| 1. |
- Börjesson, Mattias, 1978-
(författare)
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Från likvärdighet till marknad : En studie av offentligt och privat inflytande över skolans styrning i svensk utbildningspolitik 1969-1999
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- For most of the 20th century the dominant aim of Swedish educational policy was an integrated public school system under national state control. During the post-war era (1945–1989) this policy led to Sweden having one of the most centralized and integrated school systems in the world. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, there was a profound change in Swedish education policy towards decentralization, deregulation and marketization of the school system. The aim of this thesis is to provide a deeper understanding of the nature and causes of this shift in education policy. The thesis draws from a theoretical framework consisting of Critical Realism, curriculum theory and Neo-Marxism. From a Neo- Marxist perspective the configuration of state education policy is understood as a dominant education ideology. The empirical material consists of state policy documents which are understood as an expression of the dominant education ideology in society.The results indicate a shift in the dominant education ideology in Sweden between 1969 and – 1999: from an emphasis on state governance and goals of equivalence, equality and participation in the school system during the 1970s, towards increasing skepticism regarding state regulation and an emphasis on decentralization and aims to increase parental and pupil influence in the school system during the 1980s, to a dominance of private influence via school choice and competition in the school system during the 1990s. From a theoretical perspective consisting of Critical Realism and curriculum theory, this shift in education policy and restructuring of the school system is understood in relation to economic crises, a rightward shift in politics and the dominance of neoliberal ideas in Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s.
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| 2. |
- Pedersen, Helena, 1968-
(författare)
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The School and the Animal Other : An Ethnography of Human-Animal Relations in Education
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- How human-animal relations are expressed and negotiated has significance for the situation of animals in society and offers insights that contribute to our understanding of how we organize relations between humans as well. This critical ethnographic investigation is positioned at the intersection of education research and the interdisciplinary area of human-animal studies. It uses participant observation, interviews with students and teachers and critical discourse analyses of texts and other artefacts used in the schools investigated to contribute cross-curricular perspectives on how human-animal relations are configured in the daily activities of both vocational (animal caretaker) and university preparatory programs. Building on central ideas from the Frankfurt School, the study proposes a platform for a critical theory of human-animal relations in formal education that embraces species-inclusive versions of critical pedagogy as well as gender and postcolonial analyses. In this vein, the study explores how social processes and practices in and outside the classroom enable certain human as well as animal subject positions while disabling others. A primary question is how a species-discourse intersects with categories formed around conceptions of gender, race/ethnicity, and class. A variety of ascribed animal representations and positions embedded in these processes are identified.The study argues that human-animal relations are characterized by indeterminacy and contradiction. While the school may educate to achieve improved conditions for animals inhuman society, it is at the same time involved in a process of social and cultural reproduction that normalizes the accessibility of animal bodies for human purposes. At the heart of this reproduction process lies boundary work around the animal as “other”. Such conceptualizations at times conflict with the views of animals that students bring with them to school and they therefore receive guidance about the “appropriate” position of animals in society; guidance that at the same time allows students to keep intact a sense of self as caring and moral actors toward animals. The school has a repertoire of concrete strategies for achieving this, and the effects of these strategies are identified as key components in a hidden curriculum of human-animal relations. The analyses show that these effects constitute a shared frame of reference of commonsense knowledge about animals in which contradictions embedded in human-animal relations can be comfortably accommodated. In addition, analytical tools borrowed from postcolonial theory are proposed that contribute to understanding the operations of hegemonic discourses of human-animal relations in the classroom as well as the effects generated by resistance to these discourses.
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| 3. |
- Areschoug, Susanna, 1988-
(författare)
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I den moraliska periferin : Ungdomskultur, värden och politisk subjektivitet i rurala rumsligheter
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is centered on the everyday spatial practices, identity work and political subjectivities of Swedish rural youth. It explores and challenges widespread notions of rural backwardness and moral inferiority by studying youth’s navigations and negotiations on a classed, gendered, spatialized and economically produced moral field. The material that the study builds on was produced during a ten month long ethnographic fieldwork with 14-16-year-old youth in their small community in western Sweden. The main method for data collection was participant observations in the local school and in two confirmation groups organized by the Swedish church in the community. In addition, I conducted approximately 70 qualitative interviews with youth and a few adults with insight in the youth’s lives.In the study, a point of departure is the state of ‘depolitization’ that political theorist Wendy Brown (2006a) has argued characterizes contemporary Western societies. Depolitization entails a displacing of a societal phenomenon or conflict from its political origins, and a placing of the solutions to these problems on individuals. This tendency is visible both in the reoccurring Othering of the rural as responsible for increased right wing populism in Sweden, and in the way in which the Swedish state deals with this issue by implementing educational projects directed at raising knowledge and tolerance in (individualized) youth. Making use of neomarxist perspectives on the production of space (Lefebvre, 1974/1991; Harvey, 2009), and postmarxist understandings of subject formation, I explore the interplay between space, identification and political subjectivities (Butler, 1997; Hall, 2011) among youth most often understood as situated in the geographical, economic and moral periphery. In the study, I show how certain political positions where made intelligible on different ideological arenas (Althusser, 1970), and through ideas associated with urbanity and rurality, which in turn affected the youths’ tendencies to identify with them. I explore these political identifications or disidentifications as a form of ‘moral work’ (Uhnoo, 2011) closely tied to the historically produced spatialities in which they occurred. Rather than viewing problematic expressions of racism, sexism or homophobia as individualized traits or opinions of youth, I illustrate how they can be understood as positionings in a matrix of moral intelligibility, positions that are (humorously) inhabited or rejected differently with regards to gender, class and emplacement. While Swedish educational policies enforce norm critical pedagogy as a way to educate youth on tolerance and antiracism, the dissertation shows how this reproduces ideas of rural moral inferiority. By engaging with the reoccurring use of irony and parody among the youth, analyzing the (satirical) embodiment of the politically incorrect rural racist as trolling practices which require youth to be well-informed of contemporary cultural politics, the dissertation argues that racist trolling is a way of critiquing national imaginaries of urban progressiveness and rural Otherness. Theoretically, the study concludes that rural youth politics need to politicize rural identity, experience and marginalization – rather than arguing for a recognition of the same – as well as the economic-material histories of different (rural) spatialities.
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| 4. |
- Berggren, Jan, 1965-
(författare)
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Engelskundervisning i gymnasieskolan för mobilisering av ungdomars livschanser
- 2013
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Berggren, Jan (2013). Engelskundervisning i gymnasieskolan för mobilisering av ungdomars livschanser. (English teaching in upper secondary school and mobilization of young people's life chances). Linnaeus University Dissertations No 156/2013, ISBN: 978-91-87427-64-0. Written in Swedish with a summary in English.English is a school subject which every Swedish upper secondary student is required to take. The selection and dissemination of knowledge among students attending upper secondary programmes carries the intention of social integration as well as specialization. The aim of this dissertation is then to show how perspectives on education in English elicited from teachers’ and students’ responses in interviews as well as Swedish education policy (SOU, directives, propositions) contribute to the conditions for the selection of knowledge and teaching, on and between programmes.Inspired by Basil Bernstein’s theories of educational sociology (1990, 2000) and Fairclough och Chouliaraki’s critical discourse analysis, CDA (1999), albeit adjusted to the aim of this study in pedagogics, the focus is on teachers’ and students’ views on teaching and knowledge in English classes on four vocational and academic programmes, establishing varying discourse practices on the different programmes. Moreover, perspectives on upper secondary teaching in Swedish education policy texts are analysed following the same methodology.Results indicate that education policy texts at the time of the interviews strive for adjustment of course content in English teaching to the programme (termed ‘infärgning’ in Swedish). Reflecting this trend in education policy, teachers and students on programmes speak of aspirations for English teaching as being either adapted for mainly academic purposes, or vocational and everyday-life purposes. On the basis of these aspirations it is argued that teachers and students establish either academically oriented discourse or vocational and everyday-life oriented discourse as the dominant pedagogical discourse on the individual programme. Thus, education policy as well as teachers and students reflect each other in striving for knowledge to be adapted for the programme. The two discourses contribute to a movement in favour of differences between programmes, though some of the vocational students complain on not being offered possibilities to analyse and discuss current problems in society. This is to say they complain that they do not receive an education in line with the academically oriented discourse, which is offered to students on academic programmes. At the same time, vocational students are dissatisfied in not gaining adequate knowledge in vocational English.Finally, these perspectives indicate discursive conditions for the selection of knowledge and the organization of teaching in English classes on different programmes. In the last chapter of the dissertation these varying perspectives on programmes concerning the selection of knowledge are analysed but now with a focus on the relationship between programmes. Consequences of the varying dominant pedagogical discourses on the programmes are discussed with regard to how they can be understood to mobilize life chances of young people differently, creating conditions for social integration and differentiation. Keywords: Selection of knowledge, upper secondary education, English, education policy, critical discourse analysis, sociology of education, social integration, social differentiation
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| 5. |
- Brante, Göran, 1951-
(författare)
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Lärare av idag : om konstitutioneringen av identitet och roll
- 2008
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis comprises four articles and a summarizing text. The articles build on three sets of data regarding various aspects of the teaching profession. One objective is to illustrate and discuss what may make teaching appear to be a complex and intensive profession, as well as what conditions are necessary to make the relationship between teachers and pupils appear to be characterized by asymmetry. A second objective is to discuss which changes to working conditions could in turn lead to changes to the apparent complications in teachers’ working conditions. Using a systemic approach as the point of departure, different mechanisms that may contribute to the constitution of teachers’ identity and role are discussed. On the one hand the systemic analysis moves from a biological point of view, via a cultural, a psychological and a societal point of view, to explain and comprehend how groups can develop asymmetrical relationships. On the other hand, curriculum changes, as well as changes in the school system over the last twenty years and the synchronous nature of teacher work, are used in discussing the complex and intensive character of teaching. Abduction makes it possible to explain the complex and intensive character of the teaching profession, as well as the asymmetric relationship between teachers and pupils, using these mechanisms. It is also proposed that interplay exists between these two aspects. A third result is the proposal that many of these problems may be explained by the extensive reforms that have burdened teachers and schools since the end of the last century. In conclusion, changes in teachers’ attitudes towards innovation, their approach to knowledge, the relationship with the pupils, and the teachers’ mission, are suggested as possible means of modifying the situation.
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| 6. |
- Fonseca, Lars, 1963-
(författare)
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Det godkända fusket : Normförhandlingar i gymnasieskolans bedömningspraktiker
- 2014
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Education on behalf of social trust constitutes a central theme in all societies. Different forms of cheating and fraud have a negative impact on the bonds of social trust. The purpose of the thesis is to increase understanding of the scope for learning about the individual-society relationship as it finds expression in pedagogical practices involving norms relating to cheating. The established norms concerning school cheating are identified in group-based discussions involving Upper Secondary students and teachers.Students ascribe each other roles on the basis of the perceived capacity to produce school results and thereby also to justify the need for school cheating. In the norm negotiations a significant tolerance is shown towards cheating which is adjudged to be necessary, provided that a hierarchic, fair distribution of grades can be retained.The teachers perceive expectations of acting for goal fulfilment, in the form of good student grades, as based on economic arguments. Good student grades imply satisfied customers in a market exposed to competition and a strong market value for the individual school. From a critical viewpoint these norms are related to the contemporary, dominant neo-liberal principles of commercialisation and individualisation in social organisation.The school actors perceive, in accordance with stratified norm theory, the norms from economic systems of conduct as more strongly conditioning on conduct than those norms from political-administrative or socio-cultural conduct systems. The teachers are aware of expectations, in hidden concert and consent with other school stakeholders, to offer social approval for student cheating and sympathetic marking concerning the lowest grade for passing i.e. violation of rules, where this is necessary to meet the economic as well as political-administrative objectives that have been established.To be part of pedagogic practices involving school cheating implies learning to uncouple rules and practice, law and morality. Such a double agenda is incompatible with norms and ideals in official curricula as well as being destructive of the bonds of social trust; it thereby functions as a hidden curriculum.
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| 8. |
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| 9. |
- Siljehag, Eva, 1954-
(författare)
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Igenkännande och motkraft : Förskole- och fritidspedagogikens betydelse för specialpedagogiken - En deltagarorienterad studie
- 2007
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this study was to describe, explain and understand the importance of preschool and leisure pedagogy for special education. Knowledge was therefore generated concerning teacher’s reflection on three themes: 1) the view of knowledge, people and society, 2) special education as organisation, activity and content, 3) a gender perspective and its implication for their realisation of a professional practice. An analytical aim was to understand the content of the teachers’ reflection process in a critical social perspective. The group included 14 persons. The empirical material consists of eleven analysed group meetings, two sets of interviews with the participants, educational policy documents, archive material and two background interviews. The study is based on a participatory research approach and on democratic knowledge processes guided by critical social theory. The participants formulate the importance of sensory experiences, multiple forms of knowledge and on all people’s equal value. The qualification structure of the group includes overview as well as direct work with an interior and exterior organisation. The participants associate questions from the field with revealed opportunities and obstacles, relations, processes and contexts. The analysis shows that solely acceptance of the different child is not enough. Recognition precedes the appreciation of the unique and absolute Subject. The analysis by the group reveals a reproduction of subordination. The qualification structure of salaried employee and service production demands critical consciousness to avoid exploitation and control in a capitalist and market-oriented society. The double subordination of the group in the school world contains the power of recognising this partly as an opportunity for a counter power based on the justified participation on equal terms, partly as a counter power to the current tendency to split pedagogical and collective work on value issues.
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| 10. |
- Sjöberg, Lena
(författare)
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Bäst i klassen? : Lärare och elever i svenska och europeiska policytexter
- 2011
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis takes its departure in the recent criticism directed to the Swedish school system and its schools, teachers and pupils, but especially the epidemic of policies produced in order to develop and improve Swedish schools, in particular after the change of government in 2006. The general aim of this thesis is to study how teachers and pupils are represented, and thus constructed, regulated and positioned in a number of current key policy texts. The study also involves a discussion of the construction and regulation practices regarding the school, and its role in society. The main context for the study is policy texts and policy practices related to teacher education. Four studies form the cornerstone of the thesis. Through these policy texts different institutional practices are analyzed. These range from European union policy to examination data from a local teacher education institution in Sweden. A main source of inspiration to the theoretical framework of the study has been provided by the work of Michel Foucault. However, in addition to Foucault's constructionist and poststructural basis, theoretical and methodological approaches drawn from Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, Mark Olssen's social-materialist analysis of policy and Stephen J Ball's policy sociology are also included. The first study examines the constructions and governing technologies in four policy texts within the European Union working programme 'Education 2010'. The second study takes a historical perspective in the construction of teachers and pupils, based on teacher education policy text since 1948, and how the ideal teacher, pupil and school are constructed and positioned genealogically. The third study explores the discursive notions of teacher professionalism and how the regulation of teachers operates through this and other discursive practices by the Swedish government and the Teacher union (Lärarförbundet) during two different time periods, 1995-2000 and 2007-2008. The final study examines student teachers' examination assignments, as a local policy practice, and how the student teachers position the ideal pupil and themselves as ideal teachers. It examines how different policy discourses operate in relation to positioning practices. The thesis shows that current neoliberal discourse order in educational policy today is partly challenged by neoconservative rationalities. Secondly, the thesis shows how each teacher and pupil is governed through several discourses, governing technologies and governing techniques, and how these three entities function relationally in the governing of the subject. In common for discourses, governing technologies and techniques are that they are often very 'seductively packaged', which implies that it is almost impossible to resist and oppose them. Finally I claim that the current discourse order, and its discourses, and governing technologies and techniques imply structural inequalities for teachers, but especially between different pupil groups
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