| 1. |
- Kihlberg, Robert, 1975-
(författare)
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Influence in sensemaking during change : a study of the Swedish police reform and subsequent change work
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is based on four articles, and examines efforts of influence in processes of sensemaking during, and subsequent to, the Swedish police reform. Sensemaking – a process where individuals work to understand what is going on when they encounter confusing events – is of central importance for how organizational change unfolds. Influence in sensemaking refers to activities with capacity to shape persons preferences and perceptions, as they try to make sense. In this dissertation, the overall purpose is to increase the understanding about influence in sensemaking during micro-processes of change. The research questions address how efforts of influence in sensemaking at different organizational levels can be understood, and by which means actors attempt to influence others sensemaking. The research applies sensemaking and sensegiving as its theoretical framework. With a qualitative approach, and ethnographic methods, influence in sensemaking is examined on four levels: Article 1 examines how the strategic level of reform promote change through visual media. The results show how 44 videos function to layer meaning and construct stereotypes in attempts to influence how the sensemaking of change would take place. Article 2 reports an ethnography of middle-managers involving employees in a multivocal process that aims to influence how sensemaking evolves. This process has four features: open-endedness, low control over cues given, several sources of cues, and the encouragement of complexity and ambiguity. Article 3 studies employees working as ‘change’ agents at employee conferences. Results show that these actors exert influence in three ways: drawing on positional power, acting powerless, and by attempts to give power away. Article 4 reports an ethnography of employees enacting a change initiative. The results show how employees’ various enactments involve episodic power, which influence the sensemaking process to varying degrees and towards diverse ends. Overall, the results from the articles outlines three understandings of influence in sensemaking: top-down efforts, reflexive interactions and responsive enactments – each with particular consequences for who can take part in processes of sensemaking, organizing, and change work, when and how. For organizations, the results imply a need for managers and employees to raise awareness of others as well as one’s own influence in sensemaking, as it shapes the way they make sense of, understand, and enact organizational change. In a larger perspective, this has significance for which forms of organizing are stimulated to develop – democratic or undemocratic.
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| 2. |
- Lindberg, Ola, 1979-
(författare)
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'Let me through, I'm a Doctor!' : Professional Socialization in the Transition from Education to Work
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Based on four articles, this compilation thesis analyses the demonstrated com-petence defining a medical doctor, to the extent to which he or she acquires a high status and high level of employability in professional practice. Overall, the thesis aimed to describe and analyse professional socialization during doctors' transition from education to work. Questions addressed included how higher education should be understood as preparation for professional practice, how ideals of the future professional were conceived and how these ideals differenti-ated 'good' from 'bad' doctors in professional development and recruitment. The research employed a version of practice theory as its theoretical framework, developed with the aid of work by Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, John Dewey and Theodore Schatzki. Throughout the individual studies, ideals were con-structed and understood as moral imperatives, stating how doctors are expected to perform in professional practice. Article I explored the ideals of academia and higher education practices in a general sense. In this study, the ideals involve the perceived function of higher education in relation to work. Three different and conflicting perspectives were constructed with the aid of a literature study. Arti-cle II was a survey investigation of how two cohorts (n=169) of recent graduates from a Swedish medical programme viewed their competence and the prepara-tion they received for work through the medical programme. The results show that graduates might be overly prepared from a knowledge perspective, while lacking in practical skills and preparation for difficult situations in the work-place. Article III investigated the ideals of the medical programme using an interview study with eight medical students and eight medical teachers. The ideals constructed show how conflicting ideals, such as strength and humility, shape conceptions of the future professional. Finally, Article IV reports an inter-view study with recruiters of medical interns in Sweden's 21 most popular hospi-tals. Results showed that the most attractive candidates balanced two traits: orientation towards performance and orientation towards human relations. They also successfully demonstrated possession of these qualities in their appli-cation and subsequent interview. Overall, the results from the studies indicated that there are great differences between views of proper preparation for work and views of the highly-employable doctor. While medical knowledge and skills were seen as important in preparation for work, they were absent in the views of the highly-competent and employable doctor. Instead, generic attributes, such as drive, curiosity, cooperativeness, warmth, maturity and reflectiveness, char-acterised descriptions of the most accomplished medical professionals. These attributes also were seen primarily as developed before or 'beside' the formal medical education programme.
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| 3. |
- Mörtsell, Sara, 1982-
(författare)
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Maintaining teaching : exploring te(a)ch-abilities with actor-network theory
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis investigates everyday teaching with digital technology during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The pandemic was one of the world’s largest disruptions to everyday education with both health and education at stake. With the pandemic control measures affecting upper secondary education in Sweden, gathering in the classroom cannot be taken for granted and digital technologies accelerated and intensified everyday practices. The aim is to explore the relation of teaching and digital technology. How can we understand the ways in which digital technology and teaching become jointly experimented with to cope with pandemic uncertainty?With an Actor-Network theory (ANT) approach, the thesis puts emphasis on how everyday teaching holds together at the pandemic intersection of routine and breakdown. The everyday teaching practices during the pandemic is an empirical focal point for inquiry into how they become enacted and, secondly, what the implications are for knowledge production when examining this novel educational practice with ANT’s relational materialism. To answer these questions, ethnographic methods are used with an upper secondary school in Sweden from May 2020 to June 2021. The fieldwork consists of empirical engagements in school visits, interviews, and online observations. In line with recent ANT scholarship, the methodological approach is articulated as a care-ful methodology. It implies tracing vulnerable and stable relations that enact sociomaterial practice and acknowledging cuts and becoming.The results show how a manifold of more-than-digital practices enact everyday teaching. The included studies in the thesis examine attendability and mundane rituals, lesson enactments of scheduling practices, and digital platforms that co-produce specific practices while obscuring others. Teaching in the pandemic challenges taken-for-granted notions of a rapid transition to distance and online teaching. By surfacing neglected aspects of everyday teaching with digital technology the thesis discusses how ‘digitalisation of teaching’ erases the local work of everyday teaching as an equipped practice. In conclusion, the proposal is made that maintaining teaching takes into account the materiality, abilities, care, and vulnerabilities that enact everyday teaching.
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| 4. |
- Bergstrand, Ulrika
(författare)
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Styrning och re-kontextualisering av värden i utbildningspolicy på nationell och lokal nivå
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In this study, governing as re-contextualization of values in Swedish educational policy has been described and analyzed. Two levels have been central to the study: the national level, in the form of the Swedish Schools Inspectorate's (SSI) survey to school personnel, and the municipal level, examined by interviews with superintendents in sparsely populated and rural areas. Three qualitative content analyses were performed, in two of which Rokeach’s theory of values as desirable actions and goals was used. The results presented that the dominant policy goal and the value expressed was that schools should promote students' knowledge, which is in line with the values underlying the PISA survey. The SSI survey expressed that schools should be quality assured to enhance students' knowledge development. Desirable actions to achieve this were: the principals evaluating, the teachers adapting to individual students, strengthening an environment conducive to learning with codes of conduct, and the guardians being informed about their children’s development. However, the superintendents expressed a lack of competence and qualified teachers for equivalent assessments, a need to upskill teachers, and that the information to the guardians did not always reach them. The study also showed an expressed value to include all students in teaching, which is in line with the values underlying the Salamanca statement. The SSI survey expressed this value as the students' participation in individualized teaching, an increased efficiency in special support, a socialization through codes of conduct, and that the students should know their rights. The superintendents expressed this value as motivating students, particularly boys, to study, adapting education for students in need of special support, preventing violations of newcomers, addressing girls' mental health, and the strengthening of democratic attitudes. In summary, the study shows that the values at the national level promoted increased individual rights, while at the local level, the values were expressed as a need to increase democratic values. Nonetheless, the values underlying the education of democratic citizens in sparsely populated and rural areas cannot be considered a closed chapter, even though policies at the national level continue to emphasize the values of promoting students' development of knowledge and their individual rights.
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| 5. |
- Ekesryd Nordström, Malin, 1971-
(författare)
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Särskild begåvning i en förskola och skola för alla
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Based on four articles, this compilation thesis analyses different actors’ constructions of giftedness and ideas about meeting gifted children’s needs in preschool and early childhood educational settings. Previous research has highlighted gifted children’s need for early educational adaptations and support for their continued development and maintained desire for learning. Because children’s early educational experiences influence their continued cognitive, social and emotional development, constructions of giftedness at different societal levels surrounding the child were important to explore. Questions addressed included how pre- school personnel, principals and parents of gifted children talk about giftedness, how the construction of giftedness changes over time in Swedish daily press, and what meanings talk about giftedness have for gifted children’s provided education in preschool and school. The theoretical framework underpinning the entire thesis is social constructivism. In addition, special educational perspectives, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory model, and discourse analysis were used to analyse the respondents’ understandings. Empirically, the thesis is based on material collected in four studies conducted between 2019-2021. These include an on-line questionnaire to preschool personnel (n=78), interviews with preschool teachers (10) and principals (5), interviews with parents (16), and an overview of Swedish newspaper articles about giftedness (n=72). Results show that constructions of giftedness create tensions by generating diverse ideas about the offered teaching in practice, alongside different views of hindering factors for providing an adequate education, organizational thresholds or lack of education about giftedness. Dilemmas included planning an education that meet the needs of all – as well as individual children’s needs. Another dilemma was naming someone gifted in a strong tradition of an egalitarian education. How preschool staff, principals, parents and newspaper debates construct giftedness is vital for making conscious choices and treatment of giftedness in a preschool and school for all.
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| 6. |
- Grape, Monica
(författare)
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Ny i klassen : Om införande och användning av pekplattan i skolan ur ett elevperspektiv
- 2015
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is concerned with the introduction of digital tablets toschoolchildren. The aim is to contribute to knowledge about howtablets can be introduced and used as a mediating tool in schoolworkby drawing focusing on the schoolchildren’s perspective andunderstanding of this medium. The research questions addressed inthis study were as follows: 1) What characterizes the schoolchildren’suse of the tablet as a tool? 2) How do the schoolchildren perceive theintroduction and use of the tablet as a tool in school? and 3) Whatlimits and conditions are emerging as important for schoolchildrenwhen they encounter tablets in school. This thesis draws on researchwithin on socio-cultural perspectives on education, with a particularfocus on the concept of empowerment as a key element in promotingschoolchildren’s health and wellbeing. In line with SCOT, The socialconstruction of technology, based on technology and focusing on itsmeeting with the social context, technology is deemed not to bepredetermined, but rather, negotiable. The material comes from a casestudy involving 17 schoolchildren in grade six. The study lasted for anacademic year from the beginning of the fall semester when they weregiven their tablet and continued through to the end of the school year.The data collected includes observations, a special task called “tellanother class", written questions and individual interviews with all 17schoolchildren at the end of the school year. The material wasanalyzed by using meaning analysis which resulted in three themes.The first theme, yet another tool in school, explores how the tabletsschoolchildren and the teacher sought opportunities to use the tabletin their classes and school work. The second theme, given roles andunclear expectations, is about how students perceived the tablet inrelation to themselves and their expectations about what the tabletcame to mean for the students. The third theme, the overridingtechnology, highlights the schoolchildren’s belief that the tablet neededto be supplemented with more peripheral activities if it were to provevaluable, and their focus on the technology in its own right. Thediscussion highlights the importance of seeing the students as apossible resource and involving them and empowering them byproffering them a say in the process. The schoolchildren saw the tabletmore as a technical artifact than as a tool for learning. The tablets weremainly used to write notes and search for information on the Internet.My conclusion is that investment in tablets in schools is more complexthan access to technology: to be effective, the entire organization mustsupport the process and schoolchildren need to be involved and havethe opportunity to influence how they are used if they are to beempowered by the process. The tablet as a technical unit needs tobenegotiated in the school organization in order to create a commonunderstanding of what it is and how it should be used.
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| 7. |
- Haake, Ulrika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Doing gender and professional identity : inclusion and exclusion of female civilians in criminal investigations
- 2023
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Ingår i: Policing & society. - : Routledge. - 1043-9463 .- 1477-2728. ; 33:8, s. 893-907
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The number of civilian crime investigators (CIs) has been increasing among the police, a trend that is called civilianisation. However, conflicts have arisen from perceptions that civilian CIs undermine professional police efforts. The purpose of this study was to investigate the intersection of doing gender and professional identity in narratives on inclusion and/or exclusion in CIs' professional practices. Because professional background and gender composition change with the civilianisation of the police, this study included interviews with 48 female CIs from Sweden. The study showed that aspects of belongingness and uniqueness interact in complex ways and conclude that the intersection of being a civilian CI and a woman is at the core, especially in narratives on exclusion. Taken together, this means that civilian CIs' narratives are important to learn from and can help the police become aware of obstacles to and opportunities for civilian employees' full participation in the criminal investigation practice. Aspects of belongingness and uniqueness are discussed to contribute knowledge of how gender and professional identity can be redone in a way that helps reduce future barriers to full inclusion of female and civilian CIs in police work.
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| 8. |
- Haake, Ulrika, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Leadership in swedish public organizations : a research review in education and care
- 2023
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Ingår i: Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies. - : VIA University College. - 2245-0157. ; 13:2, s. 63-85
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article is a review of recent Swedish leadership research in two large public-sector areas: education and care. By comparing and contrasting research in these areas, we unveil the specifics and commonalities of research in public-sector leadership. We reviewed research articles from 2018 to 2020 and analyzed theories used, data-gathering methods employed, and topics researched. The results show some fundamental differences between the two areas. Compared to research on education, research on care is to a larger extent non-theoretical and is often focused on change management, quality assurance, and leaders’ roles in employee health. Conversely, studies on education are theory driven and mostly focused on leaders’ roles in learning and shared leadership. We discuss the state of Swedish public leadership research and make suggestions for mutual learning and moving forward in this research field.
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| 9. |
- Hällgren, Markus, 1977-, et al.
(författare)
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Sensemaking in detective work : the social nature of crime investigation
- 2021
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Ingår i: International Journal of Police Science and Management. - : Sage Publications. - 1461-3557 .- 1478-1603. ; 23:2, s. 119-132
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, we contribute to the knowledge on police detectives' work practices, and report how police detectives make sense of casework in a social manner. As our research question, we address the ways in which detective work can be understood as a social process. To target this question, we conducted an ethnographic study that examines how detectives who work with domestic violence and high-volume crimes strive to frame and understand events in everyday investigative practice. The data consist of approximately 200 hours of ethnographic data and interviews from two departments in a Swedish police station. The results indicate that detectives' sensemaking of casework took place through two principal practices: a concluding practice and a supporting practice. Furthermore, the findings show that detectives' work is highly social and procedural. This suggests that detectives' work practice is of a social nature and that contacts between investigators are important to take into account in the organization of an investigative department.
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| 10. |
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