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This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the motivations that key policy documents have put forward as justifications for Sweden's mother-tongue instruction in immigrant and historical minority languages as a multicultural policy that has endured for nearly half a century. The diachronic development of these motivations is analysed in four periods and interpreted with the help of Ruiz's (1984) orientations in language planning. The corpus consists of 26 key policy documents making up the coordinative discourse among policy actors. Based on an innovative mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the motivations are presented in a three-tiered taxonomy consisting of motivational units, themes and language-planning orientations. The results point to both continuity and change in how mother-tongue instruction has been justified over time. Confirming previous research, the results show that the language-as-resource orientation has played a central role in justifying both the establishment and the maintenance of mother-tongue instruction in Sweden and that language as right complemented this orientation. Furthermore, the study illustrates that the language-as-problem orientation need not always be detrimental to bilingualism and minority-language maintenance. Contrary to some claims in the literature, it is argued that language as extrinsic resource is not necessarily underpinned by neoliberalism, as there are also social liberal and conservative inroads to this orientation. The paper concludes that although the language-as-resource orientation plays an indispensable role in supporting bilingualism in education, not only the language-as-right orientation but also the language-as-problem orientation should not be neglected.

In Sweden, the Compulsory School for Students with Intellectual Disabilites (CSSID) is currently experiencing political change, as this type of school is being renamed and is undergoing organisational changes. The inclusion of children with intellectual disabilities (ID) in schooling, and in general society, has been challenged and debated for decades; such debates are at the heart of some of these changes. In this study, we have systematically investigated the policy work (e.g. government reports and statements) preceding and governing the changes. Hence, the purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge on how policy documents inscribe meaning to the inclusion of children with ID. Results show that discourses on inclusion are connected to neoliberal values and practices, such as assessment, global comparison, and accountability. It has been suggested that this may have a profound and long-term effect on how children with ID are fabricated and hence, how the child with ID and their education can be understood in terms of being included in the idea of 'all students' in policy, and in addition, in practice.

Against the backdrop of global convergences in education reforms, a growing focus on teacher competences has emerged in European policy discourses about teacher professionalism and professional learning and development that has driven an expanding international and national CPD market involving both state and private operators. Developments in Sweden are an example, and the aim of this article is to identify and explore the discourses on teacher professional learning that seem to proliferate on this newly emerged and expanding market and their connections with and consequences for teacher professionalism. Two sets of data have fed the analysis. These are (a) CPD invoices and (b) interviews with school principals. The analysis indicates that the dominant discourses discursively shape teacher professionalism in relation to ideas about teachers as learners as collegial consumers of knowledge. Policy recommendations about peer learning become a subordinated element of a dominant discourse that prioritises and privileges the agency of knowledge producers, such as consultancies, compared to other actors as intermediaries. Commodification is a new key intermediary process in professional learning for teacher professional development.

During the last few years, the Swedish preschool curriculum has undergone several changes. Among those changes is the introduction of the concept of teaching as a goal-oriented activity. Preschool teachers have been given a specific responsibility for leading the teaching in preschool. This study aims to explore how preschool teachers' didactical leadership can be understood in relation to the didactical questions expressed during collegial meetings. The empirical data consist of audio recordings of 17 meetings. The participants were five qualified preschool teachers, a pre-service preschool teacher and an unqualified preschool teacher. The audio recordings were transcribed and analysed using some of the key concepts of Bernstein's theory of pedagogical practice. The results show that preschool teachers' didactical leadership is established in a pedagogical discourse where children's social development and learning is at the foreground while content knowledge is often implicit. Furthermore, the child as a guide is expressed as a core idea, whilst preschool teachers position themselves mostly in the background. The results of the study point to a didactical leadership embedded in an invisible pedagogy.

In this article, we examine how policymakers from three Nordic countries, Finland, Iceland and Sweden, reflect on the future at 2 different points in time: just before the first PISA study (1998-1999) and more than 15 years later (2015-2017). The empirical data consist of interviews (N = 37) with national policymakers, collected in two comparative Nordic education policy research projects. As a result of this study, we identified three common themes according to which Nordic policymakers discussed the future: (a) school, work, and social equality in a changing society; (b) policies and practices of education governance; and (c) the future of the teaching profession and teacher education. Whereas these themes constitute a shared semantic basis for envisioning the future of Nordic education, contrasting policymakers' future reflections across time and space also reveals differences, contradictions and changes in ways of thinking about the future.

Distance education has received a lot of attention in contemporary policy as something that makes it possible for more students to participate, but also involves a certain set of challenges. When it comes to distance education, Swedish municipal adult education (MAE) stands out with its long history of flexible education, often provided on distance. Applying Bacchi's poststructural WPR approach, the aim of this study was to scrutinise how distance education is construed, and the discursive effects of this, in comments by MAE school leaders and staff during a quality audit. The analysis shows that it becomes difficult to question or think differently about distance education within the flexibility discourse in adult education. Moreover, the blame for students' lack of goal attainment and increased dropouts seems to be put on external providers, municipalities, and the students rather than on the way that the adult education system is organised or the demands around flexibility in adult education policy. What seems to be left out is a discussion about the pedagogical and didactical implications of distance education.

Exploring how the information flow of social studies textbook spreads is negotiated in teacher-led interaction, the concern of this study is the conscious and critical use of teaching material in diverse student groups. The study involved a teacher and her Grade 6 students in a school with many migrant language learners. The data was gathered by observations, field notes, voice recordings, and the collection of teaching materials. Using social semiotic theory of visual design, the analysis of the textbook used in instruction shows that the layout perpetuated a Western-centric view of a divided world, along with an individualistic and anthropocentric view of environmental sustainability. The oral interaction, highlighting different text elements, largely reinforced the meaning perspectives promoted in the textbook. However, on occasion, the students were positioned to take a more analytical stance. Implications for using knowledge about information flow in textbooks to promote critical literacy practices in teaching are discussed.

Although visual aids are widely considered a valuable source of scaffolding, the nature and active utilization of these aids in current science classrooms are not well understood. This qualitative study explores interaction in the teaching of concepts related to evolution, with a specific focus on a teacher's use of different visual support material. Based on a classroom study in a linguistically diverse Grade 4 classroom, we employed the perspective of discourse-bridging interaction to develop three broad categories of interactional examples, which we related to three kinds of visual support material used in the instruction: generic visual support images, naturalistic images, and disciplinary images showing examples of natural selection. The findings show that the interaction moved in and out of science discourse in a way that reflected the images' properties. A generic visual support image illustrated the concept of "adaption" as puzzle pieces fitting together, which promoted everyday and anthropomorphic examples of animals and people striving to fit in. When the teacher used naturalistic images, the discourse shifted between a range of perspectives, while visual aids and whiteboard drawings showing the classic examples of giraffes evolving (a disciplinary image) were employed to clarify the notion of natural selection. We discuss the study's implications for using visual support material in a planned way that supports disciplinary understanding.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate children's sense-making about their fathers' attitudes about using violence against the child's mother. More specifically, we examine various ways in which the children reflect on whether, and if so how, their father showed regret. Method: This study used data from interviews with 31 children (14 boys and 17 girls) aged between 10 and 14 years, using a semi-structured interview guide. The children's narratives were analyzed using discourse analysis. Results: We found that most of the children in this study positioned their fathers as regretful in relation to two discourses—on violence and on fatherhood—that are prominent in the interviews. Some children, however, positioned their fathers as inconsistent or non-regretful, saying they did not express regret emotionally, did not change their behavior, did not communicate regret, or communicated it in a self-contradictory way. In their narratives the children sometimes used interpretative repertoires—about feelings, actions, and communication—to explain why they thought their father did or did not regret his use of violence. Conclusion: Positioning one's father as regretful after having committed IPV can be a way to make the father's attitudes about the violence understandable, both to the children and to others. Discourses on violence and fatherhood can, however, constrain children's narratives about their fathers' violence, which is important to keep in mind when working with children who have been exposed to IPV and making decisions that concern them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both policy-making and academia, the realisation is growing that transitions striving for sustainability have to be just to be socially accepted. This insight has given rise to institutionalised approaches to a "just transition" – but also beyond these, justice is a key challenge in the governance of sustainability transitions. In this paper, we examine how justice arguments are being used in national-level discourses of transition governance in Sweden. Analysing 121 policy-related documents from 2019 to 2021, we found that justice was discursively treated in a way that essentially stifled change. Political actors attempted to trump each other's justice claims rather than to genuinely engage with them. Justice concerns that would not serve re-election, such as solidarity across social boundaries, were almost absent from the material. Based on these findings, we critically explore how justice arguments contribute to politicizing transition governance in particular ways, rendering some policy options impossible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lately, there has been massive media coverage of gang-related criminality in 'exposed areas' in Sweden. Politicians have blamed the illegal drugs trade without questioning the country's prohibitionist drug policy. This study analyzes how cannabis is constructed in Swedish newspaper articles that mention both organized crime and cannabis. We ask how the drug and its buyers and sellers are described, what discourses are drawn upon, and discuss the relationship between media coverage and drug policy. We analyzed recent (2021) articles from four newspapers (n = 71) through Critical Discourse Analysis. Cannabis was constructed as a commodity linked to violence and deviance. Agency was attributed to people with power and status (e.g. gang leaders), and recreational cannabis users were described as guilty of feeding organized crime. A combination of economic and moral discourses was used to make the reported events meaningful, and to motivate both prohibition and decriminalization/legalization. The study shows that assumedly neutral journalistic voices emphasized the link between cannabis and violence and problematized cannabis buyers and sellers. This homogenous media coverage will probably contribute to keep the question of cannabis law reform discursively lifeless in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism in national parks is on the rise and contributes to shaping notions of the non-human world (often depicted as 'nature'). One country that is currently facing a shift towards an enhanced emphasis on tourism in its national parks is Sweden. This article aims to unravel, illuminate, and problematize ways of seeing the non-human world in tourists' Instagram posts about Swedish national parks, and also to consider the productive effects these might have on the relationship between humans and the non-human world. In a discursive and visual cultural analysis, representations of the non-human world, how they are situated in historically inherited ways of seeing, and what implications they might have for how humans approach and understand the non-human world are traced and reflected upon. These representations construct ways of seeing the non-human world as a sublime, desolate, and physically challenging treasury of unique character. In this way, a romantic tourist gaze is constructed, which approaches the national parks as isolated enclaves and commodified havens that offer tourists an escape from humanity, grand views, and seclusion. The main implication of this tourist gaze is a sustaining of the approach to the human world and the non-human world as separated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses significant changes in the political rationality underpinning Sweden's official reading policy between the 1940s and 1980s. Using official inquiry reports as empirical material and drawing on a discourse analytical method, we examine policy changes regarding ideal readers (what reading should result in) and administrative practices (what policy actions could be used) and the kinds of academic knowledge that was used to justify specific measures. It is found that official reading policy ceased to be limited to distributing literature and expanded to include active reading promotion. The replacement of sociological perspectives by cognitive viewpoints as constituting knowledge is also noted. It is concluded that changes in the political rationality had consequences for how the individual reader was construed, from a subject with the potential to change society to a subject who had to adjust to society. We argue that the cultivation of readers evident in reading policy constitutes a specific technique of governance not sufficiently considered in previous cultural policy research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates 20 years of discursive struggles in Nordic medical journals around the process of legitimating and routinising gestational surrogacy and uterus transplantation in Finland and Sweden. The comparative analysis through critical discourse analysis suggests that influential health care professionals have contributed to different levels of legal and cultural adaptation of the methods, prioritising non-commercial gestational surrogacy in Finland and uterus transplantation in Sweden. The article identifies central discursive turning points in the medical journal discussions by interpreting them against the background of medical and policy developments in Finland and Sweden during the analysed twenty-year period. Legitimation and routinisation of surrogacy and uterus transplantation were developed through biomedicalisation by representing them as infertility treatments and emphasising the relational dynamics between donors and recipients—a connection that in the Nordic context is often based on kinship or close relationships. The diagnosis of absolute uterine factor infertility was central to representing women as on the boundary between fertile and infertile, as they may have functioning ovaries. Through the biomedicalised rhetoric of equal opportunities for biogenetic motherhood, the diagnosed women’s ambiguous reproductive status was used to legitimise the two methods as cures for absolute infertility, thereby reinforcing hegemonic family and kinship norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wind power production is expanding globally and with this comes social resistance. In this article, we study controversies concerning the expansion of wind power in Sweden between 2009 and 2022. To this end, we study national press coverage and local press coverage from Sweden's 290 municipalities. Despite previous studies showing that Swedish people are generally in favour of expanding wind power, our results show that this policy is controversial and often is met with significant local resistance. We identify a clash between two environmental concerns: developing national policies to mitigate the effects of climate change and local opinions calling for the preservation of natural landscapes, which are often coupled with concerns about whether expansion of wind power leads to positive climate effects. We analyse national and local discourses through a multi-level governance perspective, a view that argues Sweden's market-oriented and decentralized wind power planning regime feeds the controversy. In conclusion, the dispersal of power throughout the planning system facilitates scaling up of local resistance to an energy policy issue of national concern, creating significant uncertainty about the expansion of wind power in Sweden. • Material on the debate on wind power resistance in the case of Sweden is analysed focusing on national and local actors. • A national opinion in support for wind power development is challenged by local resistance towards the same energy source. • The controversy threatens climate objectives as well as the electrification of Swedish industry and transportation sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]