Police bodies and police minds: professional learning through bodily practices of sport participation*

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature concerned with bodily perspectives on professional learning by reporting on a study of Swedish police officers’ sport participation as a form of occupational learning. The study seeks to answer how ideals of work practice and sport participation intersect, how professional learning is channelled through sport participation, and how such bodily practices might have excluding effects on professional participation. Using a practice theory framework, the Schatzkian concept of teleoaffective structure guides the analysis. Sixteen interviews were conducted with police officers who practice police sports. The analysis targeted symbolic manifestations of teleoaffectivity, and the findings indicate five overlapping ideals between sport and police practice. In addition, one police specific ideal was constructed. Based on these findings, we discuss how professionals learn by participation in practices not directly related to the work in question, and how such learning includes and excludes from participation.     

A Research Approach to Science Education at Göteborg

This paper discusses preservice science teachers’ conceptualizations of learning. The data for this study were obtained from eight Canadian science graduates enrolled in a teacher education programme. All students participated in a series of three interviews, consisting of a variety of questions about how learning occurs. The interviews were conducted every four months, beginning at the start of the academic year. The data were analysed using a phenomenographic perspective and the conceptualizations are illustrated using excerpts from the interviews. Implications for science teacher education programmes are discussed.     

Globalisation and education for sustainable development: emancipation from context and meaning

This article tries to contribute to the critical debate on the ideological and globalising potential of education for sustainable development (ESD), which exists in the research field of environmental education, by highlighting potential contradictions in the argumentation for ESD’s ideological and globalising tendency. Further, the authors of this article argue for an alternative perspective on how education policy on ESD can be seen to contribute to globalisation and homogenisation by merging two conceptualisations of ‘globalisation as connection' and the role of ‘empty signifiers' in political discourse. The ambition with the merger is not to provide a universal explanation of globalisation and ideology, instead, the intention is to outline an alternative theoretical outlook that allows for an empirical study of the processes that can be seen to feed into or interrupt the preservation of hegemony in a global setting.     

Compulsory Higher Education Teacher Training in Sweden: Development of a national standards framework based on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Today visible proofs of excellence in teaching and learning are increasingly important aspects of institutional branding in higher education (HE). Teaching competence is brought forward as a central aspect of the quality of programmes. Still, the induction of new university teachers is managed in many different ways. Approaches may vary according to how teaching competence is perceived; as growing from practice only, requiring formal courses or, for instance, outlined in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) movement. In Sweden, the HE Ordinance from 2002 states that to get permanent positions, lecturers should have completed Compulsory HE Teacher Training (CHETT). The size and organisation of the courses were not regulated in the Ordinance and institutional practices varied. In a three‐year project intended learning outcomes for CHETT was suggested. These outcomes are based on SoTL and linked to an estimated work‐load of 10 weeks. Based on a national survey in 2006, institutional responses to the proposals are analysed.     

Digitalise and capitalise? Teachers’ self-understanding in 21st-century teaching contexts

The digitalisation of educational contexts has changed the practice of teaching and learning. In this, teachers have a key role in enacting digital technologies for this purpose and have different opportunities to do so. This article explores how digitalisation can affect teachers by focusing on: (a) how teachers manage to capitalise on digitalisation; and (b) how digitalisation can affect and reconstruct their self-understanding. Two teacher colleagues of English as a foreign language (EFL) in the same teaching team are interviewed and observed. Drawing on the interplay between self-image, self-esteem, job motivation, and task perception, it is shown how the teachers’ self-understanding is played out and changes due to the call for digitalisation. Whereas one of the teachers has been able to capitalise on digitalisation in a way that has been beneficial both professionally and personally, the other has felt pressurised by it. A conclusion is that a limited or extended use of digital technologies should not be taken as an indicator of teaching quality.     

Privileging and Artifacts: On the Use of Information Technology in Science Education

The aim of this paper is to develop an approach that can be used in addressing the issue of the use of information technology and its importance in human meaning making. By using a combination of Wittgenstein’s work method, a sociocultural perspective on learning, and a sociotechnical perspective on artifacts a specific focus for analyses was discerned: the relation between the use-of-technology in meaning-making on one hand and the circumstances for this meaning-making on the other hand. The conversations of six groups of children, who worked with an assignment, that required that they doubted information they encountered, were video recorded and analyzed. The analyses were done in three interrelated steps. (a) The students use-of-technology in meaning making, (b) the meaning patterns that the students encounter on the web, and (c) students’ intentions and habits. Our findings show that, while the mode of reinforcement of the texts used by the students may have provided little opportunity for doubt or learning how to doubt, the students’ habits and intentions with their work determined the result of the interaction, namely copying information from the web. Taking our point of departure in this empirical illustration we discuss theoretical and methodological questions concerning the understanding of the use of information technology in educational settings.     

Globalisation and education for sustainable development: exploring the global in motion

The article explores education for sustainable development (ESD) as a policy concept in different spaces and how it is re-articulated as part of a process of globalisation. The objective is to explore empirically an alternative set of logics in order to conceive of this process of globalisation. With this objective in mind, the article investigates articulations of ESD and sustainable development in Vietnamese and Thai policy-making, and reflects upon how these articulations can be seen to relate to globalisation. In so doing, it addresses concerns about the globalising potential of ESD within the field of environmental education research, and aims to open up for an alternative understanding of the processes associated with the rearticulation of ESD in different national education policy settings. The alternative conception that is put forward promotes an understanding of these re-articulations of ESD as contingent, opening up a space for contestation and counter-hegemonic articulations.