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.     

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.     

Hirsch-type characteristics of the tail of distributions. The generalised h-index

In this paper a generalisation of the h-index and g-index is given on the basis of non-negative real-valued functionals defined on subspaces of the vector space generated by the ordered samples. Several Hirsch-type measures are defined and their basic properties are analysed. Empirical properties are illustrated using examples from the micro- and meso-level. Among these measures, the h-index proved the most, the arithmetic and geometric g-indices, the least robust measures. The μ-index and the harmonic g-index provide more balanced results and are still robust enough.     

Is Education Getting Lost in University Mergers?

Mergers are common phenomena in higher education institutions. Improving educational quality is typically one of the stated goals of university mergers. Yet, little information exists about how merging institutions approach this goal. This paper presents results from a study of planning documents created prior to four mergers in the Finnish higher education system. These documents show that there was little concrete attention given to the educational issues related to the mergers. Most attention was placed on administrative issues and issues related to research. When educational issues were mentioned, it was almost always in the form of vague goals with few details provided about how the goals were to be reached. We conclude that this lack of attention to the educational aspect of mergers is a significant weakness of the planning process in these mergers.     

Berufliche Weiterbildung – Gelegenheits- und Teilnahmestrukturen

This contribution starts out from the assumption that participation in continuing professional education is realized in the context of different opportunity structures and an analysis of participation selectivity must take account of both self-selection and external selection processes. The different opportunity structures are described using approaches from segmentation and economic theory, which lead to the identification of three segments of continuing professional education. Participation structures in the three training segments are shown using logistic regressions, which take account of socio-demographic and individual characteristics of the social and employment environment. These predictors display segment-specific influences, which emphasizes the importance of differentiated perspectives on continuing professional education. Overall, participation is shown to be clearly influenced by external selection processes. The basis of the analyses is data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS), cohort 2009/10.     

Teachers’ professional agency and learning – from adaption to active modification in the teacher community

The aim of this study was to examine teacher learning in terms of teachers’ professional agency in the professional community of the school. Altogether 2310 Finnish comprehensive school teachers completed a survey. Results showed that teachers’ active efforts to learn in the professional community and to promote school development cannot be explained, and hence reduced, to a single behavioral attribute. The findings indicated that teacher learning in terms of professional agency in the professional community consists of several elements including: skills, efficacy beliefs, and motivational factors, which entail transforming one’s teaching practices, experiencing collective efficacy, constructing positive interdependency, the appreciation of mutual agreements, and using active strategies of help-seeking. The investigation also suggests that the use of modifying strategies is characteristic of both the teacher’s professional agency as well as the strategies employed to reduce stress.     

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.