An ‘appropriate’ test taker: the everyday classroom during the national testing period in school year three in Sweden

This article draws on data from a bigger project where we explore what is taking place in the daily life of classrooms during the national testing period in mathematics for 9–10-year-old children in Sweden. Data were produced by observations, video-recordings and interviews with children. The article shows on a micro level how assessment trends, on a macro level, affect children. It further focuses how children through different repertoires of time position themselves as ‘appropriate’ test takers.     

‘We are like orphans’: exploring narratives of Lao doctoral alumni educated in Sweden

In this article, we explore the narratives of 10 doctoral alumni from Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR) who underwent graduate training in Sweden. The narratives identify challenges encountered by the alumni but more importantly reveal the agency by which these challenges were overcome. The most important strategy was that of collaborative learning, actively enlisting the help of other doctoral students and supervisors, thus challenging the prevalent discourse about doctoral studies as an individual endeavour. Inspired by post-colonial perspectives, the article reveals juxtapositions between Lao colonial experiences and Swedish ignorance of their ramifications. The article argues that programmes in Sweden should work more actively towards a collaborative and inclusive learning process. This strategy becomes especially important when doctoral endeavours involve participants from both the global south and the global north, and it could be an important step in challenging the hegemonic position of the global north in processes of knowledge production.     

Academic career: on institutions,social capital and gender

During decades of change in the Western higher education sector, new ways of understanding academic work have reinforced notions of the impact of social capital. The present study investigates researchers’ experiences of their own career making within two areas of Education Sciences in Swedish higher education: Childhood Studies (CS) and Science Education (SE). The structure at the CS departments is collaborative and integrated; teaching and research are seen as an entity. This structure creates a coherent career path where members of the collective group jointly produce and accumulate social capital; it also appears to be related to discourses of femininity. In the SE departments, the career structure is strategic and differentiated; the two career paths work in parallel through a differentiation between teaching and research. This appears to be related to discourses of masculinity. In conclusion, our analysis shows how social capital and gender mutually create different ways of doing an academic career.     

Teachers’ Experience of Working with Socio-scientific Issues: A Large Scale and in Depth Study

The research is an investigation of teachers’ experience of working with socio-scientific issues (SSI). A large group of teachers (55) chose one of six cases with the characteristics of SSI and were free to organize the work as they found appropriate. The research focuses on how teachers chose content, organized their work and experienced the students’ interest and learning. The teachers answered a questionnaire after working with the cases and seven of them were interviewed to provide in-depth understanding of issues raised in the questionnaire. The teachers found the SSI to be current topics with interesting content and relevant tasks and they felt confident about the work. They were quite content with the students’ learning of scientific facts, how to apply scientific knowledge and to search for information. However, they found that the students did not easily formulate questions, critically examine arguments or use media to obtain information about the task. The interviewed teachers did not find this work new, but they organized it as ‘a special event’. They understood SSI work as ‘free’ work and group work was frequent, but only a few of the teachers developed explicit strategies for teaching SSI. They had different ideas about learning but they all talked about knowledge as a set of facts to be taken in by the students. They all included elements of SSI but mostly to introduce the regular science content. However the teachers started to reflect upon the potential of using SSI to cover more goals in the curriculum.     

Gender performance in an out-of-school science context

Cultural Studies of Science Education - This article examines how school students perform gender during a visit to a science centre where they programme Lego cars. The focus is on how students...     

Supporting Pupils in Finnish and Swedish Schools—Teachers’ Views

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate the different support systems used by teachers in compulsory education. Class and subject teachers and special educators from Finland (N?=?57) and Sweden (N?=?57) participated in the study, in which both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. Participants completed an electronic questionnaire to identify the supports and methods they use when working with pupils who have special educational needs. The findings indicate both similarities and differences between the two countries. One of the most common forms of support was individualisation, including pedagogical modifications. Methods of supporting academic skills such as reading differed from those used to support behavioral issues. Positive pedagogy and structuring the environment were used ways of supporting pupils with behavioral challenges. Results for both countries are compared and support needs are discussed.     

In search of the new engineer: gender,age, and social class in information about engineering education

ABSTRACT

It is widely argued that engineering education needs to change in order to attract new groups of students and provide students with knowledge appropriate for the future society. In this paper we, therefore, investigate and analyse Swedish universities’ websites, focusing on what characteristics are brought to the fore as important for tomorrow’s engineers. The data consist of text and pictures/photos from nine different Engineering Mechanics programme websites. Using a critical discourse analysis approach, we identify three societal discourses concerning ‘technological progression’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘neoliberal ideals’, evident in the websites. These discourses make certain engineering identities possible, that we have labelled: traditional, contemporary, responsible, and self-made engineer. Our analysis shows that universities’ efforts to diversify students’ participation in engineering education simultaneously reveal stereotypical norms concerning gender and age. We also argue that strong neoliberal notions about the self-made engineer can derail awareness of a gendered, classed, and racialized society.