Search

Purpose: Due to the global outbreak of COVID-19, Swedish teachers in upper secondary education were forced to conduct emergency remote teaching. As of today, there is a stream of research that addresses digitalization in education in light of the pandemic. Previous studies show that the challenges with the sudden intensification of digitalization have been particularly challenging in practical and aesthetic subjects. The research question is as follows: What challenges did vocational teachers experience during the emergency remote teaching caused by COVID-19 and what emergent tactics can be identified in vocational teaching practice? Design/methodology/approach: The empirical data consists of (1) interviews with two vocational teachers and, (2) workshops with 25 teacher students from different vocational programmes that addressed vocational teaching during the COVID-19 crisis. Findings: Emergency remote teaching meant challenges due to the changed socio-material environment that cannot easily be transformed to a vocational teaching setting. The challenges were related to authentic situations and material, problem solving and dexterity. Tactics that emerged as a response to the challenges were mainly connected to attempts to mimic vocational practices. Originality/value: Contributions include explaining specific challenges and possibilities in developing vocational competence when teaching is digitalised. Furthermore, it increases the understanding of the relationship between theory and practice in vocational education. By adopting a socio-material perspective on vocational competence, the authors enhance the understanding of the importance of a shared socio-material environment.

In 2020, a global pandemic changed the educational landscape overnight and caused an abrupt transition to virtual classrooms. This study aims to gain increased knowledge of teachers' experiences of facing such radical digitalization through ideal types. The data include a teacher survey with 1109 respondents from 15 high schools in Sweden, containing both fixed and open-ended response types. Educational affordances and digital competence are used as analytical lenses. The results show distinct differences regarding teachers' perception of how teaching in a virtual classroom has worked and whether they and their students have developed their digital competence during this period. We present four ideal types: (a) the enthusiast, (b) the skeptic, (c) the pessimist, and (d) the affirmative, which capture the essence of teachers' multifaceted experiences, actions, and affordances perceived in the transition to virtual classrooms. Contributions include theorizing about teachers' encounters with radical cases of digitalization.

The COVID-19 crisis changed the educational landscape. In Sweden, as in many other countries, school leaders, teachers, and students faced a completely new situation, as teaching would immediately be conducted remotely. It offered an opportunity to continue teaching in a crisis, while giving rise to new questions and dilemmas. This study aims to explore aspects of interaction in the virtual classroom. The context is four high schools in Sweden. Data includes a teacher survey and ten workshops with teachers and school leaders. The interaction order framework is used as an analytic lens. The results draw a multifaceted picture of interaction that involves both increased and reduced contact with, and control over, the students and their activities. Some students find a place in the virtual classroom that they previously lacked, while others "disappear behind the screen." Contributions include unpacking the complex role of interaction in the virtual classroom and providing implications for teachers and school leaders.

This paper explores policy related to digital competence and the digitalisation of Nordic K-12 schools. Anchored in some key transnational policies on digital competence, it describes some current Nordic movements in the national policies of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The concept of boundary objects is used as an analytical lens, for understanding digital competence as a plastic and temporal concept that can be used to discuss the multi-dimensional translation of this concept in these Nordic countries. The paper ends with a discussion of the potential to view digital competence as a unifying boundary object that, with its plasticity, temporality and n-dimensionality, can show signs of common Nordic efforts in the K-12 school policy.

Purpose: This study aims to develop the understanding of learning processes related to the new ways of interacting in the enforced digital workplace over time. Design/methodology/approach: A multiple, longitudinal case study of knowledge-based workers in three firms located in Sweden has been conducted from March 2020 to March 2023. In total, 89 interviews with 32 employees in three knowledge-based firms have been collected. Findings: The study shows how the intricate interaction between rules and norms for interaction and work must be renegotiated as well as un- and relearned when the physical work environment no longer frames the work context. Furthermore, technology can be viewed as both an enable and a barrier, that is, technology has enhanced collaboration between organizational members yet also created social difficulties, for example, related to communication and interaction. The study emphasizes that individuals learned through trial and error. That is, they tried behaviors such as translating social interactions" to a digital arena, appraised the outcomes and modified the practices if the outcomes were poor. Research limitations/implications: The present study does have several limitations. First, it is based on interviews with respondents within three organizations in Sweden. To broaden and deepen the understanding of both organizational and learning, future studies can contribute by studying other contexts as well as using a mixed method approach in other countries. Practical implications: Results from the study can provide a practical understanding of how the rapid change from working at the office to working from home using digital technologies can be understood and managed. Originality/value: Contributions include combining interaction order and un- and relearning among organizational employees. This insight is important given that the rapid digital transformation of our society has changed how work is performed and how the future workplace will be both structured and organized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) is a well-known conceptual framework for what knowledge teachers need in order to teach successfully using technology. Most recent TPACK studies address assessment of teacher TPACK by quantitative self-reporting surveys. Such an approach provides little guidance for teachers in how to develop their everyday teaching practice. We argue for a revival of the original TPACK design-based approach and propose a design-based, operationalization of the framework that is situated in action, context specific, and integrated in practical teaching. The approach has been developed, evaluated, and validated in a school development project in a Nordic Elementary School context using design-based research. The project engaged more than 100 professionals: in-service elementary teachers, school administrators and researchers, and more than 1,000 students during 3 years. The theoretical development evolved from rich descriptions of 38 didactic design as delimited units of teaching including planning, implementation, and evaluation of specified learning tasks acted out in practice. Contributions include framing teaching practice as design activity and a TPACK in situ model and methods targeting reflective practitioners. Our proposed approach addresses current limitations of TPACK and is aligned with advocated professional development methods.

Research often defines Work-integrated Learning (WIL) as an educational approach that provides students with work-based experiences. In this article, we argue that this approach definition of WIL is nonsensical and maintains a research terminology that fails to capture what WIL is, namely, a multidimensional learning phenomenon. Drawing on this argument, this article aims to explore and problematise how the term WIL is used in contemporary research. To achieve this aim, we draw on contemporary research and conduct a text analysis of 48 extended abstracts that were accepted for an international WIL conference in December 2022. The text analysis generated three recurring research phenomena that we relate to research. These are (i) WIL avoidance, when the WIL term is evaded although it could very well have been used, (ii) WIL washing, when the WIL term is used in a hollow manner, and (iii) WIL ambiguity, when the WIL term is used vaguely. We scrutinise how these research phenomena and the approach definition of WIL pose challenges to establishing a comprehensive research terminology that can bring about an increased understanding of what WIL is. Finally, we call for research to use a more careful and nuanced terminology that acknowledges WIL’s multidimensional nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global pandemic, COVID-19 shattered everyday life as we know it and disrupted education globally. In this study, we explore an initiated digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic from school leaders' perspectives in the context of Swedish high schools. The data consists of a questionnaire with 105 school leaders containing both fixed and open-ended response types. The results reveal significant differences in school leaders' views on how the transition has worked, whether they and their staff have developed their digital competence, and, how it will affect the school onwards. Contributions include theorising about school leaders' experiences of navigating an accelerated digital transformation prompted by the pandemic. We introduce four school leader profiles: (a) the enthusiast, (b) the affirmative (c) the skeptical, and (d) the hesitant. These profiles serve to encapsulate the nuanced perspectives of school leaders, thereby enriching our comprehension of their diverse requirements and priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) has been introduced as a conceptual framework for the knowledge domains teachers need to master to teach successfully using technology, and has drawn much attention across the educational field. Yet, the framework has been criticized for not being practically useful, due to inaccurate and insufficient definitions. To better understand the critics and the usefulness of the framework, an investigation of how the framework has been applied to show teacher TPACK is needed. This study is a systematic literature review of 107 peer-reviewed journal articles concerning the use of TPACK in empirical studies published from 2011 to 2016. The study supplements previous review studies with more recent work on general characteristics of TPACK studies as well as contributes an analysis of how the framework has been applied to identify teacher TPACK in recent literature. Findings show a variety of approaches and instruments to examine teacher TPACK. Most common is to identify teacher TPACK via self-reporting, while performance evaluations of teaching activities are rare. Additionally, the ways TPACK is operationalized as a measuring instrument are often implicit and make comparison of results difficult. Future directions for research are discussed.

Teaching and learning design theory are challenging tasks. To solely teach design theory through rules or codes of conduct, could be seen as a static way of approaching a complex phenomenon. In this paper, we argue for the importance of engagement in sensitive design situations, an approach that entails a process of de-emphasizing objectivity and promoting subjectivity through real-life sensitive cases to learn from, to foster reflectiveness for the future designers. This study aims to explore how sensitive design situations can be used when teaching and learning design theory. The research approach consists of a case study in a Nordic university, and a course in interaction design in a software engineering program. The sensitive design situation involves designing a digital artifact that can help children that have been diagnosed with cancer, cope with their cancer treatment. The main contribution is a teaching method for cultivating ethical design, which includes the application of sensitive design situations when teaching ethics to students. We illustrate that by forwarding three characteristics that can be used when teaching and learning ethical design through sensitive design situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]