| 1. |
- Nyström, Anne-Sofie, 1974-
(författare)
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Att synas och lära utan att synas lära : en studie om underprestation och privilegierade unga mäns identitetsförhandlingar i gymnasieskolan
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In the last decade stratification within educational results has, in Sweden as in other countries, been framed as a matter of boys’ and young men’s under-achievement. The question of whether this is a problem, and if so, for whom and how to change the structure, has been discussed in research and educational policy. The aim of the thesis is to contribute to these fields and to enhance knowledge of young people’s gendered and classed identity processes, by analyzing how achievement and engagement were negotiated and given meaning in relation to young men. Previous research has primarily explored identity processes among “risk categories” or subordinated students. The objective here was to analyze how masculinity was accomplished via peer-group interactions within a rarely problematized category, through examining how upper middle-class young men identify themselves and are ascribed identities by others.The study’s design was inspired by ethnographic methodology and combined participant observation, semi-structured individual and group interviews and a background questionnaire. Identities, social categorizations (especially gender and class) and dominance-relations were thus analyzed from an actor-oriented perspective. The research participants were young men and women, age 15-16, in two school classes. The field work was conducted at, respectively, a Natural Science and a Vehicle Programme; educational settings with connotations to masculinity but significantly different in terms of class. The study enrolled a total of fifty-six students, but focus is upon the fifteen young men among the natural science students. High achievement and under-achievement, high social and cognitive ability, and group loyalty are main themes in the study. Identity claims were analyzed in relation to the practices through which they were negotiated, e.g. self-hindrance. Similar to other research, the results emphasize the relationship between masculinity and “effortless achievement”. The concept “under-achievement” is developed as an analytical tool, by distinguishing between five dimensions.
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| 2. |
- Arvidson, Catarina, 1959-
(författare)
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Genuspedagogers berättelser om makt och kontroll
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this thesis 14 gender pedagogues’ stories about power and control are described and analysed. Here the term gender pedagogue refers to educators who have participated in further training in gender and gender equality studies. The training programme was the result of an initiative taken by the former Social Democratic government. The intention of the government was that those who participated in the training programme would then work as resource persons in the work for gender equality in preschools and schools (Frånberg, 2010; Regeringen, 2001a, 2001b; Wahlgren, 2009). The purpose of this study is to describe and analyse the gender pedagogues’ access to power and control in work for change. The theoretical framework chosen for the study consists of Basil Bernsteins concepts classification and framing (Bernstein, 1977, 2000) and Hildur Ve’s (1999a, 1999b) use of the concepts technical limited rationality and care work rationality. The empirical evidence is based on observations in a seminar series on gender issues and semi-structured interviews. The results of the interviews are presented as stories which have been created in the interplay between the gender pedagogues and the interviewer. One conclusion that can be drawn from the stories is that power relations and gender patterns on many different levels influenced the possibilities of the gender pedagogues for power and control. Power and control in the relation between technical limited rationality and care work rationality is expressed in different ways. It is seen in the possibilities and descriptions of resistance and difficulties. Resistance and difficulties depended, according to the gender pedagogues, on the differences between their own view of knowledge and that of others. If gender and gender equality was not considered to be an important area of knowledge, possibilities for power and control decreased.
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| 3. |
- Hjelmér, Carina, 1956-
(författare)
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Leva och lära demokrati? : En etnografisk studie i två gymnasieprogram
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this study is to acquire knowledge regarding democratic education in upper secondary school programmes with different gender and social class profiles. It covers the teaching in and about democracy, pupils’ power-positions and their attempts to affect routine school activities. A particular focus of attention was processes of influence, through which the pupils themselves pursue issues in school. The analysis is based on theories and previous research focused on gender and class perspectives of fostering democracy. Basil Bernstein’s theories regarding power, control and pedagogic codes, in combination with feminist theories (principally those of Arnot, Reay, Skeggs, Gordon and Walkerdine), form the basis of the theoretical framework. Ethnographic methods have been applied, including participatory observations, conversations, interviews, and analysis of relevant documents over one academic year. Two Swedish upper secondary school classes were followed: one from the vocational Child and Recreation Programme and one from the academic Natural Science Programme. Teaching students about democracy and invitations for them to exert influence appeared generally to be unplanned and were marginalised in school. The few invitations that occurred had an individual stamp and focused on pupils’ choices, responsibilities and duties, rather than on their rights in school. Democracy was presented in the form of facts about formal democracy and formal participation in democracy in the future, while a more critical attitude and possible influence strategies for youths were marginalised. Pupils in both classes wished and attempted to influence teaching, primarily through informal means. There were, however, significant differences between the classes in what they were able to influence. Analysis of pupils’ voices in relation to the pedagogic context revealed that the power relationships in these influence processes depend partly on the focal academic subject. More importantly, they also differ between the upper secondary school programs, which differ in strength of classification (sensu Bernstein), demands, pace and difficulty levels. These differences are related, in turn, to whether the programmes are intended to prepare the pupils for higher education and/or a vocation after school. Generally, the Child and Recreation pupils exerted influence more successfully when they wished to reduce the pace and difficulty of lessons than when they wished to get more out of their education, while the opposite applied to the Natural Science class. Who had influence over what was principally related to the programmes’ gender and class profiles and the pupils’ expected positions in society.
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| 4. |
- Orlander, Auli Arvola, 1960-
(författare)
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Med kroppen som insats : Diskursiva spänningsfält i biologiundervisningen på högstadiet
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes its departure in 15-year-old students’ learning about the human body. During a semester I followed most of the sciences taught in one class of grade 9 students. I have chosen to illustrate lessons and analyse using the influence of feminists perspectives different situated actions in this science classroom practice, thereby raising a number of didactic questions focusing on the limits and possibilities of school science teaching. With the help of different analytic tools I have made close readings of transcribed situations presented in four studies. The results show ways in which science content becomes relevant to students’ experiences, but also how students’ unique voices may shift focus from the expected science content. Overall, the results show how some discursive performances that are often taken for granted in science education are filled with explicit and implicit norms about how things should be for example in relation to femininity and masculinity. These performances may affect how students come to regard themselves and the world around them. However, the results also point out opportunities for changing these discursive performances. One way of doing this, which emerges from my results, is to create possibilities for acts in situations of equal subject positions, where different kinds of positions are welcomed. This is an approach where the content of science education involves and transforms the experiences of students’ social lives, where students’ actions in encounters with the differences are regarded as an important part of meaning making. Therefore, I suggest that ongoing negotiations in teaching should be taken into account, be regarded as a significant part of the learning processes and, through this, open up new possibilities of widening what kind of meaning making becomes available for the students. This, in turn, may create a space with unimagined ethical opportunities by paying attention to disparities, i.e. to others who may act from a different logic than we are used to, in other words: welcoming and involving differences.
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| 5. |
- Rönnlund, Maria, 1962-
(författare)
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Demokrati och deltagande : Elevinflytande i grundskolans årskurs 7-9 ur ett könsperspektiv.
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to examine the fostering of democracy in the form of pupils’ influence and participation in decision processes. The main focus is on pupils’ formal influence in lower secondary education, forms 7-9, in particular class councils and pupil councils, although informal influence is also studied. The study is ethnographic and based on observations, informal conversations and formal interviews with pupils and school staff in three Swedish schools during one school year (2007/2008). The analysis draws on theories focusing on democracy and gender (Pateman, 1970; Young, 1990, 1997, 2000a,b, 2005), and institutional aspects of education (Bernstein, 2000). The results show that the activity among the participating pupils is low, and that the councils deal with what the pupils mostly judge as unimportant and uninteresting issues. Issues related to teaching are generally seldom dealt with in the councils. A clear majority of the pupils also state that they cannot exert influence to the extent they would like, and that they find the representative systems both coercive and excluding. Still, pupils’ formal influence shows to be important as a means for democracy fostering. In particular positive participation effects are expressed in councils/groups characterised by pupil autonomy and collective community, a result that emphasises the importance of supporting pupil-governed councils and providing collective influence forms. But, the fact that a great deal of the pupils’ criticism against pupils’ influence in practice and the organization of pupils’ influence is connected to representation, indicates that alternative collective forms to a greater extent than the representative systems can promote interest and active participation among the pupils. The results also show that only a minor proportion of the pupils take active part in influence processes, both formally and informally, and that a predominant majority of the participating pupils are girls. In sum, the results lend support to the idea that active participation in some contexts and in some conditions yields certain positive participation effects. But the fact that a large group of pupils, a majority of them boys, do not participate, proves lacking achievement and inequality when it comes to democracy fostering in the form of pupils’ influence. In view of the results more groups of pupils need to be strengthened as regards influence and participation in decision processes.
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| 6. |
- Bredlöv, Eleonor, 1982-
(författare)
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Shaped for beauty : Vocational and gendered subjectivities in private education for the beauty industry
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis was to answer the question: How are vocational, gendered subjectivities produced in vocational education for the beauty industry? Drawing on Foucault and poststructural feminist theory, this question is answered in four papers, in which the material consists of beauty-school recruitment and marketing material, interviews with skin and spa therapy students and observations of practical skin and spa therapy training. These are educational arrangements that are closely bound to the economic sector of the beauty industry, and they have remained remarkably unexplored. Various aspects of subjectivity production are explored throughout these papers: Paper I shows how the potential beauty student is shaped through processes of responsibilising and individualising in recruitment; Paper II shows how a scientific and caring professional emerges; Paper III shows how students learn to adopt a critical gaze towards bodies; and Paper IV shows how students are produced as emotional workers and learners, taking Hochschild’s term “emotional labour” as a point of departure. The results show how (medical) scientific knowledge becomes a resource in the production of the skin and spa therapy professional, mobilising gender relations of power, and neglecting other types of skills and knowledge. However, relational and caring aspects of work and learning emerge in the study through the way in which wider discourses of femininity inform the ways in which students are produced as professionals.
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| 7. |
- Edström, Charlotta, 1974-
(författare)
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Samma, lika, alla är unika : En analys av jämställdhet i förskolepolitik och praktik
- 2010
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis is to describe, critically analyse and provide information about gender equality in Swedish preschools, in relation to policy and practice. The main focus is on pedagogues’ gender equality work with children. The study includes a comparison between state gender equality policy in Scottish and Swedish preschools. The theoretical starting point for the analysis is a policy and gender perspective. Based on Bacchis’ (1999) and Marshalls’ (1997) work suggesting that gender equality policy issues and problems are socially constructed, a contrasting analytical framework is devised and used in the analysis. The main emphasis in the analysis of gender equality constructions is on underlying assumptions, competing constructions and “areas of silence”, relating to what is missing from a gender perspective. There is also some consideration of the agreement between constructions and concrete measures. The time-period studied was from the end of the 1960s onwards; emphasis was placed on the last fifteen years. The main empirical data consists of: Swedish and Scottish state official policy documents and interviews with Scottish researchers; Swedish local authority official documents and interviews with local authority officials from four municipalities; and interviews with pedagogues from three work-teams in three preschools. This information is complemented with documentation about the preschools’ gender equality work. In state preschool policy, pedagogues are depicted both as part of the solution to the gender equality problem but also part of the problem because there are “too few men”. Local authorities consider that pedagogues need more knowledge about gender equality. The pedagogues themselves make a distinction between the past, when their treatment of children was founded on gender-based stereotypes, and the present, in which they are aware but need to keep up the work. In both Swedish preschool policy and practice, gender equality has mainly focused on treating girls and boys similarly, based on assumptions that this is desirable; and this is still the approach. This similarity discourse has been quite constant in Swedish state policy since the 1960s. One exception, however, was the attention to biological differences which gained influence in the mid 1990s in policies mainly relating to compulsory schooling. Gender equality is, with respect to both policy and practice, largely constructed as a pedagogical preschool issue. Discussions about wider society mainly concern the public sphere and the labour market, whilst the private sphere is seldom considered. Children are mainly positioned as “girls” or “boys” and as recipients of pedagogues’ gender equality measures. In general, little consideration is given to hierarchies and variations among groups of girls or boys, or about intersections between gender and other socially constructed categories. Intersections were most clearly visible in practice, especially in one preschool studied; they concern gender equality, age and space. Issues concerning power and gender order are usually missing, and there seems to be a clear influence of gender role theories. Even though there is clear current emphasis on increased similarities, there is a tension concerning whether gender equality is about treating everybody exactly the same, treating everybody in quite similar ways or treating children as unique individuals. This also involves a tension relating to whether gender equality concerns girls and boys as individuals, or as groups, or both. The study demonstrated that the emphasis on gender equality is stronger in the constructions than in concrete measures. In practice, work-teams’ discussions about gender equality were more nuanced than the somewhat compensatory methods that these practitioners applied during their work with the children.
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| 8. |
- Kärnebro, Katarina, 1975-
(författare)
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Plugga stenhårt eller vara rolig? : Normer om språk, kön och skolarbete i identitetsskapande språkpraktiker på fordonsprogrammet
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between language, identity construction and learning in the context of the Vehicle programme, a vocational program in Swedish upper secondary schools. The study focuses on language practices and the norms of language, gender and school work that are negotiated in conversations between pupils and between pupils and teachers. The language practices are considered as talk-in-interaction, and identity construction and learning are understood as processes in socially situated activities. The Vehicle programme has its basis in mechanics with links to the vehicle and transport trades, and can be identified as a male-coded program in several respects. The pupils participating in this study were both boys and girls attending a school situated in the North of Sweden. The study was conducted through an ethnographic approach, employing plural methods including observation, field notes, audio-recordings of conversations, and interviews with pupils in focus groups and individually. Recorded conversations were analysed using tools from conversation analysis. The analysis is based on Judith Butler’s theory of gender as performance, Raewyn Connell’s theory of hegemonic masculinity, and Penelope Eckert’s theory of the heterosexual market. A socio-cultural theory of learning describing communities of practice, by Lave and Wenger, which has also been applied to linguistics by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, forms the basis of the theoretical framework.The analyses of conversations show that the language practices were confrontational, direct and humorous; characteristics that have strong connections to notions of a masculine conversational style. The pupils were not as aware of interactional patterns as they were of the words they used. Thereby the norms in the community of practice, which were based on notions of masculinity and heterosexuality, were not noticed, and worked as undercurrents in the interaction. The girls participated in the language practices in the same ways as the boys, but contrary to the boys, the girls interpreted the language practices as effects of other things than gender, for example as signs of being independent or daring. They also experienced that adjusting to the expectations of normative middle-class femininity was more oppressive than adjusting to the norms that were negotiated within the community of practice. The conversation analyses also show some of the complexity in teachers’ work and their role as mediators of norms and values. Peer reactions to individual pupil turns in the classroom conversations were of more importance for the development of the conversations than teacher responses. Thus there was usually a homogenization of the expressed perspectives. Norms of heterosexuality were constantly reconstructed in interaction within the community of practice and they controlled the pupils’ understanding of what was perceived as normal or deviant behaviour. Thereby the pupils constrained each other’s school performances in the core subjects and reconstructed a difference between being theoretical and practical, a process that was partly supported by the school as an institution. Generally, the pupils in the community of practice had to balance their identity constructions in relation to the peer group, teacher expectations, and their own ambitions, for which reason learning turned out to be more than just a process of acquiring knowledge.
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| 9. |
- Lundström, Agneta
(författare)
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Lärare och konflikthantering : en undersökande studie ur ett könsperspektiv
- 2008
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation explores ten teachers' approaches to managing conflicts with/between pupils. The relevance of gender is analysed according to the strategies and representations chosen by the teachers. The methods used for data collection include 'rounds', role-plays and ongoing reflexivity, mainly in single-sex groups. Three main strategies were identified in managing conflicts with/between pupils: challenging, confirming and physically touching. The strategy of challenging reveals that teachers have high expectations of how competent pupils ought to be. It is no longer enough to be competent and independent as a pupil (in Sweden); he or she is also expected to have an integrated ethic of caring. Values such as an ethic of caring are conventionally associated with femininity, and are usually invisible and/or low status; though they have now become the dominant norm for both female and male teachers. The strategy of confirming is used to give support to the pupil but there is a risk of confirming one individual "too much" which can lead to relational problems with other pupils. Physical touching as a strategy relates to dilemmas arising from gendered expectations of physicality in teacher-pupil interaction. Overall, difficulties were found in getting male teachers to discuss and 'role-play' conflicts with girls, which did not arise with female teachers concerning conflicts with boys. Also criticized were the demands on teachers' workloads as a result of their social responsibility for pupils' welfare, and also lack of institutional support. When the teachers had time to reflect together on their experiences, they seemed willing to criticize norms and representations. Four phases in the mode of talking were identified: (1) the telling of an experience; (2) interpretation of experience as a form of difference, either as deviance or according to gender; (3) narration of experience that contradicts the above dichotomy of difference; and (4) ongoing reflexivity resulting in motivation to change strategy or strengthen former strategies based on a wider awareness of work context.
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| 10. |
- Rosvall, Per-Åke
(författare)
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”… det vore bättre om man kunde vara med och bestämma hur det skulle göras…” : en etnografisk studie om elevinflytande i gymnasieskolan
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this study is to explore how young people act and the organisation of school practice, and what possibilities they have of influencing the content and the forms practiced. The study focuses on how the pedagogic practice is organised in two classes in their first year of upper secondary school, one Social Science programme class and one Vehicle programme class. This embraces questions as: How, where, when and for what cause do students act to influence, and then with what result? Are students offered influence, and in that case which students? How does the organisation of and the content in the pedagogic practice prepare students to act in order to be able to exert influence in the future? These questions have been studied with focus on differences between the programmes with regard to social background and gender. The thesis has its theoretical base in Bernstein’s theory of pedagogy and code (1990, 2000), feminist perspectives (Arnot, 2006; Arnot & Dillabough, 2000; Connell, 1987; Gordon, 2006; Gordon, Holland & Lahelma, 2000) as well as theories of structuration (Giddens, 1984). The empirical material of the thesis was ethnographically produced during one school year, through classroom observations, individual interviews with students, teachers and head teachers, and the gathering of school and teaching material. The main results in the analysis are that actions taken to gain influence were rare, that the organisation of and the content in the pedagogic practice was mainly focused on students as becoming, i. e. it focused students possibilities to be able to influence in the future and not the present. Furthermore, changing of pedagogic content or pedagogic forms was dependent on students’ own actions. There was a lack of teacher organisation to promote student influence. Finally, what was evaluated in the pedagogic practice, i.e. factual learning, did not promote student influence. The thesis demonstrates how pedagogic practice was gendered and classed, which had consequences for how students could influence and how students were prepared to influence in the future. Since the Social Science programme mostly attracts students from a middle-class background and the Vehicle programme those with a working-class background, the content in the programmes contributed to reproducing hierarchical social relations. The content for the Vehicle students proved to be simplified, personal and context dependent, whereas the content of the Social Science programme was more advanced, general and context independent, knowledge which, in argumentation for influence, is usually highly valued. In previous research, working class masculinities have often been associated with opposition towards study-oriented subjects. However, the current study indicates that there is an interest in studying Swedish, English and maths. The students argued that it was necessary for future employment, and that the Vehicle industry is now asking for this kind of knowledge.
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