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The aim of this article is to examine aspects of democracy derived from participation in so-called research circles, and to discuss participatory and democratic ideas arising in those circles as they relate to perspectives on Early Childhood Education. This paper draws its argument mainly from material recorded from two research circles — one on Gender and the other on New subject didactic challenges in preschool. The analysis was based on the separate data from the two research circles and on a comparison between them. It is a theoretically governed approach based on Klafki’s critical constructive didactics and Biesta’s critical discussion on education and democracy in relation to the rise of neoliberalism. Larsson’s three aspects of democracy in relation to study circles have been used: equal participation, horizontal relations and knowledge that informs standpoints. The diversity between the circles resulted in variations concerning form and content that could be discussed as related to democracy aspects.

This article is a report of the second part of a study of how one group of unemployed academics with migrant background perceives their encounter with the Swedish school system and how they construe their “new” teacher identities after a two-year complementary program where they have acquired Swedish teaching certification as Science and Math-teachers. The first part of the study comprised interviews with 28 of these teachers as well as with 12 administrators at the schools where the teachers were employed. This second part of the study was conducted three years later and comprises interviews with 26 of the 28 teachers. A significant result was that nearly all of the teachers who had taken the course had found employment as teachers four years later. Moreover, almost all of the teachers were employed in schools where the majority of the students had migrant backgrounds, that is, in schools where diversity in terms of ethnicity, religion and language is strong. Although the teachers stress their good command of subject areas, they make increasing use of their own migrant background over time. Indeed, their own background becomes an important component when they construe their teacher identities, and they tend to regard themselves as a resource in relation to the students with migrant background. In relation to their “Swedish” colleagues difference is increasingly marked, not similarity.