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As 'open' and supposedly inclusive informal learning settings that participants visit out of interest and passion, there has been hope that makerspaces will democratize technology and challenge traditional gender patterns in engineering education. Passion for technology has, however, also been shown to be deeply intertwined with the masculinization of engineering. This article explores how this tension manifests among engineering students and other makers at an 'open' voluntaristically-organized technology makerspace located at the campus of a Swedish university of technology. It draws on a post-structural understanding of gender and Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenological conceptualization of emotions as 'orienting devices'. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with makers, we show how passion for technology is articulated as a particularly absorbing emotion that underpins a playful approach to technology and a framing of makers as single-minded and asocial. We demonstrate how passion for technology thereby becomes a homosocial 'glue' that makes technology 'sticky' for only a select group of techno-passionate men. We conclude that this undermines the potential for 'making' to democratize technology and puts into question the degree to which interest-driven, voluntaristic and 'authentic' settings for engaging with technology can contribute to pluralizing engineering.

We explore how norms of science are given attention through laughter in life science doctoral supervision. Four supervision sessions were observed and video recorded. All laugh units were identified, and instances of humour were coded in relation to norms of science. Our analysis reveals tensions around how to do valid research, governance vs. administration and the willingness to make sacrifices. Balancing between validity and feasibility and between quality and quantity, not to mention the importance of scepticism in intellectual conversation, are other important norms of science highlighted in the interaction. We found that norms of science are a vital part of life science supervision and that supervisors play a critical role in the process of socialising PhD students into becoming researchers. We saw how PhD students are taught to navigate these norms, that is, how they are supposed to behave in these complex normative systems. We recognised that the norm of calling has many benefits for researchers in natural science but may pose a threat to good work–life balance for PhD students. Since humour is a powerful form of communication, we recommend that supervisors reflect on how laughter is used as well as which norms and values they teach.

In this paper, we argue that the geek entrepreneur is a new hegemonic masculine formation superseding the macho formation exemplified by John Wayne and the global business masculinity proposed as h...

Shortcomings in sex and relationship education (SRE) related to norms and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexuality (LGBTQIA) perspectives have been reported internationally and in Sweden. This paper reports on findings from a critical study of SRE content in Swedish biology textbooks for 13- to 16-year-old pupils, with the aim of revealing which sexual orientations and bodies are made visible or invisible in the texts. About 200 quotations were selected and analysed, quantitatively and qualitatively, with a focus on limitations and possibilities. The results show that LGBT content is visible in all SRE chapters. However, sexual orientation is often constructed as fixed. Furthermore, stereotypical gender binaries are reinforced via heteronormative assumptions regarding hormones, genitals and reproduction, focusing on differences instead of similarities, and thus limiting the‌ potential to widen non-binary perceptions of bodies and sexualities. Our quantitative analyses reveal that there are few, if any, queer, intersex, asexual or crip/disability representations. If gaps in young people’s knowledge regarding norms, intersex, asexuality, queer and crip sexualities are to be filled in order to promote equality and diversity, it is important to rethink the SRE content of Swedish biology textbooks.

This article explores how female university students’ abilities to present themselves as ‘authentic’ engineers are imbricated with discursive constructions of gender and gender equality. The empirical data comes from interviews and video diaries collected with three female engineering students. The analysis demonstrates the power of the Swedish gender equality discourse to inform the students’ talk as they negotiate their gendered identities to become intelligible as engineering students and engineers. We suggest that gender equality is used as a resource in the repertoires, but we also demonstrate that this discourse becomes a dilemma in that it limits possibilities for gender performances to go beyond old patterns. Despite this, the article still shows three unique ways of negotiating gender and other social categories in different situations connected to university learning and participation in internships.

A diverse body of feminist scholarship has addressed the masculine orientation of Western engineering education for at least four decades. Among critiques specifically targeting curriculum, a recurrent line of argumentation highlights its reductionist framing and narrow focus on mathematics and technology. The argument is that these traits represent a masculine orientation and that women would gain from a curriculum more oriented towards the context and applicability of technical knowledge. Simultaneously, researchers working in a Bernsteinian, social realist, educational tradition have suggested that, from a social‐class perspective, it is important to provide all students with access to theoretical, abstract and context‐independent knowledge. This article explores the resultant, theoretical tension between these two positions. Our empirical starting point is a recently completed ethnographic study of a male‐dominated bachelor's degree engineering program in Sweden. This program's curriculum repeatedly emphasizes the value of experiential and contextually rooted knowledge over contextless and mathematically modeled knowledge. Borrowing Bernstein's terminology, we argue that such emphasis represents a privileging of horizontal discourse over vertical and that, as such, said curriculum potentially deprives the male, working‐class students of access to powerful knowledge. We further highlight how the program represents a poor target for the line of feminist critique identified above, despite being strongly male dominated. We thereby shed light on challenges related to formulating (intersectional) critiques of the engineering curriculum simultaneously attentive to both class and gender. Conclusively, we argue that efforts directed at making the engineering curriculum more inclusive can learn from both feminist and social realist lines of argumentation. geps

The aim of this study was to test whether digitally registered use of a mandibular advancement device (MAD) by a built-in thermal sensor was reliable compared to a self-reported diary of MAD use. Eighty consecutive patients referred to a specialist outpatient sleep medicine clinic (HUS) were recruited. Patients of both genders, aged from 25 to 70 years with a diagnosis of mild, moderate or severe, were included. All participants signed a written informed consent when they received the MAD. For the purpose of this reliability study, we found it sufficient to include the first 30 nights of MAD use in the reliability analysis. At the 30th night follow-up visit, the self-reported diary with duration of MAD use was returned and data on the duration of MAD use with the built-in sensor were retrieved. From a total of 2400 nights, complete data from both methods were retrieved for 2108 nights (84.6%). Missing data were largely a result of missing self-reported diaries, whereas technical failure occurred in 6 nights (0.002%). The relative reliability was very high with ICC3,1 0.847, and the absolute reliability for digitally registered MAD usage was calculated to -0.17 (95% CI: 1.47 to -1.81) hours in decimal conversion. Objectively collected data from built-in thermal sensors in MADs are as reliable as those of the self-report assessments. This opens new possibilities for more accurate measurements of MAD adherence.

In this article, we develop critiques of the pipeline model which dominates Western science education policy, using discourse analysis of interviews with two Swedish young women focused on ‘identit ...

Background: Physics is often seen as a discipline with difficult content, and one that is difficult to identify with. Socialisation processes at the upper secondary school level are of particular interest as these may be linked to the subsequent low and uneven participation in university physics. Focusing on how norms are construed in physics classrooms in upper secondary school is therefore relevant. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify discursive patterns in teacher–student interactions in physics classrooms. Design and methods: Three different physics lessons with one class of students taught by three different teachers in upper secondary school were video-recorded. Positioning theory was used to analyse classroom interaction with a specific focus on how physics was positioned. Results: We identified seven different storylines. Four of them (‘reaching a solution to textbook problems’, ‘discussing physics concepts in order to gain better understanding’, ‘doing empiricalenquiry’ and ‘preparing for the upcoming exam’) represent what teaching physics in an upper secondary school classroom can be. The last three storylines (‘mastering physics’, ‘appreciating physics’ and ‘having a feeling for physics’) all concern how students are supposed to relate to physics and, thus, become ‘insiders’ in the discipline. Conclusions: The identification and analysis of storylines raises awareness of the choices teachers make in physics education and their potential consequences for students. For example, in the storyline of mastering physics a good physics student is associated with ‘smartness’, which might make the classroom a less secure place in general. Variation and diversity in the storylines construed in teaching can potentially contribute to a more inclusive physics education.

To use video in educational research has become more and more common in the last few decades, including methodologies where informants themselves use video-cameras for documentation. The purpose of the article is to discuss affordances and constraints of using video-diaries as a data generation method for investigating students’ identity constitution. Video-diaries were recorded as part of a larger project, where the empirical data also included observations and videorecordings of teaching and semi-structured interviews. The noninterference of the researchers during the video-diaries was found to be both a strength, in that students more freely could tell their own stories, and a weakness, in that it put high demands on the students’ ability to express themselves in monologue format. An important affordance of the video-diaries was that they contributed to a “thick” data set, both in that they informed our individual, semi-structured interviews and allowed us to quickly move on to in-depth conversations, and in that the students were able to utilize artifacts and show environments of importance to them.

In this chapter, the authors explore the discursive construction of physics culture through lecture jokes in university quantum mechanics classes. Drawing on ethnographic data this research explores questions about how physics lecture jokes may structure possibilities for students to identify with physics and as physicists. The authors identify the ways that celebrated subject positions are constructed through jokes, and discuss the ways that jokes may do the discursive work of positioning students inside or outside of physics.

The content that is privileged in teaching has consequences for what the students are given the opportunity to learn, and can thus be regarded as an aspect of power. We analyse power aspects in the teaching of physics by identifying actions that guide or direct other people's actions, and then analyse similarities and differences in different classrooms in terms of how governance is staged and what potential consequences this can have. The analyses are made on data from classroom activities, documented through video recordings and field notes, in three lower secondary schools in Y8 and Y9 respectively. At first glance, teachers from all three schools adhere to a traditional interpretation of a physics curriculum. But a more in-depth analysis shows that the students in the different classrooms are given quite dissimilar opportunities to participate in teaching and create relationships with the content. What appears to be a desirable way of acting offers different conditions for meaning-making. In an increasingly individualised society where people are expected to be active, reflective and make choices for their own personal good, the students in these three classrooms are offered very different conditions to practice and learn to take part in knowledge-making, connect physics content to their everyday life and exercise informed citizenship. First published online 02 May 2018

Background: In science education today, there is an emerging focus on what is happening in situ, making use of an array of analytical traditions. Common practice is to use one specific analytical f ...

In this article, we explore the identity work done by four male, working-class students who participate in a Swedish mechanical engineering program, with a focus on their participation in project work. A focus on how individuals negotiate their participation in science and technology disciplines has proven to be a valuable way to study inclusion and exclusion in such disciplines. This is of particular relevance in engineering education where it is widely argued that change is needed in order to attract new groups of students and provide students with knowledge appropriate for the future society. In this study we conceptualized identity as socially and discursively produced, and focus on tracing students’ identity trajectories. The empirical data consists of ethnographic field notes from lectures, video-recordings of project work, semi-structured interviews, and video-diaries recorded by the students. The findings show that even though all four students unproblematically associate with the ‘technicist’masculinity of their chosen program it takes considerable work to incorporate the project work into their engineering trajectories. Further, ‘laddish’ masculinities re/produced in higher education in engineering also contribute to a ‘troubled’ identity trajectory for one of the interviewed students. Special Issue

Background Research in engineering education has pointed to the need for new engineers to develop a broader skill-set with an emphasis on “softer” social skills. However, there remains strong tensions in the identity work that engineers must engage in to balance the technical demands of the discipline with the new emphasis on heterogeneous skills (Faulkner, Social Studies of Science 37:331–356, 2007). This study explores how three unconventional students experience these tensions in the final year of their construction engineering program, and as they move in and out of workplace field experiences. Results Using a figured worlds framework (Holland et al., Identity and agency in cultural worlds, 1998), we explore the dominant subject positions for students in construction engineering classroom and workplaces in a 3-year Swedish engineering program. Results demonstrate that dominant subject positions for construction engineers can trouble students’ identity work as they move across classroom and workplace settings. Conclusions This study expands our knowledge of the complexity of students’ identity work across classroom and workplace settings. The emergence of classroom and workplace masculinities that shape the dominant subject positions available to students are shown to trouble the identity work that students engage in as they move across these learning spaces. We examine students’ identity strategies that contribute to their persistence through the field. Finally, we discuss implications for teaching and research in light of students’ movements across these educational contexts.

It is widely argued that engineering education needs to change in order to attract new groups of students and provide students with knowledge appropriate for the future society. In this paper we, therefore, investigate and analyse Swedish universities’ websites, focusing on what characteristics are brought to the fore as important for tomorrow’s engineers. The data consist of text and pictures/photos from nine different Engineering Mechanics programme websites. Using a critical discourse analysis approach, we identify three societal discourses concerning ‘technological progression’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘neoliberal ideals’, evident in the websites. These discourses make certain engineering identities possible, that we have labelled: traditional, contemporary, responsible, and self-made engineer. Our analysis shows that universities’ efforts to diversify students’ participation in engineering education simultaneously reveal stereotypical norms concerning gender and age. We also argue that strong neoliberal notions about the self-made engineer can derail awareness of a gendered, classed, and racialized society. EPIK (VR-UVK)

We all know that they do it, but what do students laugh about when learning science together? Although research has shown that students do use humor when they learn science, the role of humor in science education has received little attention. In this study, undergraduate students’ laughter during collaborative work in physics has been investigated. In order to do this, a framework inspired by conversation analysis has been used. Empirical data was drawn from two video-recorded sessions in which first-year engineering students solved physics problems together. The analysis revealed that the students’ use of humor was almost exclusively related to physics. Five themes identified summarize the role of humor in the group discussions: Something is obvious, Something is difficult, Something said might be wrong, Something is absurd, and Something said is not within informal norms. This study shows that humor may contribute not only to a good working atmosphere and thereby to the students’ learning but also how humor interrelates with both disciplinary culture of physics and its epistemology. The students do not only create and re-create humor that facilitates their social interactions, but through humor they constitute local norms of science and engage with the disciplinary discourse.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and illustrate an analytical framework for exploring how relations between knowledge and power are constituted in science and technology classrooms. In addition, the empirical purpose of this paper is to explore how disciplinary knowledge and knowledge-making are constituted in teacher–student interactions. In our analysis we focus on how instances of teacher–student interaction can be understood as simultaneously contributing to meaning-making and producing power relations. The analytical framework we have developed makes use of practical epistemological analysis in combination with a Foucauldian conceptualisation of power, assuming that privileging of educational content needs to be understood as integral to the execution of power in the classroom. The empirical data consists of video-recorded teaching episodes, taken from a teaching sequence of three 1-h lessons in one Swedish technology classroom with sixteen 13–14 years old students. In the analysis we have identified how different epistemological moves contribute to the normalisation and exclusion of knowledge as well as ways of knowledge-making. Further, by looking at how the teacher communicates what counts as (ir)relevant knowledge or (ir)relevant ways of acquiring knowledge we are able to describe what kind of technology student is made desirable in the analysed classroom. Kunskapens makt: Hur lärare möjliggör elevers deltagande och kunskapande i NO- och teknikklassrum (VR-UVK)

In this paper, we analyse learning dynamics in the context of physics group work of the kind increasingly found in engineering education. We apply a phenomenographic perspective on learning, seeing the notion of variation as the basic mechanism of learning. Empirically, we base our analysis on data from first year engineering students discussing physics problems concerning force and friction while working in small groups of three or four. The discussions were captured on video and audio, and the subsequent analysis primarily relies on detailed transcriptions and the students' notes. The results illustrate how students relate different parts of the whole learning object (Newtonian mechanics) to one another and create a variation with respect to the parts and/or the whole; how the presence and experience of variation complemented by an experience of relevance may result in identifiable learning; and how tutor interventions may have a favourable impact on the learning dynamics.

In educational research, it is well-known that collaborative work on core conceptual issues in physics leads to significant improvements in students’ conceptual understanding. In this paper, we explore collaborative learning in action, adding to previous research in engineering education with a specific focus on the students’ use of free body diagrams in interaction. By looking at details in interaction among a group of three engineering students, we illustrate how they collectively construct a free body diagram together when learning introductory mechanics. In doing so, we have focused on both learning possibilities and the dynamic processes that take place in the learning activity. These findings have a number of implications for educational practice.

This article aims to further the understanding of group work in higher education, primarily in science.This is done through an empirical investigation of problem solving in small groups. Position theory isused as an analytic tool for describing the complex and dynamic processes of group work, focusing simultaneously on the physics content and the student community and how they constitute each other. We analysed four video-recorded sessions with students from two Master’s programs, Engineering Physics and Bioengineering, respectively. The students addressed two introductory mechanics problems.The analysis resulted in a characterisation in terms of seven ‘storylines’ of two different kinds. These are argued to reflect different aspects of engineering student communities, where one kind of storylines captures ways of approaching the problems and the other kind exemplifies boundary work involved in the constitution of communities.

In August 23-25, 2007, the Scandinavian Society for Prosthetic Dentistry in collaboration with the Danish Society of Oral Implantology arranged a consensus conference on the topic 'Implants and/or teeth'. It was preceded by a workshop in which eight focused questions were raised and answered in eight review articles using a systematic approach. Twenty-eight academicians and clinicians discussed the eight review papers with the purpose to reach consensus on questions relevant for the topic. At the conference the consensus statements were presented as well as lectures based on the review articles. In this article the methods used at the consensus workshop are briefly described followed by the statements with comments.

This Work-in-Progress research paper describes preliminary work on a research agenda for emotions in engineering education. Emotions play an important role for teaching and learning in engineering education, but research on the topic is scarce. To spur research in this area, the authors participate in an international collaboration that aims to map existing research, identify questions that are under-researched, and outline important questions for future research on emotions in engineering education. In this paper, we describe preliminary work that has been done in preparation of an international symposium during which a first draft of the research agenda on emotions in engineering education will be developed. At FIE 2020, we will present both this preparatory work and the agenda itself.