, 2016). Furthermore, new ways of acting and communicating can be seen when policy actors, private companies, NGOs, school leaders, researchers, and lobby groups collaborate in entangled networks resulting in blurring boundaries and interwoven practices (Ball, 2018; Simons, Lundahl, & Serpieri, 2013). This in turn impacts on accountability, risk-taking, responsibility and transparency. Thus, educational spaces become fundamentally transformed and issues of democracy, societal problems, citizenship, accessibility and the like need to be renegotiated in relation to a changed educational landscape. This symposium will illuminate and discuss these changes and their consequences. For example, what happens with decision-making processes, accessibility, diversity, and political actions? What logics becomes changed, manifested or inscribed? What can be marketed, and becomes possible to sell? Could one say that citizenship and democracy have become commodities, something to trade? These questions will be addressed at the symposium alongside the discussion of the role of educational research. We stress that researchers’ engagement in education are of great importance in our European context and have the possibility to affect schools, national and international policy-makers, so called edu-preneurs and all actors involved in education. The symposium consists of contributions representing a wide range of perspectives and approaches taken by researchers from Sweden, Finland, Norway, New Zealand, and Brazil. Consequently, the symposium will mirror a variety of national and educational contexts all with the dual focus on the theme of the symposium and the theme of the conference. Many of the researchers in the symposium belong to a newly formed network called Researchers on education and marketization (the REM network) founded within the Swedish research project Education Inc. The network now consists of nineteen researchers from three countries and eight universities that in different ways problematise and scrutinise marketisation and education and the urgent and necessary issues that evolves in when education becomes marketised and new logics change the conditions for schooling. The symposium has two parts. The first part starts with an introduction given by Anna Jobér, coordinator and co-founder of the REM network followed by presentation of six papers in two sessions. They are arranged in order to give a thought-proving and interesting symposium regarding the variety of research project, methodological and theoretical perspectives as well as cultural contexts. Finally, the symposium is wrapped up by a discussant, Professor Marie Brennan https://www.vu.edu.au/contact-us/marie-brennan.

Research topic/aim The opened up of the tax-financed welfare system for profit-making through a neoliberal economic reorganization of the public sector has meant that the educational sector in many countries nowadays is legally, economically opened up to private sector participation (Beach, 2010). A commodification of both services and resources has followed and a lucrative educational market has been established. A blur of actors from both the public- and the private sector, are participating in contemporary thinking about public education and education reforms. This has become particularly evident in relation to the digitalisation of schools (Williamson, 2015). To organize education trade fairs where all actors meet, where goods, services and ideas are offered for sale to schools has become one in the line of lucrative business ideas. In Sweden is SETT the leading event, organized by a private company together with a partnership of teacher unions, state-, and private actors. The fair is thus a complex policy event of different actors with different agendas that are held together by a policy narrative targeting teachers and school leaders, usually wrapped up as marketable applications and successful methods (Player-Koro et al., 2017). Few studies have scrutinized this kind of policy arenas and their consequences for education. The aim with this presentation is to present the initial findings from a basic research study on the education trade fair SETT Syd. The aim with the study is to investigate the different roles of non- state and state actors during the event. Theoretical framework Inspired by Latour (1987), a theoretical understanding of policy processes as policy assemblages is used. To describe the process of assembling, disassembling and reassembling, two concepts developed by Latour (1987), ‘matter of concerns’ and ‘matter of facts’ will be used. Methodological design Event ethnography, an approach to ethnography that emphasizes the development of theoretical and practical descriptions of events is used (Cook and Ward, 2012). Expected conclusions/findings New actors in the educational sector means that new discourses of education are distributed, embedded and naturalized. Hopefully will this study make visible how these discourses are 670 negotiated, translated and depoliticized by actors with different agendas towards education, and at length how practices and thoughts comes to be inscribed into society. Relevance to Nordic educational research Sweden stands out as a country where market-based reforming of the education system has been the most aggressive and radical, strongly influenced by a globalized neoliberal agenda. This study trying to understand what consequences this will have for education, democracy and those working in the educational sector. Beach D. (2010) Neoliberal Restructuring in Education and Health Professions in Europe: Questions of Global Class and Gender. Current Sociology 58: 551-569. Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action. How to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Player-Koro C, Bergviken Rensfeldt A and Selwyn N. (2017) Selling tech to teachers: education trade shows as policy events. Journal of Education Policy: 1-22. Williamson B. (2015) Political computational thinking: policy networks, digital governance and ‘learning to code’. Critical Policy Studies: 1-20.

At the moment, multi-national IT-companies like Google increase their engagement in public education, e.g. through learning platforms organizing classrooms worldwide into digitized personalized learning. This development not unique for education; rather it means a global transformation of the whole public sector. We claim that there is an irony in this transformation, on the one hand personalized learning is culturally elevated, on the other hand the “googlification” of students means a global harmonization of how and what students are supposed to learn characterized by the ideals of the IT-business itself. Does personalization through digital tools really mean that more students are included, or is the idea excluding in itself? This paper discusses how Google’s learning platform G Suite for Education organizes what students should do and learn in school and what kinds of future citizens that are supposed to be shaped. How are student subjectivities made up concerning what to learn and how to live? How is the idea of the “googlified” student embedded in power relations concerning race and social class? The study builds on interviews with 15 persons selling and implementing learning platforms and analyses of an online course for teachers, through which you can become a Google-certified teacher. Theoretically it is inspired from studies on how education is governed through multilayered networks involving public authorities as well as business companies, humans as well as material actors. Furthermore, Haraway’s cyborg helps us to unpack the entanglement of politics, technological imaginaries, race and class in G Suite for Education and invite to a symposium discussion of novel ways of exploring the complexities of the digital classroom. The results show how entrepreneurial discourses organize school, through the digital tools in themselves as well as the people who sell and implement them. There is a strong emphasis on “soft” skills as innovation, collaboration and creativity. Personalized learning, with help from e.g. AI-assisted learning and sophisticated algorithms is expressed as a possibility to include “everyone” in a global entrepreneurial project. Individualization and harmonization become two sides of the same coin. Important to discuss is what it means in terms of inclusion and exclusion of different kinds of students? Is the personalization in fact a new kind of standardization excluding students not fitting into the model of the entrepreneur?

A new notion: The discussion in this presentation stems from a frustration regarding things, objects, actors, etc. and how perspective, such as ANT, STS, posthumanism or sociomaterialism can be useful when analysing educational process, and an analysis that, if possible, goes beyond the ontological. The frustration also stems from questions on how, if possible, the perspectives can deal with issues of inequality. But also, can issues on global movements, international trends and so called ‘universal truths’ be dealt with within the above-mentioned perspectives? This presentation suggests the notion pedagogical provenance as one way of open up the perspectives. It could also be a way to open up for future analysis in a more digitalised world, with the need to address issues of big data, storage and documentation, and moreover questions of equality and globalization. Hundred years ago, the organ in the classroom manifested and reproduced certain norms, the type writing machine did something for the way teachers worked. Today, the red mat influences preschool and the circle time. Building on Mol, I therefore assume things and objects as something of importance when thinking, teaching, or criticising. Pedagogical provenance: The word provenance is commonly used to express certain objects contextual and cultural circumstances, its history, birthplace and source. It can also deal with the sequences of ownership, custody and chain of custody, chains of storage, but also feelings and emotions that has been attached to the object. All these things aim to say something about the object’s authenticity, quality, its life cycle, value. Crucial in this process is documentation and narratives brought forward. To the word provenance, I add the word pedagogical, meaning that when talking about pedagogical provenance I will set the object’s provenance in relation to education thus acknowledging things and object as links in historical, cultural, emotional and discursive chains that interplays with and becomes outline in school. A STEM example: Let me give you a brief example from STEM: Science activities in classrooms can in many respects be seen as deriving from academic subjects thus translating academic knowledge into the world of schooling. The value brought into the classroom here through the microscope is authenticity, school science portrayed as a prototype of ‘real’, authentic science. The microscope thus belongs to a long contextual and historical chain of doing science with laboratory methods and documentations that encloses features of science, e.g. a white, male, western construct of the world. Like the Antique roadshow this involves feelings. When seeing a microscope, students at the teacher programme at Malmö University expresses feelings of e.g. inaccessibility, curiosity, excitements. Other words expressed are exploring, discover, cleanliness, purity, Einstein. As stated above, the word Pedagogical accentuate the relation to education, in this case this could be, building on Hultén, addressing school science as a separate and unique activity that has its own history and is subject to forces such as social and political influences. This opens up for analysis on who decide what becomes valuable in education, in what cultural and historical context? What is seemed as quality and authenticity? What and who can be part of science? It also opens up possibilities to do analysis on what knowledge to assess and document. And moreover, the storing of document and data, what, by whom and where? Will it be sold? By whom? To whom? Conclusion : When analysing objects in classrooms from a pedagogical provenance point of view, I believe it is possible to, as Isling Poromaa states, show materialities as structuring forces, crucial components that frame practices and produce values. Speaking with Popkewitz, they become inscription devices that translate and order norms, values and discourses not through the televisions show but through local classroom that can be linked to thoughts, actors and discourses far away, both geographically and temporally, which together produce and stabilize powerful figurations. This includes seeing education from a perspective where, as Fenwick and Edward claim ‘[t]hings circulate in a midst of connection, cultural histories and symbolic values, but they themselves also compel activity’. Things have provenance and exert it and, along with their owners, are put in a chronology of ownership and agency.

This paper will present substantive findings from an event ethnographic study of one large Scandinavian educational technology (ed-tech) trade fair, SETT. Educational fairs and events have become important arenas and policy nodes for an increasing global ed-tech market where products and ideas become demonstrated, promoted and sold and where (inter)national networks of public and private policy actors intersect with local school systems, schools and teachers (Ball 2012). As these event have become integral parts of policy interpretation and translation, they also transform crucial aspects of education (Ball 2016; Menashy 2016). The question is therefore what and how educational ideas and visions are framed through the event? Following this, Is it possible to track any coherent vision/politic of education among the various actors at the event? What role do the different actors believe they have? In relation to each other, to education, to teachers? These questions are addressed through an (event) ethnographic study of one ed-tech trade fair in Sweden. The study is, part of and informed by two larger ethnographic projects, based in two universities. The first project concerns a threeyear ethnographic study of these annual events. This bigger project has analysed and mapped the formation and different aspects of the ed-tech policy networks through the use of networked ethnographic methods (PlayerKoro 2014; Player-Koro and Bergviken Rensfeldt 2017). The second project is a three-year ethnographical investigation of historicizing the present, when studying how private ‘edupreneurial’ actors and logics change the conditions for what counts as good education in Sweden. This particular study explores the 2018 SETT show in Malmö. The paper draws on detailed ethnographic accounts of different actors’ participation in the exhibition hall at the event. The aim, as in most ethnographic studies, is by participating in the event, talking and listening to different actors, to offer a rich means of developing knowledge about the meaning-making processes of actors’ policy enactment (Beach 2010) represented by different schools, businesses, trade unions and government actors. The main finding is that regardless of the sector the actors represent there are not any indepth ideas about society, school or education expressed. Instead the driving force and the main messages are local and expressed in terms of: a) Private actors – their own product b) Trade Unions – their own message c) Municipalities – local school government and their own accomplishments d) Governmental structures (The Swedish Institute for Educational Research and The National Agency of Education) - the mission, their reports Our conclusion is that this creates an atomistic educational policy governance space with blurred boundaries and a complex network, driven by business ideas and economical agendas rather than social ideas about what education should be for the individual, society and democracy. Few studies have scrutinized this kind of educational arena where educational policymaking is taking place, as we argue, in the wake of a neoliberal economic reorganization of the public sector. Ethnographic approaches offer rich opportunities for exploring this arena where educational policy is formed, transformed and disseminated.

This essay uses a sociomaterialist perspective to shed new light on science education in general and scientific inquiry in particular. The focus is on human and non-human actors in science education—the pupil and the microscope. The analysis uses the concepts of figuration, apparatus and phenomenon to trace and illuminate performative figurations in science education. One of the conclusions is that the impact of events in a specific classroom extends far beyond local practices. In addition, it is shown that materialities are structuring forces, the crucial components that organize practices and produce values that in turn influence its members. In order to learn more about education, one has to step outside the immediate confines of the classroom in order to trace practices through assemblages of actors.

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

Background: As an answer to a discourse on a Swedish school in crisis a large edu-political apparatus has been implemented. Arguments on e.g. decreasing results, segregation, and equal opportunities has reinforced a number of actors to enter the educational field – actors here called “edu-preneurs” (Rönnberg, 2017). The actors offer a multitude of products and services and essential parts of everyday schooling thus become outsourced on external actors using education as an arena to reach the core of the society – the children. This process, nurtured by political reforms such as the possibility to profit on public funds (Jober, submitted) has “re-calibrated” the Swedish school – from a government-dominated and unified educational system to an unruly free market (Ball, 2009; Hamilton, 2011). This market and its edu-preneurs will be investigated in the project ‘Education Inc.’, funded by the Swedish Research Council (Ideland, Axelsson, Jobér & Serder, 2016). The project aims to study how private actors and logics change the conditions for what counts as good education. Three forms of commodification of education, outlined by Molnar (2006), will be studied: (1) actors selling to schools; (2) actors selling in schools; and (3) actors buying for schools. In order to create a baseline for the Education Inc. project this paper describes one the first sub studies. This sub study aims to scrutinise foremost actors selling toschool when presenting themselves and engage with the school community at a school fair. Research Questions: The overarching aims of the Education Inc. project is to study under what conditions, in what forms and with which consequences ‘edu-preneurial’ actors engage in Swedish schools. This particular sub study focus on with what objectives do edu-preneurial companies, NGOs and their employees engage in Swedish school. Objectives: The aim of this sub study is to conceptualise and analyse processes on how good intentions and altruistic objectives are used as arguments to justify actors’ place in education. An earlier pre-study (Jobér, submitted) showed that tutoring companies, actors in the educational market, used arguments regarding children with special needs to justify their presence and actions. This pre-study raised a number of questions: Will the companies, whatever good intentions, overlook profit? Are arguments regarding children with special needs used as a lever for businesses to survive and profit rather than to help? Similar has been showed elsewhere (Dovemark & Erixon Arreman, 2017), therefore we claim there is a risk that actors in the educational market will not consider all children as profitable enough. There is therefore a need to scrutinize if money spent (through public funds) will increase profits and exclusion rather than to support inclusion, and in addition, if students with low exchange value fit into a neoliberal market. Theoretical framework: We argue that processes in Sweden, which is a traditionally strong and well-trusted welfare state, have become entangled with neoliberal rationalities (see e.g. Dahlstedt, 2009) and that ways of imagine and practice schooling today are shaped by neoliberal logics (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). The neoliberal state has opened up for a commodification of education (Steiner-Khamsi, 2016) and educational reforms become a way to make up a specific kind of subjectivity (Ong, 2007). The marketization of education is thus not only about earning money, but also about making up meanings and practices of schooling and a certain kind of ideal citizen (Olmedo, Bailey & Ball 2013). This is what Ong (2007) conceptualizes as a neoliberalism which concerns how possible and desirable subjectivities are produced. The questions are what kind of objectives the actors put forward and how this correspond with what kind of desirable subjects that are produced in this neoliberal logic. Method: The sub study presented here will take a closer look at the actors selling to school when they attend a large school fair, SETT, which will take place in Sweden in April. In a pre-study to the larger ‘Education Inc.’ project this kind of educational ‘trade fairs’ has been identified as one of the spaces where policy becomes translated and turned into business ideas (Ideland et al, 2006). Observations will take place at this fair by four researchers. The observations will be written down using an observation scheme. The observations will also include photographs of the showcases and the messages that can be found there. In addition the research team will gather advertisement such as flyers and follow ongoing twitter flows. These data will be reflected on within the research group and finally analysed employing an analytical framework developed from the work by Callon (1986, used by, e.g., Hamilton 2011). The aim with this analysis is to more carefully explore how a problem is articulated through the actors and their relationships i.e. the problematisation moment in Callons work (1986). Callon proposes that translation of actions and actors analytically can be studied as four different moments: Problematization, Interessement, Enrolment, and Mobilization. It is the first step, the problematization moment and how a problem is articulated through the actors and their relationship that is in focus here. The problematization is the moment when actors (such as those the selling to schools at the school fair) or clusters of actors articulate a problem. It often involves a focus on a particular goal or a problem to be solved where the actors locate themselves as gatekeepers and problem solvers. Within the problematisation moment, the analysis can show what problems actors enhance (for example, in schools or in society), how do they want to solve these problems, and the argument that makes them indispensable to the problem and action. With this framework we can thus scrutinise with what kind of intentions and objectives these actors engage in Swedish school. Expected Outcomes: The hypothesis is that the observations conducted at this school fair and its following analyses will give insights in with what objectives and intention edu-preneurial companies, NGOs and their employees engage in Swedish school. Building on a pre-study (Jobér, submitted) and earlier research (e.g. Dovemark & Erixon Arreman) the hypothesis is also that the actors will bring forward a number of altruistic arguments. These might regard supporting the society to decrease widening socioeconomic gaps, including children with special needs, opening possibilities to equal opportunities for all, and reaching out to students living in rural areas of Sweden. However, as shown in above earlier studies, these are complicated arguments, given for example that a number of initiatives in the educational market, such as private tutoring, is not used at all by those with low incomes (Björkman, 2014, 21 November). There are reasons to believe that the expected outcomes from this pre-study not only will show what kind of altruistic objectives the actors use to justify their presence but also bring forward initial data that in forthcoming studies can be used to identify if the actors in educational market desire profits rather than inclusion and equal opportunities for all. References: Ball, S. (2009). Privatising education, privatising education policy, privatising educational research: network governance and the ‘competition state’, Journal of Education policy, 24(1), 83-99. Callon, M. (1986). Elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? London: Routledge, pp 196-233. Clarke, J. (2002). A new kind of symmetry: Actor-network theories and the new literacy studies. Studies in the Education of Adults, 34(2), 107-122. Dahlstedt, M. (2009). Governing by partnerships: dilemmas in Swedish education policy at the turn of the millennium, Journal of Education Policy, 24(6), 787–801. Dovemark, M. & Erixon Arreman, I. (2017). The implications of school marketisation for students enrolled on introductory programmes in Swedish upper secondary education. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 12(1), 1–14. Hamilton, M. (2011). Unruly Practices: What a sociology of translations can offer to educational policy analysis. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(1), 55–75. Ideland, M., Axelsson, T., Jobér, A. & Serder, M. (2016) Helping hands? Exploring school’s external actor-networks. Paper accepted for ECER, Dublin, August 2016. Jobér, A. (submitted). How to become Indispensable: Tutoring Businesses in the Education Landscape. Submitted to Special Issue of Discourse titled Politics by Other Means: STS and Research in Education. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Molnar, A. (2006). The Commercial Transformation of Public Education, Journal of Education Policy, 21(5), 621-640. Olmedo, A., Bailey, P. L., and Ball, S. J. (2013). To Infinity and Beyond…: heterarchical governance, the Teach For All network in Europe and the making of profits and minds. European Educational Research Journal, 12(4), 492–512. Ong, A. (2007). Neoliberalism as a mobile technology. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32(1), 3-8. Rizvi, F. & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. Rönnberg, L. (2017). From national policy-making to global edu-business: Swedish edupreneurs on the move. Journal of Education Policy, 32(2), 234–249. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2016). Standards are good (for) business: standardised comparison and the private sector in education. Globalisation, Societies and Education 14(2).

Research topic/aim: One observed change in the Swedish educational landscape is the increased use of private tutoring companies that provide assistance outside education institutions for a monetary fee. In 2007, private tuition became subject to tax deductions and the possibility to make use of private tuition services increased. Some years later there were discussions on whether to abolish tax deduction and representatives from the industry discussed the issues in newspapers articles. However, the possibility to deduct tax was taken away. Yet, several companies overcame the obstacles and are now well established. This article will analyse how this business became taken for granted asking how assemblage of actors come into being and how negotiations happened in this process. Theoretical framework: This project is informed by actor-network theory (ANT), where the main idea is that facts, thoughts and practices are effects of assemblages of relations between human and/or non-human actors (Latour, 2005). Two notions in the framework are of particular interest: problematisation (Callon, 1986) and obligatory point of passage (OPP) (Gorur, 2015; Hamilton, 2011). The problematisation is interpreted as a moment when actors articulate a problem where actors locate themselves as problem solvers. OPP is seen as a node, an infrastructural point (Hamilton, 2011) where actors align for a certain discourse or practice to happen. The infrastructure creates a node – an OPP – where the flows of initiatives and actions come together which will admit and open up for activities (e.g. private tuition enterprises). Methodological design: The issues were researched through newspaper articles, interviews and websites. In the articles and on the websites, actors such as policy makers and company owners were heard. The tutors were heard through interviews. The data were analysed with the notions problematisation and OPP. Expected conclusions/findings: The analysis show that actors create an infrastructural node with an OPP. Following actors are particular interesting: (1) possibilities for tax deduction, (2) possibilities to profit on public funds, (3) school reforms, and (4) machinations of globalised testing. The actors create a node where, for example, a school in crisis, a discourse cheered by e.g. large-scale assessments, make reforms desirable. The companies are in turn nurtured by benefits such as tax deduction. In this node discourses could be exchanged, an OPP is created, a point through which actors become obligatory to each other. When tax deduction was about to be taken away, several companies put forward a number of problem, problems they stated they could solve. I.e. private tuition companies and their allies inscribe certain problems into education and society, and claim they can solve these problems. Relevance to Nordic educational research: Educational changes concerns not only schooling but also society (Labaree, 2008). This paper shows how the shaping of society also happens outside formal education and with private-market incitement often lacking possibility for accountability. This study confirms that Swedish education becomes a marketplace where governing (Ball, 2009) of education becomes distributed. This article therefore gives insights into the dynamics of the Swedish educational landscape and its consequences.

This study uses sociological perspectives to analyse one of the core practices in science education: schoolchildren’s and students’ laboratory work. Applying an ethnographic approach to the laboratory work done by pupils at a Swedish compulsory school, data were generated through observations, field notes, interviews, and a questionnaire. The pupils, ages 14 and 15, were observed as they took a 5-week physics unit (specifically, mechanics). The analysis shows that the episodes of laboratory work could be filled with curiosity and exciting challenges; however, another picture emerged when sociological concepts and notions were applied to what is a very common way of working in the classroom. Laboratory work is characterised as a social activity that is expected to be organised as a group activity. This entails groups becoming, to some extent, ‘safe havens’ for the pupils. On the other hand, this way of working in groups required pupils to subject to the groups and the peer effect, sometimes undermining their chances to learn and perform better. In addition, the practice of working in groups when doing laboratory work left some pupils and the teacher blaming themselves, even though the outcome of the learning situation was a result of a complex interplay of social processes. This article suggests a stronger emphasis on the contradictions and consequences of the science subjects, which are strongly influenced by their socio-historical legacy.

I den allmänna debatten förs nu en diskussion om vad det är för bild av Sverige som berättas och hur den används i den politiska argumentationen. Men vad är det egentligen för berättelser som brukar berättas om skola och utbildning och vad gör dessa med våra uppfattningar om hur det står till och vad som borde göras? Anna Jobér efterlyser ett kritiskt brukarperspektiv i skoldebatten. (red)

The project aims to understand under what conditions, in what forms and with which consequences non-educational actors engage in schools. It explores how a discourse of Swedish school’s failure is translated in and through different contexts and activities outside the formal edu-political system; “school’s external actor-network”. We ask what it means that parts of education are distributed to diverse actors on a non-regulated, unruly market.

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

In this article I use a fictive microscope and fictive student in a science classroom as a focal point in order to elaborate on matter and things in science education. This paper is a part of a larger book project that aims to critically discuss science education from a Nordic perspective. The microscope and its setting; the science classroom, is chosen since the science subjects and its teacher particularly rely on and use tools and artefacts in their daily practice (Röhl, 2015). However, this practise and the use of things, matter and material in education are according to Fenwick “often missing from accounts of educational processes such as learning. Materials tend to be ignored as part of the backdrop for human action” (ibid, p.141). With a sociomaterialistic approach, this paper opens up educational practices as collective sociomaterial enacments (Fenwick et al, 2015). Following Röhl (2015 and Fenwick et al (2015) this paper elaborates on following questions: What kind of education is configured through and with material objects? How are the range of actors - human and non-human - influencing what is enacted in education? How do some educational practices become stabilized? How do sociomaterial assemblages produce particular identities, discourses and possibilities? The goal therefore, leaning on Barad (2007) is not only to “simply to recognise that both social and material matter, but to examine how they matter” (ibid, p.30). Inspired by writers such as Latour (1999, 2005), Mol (2000), Fenwick (2010, 2011) and Barad (2003, 2007) this paper “focus on materials as dynamic and enmeshed with human activity in everyday practices”(Fenwick et al, 2015, p.143). Material refers here to things, tools and non-human actors (in this case a microscope). Social refers to meanings, desires, discourses and human actors (in this case a student in a science educational discourse). From a sociomaterialistic perspective (as well as ANT and STS) ideas, practices and facts are effects not of one thinker, nor of a specific action. Rather they are effects of assemblages and web of relations between actors, both human and non – human. For example, knowledge building or learning are an effects of joint exercises in assemblages of actors that are co-creators of meaning and knowledge. Realities therefore becomes a products of history, discourses, bodies and many other factors (Gunnarsson, 2015).The assemblages, and the effects of these, travels through time and space and is not one-dimensional nor singular, reality is multiple and created constantly in a myriad of different ways. We exist, according to Haraway (1991) in an ocean of powerful stories and narratives which opens up for new stories and realities to constantly take shape. The microscope and the student for example, are therefore not only passive objects or actors, they represent and create a synthesis of sociohistorical legacies and put in a chain of discourses, knowledge and power issues that comes into being in the classroom. A sociomaterialistic view are of special interest in education since human and non-humans intra-act towards a production of knowledge. Education is therefore understood as a results of an interplay between human and non-humans (Fenwick et al, 2015). In addition, a sociomaterial perspective annul a dichotomised (and reduced) view on education when effects of assemblages moves beyond time and space and beyond the local and global Röhl (2015). Methods/methodology (up to 400 words) Three threads will be followed into webs of actions and actors within earlier research, curricula, websites, analyses of google pictures and youtube-clips. The threads are connected to each other through societal and educational discourses that characterize science education (Carlone, 2003; Lederman, 2008; Lundin & Lindahl, 2014). A sociomaterialistic perspective however demands a “rethinking of causality as entanglements with surprising effects, not linear relations between causes and effects (Fenwick et al, 2015, p.143). This rethinking is not easily done, the “methods and theories are difficult to apply (Fenwick et al, 2015, p.121) and the elaboration is complex. In this elaboration, I will therefore use four notions to guide me. One of the ontological basis for the sociomaterial methodology lies within the view that “[i]t is not that separate, delineated entities come together to interact, rather things already loosely connected participate actively with each other to produce particular phenomena” (Fenwick et al, 2015, p. 134, my italic). The student and the microscope (i.e. the practical work that a student performs with a microscope in a science classroom) will therefore together be in the focal point. When a human (e.g. a student) repeatedly is encountered with a non-human (e.g. an equipment), it is created, with Barads perspective, an intra-action. The smallest unit in this elaboration is therefore not the student, not the microscope; it is the reality, the phenomenon that they create together in an intra-action. This phenomena must be understood as both student and microscope, where ”[o]ne is too few, two is too many” (Haraway, 1991, p.35). However, this perspective are deeply complex. In order to make some elaborations that could be understood I will draw on Barad (2003) and do an agential cut and look at a specific intra-action (i.e. the microscope and the student), that will become the “apparatus of observation”. Barad describes the notion apparatus as “dynamic (re)configurings of the world, specific agential practices/intra-actions/performances” (ibid, p.816) which can create boundaries in order to define e.g. activities and phenomena (Fenwick et al, 2015) It is through the apparatus that figurations (formations, configurations) are created and formed. Figurations points toward the performative, practices and actions that forms something into a figure or a stabilisation (such as a taken-for granted practice), or seen from an ANT-perspective, an ”immutible mobiles” (Latour, 1986). I argue that it is here that research with a sociomaterialistic perspective shows how questions above can be understood. Expected outcomes/results (up to 300 words) The analysis and elaboration of these threads are under process; however, some preliminary outcomes can be described. Firstly (1), the apparatus (the student and the microscope) becomes a prototype (Carlone, 2003) of the “real” scientist and his artefacts in a science lab. The apparatus therefore participate in figuration of the discourse of what science is and should do however with fewer resources and other objectives (Zogza and Ergazaki, 2013). Together with apparatuses in classrooms around the world, it becomes a phenomenon that creates powerful pictures and might contribute to a stabilisation of “taken for granted notions and sociohistorical legacies of science” (Carlone, 2003, p. 308). Secondly (2), when bringing in equipment into the classroom this imply that a number of institutions (such as manufacturers) indirectly govern the classroom (Röhl, 2015). Likewise the scientist they are driven by other objectives and the classroom might become remotely governed. Preliminary analyses shows that this remotely governing takes place through the apparatus. Thirdly (3), tools and artefact in school are often simplified versions. This might cause a reduction of learning possibilities and a vertical learning process. Tools and artefacts used in the science classroom are not at all harmless. In intra-action with the student, they becomes apparatus that performs and creates realities. I.e. things and matter “transmits knowledge and values across time and space (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010, p. 9). However, “intra-actions are constraining but not determining” (Barad, 2003, p. 826).When acknowledging this perspective there are therefore “possibilities for acting … at every moment, and these changing possibilities entail a responsibility to intervene in the world’s becoming, to contest and rework what matters and what is excluded from mattering” (ibid, p.827). In other words, “[t]he future is radically open at every turn” (ibid, p.826). Intent of publication Jobér, A. (2016). Cultural performativity in science education. Troubling laboratory life and inquiry-based learning (prel title). In K. Otrel-Cass, M. Sillasen, A. Arvola Orlander (Eds.). Cultural, Social, and Political Perspectives in Science Education. A Nordic View. Springer. References (400 words) Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2003, vol. 28, no. 3, pp 801 – 831. Barad, K.M. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. Carlone, H. (2003). Innovative science within and against a culture of ‘achievement’. Science Education, 87(3), pp. 307–328. Edwards, R. (2002). Mobilizing lifelong learning: governmentality in educational practices, Journal of Education Policy, 17(3), pp. 353-365. Fenwick, T., Doyle, S., Michael, M., Scoles, J. (2015). Matters of Learning and Education. Sociomaterial Approaches in Ethnographic Research. In S. Bollig., M. Honig, S. Neumann & C. Seele, C. (eds.) MultiPluriTrans in educational ethnography: approaching the multimodality, plurality and translocality of educational realities. Pp. 141-162. Fenwick, T. (2010). (un)Doing standards in education with actor‐network theory. Journal of Education Policy, 25(2), pp. 117-133. Fenwick, T. (2011). Reading Educational Reform with Actor Network Theory: Fluid spaces, otherings, and ambivalences. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(1), pp. 114-134. Fenwick, Tara J. & Edwards, Richard (2010). Actor-network theory in education [Elektronisk resurs]. 1st ed. London: Routledge. Gunnarsson, Karin (2015). Med önskan om kontroll: figurationer av hälsa i skolors hälsofrämjande arbete. Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2015. Haraway, D. J. (1991). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In D. J. Haraway (Eds.), Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge. Latour, B. (1999). “On recalling ANT”, in Law, John & Hassard, John (eds). Actor Network Theory and after. Oxford: Blackwell, p. 19. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lundin, M., & Lindahl M. G. (2014). Negotiating the relevance of laboratory work: safety, procedures and accuracy brought to the fore in science education, Nordina 10(1), pp. 32–45. Mol, Annemarie. (2000). Things and thinking. Some incorporations of intellectuality. Quest Vol. XIV, No. 1-2, 2000. Röhl, T. (2015). Transsituating Education. Educational Artefacts in the Classroom and Beyond. In S. Bollig., M. Honig, S. Neumann & C. Seele, C. (eds.) MultiPluriTrans in educational ethnography: approaching the multimodality, plurality and translocality of educational realities. Pp. 121 – 139.

Jag tycker om klockor. Jag gillar inte tid och alla tankar om tid som en som människa måste förhålla sig till, i tid och otid. Men klockor, det är något särskilt med klockor. Kanske har det med en längtan efter att mäta det som inte går att se, mäta det som ständigt tycks vilja slinka en ur händerna? Speciellt äldre klockor tycks fascinera mig och mer än en gång har jag lagt bud på klockor på nätauktioner som, tack och lov, när jag ser det i backspegeln, har runnit mig ur handen vartefter klockan (i dubbel bemärkelse) närmar sig klubbslag och ett alltför högt pris.

För tio år sedan var svensk skola, trots de problem som diskuterades då, en av de mest likvärdiga i världen. Resultaten i internationella skoljämförelser var mycket goda och skillnaderna mellan elevers och skolors resultat var mindre än i nästan alla andra länder. Det är inte bara resultatskillnaderna som nu ökat utan skolor med elever från en högre social klass rapporterar också att de har bättre resurser och lättare att rekrytera behöriga lärare. Ett alltmer segregerat skolsystem växer fram i dagens Sverige. Vad kan lärare göra för att motverka ökade skillnader och hur kan en undervisning som stöttar alla elever se ut? Hur kan kommunikation skapas mellan elever med olika kulturellt kapital? Studier visar att lärarna inte använder ordet klass när de pratar om eller med eleverna samtidigt som de uppenbart har olika förväntningar på elever med olika bakgrund. Lärande och framgång måste ses som något som kan tränas upp och inte som en inneboende egenskap hos eleven.

Den här boken visar hur social klass påverkar klassrumssituationen, undervisningen och i förlängningen även elevernas resultat. Skolans förmåga att kompensera för elevers bakgrund har försämrats och föräldrarnas utbildningsnivå får en allt större betydelse för hur elever lyckas i skolan. Med konkreta exempel förklarar forskaren Anna Jobér hur du som lärare kan hantera socioekonomiska skillnader i klassrummet och skapa likvärdiga möjligheter för alla elever, oavsett bakgrund. Social klass i skolan vänder sig i första hand till yrkesverksamma lärare och lärarstuderande, men kan läsas av alla som vill förstå hur vi kan göra skolan likvärdig.

General description on research questions, objectives and theoretical framework: In recent year test and measurement has gained a strong position in education. PISA results, league tables, etc. has from a neoliberal perspective created a discourse about a school in crisis (Popkewitz, 2011; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). At the same time a growing edu-market (Ball, 2012) with a free school market and homework companies has entered the educational landscape. Education has traditionally in Sweden been a state issue, however this has changed dramatically. This has led to a re-territorialisation of educational responsibility (Tröhler, 2009) where e.g. private school are taken for granted and a growing number of so called home work companies providing families help with home works. Following the traces of Popkewitz and Wehlage’s (1973) discussion on accountability, this paper briefly describes ongoing research that intend to unfold and disassemble processes of accountability in the intersection between family, education, and the free school market; homework companies. This paper starts out in the societal desire of a more effective schooling where measurements and testing are used to track knowledge production (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010), i.e. the “enthusiasm for accountability that grows out of the sense of frustration and impatience in accomplishing basic educational goals” (Popkewitz and Wehlage, 1973, p. 48). This turns education into school credentials which in turn enables processes of who to hold accountable (Labaree, 2008). Therefore I claim processes and materialization of accountability are of special interest. In a time when “development of measurable objectives is the sine qua non of accountability” (Popkewitz and Wehlage, 1973, p.49) the notion of accountability serves as “a potent vehicle of expression” (ibid, p. 48) and a vehicle of analyse. The overarching aim of the ongoing research is therefore to unfold and disassemble processes of accountability in a changing educational landscape in Sweden. More specific, this paper reports on research how accountability is flowing, moving, translated, negotiated and materialised in practises of homework companies. Following Nespor’s (2002) research on homework and Fenwick’s (2010b) view on ANT as a possibility of researching education I will use ANT as theoretical and methodological frameworks. Briefly, the main idea with ANT is that ideas, practices and facts are effects of assemblages and webs of relations between (human and non-human) actors (Gorur 2011). ANT does not privilege the human, actors can be both animate and/or inanimate and treats social relations, including power and organization, as network effects. Likewise several researchers, I will treat networks as assemblages of heterogeneous materials such as videos, written curricula, utterances, people, building, reports (Edwards, 2002). In intersections (such as practices of homework companies), or following the construct of Latour (2005) and Fenwick (2011); in nodes, it is possible to trace interactions, negotiations, and translations to explore how not only actions, but also power and truths comes into being. ANT therefore offers one way of tracing dynamics of assembling and disassembling, embodiment and materialising processes, often unmentioned or considered unintentional in education (Fenwick and Edwards, 2012). Regarding accountability processes, Fenwick and Edwards (2012) has pinpointed the notion in relation to ANT. They claim for example that “ANT concepts help to trace important nuances in these processes, showing how they actually function as messy networks folded into spaces alongside other networks, and how injunctions of accountability are negotiated at different nodes of these networks“ (ibid, p.115). In addition, researching humans and non-human simultaneously becomes important in this research since there is a risk that students “internalise these forms of self-regulation through representations of their performance … actors make themselves into calculable subjects (ibid, p.115). Method: This paper reports from a larger research project that is in the bud. Up to this point, processes and practices into two threads has been followed: 1) Homework company websites and 2) interviews of four employees at homework companies. Building upon ANT, website and interviews, non-humans and humans, are treated as active members of networks, transacting themselves, translating ideas and affecting action through relationships. ANT in this research are therefore used both as a theoretical and a methodological approach that not only set the ontological agenda but also leads me to what kind of data to be used. There are several homework companies in Sweden. These companies provide help to families through their study buddies who meet up with student and help them with for example homework and pre-test training. The families pay approximately 300 SEK (30 EUR) for one hour with a study buddy. The study buddies are often students, some of them teacher training students. At this point, two websites from the two of the largest homework companies in Sweden has been read through. In addition, four interviews has been undertaken with four employees (so called study buddies) at two major homework companies, The transcription process is ongoing and the analyse procedure is under development. At the moment, questions from Fenwick’s (2010a) earlier research are used when going through the first data: “What kinds of connections are continuing to hold, why, and what else is working to hold them in place? What changes occurred in the process of these connections—and what didn’t change?” (ibid, p.131). In addition to these question, based on Gorur (2013), identification of four moments of translations will be used. Expected outcomes/results This research is ongoing, however, the first preliminary analysis of websites indicates that the companies do not express any kind of accountability regarding overarching goals or curriculum. Instead, the websites express their own methods, tutoring and goal, stating: “In summary, we design tuition for each and every student and customize it for the individual student” [website, company B]. Or they set up help that “suits the student's needs” [website, company A]. This indicates that the companies do not place themselves in relation to the curriculum in Sweden. This place the companies alongside not only curriculum and tests but accountability. The preliminary results of the interviews indicates negotiations and translations. The study buddies says about their employer: “They don't have the same responsibility …. So honestly speaking … I am a little bit sceptic to this…. There is no law or document that hold them accountable. So the whole situation becomes a little bit risky.”[Martin, interview]. Another states: “The teacher and the student still have the same responsibility as before. Even though there is an extra chief… just because there is a study coach as well it does not make their responsibility smaller. I am just a bonus. I don’t have the full responsibility. It is very safe to feel this way. … I could fail and it wouldn’t matter to me….” [Carl, interview] The preliminary conclusion indicates an evasive accountability when it comes to homework companies. A growing edu-market has received a strong position in education, however this strong position seems to be a chimera. When looking at actors in the network it becomes clear that accountability flows, moves and becomes evasive, the opposite of the intention with notion accountability. The discourse of a school in crisis which asks for accountability has created a growing edu-market with no accountability. Intent of publication: Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (Routledge). ISSN: 0159-6306 (Print), 1469-3739 (Online) References (400 words) Ball, S. (2012). Global Education Inc.: New policy networks and the neoliberal imaginary. London: Routledge. Edwards, R. (2002) Mobilizing lifelong learning: governmentality in educational practices, Journal of Education Policy, 17(3), pp. 353-365, Fenwick, T (2010a) (un)Doing standards in education with actor‐network theory, Journal of Education Policy, 25(2), pp. 117-133 Fenwick, T. (2010b). Accountability practices in adult education: Insights from actor-network theory. Studies in the Education of Adults, Vol. 42, Issue 2. Fenwick, T (2011) Reading Educational Reform with Actor Network Theory: Fluid otherings, and ambivalences, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(1), 114-134. Fenwick, T. & Edwards, R. (red.) (2012). Researching Education Through Actor-network Theory. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. (UK) Gorur, R. (2011). ANT on the PISA Trail: Following the statistical pursuit of certainty. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(1), 76-93. Gorur, R. (2013). The invisible infrastructure of standards. Critical Studies in Education, 54(2), pp. 132- 142. Labaree, D. (2008). The winning ways of a losing strategy: Educationalizing social problems in the United States. Educational Theory, 58(4), pp 447-460. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nespor, J. 2002. Networks and contexts of reform. Journal of Educational Change 3, pp. 365–82. Popkewitz, T. (2011). PISA. In M. A. Pereyra, H.G. Kotthoff & R. Cowen (Eds.), PISA Under Examination: Changing Knowledge, Changing Tests, and Changing Schools (pp. 31-46). Sense Publishers. Popkewitz, T. & G. Wehlage. (1973). Accountability: Critique and alternative perspective. Interchange 4(4), pp 48-62. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. Tröhler, D. (2009): Harmonizing the Educational Globe. World Polity, Cultural Features, and the Challenges to Educational Research. Studies in Philosophy and Education 29, 7–29.

Earlier research shows that there is a relationship between low achievements in science education and low socioeconomic background. Despite the aim to give all children an equal education, school science contributes to a reproduction of social. The overall aim of the research is to contribute to a more complex and multi-faced description and analysis of the relation between inequalities in education, focusing on social inequalities in the science classroom. With a characterizing of the science subject and asocial class perspective as a backdrop, the aims of this research will be elaborated on through the theoretical frameworks from foremost Bourdieu and Bernstein. Inspired by an ethnographic approach the data was produced through observations, field notes, interviews and questionnaire in a Swedish compulsory school and students aged fourteen and fifteen, were followed during a five weeks unit on physics (mechanics). The results revealed for example that room to manoeuvre, possibilities, options and success in this science classroom were a collective process. It was shown that science learning and teaching were deeply complex and that social class clearly gets manifested and sometimes created and established in the science classroom with its activities and practices however in collective social processes where many actors interplay.

I den här boken diskuterar och problematiserar författarna medborgerlig bildning ur olika perspektiv. De ställer frågor om vad som krävs för att barn och ungdomar ska utvecklas till kompetenta, reflekterande, kritiska och aktiva medborgare med möjlighet att ta ansvar. Vilka krav på kompetenser krävs inom så specifika områden? I detta specifika kaptiel får läsaren ta del av varför medborgerlig bildning har en plats inom det naturvetenskapliga fältet.

This presentation takes it starting point in larger study (Jobér, 2012) with the aim to contribute to a more complex and multi-faceted description and analysis of inequalities in education, focusing on social class in the science classroom. Inspired by an ethnographic approach, the data was produced through observations, interviews, and a questionnaire in a Swedish compulsory school. The students aged fourteen and fifteen, were followed during a five week unit on physics. Building upon sociological frameworks, provided by foremost Bourdieu (e.g. 1990, 2010) and Bernstein (e.g. 1975, 2000), the descriptions and analyses of the school, the teacher, the student and the science classroom revealed a number of things. For example, when analysing the communication in the classroom it was showed that a number of students never were heard. This happened for example due to the fact that many activities in this science classroom relied on group activities (e.g. laboratory work), stipulated by both sociohistorical legacies (Carlone 2003, 2004) and national curricula (SNAE 2011). This implied that the teacher lacked sufficient information regarding the individual students’ knowledge. The teacher felt she had to use tests to figure out what the students (in this case a number of girls) knew and stated “but the girls, I need to give them tests or else I don’t know”. Due to the activities in the classroom the teacher hesitated, the pedagogy was changed and the teacher chose another form of assessment. What also was shown was that what happened in the classroom were effects of complex collective interplays often with hidden negotiations (Jobér, 2012). This implied that the way the teacher used test influenced all the students in the classroom, not only the particular girls. Stating this, this presentation aims to focus on the issues that “classroom learning is social, classroom testing is individual” (Lemke, 1990 p. 80). There is therefore a contradiction in the science classroom in learning as social collective process, and assessment and outcomes as individual processes. In addition this presentation aims to address the same issue however on a national level. If the curricula stipulate group activities and communication, (reasoning, argumentation, etc.), how can the national tests in the science subjects be understood and used (c.f. Lundahl, 2009)? Recalling that assessment often provides the admission ticket to their future: How can we relate the individual student and his or her options and room to manoeuvre to national criteria and desirable knowledge?

Earlier research shows that there is a relation between social class and science education. Many students do not reach the goals for science set by their national curricula and failure in science has been shown to be more strongly correlated to social class than any other school subject. Moreover, success in school science has been shown to act as a gatekeeper to higher education, thus broadening life chances of those who succeed, while limiting the future opportunities of those who fail. Consequently many students from low social class fails in subjects that are constructed as important and highly valued. Science education becomes key factor in the reproduction of an unequal society rather than to contribute to science for all. However, there is little research done regarding how social class is shown and manifested in the science classroom, in the everyday life of the classroom. Thus, the overall aim of this research is to contribute to our understanding of the relation between social class and science class. Data were collected with an ethnographic approach at a Swedish compulsory school during a unit of physics. Results were analysed using concepts from foremost Bourdieu and Bernstein. The results showed that many taken for granted activities and practices in this science classroom reproduced inequalities. For example; a weakly framed laboratory work gave a sense of freedom however reduced the possibilities for those student that could not recognise and realize what to do. The result also showed that it is the form of the content, rather than the content itself that hinder students. This was clearly shown in the dialogues where student with appropriate cultural capital could interact more easily while others struggled with the interpretation. Thus, this research addresses the everyday classroom practices and different pedagogical models in the science classroom.

One of the most important aims of schooling is to give all children an equal education. Despite this, social differences continue to be reproduced in school. Earlier studies show that there is a relation-ship between low socioeconomic background of students and low achievement in science education, thus excluding many students from highly-valued education and positions in society. Building upon established sociological frameworks – particularly those pro-vided by foremost Bourdieu and Bernstein - the overall aim of this thesis was to contribute to a more complex and multi-faceted de-scription and analysis of inequalities in education, focusing on so-cial class in the science classroom. Inspired by an ethnographic ap-proach, the data was produced through observations, field notes, interviews, and a questionnaire in a Swedish compulsory school. The students, aged fourteen and fifteen, were followed during a five week unit on physics (mechanics). Firstly, the descriptions and analyses of the school, the teacher, the student and the science classroom revealed that the knowledge threshold in the classroom has been lowered. This had been done in hidden negotiations (often with good intentions) between the students, the teacher, the sociohistorical legacy of science educa-tion, and a social discourse. It created a knowledge threshold, a lowest common denominator - which was altered not only for stu-dents from lower classes but for all the students in the classroom. Secondly, the descriptions and analyses of the classroom communi-cation showed that being able to translate, interpret and adapt to new or changed ways of talking increased the possibilities of un-derstanding what ways of talking and acting that were valid or not. What also was also shown was that ways of talking were created and influenced in an intricate interplay between the practices in the classroom, the teacher, and the students often in hidden negotiations. Together they constructed what ways of talking were valued and how you could act and talk in the science dialogues. In strongly controlled dialogues, more students could be heard and evaluated. However, it became a type of communication based on the lowest common denominator that in the long term might exclude all students and narrow their room to manoeuvre. Thirdly, laboratory work lessons could be lessons filled with curiosity, freedom and exciting challenges. However another picture emerged in this very common way to work in the classroom. For example, the regulative discourse totally overrode the instructional discourse and became decisive in this practical science activity. In addition, there were at least two parallel codes that needed to be translated and adapted to in the classroom. Laboratory work in this classroom was a social process that needed and was expected to be performed in groups. However, this became problematic since the grades were awarded to individuals and in addition, the reactions and the effects of a hierarchical class-marking group process became decisive. The groups became to some extent safe havens for the students, on the other hand, undermined their chances in the classroom. Labor-atory work left the students and the teacher blaming themselves even though the outcome was a result of the complex interplay be-tween practices, the science field doxa, the curriculum, social class, school premises and educational codes. Science learning and teaching in this classroom at its most basic was a social process and could not be correlated to, for example, inborn facilities per se nor to certain agents in the field. Social class was manifested in the science class, for example in the dialogues or in the laboratory work always performed in groups. However so-cial class must be understood as collective processes and in rela-tionship with, for example, the value that science is ascribed. It must be understood from the possibilities, limitations and the ex-pectations the students and teacher have and how these are used. Through descriptions and analyses of social class in the science class, this thesis revealed that science classroom activities and prac-tices and in turn room to manoeuvre and possibilities, are collec-tive processes.

Being good at science is a qualification needed to reach prestigious higher education and societal positions. Since the pass rate in the science subjects is lower than in other school subjects and failure in school science subjects is correlated to low social class, it has been showed that science is a factor in the reproduction of an unequal society. The way science is taught and learned in schools thereby contributes to an unjust society where children from e.g. disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds have less chance to succeed therefore addressing science education as an important part in the citizenship education. Thus, the overall aim of my research is to contribute to our understanding of how school science reproduces unequal structures in society. Data were collected at Swedish compulsory schools. Results were discussed and analysed using concepts derived from Bourdieu and Bernstein. Preliminary findings indicate that habitus play a role in the science classroom and influence how students react and respond to the way the teaching and learning is organized and presented. Moreover, the first analysis point out that e.g. when framing is weak, student with inappropriate cultural capital fails. The preliminary results indicates that science education contribute to an unequal society through the way that science is taught and learned in the science classroom. Thus, this research calls for attention to issues regarding equity and citizenship in the science classroom.

Being good at science is a qualification needed to reach prestigious higher education and societal positions. Since the pass rate in the science subjects is lower than in other school subjects and failure in school science subjects is correlated to low social class, it has been showed that science is a factor in the reproduction of an unequal society. The way science is taught and learned in schools thereby contributes to an unjust society where children from e.g. disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds have less chance to succeed. Thus, the overall aim of my research is to contribute to our understanding of how school science reproduces unequal structures in society. Data were collected at Swedish compulsory schools with ethnographic methods. Results were discussed and analysed using concepts derived from Bourdieu and Bernstein. Preliminary findings indicate that habitus play a role in the science classroom and influence how students react and respond to teaching instructions, goals and criteria. Moreover, the first analysis point out that when framing is weak, student with inappropriate cultural capital fails.