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This article closes the special issue Alignment Work for the Movement of Knowledge. It argues that the concept of alignment work, through making it possible to think about collaborations of different epistemic cultures, provides a useful addition to Knorr Cetina’s (1999) concept, keeping it relevant for current concerns in Science and Technology Studies (STS). The article discusses central issues in STS, namely how different academic and professional cultures exchange knowledge, including trading zones, boundary objects, and aspects of Actor-Network Theory, alongside an interest in epistemic cultures and knowledge production. We argue that and demonstrate how knowledge exchange can be understood through epistemic differences and their persistence in collaborative work.

This article closes the special issue Alignment Work for the Movement of Knowledge. It argues that the concept of alignment work, through making it possible to think about collaborations of different epistemic cultures, provides a useful addition to Knorr Cetina’s (1999) concept, keeping it relevant for current concerns in Science and Technology Studies (STS). The article discusses central issues in STS, namely how different academic and professional cultures exchange knowledge, including trading zones, boundary objects, and aspects of Actor-Network Theory, alongside an interest in epistemic cultures and knowledge production. We argue that and demonstrate how knowledge exchange can be understood through epistemic differences and their persistence in collaborative work.

This article closes the special issue Alignment Work for the Movement of Knowledge. It argues that the concept of alignment work, through making it possible to think about collaborations of different epistemic cultures, provides a useful addition to Knorr Cetina’s (1999) concept, keeping it relevant for current concerns in Science and Technology Studies (STS). The article discusses central issues in STS, namely how different academic and professional cultures exchange knowledge, including trading zones, boundary objects, and aspects of Actor-Network Theory, alongside an interest in epistemic cultures and knowledge production. We argue that and demonstrate how knowledge exchange can be understood through epistemic differences and their persistence in collaborative work.

This article closes the special issue Alignment Work for the Movement of Knowledge. It argues that the concept of alignment work, through making it possible to think about collaborations of different epistemic cultures, provides a useful addition to Knorr Cetina’s (1999) concept, keeping it relevant for current concerns in Science and Technology Studies (STS). The article discusses central issues in STS, namely how different academic and professional cultures exchange knowledge, including trading zones, boundary objects, and aspects of Actor-Network Theory, alongside an interest in epistemic cultures and knowledge production. We argue that and demonstrate how knowledge exchange can be understood through epistemic differences and their persistence in collaborative work.

This article closes the special issue Alignment Work for the Movement of Knowledge. It argues that the concept of alignment work, through making it possible to think about collaborations of different epistemic cultures, provides a useful addition to Knorr Cetina’s (1999) concept, keeping it relevant for current concerns in Science and Technology Studies (STS). The article discusses central issues in STS, namely how different academic and professional cultures exchange knowledge, including trading zones, boundary objects, and aspects of Actor-Network Theory, alongside an interest in epistemic cultures and knowledge production. We argue that and demonstrate how knowledge exchange can be understood through epistemic differences and their persistence in collaborative work.

This paper discusses the virtue epistemology literature on epistemic emotions and challenges the individualist, unworldly account of epistemic emotions. It argues that epistemic emotions can be truth-motivating if embedded in co-inquiry epistemic cultures, namely virtuous epistemic cultures that valorise participatory processes of inquiry as truth-conducive. Co-inquiry epistemic cultures are seen as playing a constitutive role in shaping, developing, and regulating epistemic emotions. Using key references to classical Pragmatism, the paper describes the bridge between epistemic emotions and co-inquiry culture in terms of habits of co-inquiry that act as the scaffolding of epistemic emotions. The result is a context-sensitive and practice-oriented approach to epistemic emotions that conceives of those emotions as being shaped by co-inquiry epistemic cultures., Tento článek pojednává o literatuře epistemologie ctnosti týkající se epistemických emocí a zpochybňuje individualistický, nesvětský popis epistemických emocí. Tvrdí, že epistemické emoce mohou být motivující pro pravdu, pokud jsou zakotveny v epistemických kulturách společného zkoumání, konkrétně v ctnostných epistemických kulturách, které oceňují participativní procesy zkoumání jako pravdivé. Epistemické kultury společného zkoumání hrají konstitutivní roli při utváření, rozvoji a regulaci epistemických emocí. S využitím klíčových odkazů na klasický pragmatismus článek popisuje most mezi epistemickými emocemi a kulturou společného zkoumání ve smyslu návyků společného zkoumání, které fungují jako lešení pro epistemické emoce. Výsledkem je kontextově citlivý a na praxi orientovaný přístup k epistemickým emocím, který tyto emoce chápe jako utvářené epistemickými kulturami společného dotazování.

The publishing landscape has undergone significant transformation in the last years facing and implementing open science policies, including principles for open access (OA). However, certain challenges have been identified in OA-publishing for different scientific fields, such as the humanities, depending on the norms and traditions for how to conduct research and how to publish. The topic of this thesis is the new researchers now entering this research field, i.e. doctoral students, and how they perceive and experience publishing. Therefore, the thesis aimed to contribute more knowledge about doctoral students’ views on scientific publishing and open access within the field of the humanities. Seven qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Swedish doctoral students to explore this topic. The theoretical approach used in the thesis was practice theory and Karin Knorr Cetina’s concept of epistemic cultures – taking the perspective that social life is ordered through practices and that each scientific field has its own culture of practices surrounding research and publishing. The study found that supervisors and colleagues shaped the choices doctoral students made in publishing to a high degree. Furthermore, depending on how the students related to different aspects of publishing practices they made certain strategic choices. Visibility was the most important factor in publishing, first and foremost in the form of publishing in a prestigious journal within the student’s own field. Lastly, the study concluded that open access-publishing has become the norm even within the humanities field, at least for article-publishing. The doctoral students experienced no conflict between how they publish within their field and open access. Overall, the respondents had a positive view of OA. However, they would only choose OA if it was easy to do, and it was not the first priority for most respondents.

Data use in healthcare: there is a contrast between dreams and practices In recent years, terms such as “big data”, “machine learning” and “artificial intelligence” have repeatedly made similar promises. Data would help create more effective interventions and tailor-made treatments. As a result, the quality of care would improve, lives would be saved and healthcare costs reduced. Marthe Stevens investigated what happens when such “data dreams” become drivers for concrete initiatives in healthcare by studying literature and data initiatives in the Netherlands and Europe. Each time she noticed a contrast between dreams and practices. Data are expected to revolutionize healthcare. This research shows that the media mainly emphasize the positive sides of data and the criticism is largely limited to a few themes, such as privacy, while there are also other pressing questions. For example, we do not know how to best organize responsibilities around data initiatives. In the “dreams”, the developments seem to be going fast. Marthe Stevens saw that healthcare professionals work together with lawyers, technicians and ethicists to start data initiatives in healthcare organizations. For example, to make a model that predicts the chance of side effects of medicines. However, these initiatives are not easy. It takes the professionals time to get to understand each other’s language and working methods. Marthe Stevens argues that we should not understand data dreams as practices. This leads to a tendency towards overregulation and limits social discussions. Instead, we must create

Data science and psychiatry have diverse epistemic cultures that come together in data-driven initiatives (e.g., big data, machine learning). The literature on these initiatives seems to either downplay or overemphasize epistemic differences between the fields. In this paper, we study the convergence and divergence of the epistemic cultures of data science and psychiatry. This approach is more likely to capture where and how the cultures differ and gives insights into how practitioners from both fields find ways to work together despite their differences. We introduce the notions of “epistemic virtues” to focus on epistemic differences ethnographically, and “trading zones” to concentrate on how differences are negotiated. This leads us to the following research question: how are epistemic differences negotiated by data science and psychiatry practitioners in a hospital-based data-driven initiative? Our results are based on an ethnographic study in which we observed a Dutch psychiatric hospital department developing prediction models of patient outcomes based on machine learning techniques (September 2017 – February 2018). Many epistemic virtues needed to be negotiated, such as completeness or selectivity in data inclusion. These differences were traded locally and temporarily, stimulated by shared epistemic virtues (such as a systematic approach), boundary objects and soci

Data science and psychiatry have diverse epistemic cultures that come together in data-driven initiatives (e.g., big data, machine learning). The literature on these initiatives seems to either downplay or overemphasize epistemic differences between the fields. In this paper, we study the convergence and divergence of the epistemic cultures of data science and psychiatry. This approach is more likely to capture where and how the cultures differ and gives insights into how practitioners from both fields find ways to work together despite their differences. We introduce the notions of “epistemic virtues” to focus on epistemic differences ethnographically, and “trading zones” to concentrate on how differences are negotiated. This leads us to the following research question: how are epistemic differences negotiated by data science and psychiatry practitioners in a hospital-based data-driven initiative? Our results are based on an ethnographic study in which we observed a Dutch psychiatric hospital department developing prediction models of patient outcomes based on machine learning techniques (September 2017 – February 2018). Many epistemic virtues needed to be negotiated, such as completeness or selectivity in data inclusion. These differences were traded locally and temporarily, stimulated by shared epistemic virtues (such as a systematic approach), boundary objects and socialization processes. Trading became difficult when virtues were too diverse, differences were enlarged by storytelling and parties did not have the time or capacity to learn about the other. In the discussion, we argue that our combined theoretical framework offers a fresh way to study how cooperation between diverse practitioners goes and where it can be improved. We make a call for bringing epistemic differences into the open as this makes a grounded discussion possible about the added value of data-driven initiatives and the role they can play in healthcare.

This paper aims to explore disciplinary variation in valuation practices by comparing the way research groups accumulate credibility across four epistemic cultures. Our analysis is based on case studies of four high-performing research groups representing very different epistemic cultures in humanities, social sciences, geosciences and mathematics. In each case we interviewed about ten researchers, analyzed relevant documents and observed a couple of meetings. In all four cases we found a cyclical process of accumulating credibility. At the same time, we found significant differences in the manifestation of the six main resources that are part of the cycle, the mechanisms of conversion between these resources, the overall structure and the average speed of the credibility cycle. The different ways in which the groups use data and produce arguments affect the whole cycle of accumulating credibility. In some cultures, journal publications are the main source of recognition, but in others one can earn significant amounts of recognition for conference contributions or service to the academic community. Moreover, the collaboration practices in the respective fields strongly influence the connection between arguments and publications. In cultures where teams of researchers collaboratively produce arguments, it is more strongly embedded in the process of writing publications. We conclude that the credibility cycle can only be used as an analytical tool to explain the behavior of researchers or research groups when taking differences across epistemic cultures into account.

This paper aims to explore disciplinary variation in valuation practices by comparing the way research groups accumulate credibility across four epistemic cultures. Our analysis is based on case studies of four high-performing research groups representing very different epistemic cultures in humanities, social sciences, geosciences and mathematics. In each case we interviewed about ten researchers, analyzed relevant documents and observed a couple of meetings. In all four cases we found a cyclical process of accumulating credibility. At the same time, we found significant differences in the manifestation of the six main resources that are part of the cycle, the mechanisms of conversion between these resources, the overall structure and the average speed of the credibility cycle. The different ways in which the groups use data and produce arguments affect the whole cycle of accumulating credibility. In some cultures, journal publications are the main source of recognition, but in others one can earn significant amounts of recognition for conference contributions or service to the academic community. Moreover, the collaboration practices in the respective fields strongly influence the connection between arguments and publications. In cultures where teams of researchers collaboratively produce arguments, it is more strongly embedded in the process of writing publications. We conclude that the credibility cycle can only be used as an analytical tool to explain the behavior of researchers or research groups when taking differences across epistemic cultures into account.

The aim of this master’s thesis is to study information practices among scholars at Lund university regarding the accessing and sharing of digital scholarly material. This is done through examining of how scholars choose and motivate their use of different methods for accessing and sharing digital material. These methods includes platforms that may violate copyright and as well as informal peer-to-peer sharing. The thesis examines the scholars’ use, awareness and opinions of these methods. The thesis is based upon in-depth interviews with nine scholars with varying academic titles. The study uses a norm perspective through examining how the scholars perceive their colleagues or scholarly community to relate to and value these methods of access and dissemination. Their use and opinions of Open Access and Creative Commons are also relevant as these are a result of a movement that advocates a freer flow of scholarly information with lesser copyright-restrictions. The theoretical framework is based on practice theory, epistemic cultures and socio-legal theory. This framework enables an examination of the scholars’ practices and routines with regard to information access, as well as of social norms within their scholarly community. The socio-legal perspective is used to further understand the use of digital platforms that may violate copyright, in relationship to legal ways of accessing material. Our study shows that scholars perceive a general silence in the scholarly community regarding the use and sharing of material that violate copyright. Scholars themselves motivate, excuse or reject the use of material that violates copyright differently and express different opinions on who is using digital platforms that may violate copyright, what their motivations are and whether those are defensible. A common practice is shown in the use of peer-to-peer-sharing. In some cases the study shows a mismatch between opinions on copyright-breaches and the scholars’ own practices. So

Design is a notoriously ambiguous word in English. Similarly, it is also an ambiguous research field for Science and Technology Studies (STS). Introducing the special section A Matter of Design, the paper discusses the place of design in the overall context of Science and Technology Studies, with an emphasis on relevancies and difficulties in making two different epistemic cultures meet.

There exists a vast amount of different texts (policy documents, guidelines, action plans etc.) with the aim of stipulating the road forward for digitalisation of public sector, and an often used rationale for digitalisation is that the use of digitalised services will stimulate efficiency, reduce costs and at the same time enhance service quality. This is also often coupled with the idea that guarantee of success can be found participatory practices. This paper aims to disclose some of the underpinnings to the above logic by a closer analysis of 'the who, the why and how' of involving participators in digitalization of public sector. This paper uses a combination of discourse analysis and a Bourdieuan inspired use of the concept of epistemic cultures as an analytical framework to disentangle the notion of a participatory eGovernment development. The empirical case is a text analysis of a national action plan for digitalisation and the results of the analysis unfold two interesting notions; 1) three conflicting notions of for whom, why and how this is done, and 2) the consequences of conflicting epistemic cultures for practitioners to solve in the everyday practice when customer-oriented market logics are naively linked with democratically oriented inclusive participatory decision processes; two not so easily combined ideologies. Copyright © 2015, IGI Global., Article

Was passiert, wenn WissenschaftlerInnen die eigene Zunft selbst zum Gegenstand der Forschung machen, ganz im Sinne einer Ethnographie der eigenen Forschungskultur? Dann wird schnell deutlich, dass Wissenschaft mehr ist als die Ansammlung von wissenschaftlichen Einzelpersönlichkeiten mit der Begabung zu kognitiven Höchstleistungen. WissenschaftlerInnen sind vielmehr Mitglied in unterschiedlichen Stammeskulturen mit eigenen Ritualen, ihre Leistungen das Ergebnis von sozialen Praktiken und Kämpfen im Feld. Das ist in der sozialwissenschaftlichen Interkulturalitätsforschung nicht anders, die sich professionell mit fremden Kulturen beschäftigt. Was aber steuert den Blick der Interkulturalitätsforschung, wer beobachtet hier wen, wie und welche Konsequenzen hat dies auf das Verständnis von Kultur, kultureller Differenz und das Selbstverständnis von Interkultureller Forschung?, What happens when social scientist make their own craft the object of research, in other words an ethnography of one’s own research culture? Doing so, it becomes apparent that science is more than the collection of individual scientific personalities with a talent for top cognitive performances. From an autoethnographical perspective scientists are rather members of different tribal cultures replete with their own rituals. Their achievements are the result of social practices and negotiations in the field. This is no different to social-scientific intercultural research which deals with foreign cultures. What is it however that regulates the view of intercultural research, who observes whom and how and which consequences does this have on the understanding of culture, cultural difference and the self-conception of intercultural research?

Only two decades ago, finance was mainly the province of economics, a territory into which only few outsiders wandered. Nowadays, finance has be- come a central topic and various social science and humanities disciplines, have made inroads into this territory. Should the social sciences (and STS in particular) just analyse finance, or should they mainly criticize it, or maybe even provide what some have called an alternative narrative to capitalist finance? Stemming from an ironic and innovative overview of social studies of finance (SSF), the paper presents the core characteristics of such a perspective, taking in- to account also the main critique that SSF attracted. The contribution concentrates then on the three issues where STS investigations of finance promise good yields: (1) agency and robots; (2) epistemic cultures; (3) expertise.

It is the aim of this thesis to contribute to a research-based understanding of researchers’ use of blogs as a part of scholarly communication. The following research questions guide the investigation: (1) How are scholarly blogs constructed and used as sociotechnical systems in scholarly communication? (2) Which roles do scholarly blogs play in relation to other forms of scholarly communication? (3) Which expressions of researchers’ relations to the public emerge in scholarly blogs? Four separate research articles make up the main body of the thesis. These articles report on three largely independent studies which explore different aspects of scholarly blogs. The thesis starts from the assumption that scholar’s different epistemic cultures influence and shape scholarly communication practices. It furthermore approaches scholarly communication as practice. This makes it possible to include technology as shaping and being shaped by these practices. Consequently, scholarly blogs are treated as sociotechnical systems and envisioned as shaped in an interplay between technical and social aspects. The thesis’ first study takes a bird’s eye view and investigates the landscape of academic blogs. This is achieved through a case study of the Swedish academic blogosphere which unites a content analysis and a webometric analysis. The second study draws on 11 in-depth, semi- structured interviews with researchers who are all active bloggers. It focuses in particular on the motivations these researchers have for blogging, by starting from how they describe the functions that their blogs serve in their scholarly communication practices. Finally, the third study investigates characteristics of blogging as part of scholarly communication within epistemic cultures. This study is based on a genre-theoretical approach and structured around two groups of researchers in two disciplines, Physics and History. It employs a framework for situated genre-analysis, developed specifically for an

The main issue of this work concerns the meaning of educational supervisionas a tool for collaborative work-related knowledge formation in preschool. The study is based upon and complements the analysis of the phenomenoneducational supervision in a previous study presented in my previousbook Det mångtydiga mötet – ett försök att förstå komplexiteten i pedagogiskhandledning med yrkesverksamma [The many folded encounter – anattempt to understand the complexity in collaborative educational supervision].Supervision dialogues are in the focus as one of several tools for developingthe content of knowledge in preschool, the knowledgebase of the professionals,and their coping with professional issues within their daily work.These two studies together form my licentiate treatise. For studying the phenomenon,two perspectives have been used: a societal and an inter-subjectiveperspective. Educational supervision, as an epistemic culture, is analysed inrelation to an emerging knowledge society. The implementation of a new curriculum for preschool, with its model forparticipatory goal-steering, has been the basis for the analysis of the supervisionprocess as an activity for knowledge formation. The analysis is relatedto curriculum theory. Issues related to power are crucial in contexts for supervision.These are analysed with regards to the participators in the supervisiondialogue on the one hand, and to institutional actors, e.g. the relationshipbetween university and preschool and between the professionals in a localpreschool and the administrative level of the municipality, on the other. Thefundamental premise of the work has been that supervision is to be conductedon the conditions of those being supervised. The study relies on previous experiences of and reflections on supervisionas well as on consultee-centered case consultation. Further material and methodsused for the study are interviews with supervisors and supervised, andtextual analysis of contemporary educational lite, With an abstract in English

The main issue of this work concerns the meaning of educational supervisionas a tool for collaborative work-related knowledge formation in preschool. The study is based upon and complements the analysis of the phenomenoneducational supervision in a previous study presented in my previousbook Det mångtydiga mötet – ett försök att förstå komplexiteten i pedagogiskhandledning med yrkesverksamma [The many folded encounter – anattempt to understand the complexity in collaborative educational supervision].Supervision dialogues are in the focus as one of several tools for developingthe content of knowledge in preschool, the knowledgebase of the professionals,and their coping with professional issues within their daily work.These two studies together form my licentiate treatise. For studying the phenomenon,two perspectives have been used: a societal and an inter-subjectiveperspective. Educational supervision, as an epistemic culture, is analysed inrelation to an emerging knowledge society. The implementation of a new curriculum for preschool, with its model forparticipatory goal-steering, has been the basis for the analysis of the supervisionprocess as an activity for knowledge formation. The analysis is relatedto curriculum theory. Issues related to power are crucial in contexts for supervision.These are analysed with regards to the participators in the supervisiondialogue on the one hand, and to institutional actors, e.g. the relationshipbetween university and preschool and between the professionals in a localpreschool and the administrative level of the municipality, on the other. Thefundamental premise of the work has been that supervision is to be conductedon the conditions of those being supervised. The study relies on previous experiences of and reflections on supervisionas well as on consultee-centered case consultation. Further material and methodsused for the study are interviews with supervisors and supervised, andtextual analysis of contemporary educational lite, With an abstract in English

The main issue of this work concerns the meaning of educational supervisionas a tool for collaborative work-related knowledge formation in preschool. The study is based upon and complements the analysis of the phenomenoneducational supervision in a previous study presented in my previousbook Det mångtydiga mötet – ett försök att förstå komplexiteten i pedagogiskhandledning med yrkesverksamma [The many folded encounter – anattempt to understand the complexity in collaborative educational supervision].Supervision dialogues are in the focus as one of several tools for developingthe content of knowledge in preschool, the knowledgebase of the professionals,and their coping with professional issues within their daily work.These two studies together form my licentiate treatise. For studying the phenomenon,two perspectives have been used: a societal and an inter-subjectiveperspective. Educational supervision, as an epistemic culture, is analysed inrelation to an emerging knowledge society. The implementation of a new curriculum for preschool, with its model forparticipatory goal-steering, has been the basis for the analysis of the supervisionprocess as an activity for knowledge formation. The analysis is relatedto curriculum theory. Issues related to power are crucial in contexts for supervision.These are analysed with regards to the participators in the supervisiondialogue on the one hand, and to institutional actors, e.g. the relationshipbetween university and preschool and between the professionals in a localpreschool and the administrative level of the municipality, on the other. Thefundamental premise of the work has been that supervision is to be conductedon the conditions of those being supervised. The study relies on previous experiences of and reflections on supervisionas well as on consultee-centered case consultation. Further material and methodsused for the study are interviews with supervisors and supervised, andtextual analysis of contemporary educational lite, With an abstract in English

The main issue of this work concerns the meaning of educational supervisionas a tool for collaborative work-related knowledge formation in preschool. The study is based upon and complements the analysis of the phenomenoneducational supervision in a previous study presented in my previousbook Det mångtydiga mötet – ett försök att förstå komplexiteten i pedagogiskhandledning med yrkesverksamma [The many folded encounter – anattempt to understand the complexity in collaborative educational supervision].Supervision dialogues are in the focus as one of several tools for developingthe content of knowledge in preschool, the knowledgebase of the professionals,and their coping with professional issues within their daily work.These two studies together form my licentiate treatise. For studying the phenomenon,two perspectives have been used: a societal and an inter-subjectiveperspective. Educational supervision, as an epistemic culture, is analysed inrelation to an emerging knowledge society. The implementation of a new curriculum for preschool, with its model forparticipatory goal-steering, has been the basis for the analysis of the supervisionprocess as an activity for knowledge formation. The analysis is relatedto curriculum theory. Issues related to power are crucial in contexts for supervision.These are analysed with regards to the participators in the supervisiondialogue on the one hand, and to institutional actors, e.g. the relationshipbetween university and preschool and between the professionals in a localpreschool and the administrative level of the municipality, on the other. Thefundamental premise of the work has been that supervision is to be conductedon the conditions of those being supervised. The study relies on previous experiences of and reflections on supervisionas well as on consultee-centered case consultation. Further material and methodsused for the study are interviews with supervisors and supervised, andtextual analysis of contemporary educational lite, With an abstract in English

The main issue of this work concerns the meaning of educational supervisionas a tool for collaborative work-related knowledge formation in preschool. The study is based upon and complements the analysis of the phenomenoneducational supervision in a previous study presented in my previousbook Det mångtydiga mötet – ett försök att förstå komplexiteten i pedagogiskhandledning med yrkesverksamma [The many folded encounter – anattempt to understand the complexity in collaborative educational supervision].Supervision dialogues are in the focus as one of several tools for developingthe content of knowledge in preschool, the knowledgebase of the professionals,and their coping with professional issues within their daily work.These two studies together form my licentiate treatise. For studying the phenomenon,two perspectives have been used: a societal and an inter-subjectiveperspective. Educational supervision, as an epistemic culture, is analysed inrelation to an emerging knowledge society. The implementation of a new curriculum for preschool, with its model forparticipatory goal-steering, has been the basis for the analysis of the supervisionprocess as an activity for knowledge formation. The analysis is relatedto curriculum theory. Issues related to power are crucial in contexts for supervision.These are analysed with regards to the participators in the supervisiondialogue on the one hand, and to institutional actors, e.g. the relationshipbetween university and preschool and between the professionals in a localpreschool and the administrative level of the municipality, on the other. Thefundamental premise of the work has been that supervision is to be conductedon the conditions of those being supervised. The study relies on previous experiences of and reflections on supervisionas well as on consultee-centered case consultation. Further material and methodsused for the study are interviews with supervisors and supervised, andtextual analysis of contemporary educational lite, With an abstract in English

The main issue of this work concerns the meaning of educational supervisionas a tool for collaborative work-related knowledge formation in preschool. The study is based upon and complements the analysis of the phenomenoneducational supervision in a previous study presented in my previousbook Det mångtydiga mötet – ett försök att förstå komplexiteten i pedagogiskhandledning med yrkesverksamma [The many folded encounter – anattempt to understand the complexity in collaborative educational supervision].Supervision dialogues are in the focus as one of several tools for developingthe content of knowledge in preschool, the knowledgebase of the professionals,and their coping with professional issues within their daily work.These two studies together form my licentiate treatise. For studying the phenomenon,two perspectives have been used: a societal and an inter-subjectiveperspective. Educational supervision, as an epistemic culture, is analysed inrelation to an emerging knowledge society. The implementation of a new curriculum for preschool, with its model forparticipatory goal-steering, has been the basis for the analysis of the supervisionprocess as an activity for knowledge formation. The analysis is relatedto curriculum theory. Issues related to power are crucial in contexts for supervision.These are analysed with regards to the participators in the supervisiondialogue on the one hand, and to institutional actors, e.g. the relationshipbetween university and preschool and between the professionals in a localpreschool and the administrative level of the municipality, on the other. Thefundamental premise of the work has been that supervision is to be conductedon the conditions of those being supervised. The study relies on previous experiences of and reflections on supervisionas well as on consultee-centered case consultation. Further material and methodsused for the study are interviews with supervisors and supervised, andtextual analysis of contemporary educational lite, With an abstract in English