Changing higher education: converging policy-packages and experiences of changing academic work in Sweden

The past two decades of international higher education reform are often described by researchers as having produced new managerial and neoliberal policy turns that have brought about a fundamental global shift in the way institutions of higher education are defined, run and justify their institutional existence and practices. Universities in Sweden were felt able to offer some possible resistance and based on ethnographic research at three Swedish universities this idea is explored in the present article. The article suggests however that resistance has been circumscribed through a coordinated collection of policies and that as elsewhere, the proliferation of competition based on quasi-markets and the standardisation of quality assurance through new accountability systems predominates, with significant effects on universities, their interactions and agents, and the relative social positions, influence, status and relationships of these agents.     

Making ‘right’ choices? An ethnographic account of creativity,performativity and personalised learning policy,concepts and practices

This article uses ethnographic research from two Year 8 classes in two middle‐sized secondary schools about a kilometre apart in a Swedish west‐coast town to examine how new policies for personalised learning have developed in practice, in the performative cultures of modern schools in a commodity society. One school stands in a predominantly middle‐class area of privately owned ‘low‐rise’ houses. The other is in an area of ‘high‐rise’ rented accommodation, where the first language of many homes is not Swedish. The differences are important. According to the article, personalised learning mobilises material and social resources in these schools that support new forms of individualistic, selfish and private accumulations of education goods from public provision and a valorisation of self‐interest and private value as the common basis for educational culture. The article describes this cultural production in school and links it to processes of cultural and social reproduction.     

Production Methods

Nathan J. Sambul, ed., THE HANDBOOK OF PRIVATE TELEVISION: A COMPLETE GUIDE FOR VIDEO FACILITIES AND NETWORKS WITHIN CORPORATIONS, NON-PROFIT INSTITUTIONS AND GOVERNMENT AGENCIES (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1982---$64.95)

Mark Beach, EDITING YOUR NEWSLETTER: A GUIDE TO WRITING, DESIGN, AND PRODUCTION (Coast-to-Coast Books, 2934 N.E. 16th Avenue, Portland, Oregon, 97212---$9.95 plus $1.50 packing and postage, paper)

Charles J. Sippl and Fred Dahl VIDEO/COMPUTERS: HOW TO SELECT, MIX, AND OPERATE PERSONAL COMPUTERS AND HOME VIDEO SYSTEMS (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981--- $15.95)

Daniel E. Garvey and William L. Rivers BROADCAST WRITING (New York: Longman, 1982---$13.95, paper)

Garvey and Rivers BROADCAST WRITING HANDBOOK ($10.95, paper)

Courtland L. Bove and William F. Arens CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING (Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, 1982---$26.95)     

Young primary students making sense of text and illustrations about how refuse can become soil

Explanatory pictures and models are frequently used in teaching and learning situations. However, it seems to be simply assumed that they are always beneficial. In this article results from an investigation with 16 Swedish pupils aged 7–9 year are presented based on an analysis that has examined how well this assumption holds up. Concepts from multi-modal theory have been used to investigate how young learners deal with illustrations and text from an early reader booklet about composting domestic refuse. The analysis suggests that expectations that illustrations facilitate the meaning-making of young pupils may be exaggerated. Although the booklet claimed to provide interactive support between image and text most of the examples show pupils ignoring pictures or misinterpreting vital information about composting in both the verbal and non-verbal material. The illustrations did not compensate for the most crucial deficiencies in the written text.     

Transition of maternal competency of married and single mothers in early parenthood

Women who perceive maternal competency in early parenthood feel comfortable with infant care. A convenience sample of 58 married, first-time mothers and 22 single, first-time mothers was surveyed at six to eight weeks after childbirth to determine the differences in maternal competence perception between married and single mothers. Findings in this pilot study reveal that single mothers significantly reported less comfort in the maternal role as compared to married mothers. Implications for practice, research, and education are discussed.     

Ethnography,materiality, and the principle of symmetry: problematising anthropocentrism and interactionism in the ethnography of education

ABSTRACT

In this article we draw on actor-network theory (ANT) in order to challenge the methodological and empirical orthodoxies of anthropocentrism and interactionism that have long informed dominant discourses of ethnographic work. We use ANT to open new possibilities for understanding education as emergent in relational fields where non-human forces are as equally necessary as and possess an agency equivalent to, human forces: the principle of symmetry. We argue that this generates important conceptual as well as political possibilities in constituting different possible outcomes in the accomplishment of ethnographies of education. We draw attention to the problematic of the decentring of the human subject and the critical investigation of the interface between people and objects that frame this special issue, and also propose a methodological response framed by a commitment to empirical research through ethnography as well as a theoretical response framed by relational materialism, operationalised here through recourse to ANT.     

Playing texts against each other in the multimodal English classroom

This article explores the way adolescents and adults are experimenting with the multimodal affordances of contemporary intertextual practices. Drawing on a considerable number of recent research studies, we outline how young people and young adults are consistently engaging with the opportunities of the digital environment. We explore the recent history of multimodality, examining how we can help students move from simply using intertextuality for their own enjoyment, to a far more critical and informed position. This critical position, we feel, is especially powerful when students engage in intercontextuality and when they investigate issues of identity through the affordances of multimodal texts. Drawing on the research studies, we offer a number of ways in which English teachers can utilize the potential of their students' capability with the new technologies.