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Understanding the influence of teaching culture (tradition) within academic departments is crucial for new teachers navigating the complex landscape of higher education. This paper investigates the possible impact of the department’s teaching culture on the pedagogical approaches of new teachers, forming their teaching style, concentrating on insights gathered from interviews with experienced colleagues in a Swedish university department with a focus on engineering education. By exploring the department’s teaching traditions and identifying potential challenges faced by new teachers, this study offers valuable insights into enhancing teaching styles and fostering student engagement. Drawing upon both experiential knowledge and insights from pedagogic literature and courses, the authors provide practical strategies to overcome obstacles and promote operative teaching practices. Ultimately, the outcomes of this study aim to empower new teachers to create enriching learning environments that promote student motivation, engagement, and overall academic success, aligning with the findings of existing literature on pedagogy and student learning outcomes.

In recent years, many countries have revised their school policy documents to incorporate digital competence, computational thinking and programming. This study examines and compares how and in what contexts Nordic curricula, Swedish and Norwegian in particular, embody aspects of computational thinking. Results show that only parts of the practices defined in the computational thinking framework used for analysis could be explicitly identified in the curriculum documents. The most salient computational thinking practice represented in both the Swedish and Norwegian curricula is programming, and programming is primarily recognized as a method and tool for learning other subject content and not as a knowledge domain in its own right. Implicitly both curricula leave leeway for teachers to implement a broader approach to computational thinking. However, this would need much time, teacher competence and effort, and what it requires seems to be under-communicated in the curricula, leaving schools and teachers with major challenges.

This study reports a snapshot from ongoing professional development of a group (n=19) of Swedish in-service compulsory school teachers who prepare to implement a new national curriculum which introduces programming as core content in mathematics and technology. Insight into the preparation process was made possible through recorded conversations of three different groups of teachers, who had met to share experiences, thoughts and to discuss how to address programming in their teaching. The group conversations were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis.The results of the study reveal that the preparation status, with less than five months to go before the new curriculum is effectuated, varies quite substantially between schools and teachers within the same municipality. The study aims to provide knowledge about how teachers navigate in an environment of change with respect to the particular characteristics attributed to programming in the revised Swedish curriculum for compulsory school. Further, the study seeks to contribute to the discussion of teachers’ professional development conditions and needs in relation to expected outcomes of the new curriculum which could be valuable for policy and decision makers at both local, regional and national level.

When compared with traditional science subjects, technology has a more fragile position in both Norway (Sanne et al., 2016) and Sweden (Hallström, Hulten & Lövheim, 2013). One way this is displayed in Sweden is through teachers’ uncertainty regarding subject content (Skolinspektionen, 2014). In Norway, many teachers feel that they lack the skills required to teach technology (Sanne et al., 2016). This symposium consists of three contributions each dealing with the problem of establishing a common subject content. The first contribution addresses the relationship between teaching science and technology and presents results from a project where teaching has been designed for the parallel development of scientific and technical knowledge. The second contribution examines the conditions for teaching about technology and society in the form of technology teachers' intentions with their teaching.The final contribution highlights the inclusion of programming in school, a specific example of subject content surrounded by great uncertainty amongst policy makers and teachers. All build upon a way of dividing technological knowledge in three main categories as used by, among others, Dahlin, Svorkmo & Voll (2013), Sanne et al (2016) and Skolverket (2011a).

This conceptual paper describes challenges in the field of Interactive Media and Learning (IML), striving towards a research and teaching field for mobile learning. The theoretical background is provided and arguments are listed, specifically what challenges researchers, practitioners (e.g., teachers, employers, employees) and designers face today on the way to mobile learning. This will be done from an educational perspective, in particular from Educational Technology from a Scandinavian community. The leading issue is how to educate the Homo Interneticus? Is learning supported by mobile devices one option? Is there a need to rethink the learning spaces of today? The paper provides answers by illustrating challenges in research and teaching with regard to mobile learning.

An online questionnaire was directed towards students undergoing various teacher training programmes at Umeå University, Sweden. The survey targeted approx. 200 students. 96 responses were recieved to questions about what challenges a teacher may face when using video games in the pedagogical practice. The answers were interpreted and placed into the categories displayed in the tag cloud below. The study showed that a majority of the student teachers had no experience of video games being used for learning purposes, neither as pupils nor as student teachers. Almost half of the respondents stated that they would use video games in their future teaching practice but almost as many expressed uncertainty whether or not they would use video games in their teaching. Our study also showed that many student teachers are positive towards using video games in their teaching. They could also identify many challenging factors that are important to address if video games are to find their way into their pedagogical practice in the future. The most frequently identified challenges were related to: • teachersʼ knowledge about and experience of game based learning • supporting structures and material that help teachers design game based learning activities • teachersʼ general proficiency with and access to technology Much could be done in order to overcome challenges like these. Our conclusion is that game based learning should be embraced to a higher extent in the teacher training programmes, educational support stuctures for game based learning should be improved and finally more resources and efforts should be focused towards educating teachers to become more technically skilled.