Toward Creativity Management: Idea Generation and Newsroom Meetings

This study combines theories of creativity with an empirical examination of newsroom practices at a Finnish newspaper. The focus is especially on newsrooms meetings, the “morning meeting,” and a special idea-generation meeting. The method used is participant observation and discourse analysis. Research indicates that (a) trust and encouragement, (b) appropriate levels of challenge and resources, (c) variety, in general and especially in team composition, together with (d) the idea that freedom and autonomy at work can have a direct, positive effect on organizational creativity. The empirical results reveal the many sides of creativity. Based on the data, creativity at ordinary newsroom meetings is rather limited, but not extraneous. Idea development occurs at meetings, but idea generation mostly takes place outside of formal meetings. Many meetings are limited to discussing what other news media have already covered. Ideas based on reporters’ personal experiences are infrequent. Occasionally, it seems to be more important to demonstrate your knowledge, rather than acquiring it by asking open-minded questions. Detailed analysis of communicative practices can provide a more solid understanding of the complexities of creativity in various media settings.     

Higher education and self-governance: the effects of higher education and field of study on voice and agency in Sweden

There is extensive research pointing to the positive effects of education in the form of labour market outcomes. These outcomes are vital when evaluating education; there are however additional outcomes of education that might also be important for quality of life. From this point of view, education could affect non-market areas such as democracy, gender equality and civic engagement. This article investigates the effects of level of education and field of study on two vital non-market capabilities: agency and voice. The study uses an eight-year longitudinal national survey of 1058 Swedish youth, controlling for baseline values of voice and agency. The empirical analysis shows that university education increases young people’s capabilities of voice and agency. Field of study was also found to have a relationship with agency, where social science and business education was found to be connected with the highest probability of agency, whereas there were only small effects of field of education on voice.     

The inadequacy of ADHD: a philosophical contribution

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a widely spread diagnosis. The dominant paradigm of ADHD is biomedical where ADHD is defined as a brain disorder. At the same time, the legitimacy of the diagnosis is being questioned since it is unclear whether or not ADHD can be deemed a medical disorder in itself. The aim of this article is to critically assess the merits of understanding the diagnosis of ADHD as a medical condition defined as a brain disorder. This is being done using the seventeenth century philosopher Benedict Spinoza’s (1632–1677) notions of adequate and inadequate knowledge and his counterintuitive theory of mental health. Doing so it becomes clear that ADHD, however adequate it may seem, is founded on inadequate knowledge and that the legitimacy of the individual diagnosis should therefore be questioned on the grounds that on a long term scale it is passivizing and stigmatizing rather that liberating.     

The vocational–academic divide in neoliberal upper secondary curricula: the Swedish case

A historical tension between a more general and a more specific focus in post-compulsory education is made visible in some educational systems by the division into more academic and more vocational programmes. Embedded in this tension are questions of social justice and the purposes of education. In addition, division into academic and vocational programmes has class dimensions since youth with working class backgrounds are often over-represented in vocational programmes. This study investigates how this tension is handled in the Swedish upper secondary curriculum, which reflects an international neoliberal policy trend in promoting competition, employability and employer influence over the curriculum. By analysing how the educational content of vocational educational and training (VET) programmes and higher educational preparatory (HEP) programmes is contextualised, we found that the two programme types were based on very different logics. In VET programmes, knowledge is strongly context-bound and often related to regulating behaviours. This contrasts sharply with the way knowledge is contextualised in HEP programmes in which less context-bound knowledge and skills such as using concepts, models and critical thinking are dominant. Students in VET programmes are trained to ‘do’ and to ‘adapt’, while the students in HEP programmes are trained to ‘think’ and to ‘imagine possibilities’. Thus, students from different social classes are prepared for very different roles in society.     

(Un)becoming dysfunctional: ADHD and how matter comes to matter

Various neuropsychiatric disorders are a common feature today, not least in educational contexts where Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a common diagnosis. The dominant perspective regarding ADHD is biomedical. This perspective has been questioned and challenged in various ways. The aim of this article is to think ADHD through quantum physicist and philosopher Karen Barad’s [Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.] theory of agential realism. According to Barad, what we perceive as singular entities do not exist in advance. Barad pays attention to the world’s entanglements, and what we perceive as singular objects and subjects are effects of specific and various material-discursive practices acting as agential cuts. The theory of agential realism assigns performativity to matter, which highlights that ADHD is something that continuously comes into being together with human and non-human bodies. The material dimension has not previously been emphasised as a causal factor in studies on ADHD. In this article, the focus is on the agency of the book. As a conclusion, the importance of taking responsibility for every material-discursive practice with which we are always entangled is emphasised.     

A curriculum tailored for workers? Knowledge organization and possible transitions in Swedish VET

A key feature of the Swedish upper secondary school reform of 2011 (GY11) is the new direction it sets out for the organization of vocational education (VET) and the role it plays in youths’ transitions from school to work. This study analyses the GY11 reform in terms of its impact on the organization of knowledge in VET and its implications for students’ prospects of transitioning from VET to work or higher education, and for their roles as citizens. To understand its likely consequences, GY11 is analysed in the context of practices in a school class for the Vehicle programme steered by the curriculum prior to GY11. The theoretical concepts used are drawn from Basil Bernstein and his distinctions between knowledge organized into horizontal and vertical discourses. The findings of the study suggest that GY11 reinforces an already strong emphasis on horizontally organized knowledge in VET by placing great importance on strongly context-bound, skill-oriented knowledge. This implies a stronger exclusion of VET students, primarily with working-class backgrounds, from vertical discourses and limits the possible transitions of youths taking the VET-route by reducing their access to higher education and their capacity to function as both workers and citizens.     

Building a Common Platform on Students’ Participation

This article sets out to examine how school science activities can encourage students’ participation while supporting a specific science content. One ordinary class with 12-year-old students was chosen and their regular classroom work was studied without intervention and with a minimum of interference. Lessons were video filmed, transcribed and analyzed focussing on the participants’ speech acts. It was found that students’ initiatives and experiences were important parts of their participation. The results show how students’ participation was orchestrated with a science content by means of four different kinds of activities. The activities are called ‘individual inventory of experiences’, ‘building a common platform of experiences’, ‘sharing new experiences’ and ‘concluding a common platform’. The activities form a foundation for participation in human biology topics. For example, to ‘build a common platform of experiences’ seems to level out students’ different prerequisites for participating in subsequent tasks. Furthermore, to ‘conclude a common platform’ implied a checkpoint of the shared new experiences. The activities support students’ tentative use of scientific words as well as their learning of what counts as knowledge in the school science setting. However, it can be questioned if the time spent on each separate activity is necessary or if similar achievements could be made even if some activities were integrated. The question is open for further research.

Gendered distribution of ‘knowledge required for empowerment’ in Swedish vocational education curricula?

Sweden is internationally commended for a high degree of gender equality, but many divisions in Swedish society, including the labour market, disadvantage women. This paper addresses gendered divisions of preparation for civic participation in the vocational upper secondary national curricula, which may participate in reproduction of the pattern. In a comparative analysis of the curriculum guidelines for different vocational upper secondary programmes, we focus on the inclusion of important knowledge for empowerment and how knowledge is contextualised in terms of valued labour positions. We deploy Bernstein’s concepts of horizontal and vertical discourse and Connell’s concepts of production, consumption and gendered accumulation. A general finding is that vertical discourse is contextualised towards discourses of consumption in girl-dominated programmes and towards discourses of production in boy-dominated programmes. Boy-dominated programmes include more knowledge that can be clearly classified in recognised disciplines or fields, whereas girl-dominated programmes include courses of undefined knowledge, such as creativity and entrepreneurship. We conclude that the vocational curricula reinforce rather than challenge existing gender structures in the labour market and wider society. In a historical perspective, it can be concluded that Swedish vocational education policy has a continuum of ‘gender-blindness', and thus confirming with wider norms.