Defining student diversity: categorizing and processes of marginalization in Swedish schools

The article presents an analysis of how diversity is defined and attended to in Swedish schools. The research reported has been carried out as a case study of categorizing practices that concern the uses of neuropsychiatric diagnoses, notably ADHD. The data were collected as part of a larger study. The interaction over a two-year period between the parents of a boy (William, aged 5.5 years) and representatives of the school (school psychologist, principal, teacher etc.) has been analysed. It is shown that parents and professionals provide different accounts of William’s difficulties. The parents, while not denying that their son causes problems in class, argue that the boy will mature and that the problems will disappear. The representatives of the school try to convince the parents that a neuropsychiatric examination of the boy will be beneficial to all parties. The long process of negotiation can be understood as a rhetorical drama, where the category ‘ADHD’ serves as the resolution of a complex institutional problem in the modern welfare state.     

Tracking of physical activity in pubertal boys with different BMI over two-year period

We examined the tracking of physical activity (PA) measured by accelerometers and subjective self- and parental reports in normal weight and overweight and obese pubertal boys over two-year period. In total, 156 boys with mean (±SD) age of 11.53 ± 0.76 at baseline and with mean age of 13.94 ± 0.74 at 2 year follow-up were studied. At baseline and approximately two years later, the boys completed self-report questionnaire and wore an accelerometer for seven consecutive days. On the basis of first year assessment’s body mass index (BMI), the children were grouped as normal weight and overweight and obese groups according to BMI cut-offs. Tracking correlations of objectively measured PA and subjectively measured PA were fairly similar across the 12–14 year-old-boys weight groups over two year period. Tracking correlations of objectively measured PA and subjectively measured PA were not significantly different over two-year period between both BMI groups. The results of the study show that pubertal boys objectively measured PA decreased over two-year period and so the boys started to be less active in their pubertal period.     

Teachers’ dilemmatic decision-making: reconciling coexisting policies of increased student retention and performance

In recent years, many countries within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have formulated educational policies aimed at providing better education to more students. However, this may be perceived as constituting dilemmatic spaces, where teachers must make efforts to reconcile coexisting political demands in their everyday work. The purpose of this article is to provide insight into how teachers handle coexisting educational policies of increased student retention and performance. Empirical findings from a one-year field study at a Danish vocational school explore how teachers’ decision-making as response to coexisting demands of increased student retention and performance involves the development of various pedagogical approaches to the students: an active ‘caring’ approach, a passive ‘wait until this class is over’ approach, an active ‘vocational gate-keeping’ approach, and a passive ‘wait and see whether they drop out’ approach. Based on the findings, it is argued that the various pedagogical approaches are developed through social negotiations with leaders, students, and other teachers. Moreover, these pedagogical approaches lead to the development of further negotiated, dilemmatic decisions to be made. Thus, a dynamic approach to teachers’ dilemmatic decision-making is proposed.     

Perceived employability and ability self among Finnish university students

Employability is an increasing concern for university students. Our survey set out to examine university students’ perceptions of their employability and the ways in which these perceptions relate to positions that subsequently connect students to working life: students’ self-representational position or “ability self”, and students’ life-historical positions such as chosen field of study, phase of degree and working life experience. The participants comprised a sample of students (N = 1819) from two Finnish universities, representing diverse fields of study. It was found that apart from the field of study, the perceived proximity to graduation and working life was associated with the perception of employability. Furthermore, a set of self-attributed capabilities was associated with students’ perceptions of employability, particularly extroversion, ambitious competitiveness, mental strength and the desired characteristics of a good employee; however, the attribution of academic skills showed opposing effects. It was concluded that both self-representational and live-historical positions are part of the construction of students’ optimism regarding their employability.

     

Degrees of value: comparing the contextual complexities of UK transnational education in Malaysia and Hong Kong

This paper reveals the complex diversity that underpins ostensibly similar transnational education programmes (TNE), through a comparison of UK TNE in Malaysia and Hong Kong. It draws on data from two different yet cognate studies on the role of UK universities in delivering higher education in Asia. Some fine-grained and informative differences between the ways in which ‘value’ in TNE is constructed in different host contexts is revealed. The paper brings to light the ‘voices’ of TNE students and graduates, which are very seldom heard. The arguments adapt and extend the concepts of education as a positional good, and as cultural capital. For various instrumental, intrinsic and personal reasons the authors discuss in detail, UK TNE is more highly valued in Malaysia than in Hong Kong. The paper makes a wider contribution to knowledge on the changing landscape of international higher education and the impact on social and personal (dis)advantage.     

Relation of resemblance in information retrieval

A method using the amount of semantic information of query terms as weight in a fuzzy relation of resemblance is presented. The relation can be used to partially order documents in decreasing order of resemblance with the query. Large operational bibliographic data bases are used to test the validity of the approach.