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Principals’ work with democracy. Always important, sparsely accomplished, constantly challenged. This paper examines principals’ work with democracy in schools, the challenges they face when carrying out such work and what role they themselves consider playing in the democratic work. The paper is based on an interview study with principals. The first interviews were conducted in 2003 and the later in 2023, which allows comparison between principals who exercise school leadership in different time and space. The study shows that the principals describe democratic work as always important but sparsely accomplished. The democratic work of principals is described as multidimensional including the realization of the tasks of schools, schedule-breaking activities, democratic school organization, the promotion of democratic attitudes, and environmental or external monitoring. The study also shows that principals engage in innovative democratization although there are tensions between economic and democratic imaginaries pervading their work likely to crowd out the always important, sparsely accomplished and constantly challenged democratic work.

Denne artikel bygger på fire måneders feltarbejde i det fritidspædagogiske tilbud Lyng Rollespil; et liverollespil, som gennem 20 år på ugentlig basis har udfoldet sig på udearealerne omkring en fritidsklub ved en dansk folkeskole. Hver torsdag aften mødes ca. 100–150 deltagere her; primært børn og unge mellem 10 og 18 år, men også en stor gruppe frivillige over 18 år samt fire fritidspædagoger, som har en del af deres ansættelse her. På baggrund af observationsnoter, fotos og interviews og med teoretisk afsæt i sociokulturelle og nymaterialistiske perspektiver belyses spillet som en slags socio-materielt sammenfiltret væsen. Et væsen, som konstitueres dynamisk og kreativt af deltagerne gennem handlinger, artefakter, steder, stemninger og regelstrukturer. Det belyses, hvordan deltagernes praksisser nærer, udvikler og transformerer dette sammenfiltrede væsen, herunder sikrer det imod opløsning og sammenbrud. Artiklen zoomer ind på en specifik handlingstråd, nemlig en gruppe spilleres intensive foretagsomhed, som, over et par måneder, kulminerer i et risikofyldt shamanritual med det formål at fremmane en specifik karakter, som ellers ikke havde været en del af spillet i flere år. Det synliggøres herigennem, hvordan både legen og pædagogikken tjener til at nære og tøjle Spillet som væsen. English abstract “I’ve Spent a Fucking Month on This Character!” On the Functions of Play in the Live-Action Role-Play Activities of an Afterschool Club This paper builds on four months of field work in the afterschool pedagogical initiative “Lyng Rollespil”: a live action role-play that unfolds on the outdoor premises of an afterschool club at a Danish state school. Every Thursday evening, approximately 100–150 participants meet here: children and young people between the ages of 10 and 18, but also volunteers over the age of 18 and four social educators who are employed here. Based on observation notes, photos, and interviews, and with a theoretical basis in sociocultural and new materialist perspectives, the role-play is illuminated as a kind of socio-materially entangled creature, a creature that is dynamically and creatively constituted by the participants through actions, artifacts, places, moods, and rule structures. The paper shows how the participants’ practices nourish, develop, and transform this entangled creature, defending it against dissolution or collapse. We zoom in on a specific thread of action: a group of players’ intensive endeavor which, over a period of two months, culminates in a risky shaman ritual with the purpose of evoking a specific character that has been absent for several years. This case makes visible how the role-play as creature is nourished and restrained by both play and pedagogy.

Nordic perspectives on playful learning have been defined by values and preconceptions associated with play in schooling. However, playful learning also emerges in specific ways as part of the patterns of relations that form classroom teaching and learning. Patterns can be understood as sociomaterial relationships in practice that create rhythms which become constitutive for specific teaching and learning practices (Sørensen, 2009). In the paper, I identify and trace ways in which specific patterns are created by multiple relationships that enable and hold together playful learning activities. With a focus on patterns of relations, I draw on performative understandings of playful learning which are holistically defined by complex sociomaterial relationships. The paper explores how these patterns enact Nordic ways of doing playful learning that are defined by both specific materialities, moods, and rhythms of doing language learning in secondary schooling. The paper builds on observations and interview data from a project in which teachers and students from three Danish schools experimented with playful learning in the school subjects English and German. In the project, experimentation and didactic development were enabled through action learning processes involving the participating teachers and the researcher. Experiments were scaffolded through use of the platform Drama Studio, where students can create animated stories using avatars in multimodal drama production. The paper focuses on a specific case in which the teaching of German became part of doing hygge as a seasonal mood in the classroom during an unusually long, four-hour German session. In the dynamics of enacting German as hygge, multiple relationships emerged that both held together and transcended the apparently delineated activity of doing German through Drama Studio.

While education is often seen as a main strategy for enabling sustainable futures, youth question the ability of modern schooling to provide them with the necessary tools to mitigate our current planetary crises. In this paper, we argue for the need for more critical insight into how youth understand and envision sustainability. The paper is based on a pedagogical intervention study, with a design inspired by decolonial pedagogy (Pashby & Sund, 2019, p. 38). Data was collected in two interconnected workshops at three Norwegian upper secondary schools. We share reflections communicated by students in conversations during the workshops. The material shows that although the students display criticality and an acknowledgement of the need for alternative ways of thinking, they also express a frustration over not being provided with the necessary tools to express this critique through their current education. We argue that if sustainability is to provide an educational avenue of hope and change, it requires tools that can help students challenge the limitations of modern-colonial habits of being and knowing. As the students suggest themselves, there is also a need for making space for more creative and imaginative pedagogical practices in education.

In 2021, I was asked to give a keynote address at the inaugural symposium of the Swedish national research school, CuEEd-LL – Culturally Empowering Education through Language and Literature, which was to take place in March 2022. I decided to focus my talk on my teaching journey. This paper builds on this keynote and includes my reflections on why and how I teach literature at Rhodes University, a culturally diverse institution. My teaching journey can be described as an unending learning expedition – a journey that has been challenging yet rewarding and continues to enrich me as a Black African female academic in South Africa. In this paper, I draw freely from the elements of a play by dividing my discussion into four parts. I begin with the prologue, which lays out the structure of the paper. Act I is a summary of my teaching journey, where I briefly contextualise higher education in the world, South Africa and Rhodes University before interrogating the role of literature studies in Africa in general and South Africa in particular. Act II contains a discussion of the different theories that inform my teaching philosophy, and the epilogue concludes my teaching journey.

This position paper argues that creative writing can be a fruitful tool for cultural responsiveness in secondary education and calls for creative writing to be viewed as a more natural part of language teachers’ culturally responsive pedagogical repertoire. The integration of creative writing exercises in culturally responsive language arts education may rouse a strengthened voice, benefit cultural literacy, engender the discovery and exploration of individual funds of knowledge, enhance relational competence, and bring about the critical crafting of and engagement with cultural representations. These arguments are convergent with the view that teaching, in order to be culturally responsive, should originate from students’ funds of knowledge, taking both subject content and relational aspects into consideration – and this paper proposes that creative writing is uniquely positioned to facilitate these aims.

This paper provides a critical examination of the domain of artificial intelligence (AI) in education, with a focus on the expectations and practical implications accompanying its integration into teaching. The expectations have been propelled by two interconnected concepts: (1) the potential for AI to automate pedagogical processes, replacing teachers in certain scenarios; and (2) the notion that teachers’ insights can be augmented through AI-based analysis. Drawing on two ethnographic studies in Swedish primary and secondary schools, this paper explores the enactments of pupils, teachers and two AI-based educational technologies. The aim is to demonstrate how automation and augmentation can emerge in teachers’ practice. Utilizing inspiration from a relational epistemological problematisation of socio-technical phenomena, the paper demonstrates how rather than automation and augmentation, AI in education is an act of symmation in which automation and augmentation is co-produced by the technology and teachers’ different hidden work, in this paper conceptualised as adaptations, experimentations, compensations and confirmations. The paper suggests that the study of symmation in relation to the teaching profession can be productive in further exploring the yet limited understanding of AI in educational practice.

The recent hyperbole around artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted on our ability to properly consider the lasting educational implications of this technology. This paper outlines a number critical issues and concerns that need to feature more prominently in future educational discussions around AI. These include: (i) the limited ways in which educational processes and practices can be statistically modelled and calculated; (ii) the ways in which AI technologies risk perpetuating social harms for minoritized students; (iii) the losses incurred through reorganising education to be more ‘machine readable’; and (iv) the ecological and environmental costs of data-intensive and device-intensive forms of AI. The paper concludes with a call for slowing down and recalibrating current discussions around AI and education – paying more attention to issues of power, resistance and the possibility of re-imagining education AI along more equitable and educationally beneficial lines.

This paper analyses what makes young adults feel insecure when they use social media to socialise and connect with peers.1 In a broader sense, the paper discusses what it means to grow up in a digitalised world with social media at the heart of youth life. The analysis is based on a two-year online ethnography conducted on Jodel, an anonymous location based social media app. The paper focuses on Jodel users’ anonymous disclosures about their social media related insecurities – shedding light on discourses related to social media practices that are often hidden or neglected in interview studies. The analysis finds that it is often the affordances of the platforms or design choices of apps such as Instagram, Snapchat or Tinder that lead to feelings of insecurity or uncertainty in relational maintenance or in the forming of new relationships. Because of the platforms, young adults sometimes find it difficult to know why peers behave like they do online, resulting in unfounded worries and feelings of insecurity.

This paper contributes knowledge on the effects of materiality and space on teaching and equal access to teacher education. Through an intersectional analysis, with a specific focus on orientations, bodies and materiality, we show how student-bodies orientate closer to or further from various parts of teacher education as an effect of the materiality of emergency-remote vs. on-campus education. We elaborate on three different student-body orientating processes that take place during teacher education. These are all related to the emergency-remote education implemented as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We call these processes ‘remote education as relief’, ‘the embodiedness of raising the hand on Zoom’ and ‘energy-draining pre-recorded lectures’. We show how the materiality of emergency-remote education orientates the participants situated within the bodily horizons of intersectional positions of being deaf, female, racialized as non-white and not having Swedish as a first language, both closer to and further away from various parts of their teacher education. The analysis is based on both individual and group interviews with twelve teacher students. The paper contributes insights to emergency-remote education, remote education and on-campus educating.

School refusal is an increasing concern in the Nordic countries. In Norway, public recommendations to combat school refusal sometimes include making life at home less desirable, which reflects the notion that children choose to stay at home out of convenience. However, the mechanisms behind absenteeism are not trivial. A largely unaddressed topic is the compatibility of Nordic mainstream schools for students with neurodevelopmental or psychological diagnoses. This paper supports King and Bernstein’s definition of school refusal as related mainly to anxiety and emotional discomfort. We ask: Are there school-related differences between different groups of students who struggle with school refusal? The paper discusses the results of a web-based survey that included 256 guardians of children with substantial undocumented school absences. We found school-related differences between students with ADHD, autism, and psychological challenges and students without diagnoses who also struggle with school refusal. Compared to students without a diagnosis, autistic students strived socially more and had higher risk of being without friends at school, and students with ADHD were more exposed to bullying, strived socially more, and fewer of them had good relations to the teachers.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on approaches that could build a didactic framework for school-age educare centres (SAECs). As a theoretical basis and a research field, didactics exists within many disciplines (e.g., education in natural sciences and preschool). This is not the case within the SAEC. While a lot of research has been devoted to subject didactics, there is a lack of research on didactics in SAECs, and the marginal research that exists shows a fragmented picture of what it could consist of. However, researchers in the field agree that didactics in SAECs is something else than subject didactics and differs from general didactics. Our aim in this paper is to suggest and discuss how a didactic framework in SAECs could be conceptualised with an intention in the near future to find the specific didactics that distinguishes the work in SAECs. The proposed design involves theory building/testing with a bottom-up perspective and various data collection methods. Because building a didactic theory for SAECs is the intention, the research process will take informed grounded theory (GT) as its methodological starting point. The empirical material will be related to the two dominant didactic frameworks: the German and the Anglo-Saxon. These frameworks will also be critically reviewed in relation to the activities in SAECs. The results will contribute important knowledge to the development of a relevant and useful didactic theory for SAECs. The practical implications are directly relevant to every stakeholder affected by the SAECs’ activities: policy actors, staff, students, and researchers. In the long term, we will be able to find a legitimate platform for didactics in SAECs, which will have concrete importance for professionals and researchers in particular.

This paper presents the research behind the formulation of a new didaktik model on waste and material resources in preschool. The research was part of an extensive collaborative R&D programme, involving close to 300 preschool teachers/managers and researchers, to build systematic knowledge on what may characterize teaching in preschool based on scientific grounds and proven experience. The guiding question in this specific study was what it can look like to teach sustainability issues in preschool. The teaching examined in the study was informed by the concept of didaktik as well as by pragmatic theory. Using the methodological approach of abductive analysis, a new didaktik model was designed. This process of generating a new didaktik model is part of didaktik modelling, a focus of the paper.

The paper presents a review process of Didaktik and curriculum theories, one that suggests that a German Bildung Didaktik approach seems to be suitable ground for the development of a critical-democratic Didaktik in preschool. The paper examines fundamental dimensions in Bildung Didaktik as point of departure for the modelling of a Didaktik in preschool. Among other things, a circular situation-oriented and dynamic didactical model is constructed. In order to take the preschool tradition into consideration, different forms of play-based learning are stated. These form an outline of a critical-democratic play Didaktik, including the concept playworld.

The current issue consists of two position papers and six articles covering diverse aspects of didaktik in preschool stemming from a major collaborative research project Multivocal Teaching in Preschool (https://mau.se/en/research/projects/multivocal-didactic-modelling-in-preschool/). The guest editor, Professor Ann-Christine Vallberg Roth, introduces this special issue in her position paper “Teaching in preschool: Multivocal didaktik modelling in a collaborative conceptual replication study.”

This paper contributes knowledge on the effects of materiality and space on teaching and equal access to teacher education. Through an intersectional analysis, with a specific focus on orientations, bodies and materiality, we show how student-bodies orientate closer to or further from various parts of teacher education as an effect of the materiality of emergencyremote vs. on-campus education. We elaborate on three different student-body orientating processes that take place during teacher education. These are all related to the emergencyremote education implemented as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We call these processes ‘remote education as relief’, ‘the embodiedness of raising the hand on Zoom’ and ‘energy-draining pre-recorded lectures’. We show how the materiality of emergency-remote education orientates the participants situated within the bodily horizons of intersectional positions of being deaf, female, racialized as non-white and not having Swedish as a first language, both closer to and further away from various parts of their teacher education. The analysis is based on both individual and group interviews with twelve teacher students. The paper contributes insights to emergency-remote education, remote education and on-campus educating.

Resumé Med samfundets pågående digitalisering som et tidstypisk nøgleproblem bliver de digitale teknologier et centralt anliggende for skolen og dermed for læreruddannelsens dannelsesopgave. Denne artikel præsenterer, undersøger og diskuterer et forsøg, hvor teknologiforståelse afprøves som nyt dannelsesfelt i den alment dannende undervisning i faget Lærerens Grundfaglighed, og hvor det er de lærerstuderende og deres dannelse i forhold til digitale teknologier, der er i fokus. I artiklen præsenteres eksempler på de studerendes møde med teknologiens umiddelbare egenskaber, gennem et brugerinterface og deres møde med de bagvedliggende strukturer i form af et programmeringsinterface. Artiklen belyser alment dannende elementer af teknologiforståelse i en læreruddannelseskontekst og diskuterer teknologiforståelse som potentiel bro mellem dannelsesteori og praksis. Abstract (UK) This paper takes as its premise that society’s ongoing digitalisation can be viewed as what German educational philosopher Wolfgang Klafki termed an epochal key problem. Therefore, digital technologies are a central issue for the school and thus for teacher education. In the paper, we present, examine, and discuss an experiment, in which technology comprehension was tested as a new aspect of general pedagogy with a focus on students’ competences as well as their own, general education (bildung) in relation to digital technologies. The paper presents examples of students’ encounters with immediate properties of technology through a user interface as well as subsequent encounters with program structures in a programming interface. The paper presents aspects of bildung within technology comprehension in teacher education and discusses elements of technology comprehension as a potential bridge between general pedagogy and practice.

This paper illuminates what fiction reading means inside and outside of Swedish schools. It also argues for the need to formulate this endeavour as both an epistemological project and a phenomenological one. At the core of this paper lies a troubling state of affairs—that reading is declining—and a wish to trace the origins of this decline to find available means for remedy. To be able to grasp what fiction reading means in a phenomenological sense, the paper first embarks on a critical discussion of the reader and the text, which is followed by a methodological and theoretical section fully devoted to the effort of describing reading as such through Michel Henry’s concept of flesh. Armed with a phenomenological understanding of the significance of reading, the paper then places fiction reading within the context of Swedish education. The phenomenological analysis finds that in education, when reading fails to be preciselyreading (pathetic-esthetic reading), it is instead often transformed into something other (objectified reading or instrumental reading) than what it sets out to be. The paper uses a literary example to concretize its findings.

The paper argues that Swedish preschool teachers tend to be depicted mainly as subjects for policy implementation when it comes to their mission to teach in preschool. Taking the perspective of inside-out-professionalism, the paper aims to make visible how preschool teachers have developed professional knowledge about teaching from within the preschool context. The methodology is based on content analysis of semi-structured interviews with ten experienced preschool teachers. Teaching is defined openly as a conscious arrangement for learning. Dewey’s notions of experience, environment and subject content further informed the interpretation of the results. Two main categories were discerned, both emphasising the experience and active participation of the child: identifying potential subject components in children’s experience, and arranging an environment in which the child becomes a part. Each main category further included two sub-categories. Thus the present issue of implementing teaching in preschool could gain from research on established preschool practice based on inside-out-professionalism and made visible through Dewey’s theorical lens.

The Battle over Knowledge in Teacher Education: An Analysis of Knowledge Discourses in the Integrated Teacher Education Programs in Norway. Different forms of knowledge are at play in teacher education and there is an ongoing debate as to which form of knowledge should set the premises. Policy documents call for a more research-based teacher education close to practice and, therefore, integrated teacher education [ITE] programs have been established. This paper has aimed to explore different forms of knowledge that are formed in practice in the former and new national guidelines for the ITE programs in Norway, using Basil Bernstein’s concept of vertical and horizontal knowledge discourses. The findings indicate a change from the former guidelines, where most of the focus was on experience-based knowledge in practice, to where there is now more focus on research-based knowledge. Therefore, the article discusses the relation between researched-based and experience-based knowledge and the consequences for teacher education as a profession-orientated program when research-based knowledge takes the lead and experienced-based knowledge lags behind.

Resumé I artiklen præsenteres analyser fra en tværgående udviklingsgruppe af læreruddannere indenfor naturfag, der har undersøgt muligheder og udfordringer relateret til integreret praktik. Teoretisk samles der op på forskning under disse overskrifter: integreret praktik, sammenhæng og progression, og praksisbaseret læreruddannelse. Empirisk indgår materiale fra workshops i udviklingsgruppen, både audiooptagede dialoger og forløbsskitser. Det samlede materiale kondenseres i en model til analyse og videreudvikling af forløb med integreret praktik og diskuteres under en række tematiske overskrifter. Betydningen af den organisatoriske rammesætning på professionshøjskolerne fremhæves, herunder bekymring for, at større fag som dansk og matematik prioriteres, hvilket paradoksalt nok kan forringe muligheder for praksissamarbejde i naturfag. Der præsenteres forskellige eksempler, hvor bevægelsen af både aktører og artefakter på tværs af uddannelsens arenaer er en væsentlig pointe, og hvor der på forskellige måder indgår en progression fra beskyttede øvebaner, fx med praksisapproksimationer på campus, til den fulde kompleksitet i åben praksis. Abstract The paper presents analyses from a national group of science teacher educators examining possibilities and challenges related to integrated school practice. In the theoretical background there is a condensation of research organized under the headings: integrated school practice, coherence and progression, and practice-based teacher education. The empirical material consists of audio-recordings from workshops and sketched progressions. A model is presented aimed to be used in analyses of integrated school practice and discussed under thematic headings. The importance of the organizational framing is emphasized, including worries that the larger subjects like Danish and Mathematics will be prioritized, thus paradoxically leading to less practice cooperation in science. A range of examples are presented, where the movement across the arenas of teacher education is a key point and where there in various ways have been worked with a progression from protected practice for example with approximations of practice at campus to the full authenticity at schools.

Resumé Teknologiforståelse er på den uddannelsespolitiske dagsorden, men det er stadig uklart, hvordan teknologiforståelsesfagligheden skal indgå i læreruddannelse og i folkeskole. Et casebaseret observationsstudie undersøger mulige læringspotentialer ved at integrere teknologiforståelse i eksisterende fag. Studiets empiriske grundlag er fire cases, som stammer fra gennemførte undervisningsaktiviteter, hvor teknologiforståelse som noget nyt er integreret i matematik på læreruddannelsen og i fysik/kemi, håndværk og design og dansk i folkeskolen. Data indsamles gennem deltagerobservation og interview. En induktiv temaanalyse danner grundlag for fund af to læringspotentialer: 1) Digitale teknologier kan både understøtte forståelse og gøre opmærksom på misforståelser af faglige begreber. 2) Samfundsmæssige problemstillinger, hvor teknologi spiller en væsentlig rolle, kan bringes i spil, når teknologiforståelse integreres i fag. Studiet fastslår, at der er læringspotentialer ved at integrere teknologiforståelse i eksisterende fag, men at der også kan være reelle udfordringer, som der skal tages højde for. Abstract This paper examines the learning potential of integrating technology comprehension in existing courses through a case-based observation study. The empirical foundation of the study consists of four revelatory cases that stem from completed teaching activities in which technology comprehension is integrated. Data is collected through observations and interviews. An inductive thematic analysis forms the basis for identifying two learning potentials. 1) Digital technologies can both support understanding and draw attention to misunderstandings of academic concepts. 2) Societal issues where technology plays a significant role can be brought into play when technological literacy is integrated into subjects. The case study states that there is learning potential in integrating technology comprehension into existing subjects, but there may also be real challenges that must be considered.

Emphasis on the need for Norwegian student teachers to conduct part of their teacher education programme abroad is increasing. Among the arguments for this emphasis is the idea that globally aware teachers have better intercultural competence that can facilitate sustainable development and more just education. Evidence to support these claims is contested. In this paper, we explore how facilitators of student teachers’ mobility between Norway and countries in the Global South reflect on student mobility as part of the (de)colonial project. We apply decolonial frameworks (Mbembe, 2016; Mignolo, 2021) that interrogate the colonial matrix of power (CMP) (Quijano, 2000) to identify and challenge colonial relations and expectations. Findings are based on interviews from four facilitators from Tanzania and Zambia (Global South) and three teacher educators from Norway (Global North) who facilitate Norwegian student teachers’ mobility. The findings show that student facilitators from the Global North had more freedom to shape mobility activities, including the freedom to choose partners, reproducing asymmetrical power relations exerted through mobility.

care educations. Danish law states that vocational education and training, VET, must contribute to developing pupils´ interest in, and ability to participate actively in democratic society. Based on Dewey’s theory, this paper focuses on managers´ perspectives on implementing the intention of the law. This is done through interviews with managers from social and health care colleges (the school) and with managers from elder care institutions where training takes place (the employer). The results show an awareness and an interest in democracy but also that it can be interpreted in many ways. Hence, there is a potential for pupils´ participation in democracy in different situations in VET. However, it is challenging to connect different pupils´ knowledge of democracy, impressions from the college, experiences from the training, and to contribute to a reflection on democracy.

This special issue consists of five position papers, four articles and two essays covering diverse aspects of the theme Culture on the Move that foregrounds language and literature both as pedagogical tools and disciplinary fields necessary for learning to live and work in a culturally diverse world. The contributions stem from the initial activities within the graduate school “Culturally Empowering Education through Language and Literature” (CuEEd-LL). Centre-staging teaching and learning in Swedish education, the texts in this issue present a range of inroads into how language and literature can be used to support cultural diversity among pupils, students and teachers since cultural diversity is steadily gaining attention both as a resource and a challenge in education and society.

This paper aims to glean valuable insights from critical pedagogy in order to apply them to the field of African literary studies. Specifically, I am interested in how approaches inspired by culturally responsive education can help us revisit the important but under-researched topic of student agency as it features in fictional works that deal with colonial education in Africa. Although colonial education in literature has been the subject of intense focus in postcolonial theory, such theorizations largely examine how colonial education reproduces colonial rule through the dissemination of colonial discourse/ideology. When student agency in the colonial education systems is addressed, conventional postcolonial theory sees it as being overwhelmed or assimilated by colonial discourse and power. Ideas emanating from critical pedagogy and culturally responsive education are of value here in that they can elucidate how students interact with and even resist the pedagogical and political power of the colonial education system. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s novel Weep Not, Child is an illustrative example of how such a critical-pedagogy-inspired approach can help us reorient literary studies of colonial education systems.

Through the monolingual bias and essentialist understandings of language in education, multilingual youth across the globe have consistently been portrayed as deficient based on their linguistic practices. Deficit approaches in education stem from a colonial project meant to silence the voices and erase the experiences of the Other, and although there is a long tradition of pedagogies that try to counteract this form of discrimination, these attempts are typically built on principles and assumptions that reproduce essentialism and dynamics of marginalization. In this position paper, I argue that it is necessary for educators to engage with non-essentialist understandings of language and multi-sided perspectives on multilingualism to develop pedagogies that are empowering for multilingual youth in Sweden. By engaging with the decolonial notion of linguistic citizenship, educators in Sweden can allow fluid understandings of multilingualism to enter the classroom, creating spaces for socio-political participation and dialogue at the margins of institutional arenas in which language can be negotiated. This measure creates opportunities for empowerment for all students, engaging them in the reconstruction of language and giving voice to stories that would otherwise remain silent.

In this paper, I formulate a position on the dissemination of ‘cultural empowerment’ in schools through a critical discussion of its relation to my research field, mother tongue instruction (MTI) in Sweden. In addition, I compare the ideals of the culturally empowering pedagogies and praxis of MTI, which I see as related through the underlying utopian visions of the multilingual and multicultural school. Both are forms of education which place a focus on the validity and importance of students’ individuality and their pre-existing knowledges from outside the curriculum. In discussing the marginalisation of MTI via the discourse of its threat to ‘Swedishness’, I hope to highlight some of the underlying problems inherent in cultural empowerment as an individualising practice carried out within the universalising framework that is the state education project. The implementation of MTI demonstrates a need for change targeted not only at the level of teachers and researchers but also at a level where legitimacy is granted to such change.

The last decades have seen regular and frequent modifications of the wording of school curricula in the Nordic countries together with increased appeals from teachers for further clarification. The paper analyzes how assessment of the subject English is presented in Sweden and Finland at the lower and upper secondary levels. The aim was to explore how much space was given to assessment in the texts, the types of expectations on school staff the texts generate, and the competences required to meet these, while considering the predominant curriculum theories reflected in these texts. It is a comparative case study combining qualitative and quantitative methods. The results show an imbalance between the two countries when it comes to space allocated to assessment. The Finnish curriculum is more extensive and distinct compared to the Swedish one. In both countries teachers’ main obligation is to make assessments based on knowledge and praxeological competence. Systematic and deliberative curriculum theory permeates both, but the shorter Swedish general guidelines give more space for local interpretation than the more detailed Finnish guidelines. Nevertheless, there are several issues in both curricula that can cause ambiguity. The importance of more distinct and transparent guidelines is thus apparent.

This paper deepens the understanding of conditions for students' subject-specific reading comprehension created through different ways of working with reading in civic education, and the support students thus get to read verbal texts. Motivation for the study is found in an increasing need for knowledge about reading in various school subjects, and theoretical foundation is found in New Literacy Studies and disciplinary literacy. Video recordings were analyzed from lessons in three different schools and six different classes (ca 100h in total). The schools worked with reading in different ways, two schools used different models for teaching reading and one school did not use any particular model. The material was analyzed using thematic content analysis. Seven different functions for reading were identified together with reading materials. Furthermore, we analyzed which text levels were in focus. Results show that the classrooms where teachers work according to special models give clearer support to read and comprehend longer coherent verbal texts by using this type of texts and working with them through a variety of functions for reading activities, activities general for several subjects as well as more subject specific activities.

In this paper we present our work process, methods and concerns in developing and implementing a model for analysis of multimodal texts. Using a design-based research approach and a multimodal social semiotic framework on communication, we investigated three different groups of students using video recordings and participatory observations. The results revealed the development of the model through three different design cycles into the current version and how students contributed to this process. In addition, we examined how the design process can be understood from the concept of student agency and how it contributes to the understanding of theory. The findings show that by applying a design process, students are offered student agency while creating an opportunity for a joint exploration between students and teachers, which is a rewarding experience that contributes to the development of all participants.

The present study analyzes and discusses mother tongue teachers’ perspectives on interdisciplinary collaboration with two specific groups of professionals: mainstream teachers and SEN teachers. A purposeful sampling with a maximum variation was chosen to obtain the highest possible representativeness. Thereafter, 13 individual, thematical, open-structured interviews were conducted. To discuss the themes arising from the abductive analysis of the interviews Bronstein’s (2003) theoretical model for interdisciplinary collaboration was used. The study forms part of a doctoral dissertation, which aims to get a more in-depth view of different measures that support multilingual students’ learning in the Swedish school context. In this paper, however, only results concerning mother tongue teachers’ perspectives on interdisciplinary collaboration with mainstream teachers and SEN teachers are presented. The results show that mother tongue teachers have a firm and consistent perception of their professional role, relying on the subject curriculum when planning, implementing, evaluating, and grading. However, interdisciplinary collaboration with mainstream teachers and special educational needs teachers is limited to solving structural and administrational challenges. The findings suggest that valuable multilingual resources would be made better use of when structural and administrative matters were formalized.

In this paper we conceptualize formative peer feedback principles by analyzing and comparing six empirical examples of formative peer feedback in a set of international STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) contexts. By discussing how these different approaches to peer feedback unfold in practice, we aim to facilitate the bridging of the gap between theory and practice in implementing peer feedback in Higher Education. As a group of researchers and teaching practitioners from six Higher Education institutions, we discussed, analyzed, and synthesized practical examples of peer feedback in STEM that cover a breadth of settings, aims, and forms. The analysis and comparison of these examples illustrate how principles in peer feedback emerge in practice. We discuss how the context in peer feedback influences its practical implementation, particularly with regard to its purpose and aims, the development and use of assessment criteria, and embedding and supporting the initiatives into the teaching and learning activities.

Breaking the class ceiling? A case study of a university mathematics student from a non-academic background. In this paper we report from a case study of a student from non-academic background, who has continued on to study mathematics in higher education. Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, habitus, and field were used to analyse the student’s trajectory into university mathematics, with a particular focus on mathematics specific capital. Data was collected through classroom observations and three semi-structured interviews, over a period of three years. The analysis showed how the student acquired mathematics capital by acting as an informal teaching assistant, thus receiving recognition from both peers and teachers for his mathematical abilities. The longitudinal interviews also demonstrated how the student has continuously been able to expand his social capital related to mathematics and science. We argue that it is important for higher education researchers and teachers to consider disciplinary specific capital, and also to provide students with opportunities to acquire such capital.

Den här studien illustrerar hur styrning kommer till uttryck i universitetslärares beskrivningar av uppsatshandledningsarbete på grund- och avancerad nivå. Mer precist analyserar vi spänningsförhållanden mellan olika styrprinciper i åtta universitetslärares berättelser och lokala styrdokument gällande uppsatshandledningsarbete på en utbildningsvetenskaplig fakultet. Frågan som ger oss riktning är: Hur responderar universitetslärare på de organisatoriska strukturer som omger arbetet med uppsatshandledning. Vi utgår från ett professionsteoretiskt perspektiv och förstår uppsatshandledningsarbetet genom två idealtypiska styrprinciper, organisationsprofessionalism och yrkesprofessionalism. I likhet med tidigare studier om universitetslärares arbete framträdde motstridiga styrprinciper i uppsatshandledningsarbetet. I lärarnas berättelser framträder starka spänningar mellan yrkesprofessionalismens och organisationsprofessionalismens styrningslogiker. Universitetslärarnas utsagor om handledningsarbetet kännetecknades av ont om tid för arbetsuppgiften, fria men svårerövrade arbetssätt samt problematiseringar gällande kollegial oenighet kring vetenskaplig kvalitet hos den färdiga produkten. Utmaningarna hanterades genom att handledarna erbjöd sin fritid, utvecklade egna arbetssätt samt problematiserade och distanserade sig från att bedöma uppsatsernas vetenskapliga kvalitet. Hur de än gjorde blev arbetet svårgenomförbart och riskerade att få konsekvenser för den enskilde. Vi ställer oss frågan om liknande utmaningar även förekommer på andra fakulteter och inom andra delar av universitetslärares arbete. Vad betyder det i så fall för universitetslärares rätt till ett hållbart arbetsliv? ENGLISH ABSTRACT Clashing logics in lecturers’ stories of supervising degree projects This paper highlights governance in university teachers’ statements about their work with supervision of degree projects, at undergraduate and advanced level. The study was carried out at an educational faculty at a Swedish university and consisted of semi-structural interviews with eight teachers and content analyses of documents from six different degree project courses. The data was analysed from a professional theoretical perspective. In alignment with previous research, contradictory logics of governance appeared in our findings. Tensions between and within the different logics of governance appeared and the teachers were trapped in the middle. The university teachers handled the challenges by offering their spare time, developing own working methods and by disclaiming responsibility for the scientific quality of the theses. However, this study was carried out in a particular context and the question is if similar challenges also appear at other faculties and in other areas of university teachers’ work? If so, what are the implications for university teachers’ sustainable work life?

This essay provokes who the “experts” are in discussions about education: why not the students who are most impacted by it? At the Centre for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS), a joint centre between Uppsala University and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, students are hired as Course Coordinators (CCs) to develop and facilitate freestanding university courses. This paper is an outcome of a collaborative reflection exercise in the form of a written dialogue between students, CCs, and a guest lecturer of a CEMUS course “Reimagining Education”. This course focused on approaching learning and education on a meta-level where students and their experience become the subject of collaborative learning. By comparing the experience from this course with other courses at CEMUS and beyond, we discuss whether and how CEMUS challenges traditional pedagogies based on teacher-student hierarchies. Both the capacity for CCs to influence the content and pedagogical arrangements as well as the opportunities for non-CC students to take responsibility in steering class discussions were highlighted as empowering experiences. We reflect upon how this and the use of arts-based pedagogies can lead to fostering community and how it motivates students to collectively engage in their personal learning experiences beyond curriculum goals.

The position in this paper is that Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) are very relevant for children’s education in Sweden, and that their practice makes them highly adaptable to English language teaching. The rationale for this position is that this elicitation and communication technique has proven very effective in nurturing the abilities and skills which are identified in the Swedish curriculum for compulsory schooling. The impact of VTS in the Swedish education system could be significant. First, once known and understood by teachers, VTS can be a very efficient technique in the English language classroom and can directly help to fulfil several of the ambitions of the curriculum and the English language syllabus. Second, abilities and sensitivities developed by VTS correspond to the core values of Swedish society in its promotion of democratic values, which are espoused in the compulsory school curriculum. Third, VTS lends itself to being actively used across school subjects and therefore supports an interdisciplinary sensitivity in students. VTS can help student performance and confidence across subject areas, thus again fulfilling the wider ambitions of the compulsory school curriculum and encourage these students in their growing independence as individuals and as active members of society.

Since teaching in Swedish preschool was regulated in the Education Act 2010, preschool teachers have appeared to struggle with the concept of “teaching” in their day-to-day practices. This paper is based on a collaborative R&D programme involving preschool teachers and researchers aimed to build knowledge of what can characterize teaching in preschool. The research was carried out in 40–44 preschools/preschool departments in eight municipalities in Sweden between 2018 and 2020. The method was based on a praxiographic approach where preschool teachers tried out different theory-informed teaching arrangements, including didaktik, variation-theory, post-structural gateway and pragmatic perspective. The material for the article consisted of 350 co-plans, 305 co-evaluations and 35 hours of video. Analysis was based on a didaktik premise and can be methodologically described in terms of abductive analysis. Theory-informed teaching arrangements have been tried out and shown to support teachers in conducting teaching in the complex reality that is based on scientific grounds and proven experience. In summary, the analysis is merged in a communicable entity through the concept of “multivocal didaktik modelling.”

I artiklen sammenligner vi tre læreres syn på skole-hjem-samarbejdet før og under lockdown i forbindelse med indsatsen mod COVID-19. Lærerne er udvalgt på baggrund af et tidligere studie, da de positionerer sig på tre meget forskellige måder i forhold til skole-hjem-samarbejdet. På baggrund af interviews med disse lærere foretaget før og under lockdown, analyserer vi (1) forskelle og ligheder mellem de tre læreres syn på skole-hjem-samarbejdet inden lockdown, og undersøger dernæst (2) med udgangspunkt i Goffmans rammeteori og positioneringsteori, hvordan de respektive lærere håndterer det rammeskift, som omlægningen til hjemmeundervisning efter reglerne for nødundervisning medfører. Konklusionen er, at lærerne fastholder deres forskellige positioneringsstrategier i forhold til forældrene, hvilket giver dem særdeles forskellige udgangspunkter for at repositinere sig efter det rammeskift, som hjemmeundervisningen udgør. Abstract In this paper we analyze different strategies by which teachers position themselves in the teacher-parent cooperation, by comparing three teachers’ views on the cooperation before and after the COVID-19 Danish school lockdown. The teachers were selected based on a previous study where it was identified that they held distinct positions on, what was expected in the cooperation. Interviews were conducted with the teacher before and during the lockdow, and analyzed by applying Goffmann’s frame theory and positioning theory. The result is a demonstration of, how the individual teacher handles the “change in frames” that the school lockdown and teaching from home entails. The conclusion is that the teachers maintain their positioning-strategies in regard to the parents, which gives them very different basis for repositioning themselves after the change in frame.

Resumé I artiklen præsenteres en kvalitativ analyse af data fra forløb for lærerstuderende med fokus på mindfulness, selvberoenhed og relationskompetence. Kvantitative eksperimentelle data fra samme forløb har vist effekt på de lærerstuderendes mentale trivsel. Mulige årsager og kobling til arbejde med relationer som kommende lærer diskuteres baseret på en tematisk analyse af bl.a. gentagne interview. Fem overordnede pointer fremhæves i relation til oplevet udbytte: 1) Der har været en frugtbar spænding mellem kendthed og anderledeshed, 2) de studerende har oplevet en syntese mellem “hoved og krop”, 3) forløbet er oplevet som modsvar mod en udbredt præstationsorientering og acceleration, 4) læringsfællesskabet på holdet fremhæves som afgørende for de studerendes oplevelse af selvberoenhed, og dette ser ud til at blive understøttet af den scene, der sættes af underviserne, og 5) de lærerstuderende oplever selv at have udviklet nogle kompetencer, som de har en intention om at anvende såvel i mødet med (kommende) elever som med kolleger. Abstract (UK) The paper presents a qualitative analysis of data from a pedagogical project for student teachers focused e.g. on mindfulness and relational competencies. Previously reported quantitative experimental data from the same project have shown an effect on the student teachers’ mental health. The background for these effects and the connection to the student teachers’ relational work as prospective teachers are discussed based on a thematic analysis of interview data etc. Five key points are highlighted referring to the perceived outcomes: 1) A fruitful tension between something well known and something very different, 2) a synthesis in both body and brain, 3) difference compared to the normal performance orientation and acceleration, 4) a community of learning together has developed and has been experienced as supportive, this is both among peers but also scaffolded by the teacher educators, 5) the student teachers themselves experience to have developed competencies they intend to use with future students and colleagues.

In this paper, we present the conceptual framework, objectives, and methodology of an interdisciplinary research program (2018–2022) on the media literacy competence of teenagers in French-speaking Belgium, Quebec, France, and Switzerland. The program is undertaken by researchers in four universities, one in each national context. Focusing on information search and multimodal production as core media literacy activities, this program develops a multi-level assessment method to measure media literacy competence at varying levels of complexity. Additionally, we relate task-based measures of competence with self-reported competence and practices and seek to document the influence of the students’ interpretation of the tasks contexts and purposes, their motivation and feeling of empowerment, and their collaborative practices on the exercise of their media literacy. Preliminary results reveal that students report substantially higher levels of competence in information search than in web production; however, this difference is reduced when students assess their ability to perform specific search-related or production-related actions. These results are discussed in light of the potential usefulness of the program for teachers and for curricular design.