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Purpose: Taking läxhjälp/homework support in Sweden as a case, this article aims to further explore shadow education, especially as a pedagogical object from curriculum theory perspective. Design/Approach/Methods: Approaches including policy analyses, ethnomethodological work based on video-recorded interaction, and narratives have produced empirically grounded knowledge. We use examples from several substudies and analyze the reentry and regulation of supplementary education and how tutors and tutees interact in tutoring settings and negotiate identities in läxhjälp as well as the relation to regular schooling. Findings: Läxhjälp is conditioned by the logic of equality and changes in the governance of läxhjälp. The proliferation of different kinds of tutoring practices provided by various organizations calls for a broad definition of shadow education. With curriculum as boundary object, equality and academic success are foundational. Different settings and spatiotemporal arrangements affect modes of interaction, distribution of epistemic authority, and negotiations of identities. Originality/Value: With Sweden as a case, it is possible to explore shadow education in a new context, the Scandinavian welfare state, and its history of comprehensive education. Moreover, ethnomethodological interaction and narrative studies and curriculum perspectives are seldom employed within research on shadow education. A number of critical key boundary objects are identified. is conditioned by the logic of equality and changes in the governance of läxhjälp. The proliferation of different kinds of tutoring practices provided by various organizations calls for a broad definition of shadow education. With curriculum as boundary object, equality and academic success are foundational. Different settings and spatiotemporal arrangements affect modes of interaction, distribution of epistemic authority, and negotiations of identities. Originality/Value: With Sweden as a case, it is possible to explore shadow education in a new context, the Scandinavian welfare state, and its history of comprehensive education. Moreover, ethnomethodological interaction and narrative studies and curriculum perspectives are seldom employed within research on shadow education. A number of critical key boundary objects are identified.

The purpose of this study is to discern and discuss issues with relevance to the tension between contextuality and generalisation, which recurrently are identified over time in research reviews of teaching methods. The 75 most cited reviews on teaching methods listed in the Web of Science from 1980 to 2017 were analysed. Since our interest is the claims made in each article about the teaching method under study, the analysis concerned the abstract, results, discussion, conclusion, and implication parts of each review. Three main issues, cutting across the reviews over time, were identified: 1) the abundance of moderating factors, 2) the need for highly qualified teachers, and 3) the research-practice gap. It is argued that the three issues reflect tensions in original research. The implications of these findings are discussed in the article. One main conclusion is that such issues ought to be more explicitly attended to and elaborated in both primary and secondary level research. The importance of viewing validity as a multidimensional concept, including internal, external, and ecological aspects, is underlined. Further, ideas from realistic reviewing are used to discuss a contextually bound approach to causality.

A third level of educational research is emerging, in addition to original research and secondary-level reviews. Whereas most third-level research syntheses focus on rather restricted topical areas, this study introduces a comparative and integrative overview of prominent second-order research on teaching, including many different types of reviews and aspects of teaching. The purpose of the study is to illuminate patterns in a second-order research topography in the widespread and multi-faceted field of research on teaching from 1980 to the present, in order to discuss its implications for research and review-making. The overview encompasses 75 most-cited reviews of research on teaching published in international, refereed journals from 1980 to 2018 in the Web of Science. The overview utilised a specific coding procedure covering methodology, review topics and context. The study shows that several research traditions have contributed to advances in the research on teaching over time. Reviews have become more formalised, but the distribution of different types of review formats and research traditions is relatively constant. The single most established review format is meta-analysis, but it is less dominant than might be expected in an era of evidence-based education. The reviewers mainly belong to educational psychology, applied linguistics/research on language teaching, or research on science teaching. Whereas most reviews of research on science teaching are qualitative, reviews performed by psychologists and language-education researchers are mainly quantitative or based on mixed methods as a way to rationally and cumulatively summarise and downsize unmanageable amounts of research.

This article develops knowledge about the meaning and value ascribed to educational proficiency in the recruitment of full professors. Hiring processes reflect standards that organize academia and notions of academic scholarship, its value and quality, and agents involved have an institutional gate-keeping function. The empirical data, external peer review letters, is drawn from an old comprehensive research-intensive university, offering educational programmes within a broad range of scientific domains. Although a large variety of aspects are ascribed to educational proficiency, and variations do occur across scientific domains and reviewers, the main finding is a restricted notion. A special value is assigned to the scope of doctoral supervision and teacher training. Internal individual classroom performance is focused, while scholarly interaction is less emphasized. Reviewers primarily serve as gatekeepers of disciplinary research, not the education thereof, thus educational proficiency is no game changer in the context of academic scholarship.

This study investigates knowledge structures and scientific communication using bibliometric methods to explore scientific knowledge production and dissemination. The aim is to develop knowledge about this growing field by investigating studies using international large-scale assessment (ILSA) data, with a specific focus on those using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data. As international organisations use ILSA to measure, assess and compare the success of national education systems, it is important to study this specific knowledge to understand how it is organised and legitimised within research. The findings show an interchange of legitimisation, where major actors from the USA and other English-speaking and westernised countries determine the academic discourse. Important epistemic cultures for PISA research are identified: the most important of which are situated within psychology and education. These two research environments are epicentres created by patterns of the referrals to and referencing of articles framing the formulation of PISA knowledge. Finally, it is argued that this particular PISA research is self-referential and self-authorising, which raises questions about whether research accountability leads to "a game of thrones", where rivalry going on within the scientific field concerning how and on what grounds "facts" and "truths" are constructed, as a continuing process with no obvious winner.

This article discusses teacher autonomy in the case of the Swedish teaching profession since the 1980s. It is argued that deregulation, decentralization, and marketization reforms of the 1990s have indeed increased teacher autonomy, but in some respects also led to a increase of complexity in the Swedish school system. In order to handle this complexity, the state intensified a standardization of schooling, which restricts teacher autonomy today. Relevant the paper's understanding is that teacher autonomy is always about control, exerted internally by the profession itself and facilitated externally by state standards. The article argues that the restriction of teacher autonomy in recent times is also related to a simplified understanding of the phenomenon in the reforms of the 1990s.

By analysing five separate OECD reviews of evaluation and assessment practices with Norway and Sweden as cases, our study illustrates different ways in which a specific international educational reasoning is blended into more context-based national education policies and, as such, works in parallel with internal reforms and agendas. It is evident that an overarching narrative promotes the importance of coherent and integrated systems of evaluation and assessment in order to strengthen social and political endeavours for equity, quality and achievements. The parallel mix of OECD discourses and national discourses creates a combined narrative in which evaluations and assessments appear natural, self-evident and rational as well as highly adaptable to national settings. The study shows that national vertical and/or horizontal developments are intertwined with the OECD policy recommendations, which are quite general in character. In a continuing process of uploading and downloading, within different contexts, policies are elaborated and recontextualised. Evaluations and assessments are part of a contemporary rational paradigm for mapping and promoting performance in national educational systems--what we identify as a comparative curriculum code.

This article describes the development of the Swedish curriculum-theory tradition with a focus on different curriculum practices, educational message systems, arenas, and curriculum makers. Attention has been paid to different places, spaces, and times in relation to the selection, ordering, and manifestation of knowledge, norms, and values, as well as the management and organization of education. Curriculum and leadership research and changes in Swedish education are described and we introduce the comparative curriculum code as a codification of the contemporary changes in the education system and their consequences for the selection and ordering of knowledge and students.

The objective of this article is to explore differentiation of education through juridification. We examine changes in school governing, including trends towards globalization and marketization, as well as increased regulatory intervention in addressing complex social problems. Drawing on Luhmann's theory of functional differentiation and Teubner's problematization of juridification, we scrutinize three sets of distinct legislative regulations in a Swedish context. We uncover a multifaceted juridification alongside a multifunctional school organization nested in a complex web of differentiated and interconnected subsystems. Traditional forms of differentiation persist, albeit with juridification as a lever, thus sparking renewed tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a comparative study of German and Swedish teachers' continuing professional development (CPD) in relation to student assessment. It investigates the sources teachers use to improve their knowledge about assessment and the relationship this has to different national contexts. Assessment, as well as evaluation, defines what counts as valid knowledge and how this can be measured. As such, assessment is a major focus of teaching and specifies constraints and possibilities for teacher practice in the classroom. Teachers are seen as agents in a regulated CPD marketplace, and within this framework teachers make decisions about the knowledge sources they use to educate themselves about assessment. These choices can be seen as expressions of what they perceive as important and relevant in relation to assessment. We argue that this expression of opinion can contribute to an understanding of teachers' professional autonomy, especially in relation to their decisions about a crucial aspect of their profession. In this way, we propose a way to conceptualize the impact of the national context on teachers' CPD. (Contains 6 tables.)