| 1. |
- Blanck, Sara, 1980-
(författare)
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Elever möter samhällsfrågor : Didaktiska och bildningsteoretiska perspektiv på samhällsorienterande undervisning om epoktypiska samhällsfrågor
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Med utgångspunkt i didaktik och bildningsteoretiska perspektiv är syftet med denna avhandling att undersöka och analysera ämnesövergripande undervisning om epoktypiska samhällsfrågor i grundskolan för att utveckla kunskap om undervisningens didaktiska möjligheter och utmaningar.Avhandlingen är en sammanläggning och består av tre ingående texter: en licentiatuppsats om samhällskunskapsämnet i ämnesintegrerad undervisning som genomfördes 2012–2014 samt två artiklar från forskningsprojektet ”Att utveckla undervisning i samhällsfrågor: om didaktiska val i SO-ämnena i grundskolans mellanår 4-6” som genomfördes 2017–2022. I de empiriska undersökningarna användes olika metoder såsom observationer och ljudinspelning av undervisning, intervjuer med lärare, enkät, fokusgruppsintervjuer med elever samt forsknings- och utvecklingscirkel tillsammans med lärare. Vid analysen används didaktiska och bildningsteoretiska perspektiv för att analysera empirin. Resultaten presenteras i form av så kallade curriculumprinciper som kan fungera som utgångspunkter för lärares didaktiska analys, val och handlingar, när det kommer till undervisning om epoktypiska samhällsfrågor. Genom en analys av de didaktiska relationerna visas betydelsen av att lärarens didaktiska val görs utifrån ett relevant och kraftfullt innehåll som också blir meningsfullt för elevers samtid och framtid. Fyra curriculumprinciper föreslås som utgångspunkter för lärare när de planerar och genomför undervisning om epoktypiska samhällsfrågor. De två första principerna handlar om hur ett flerdimensionellt bildningsbegrepp, där kognitiva, etiska och estetiska dimensioner samverkar, kan utgöra en målsättning för undervisningen. Innehållet kan struktureras i ämnessamspel med skolämnenas olika bidrag till förståelsen av dessa komplexa samhällsfrågor. Den tredje och fjärde principen har utgångspunkt i dels elevers begreppsliga utveckling genom autentiska exempel och inferenser dels i hur lärares didaktiska val av exempel blir betydelsefulla för hur innehållet förstås av eleverna.
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| 2. |
- Svensson, Malin, 1976
(författare)
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Hoppet om en framtidsplats. Asylsökande barn i den svenska skolan
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis explores how accompanied refugee and asylum-seeking children experience everyday life in Sweden. During the asylum process, as part of a policy for promoting ‘normal life’, these children have the same right to education as permanently resident children. An ethnographic approach brought out data from combining interviews with participant observation and visual material produced by children. Methodological inspiration was sought in the new sociology of childhood and in its potential to make an eclectic analysis of the empirical data. Study I explores how spatial and temporal dimensions theoretically may guide dialogue with refugee children and interpretation of their visual material. The findings point to how children negotiate opportunities for the future where everyday life takes place, and how conditions for education are perceived in relation to their future prospects. Inquiring into the meaning of school, Study II explores the sense of possibility as perceived by asylum-seeking children, and shows how school is a social place that provides structure, a sense of belonging and a learning environment. Paradoxically, schools’ limited attention to the children’s predicament risked accentuating the ambivalent social position of being an asylum seeker and thus weakening the benefits of their right to education. Study III examines the challenges teachers face, as street-level bureaucrats, in catering to the needs of asylumseeking pupils and demonstrates how conflicting goals of education policy and asylum policy conditioned teachers’ work and risked undermining the compensatory pedagogical task. In sum, through analyses that encompass how an unsecured residence permit does not prevent children aspiring to their futures, as envisioned in the present, creating a home can be understood in terms of hope. While the asylum process conditions ideas of the future, the thesis contributes to an understanding of how it also shapes how children and teachers, as social actors, construct what is considered to be ‘normal life’ during the asylum process.
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| 3. |
- McCrory, Gavin, 1990
(författare)
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The unseen in between: Unpacking, designing, and evaluating sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We live in a time of compounding ecological and social change. Given its uncertain and urgent nature, contemporary forms of governance are experiencing tension between controlling the present and nurturing collective capacities to enact transformative change. Amidst a wave of interest in transitions and transformations in-the-making, labs in real-world contexts have entered the discussion. Labs have emerged as appealing, novel and highly complex entities that situate and localize engagement around complex sustainability challenges. Labs carry a systemic view of change; they comprise alternative and experimental approaches; they carry a normative assumption that research has plural roles; and they hold an explicit learning orientation that infuses knowledge with action. Given the unfolding of labs in the real world, my involvement in their design, and ongoing interests in treating both meanings and processes of sustainability, this thesis is organized around a curiosity. Its overarching aim is to investigate how sustainability-oriented labs could be unpacked, designed and evaluated in the context of sustainability transitions and transformations. Underlaboured by a critical realist philosophy of science, this thesis investigates sustainability-oriented labs by way of a qualitative-dominant, case-based research strategy. It does this across three overlapping research phases, culminating in four appended papers. In research phase one, we adopt a systematic review of sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts, exploring and classifying a global sample of labs according to their engagement with sustainability. In paper I, we identify and unpack 53 sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts. Through a mixed-methods analysis, we explore the distribution and diversity of these labs, discerning the research communities which conceptualize labs and the dimensions of their practice. In Paper III, we present an empirically grounded typology, arriving at six different types of sustainability-oriented labs: 1) Fix and control, 2) (Re-)Design and optimize, 3) Make and relate, 4) Educate and engage, 5) Empower and govern and 6) Explore and shape. In research phase two, paper II presents a qualitative case-based inquiry into Challenge Lab (C-Lab), a challenge-driven learning environment. Paper II conceptualizes challenge framing as embedded within an open-ended learning process, both on a level of practice and space. Experiences related to framing in C-Lab shed light on how students situate themselves and see their role within existing challenges, how they navigate limits to knowledge in complex systems, and how they self-assess their own sense of comfort and progress. In addition, we introduce three dilemmas that are not owned by teachers or students but emerge, as contradiction, within the learning space. In research phase three, paper IV presents a multi-case comparison of evaluation practices in various sustainability transition initiatives. We conceptualize and compare the role of evaluation as a tool that can enhance the transformative capacity of sustainability-oriented labs and its broader family of transition experiments. This thesis and its appended papers provide practical-experiential, empirical-conceptual and methodological contributions on the topic of sustainability-oriented labs in real-world contexts. In addition, it contains a layered account of an undisciplinary doctoral journey. I do this by (1) reflecting upon each research phase, (2) providing transparent accounts of positionality in relation to my research, (3) conceptualizing and reflecting upon undisciplinarity as a process of becoming, and (4) providing a mobile autoethnographic account of staying on the ground as part of a broader commitment to interrogate knowledge practices. Moving forward, I find myself motivated by three convictions: (1) transformations are needed, and labs are invitations in between dualisms, (2) invitations hold the possibility of flipping big assumptions and ethical practices, and (3) transformations presuppose fundamental change from within both research and education knowledge systems. They hinge upon the questioning of what both are, who they are for, and what they might need to become. In conclusion, they compel us to think big, start small, and act now.
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| 4. |
- Strindberg, Joakim
(författare)
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”Why Do We Even Bully?” : Exploring the Social Processes of Bullying in Two Swedish Elementary Schools
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to explore and deepen the understanding of pupils’ experiences of bullying and their reflections on why bullying may occur and be maintained in school, despite pupils’ understanding that bullying is wrong. This aim is examined in four articles. The results highlight how pupils emphasise the importance of the social perception of individual pupils. Pupils may thus assume different participant roles in bullying situations to emphasise, maintain, or protect their own social position in the group, but also in an effort to reduce the risk of being bullied. The participating pupils raise the importance of social stigmatisation as a significant social process in bullying and highlight social stigmatisation processes as closely related to social perceptions of “normality” and “difference”. Social stigmatisation is, in turn, related to processes of inclusion and exclusion. The results point to the importance of the institutional constraints of the school setting in the occurrence and maintenance of bullying, not least in how pupils relate these constraints to social status, friendship, and bullying. In conclusion, the results of the dissertation highlight the importance of understanding bullying as a socially intertwined phenomenon and part of a social ecology. Not only do societal norms shape pupils’ perceptions of how pupils “should” be as a girl or boy in school, but the social contexts of schools and classrooms are also significant for what is socially valued or rejected. The results of the dissertation underline that the social ecology of bullying is closely linked to pupils’ experiences of social marginalisation, loneliness, and bullying.
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| 5. |
- Doyle, Andrew, 1992-
(författare)
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Consolidating concepts of technology education : From rhetoric towards a potential reality
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The thesis focuses on the relationship between international rhetoric and classroom realities in technology education. For some time there has been widespread recognition that the intended goals for learning in the subject area have failed to manifest in enacted practices as envisioned. As the intermediary between rhetoric and reality, the technology teachers and ways of understanding their enacted practices are the focus of this work. The thesis is based on four research articles which adopt theoretical and empirical approaches to investigating the technology teacher as mediator of enacted practice. In Article I, technology education in the Irish national context is investigated through technology teachers’ reflections on enacted practice. In response to a variety of situational- and systemic- factors which impede classroom practice being identified, Article II and III theorise approaches to investigating enacted practice in technology. In acknowledging the epistemological basis of technology as depicted in the extant literature, a reconceptualisation of how to utilise pedagogical content knowledge research in explaining enacted practice is put forward. Article IV returns to the technology teacher in a transnational context, whereby teachers from the Republic of Ireland, Sweden and New Zealand are interviewed in constructing a grounded theory of teachers’ purposes for teaching technology. The contributions of the research are twofold. Firstly, following the identification of evidence to support the existence of rhetoric-reality tensions in technology education, an ecologically situated framework of enacted practice is put forward. The framework acknowledges how subject matter is treated in technology education in striving for more comprehensive ways of investigating enacted practice. Secondly, in taking a preliminary step toward understanding enacted practices, a grounded theory of teachers’ purposes for teaching technology is put forward. This grounded theory offers a unified model for articulating the purposes of teaching technology that prevail in classroom realities today.
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| 6. |
- Bodén, Linnea, 1981-
(författare)
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Present absences : Exploring the posthumanist entanglements of school absenteeism
- 2016
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of the study is to explore how school absenteeism as a material-discursive phenomenon is produced in the practices of humans and nonhumans, when absences and presences are registered and managed through digital technologies. How is the phenomenon of school absenteeism produced when absences and presences are digitally registered? How does the phenomenon of school absenteeism emerge when both human and nonhuman entanglements are included in the apparatuses of knowing?Through a posthumanist approach, the study engages empirically with two types of software for the registration of absences and presences at three Swedish schools. The results show that digital registration blurs the division between absences and presences, and queers what is absent and what is present. Digital registration produces school absenteeism as a phenomenon for all students every day, and at the same time as mainly for the students who are present most of the time. A conclusion that is drawn from the study is that digital registration makes absences present, by the visualization and performative repetition of the registration. The study points to how school absenteeism is always ‘in the making’, and proposes the concept of school absenteeing as a productive way to open up new possibilities in relation to students’ absences.
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| 7. |
- Elfström Pettersson, Katarina, 1959-
(författare)
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Production and Products of Preschool Documentation : Entanglements of children, things, and templates
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The objective of the present study is to produce knowledge about how children, things, documents, computers, teachers, templates and other entities take part in and produce documentation in preschool systematic quality development work. The thesis asks questions about how and what is produced as quality in preschool documentation. Through a posthumanist agential realist approach, the study engages empirically in video recordings of preschool documentation practices from one Swedish preschool, and in documentation from four other Swedish preschools.The results, presented in four articles, show that documentation practice is complex and entangled with a variety of entities, human and non-human, and spaces and time. The study shows how children’s participation in production of documentation does not depend on which documentation method is used. In the study, objects such as computers, images and coloured labels, together with teachers’ attitudes and agendas, have an impact on the way that children are involved in producing documentation. The results also show that the products of documentation, intra-acting with a local template, with past and present preschool traditions and policies, produce rather than represent certain elements of quality such as teachers’ actions, children’s interests and thematic work. The thesis produces knowledge about how the focus of preschool documentation shifts away from individual children and towards teachers’ activities, and creates possibilities for what preschool practices and quality may become.
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| 8. |
- Malm, Tobias, 1980-
(författare)
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Konsten att hålla ihop : Om lärande och organisering i rockband
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Rock bands are foundational for modern day music life. These small groups provide well-being and self-fulfillment to its members, as well as fuel for the cultural life and the increasingly highlighted creative industries. Rock bands, however, are particularly difficult to organize. Bands face a range of challenges in keeping together and developing as a group.The aim of this doctoral thesis is to develop knowledge on rock band formation and development over time. Based in the discipline of education, the thesis mainly contributes to the fields of organization studies, social theories of learning, and music and cultural life research.The thesis uses the theory of situated learning to explore rock band formation and development. The methodology is qualitative and ethnographic, and the research design builds on three studies: an interview study with three rock bands and two case studies. All five bands are Swedish and have found different degrees of success and popularity.The thesis investigates band activities and courses of events, band members’ identities, and challenges faced. The findings indicate that a rock band’s activities shift between a production mode – i.e. highly productive times associated with public performances, record releases and marketing, and behind the scenes processes of creating, recording and planning – and a contrasting less active hibernation mode without bigger public projects or goals. The amount of time spent in production mode depends on the band’s degree of “membership” in the music industry. Moreover, a band member forms and actualizes identities of colleague, creator, entrepreneur, friend, hobbyist and professional, in differing combinations, situations and modes. Furthermore, the members’ most significant challenges relate to identity dilemmas.Based on these findings, the thesis formulates a model for a rock band’s learning trajectory and argues that a band may develop as it approaches, or becomes a more central member in, the music industry. This development demands increased public success and organizational ability: the band members’ ability to form business-oriented practices, to participate uniformly in an overarching community of practice, and to be flexible as they must identify with, and ascribe meaning to, a variety of activities in different and sometimes contradictory ways.The thesis concludes that the challenges of persistence as a rock band or similar group relates chiefly to group member difficulties in identifying with different activities and situations that are necessary to sustain and develop as a collective. Eventually, individual members tend to handle the experience of uncertainty and ambivalence by holding on to one singular identity, which may prevent group development, foster intra- and interpersonal tensions, and ultimately can lead to significant conflicts and/or a band’s breakup.
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| 9. |
- Hagvall Svensson, Oskar, 1990
(författare)
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What's wrong with engineering education? Comparing and combining a teaching-problematization and a culture-problematization
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- While much has been said about what is wrong with engineering education, the assumptions we make when talking about its problems often remain hidden. One particularly common implicit assumption is that inadequate teaching is the primary antecedent of educational problems. Following such a problematization, efforts to improve engineering education have often centered on developing and spreading better teaching methods. In recent years, however, an alternative assumption has been proposed, locating problems in the culture of engineering education rather than in educational designs. In line with such a problematization, research and reform tasks are significantly broadened. In this thesis, I interrogate these alternative problematizations and the research that draws on them. I present my own work in two parts, building on case studies and fieldwork. The first part comprises two papers focused on evaluating the pedagogical possibilities of teaching methods positioned as better preparing students for professional practice. The second part comprises three papers focused on how cultural processes facilitate and constrain educational outcomes. Taken together, the findings illustrate how both teaching methods and cultural processes may serve as barriers to engineering learning, suggesting that researchers and educators alike may do well to combine a focus on teaching with a focus on culture when attending to educational problems. Furthermore, the findings also illustrate that although educational development usually involves making prioritizations between competing educational objectives, value-judgements risk being obscured in talk of educational problems. As such, educators and researchers alike need to develop an aptitude for values-clarification as they take on questions of educational development. In light of these findings, I argue that there is dual value in adopting a vocabulary of cultural analysis when talking about what is wrong with engineering education. First, such a vocabulary may help to identify leverage points for educational development that otherwise may remain unexplored. Second, such a vocabulary may contribute to talk of educational development becoming more open to critical deliberation.
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| 10. |
- Larsson, Johanna, 1986-
(författare)
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Trainee teacher identities in the discourses of physics teacher education : Going against the flow of university physics
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis investigates what is involved in being recognized as a legitimate physics teacher-to-be in a Swedish physics teacher programme. Drawing on in-depth, qualitative interviews with 17 physics teacher educators and 17 trainee physics teachers, this thesis sees learning to become a physics teacher as a process of performing professional identities. It demonstrates aligning discourses of educators and trainees, and outlines a number of challenges that trainees have to negotiate when learning to become physics teachers.The first part of the project analyzes the discourses of teacher educators. Four discourse models are identified which demonstrate how the talk of physics lecturers portrays the default goal of learning physics as becoming a researcher. Choosing to become a teacher in this system, means diverting from the expected path of a physics student, and moving backwards towards school physics. In such a system, trainee physics teachers are described as less competent and ambitious than other physics students, and can be understood to be incomprehensibly “going against the flow” of university physics by aiming towards school physics.The second part of the project shows how physics courses are experienced by the trainee physics teachers as primarily meeting the needs of other student groups. The educators’ talk about trainee teachers as less competent and ambitious is mirrored by trainees who see no incentive to try hard for good results. The analysis shows a physics study culture that emphasises brilliance and nerdiness, resulting in a passive classroom culture and high stress. Deepened analysis of the identity negotiations of three female interviewees shows how trainee teachers are resourceful in navigating this study culture. Combining positions of feminine woman, trainee teacher, and physics student, these students create practices of relaxed and constructive physics learning that challenge the elitist physics discourse.The education of physics teachers is important for many reasons. There are projected shortages of trained teachers, and physics teachers have the power to affect how physics, a field that is lacking diversity, is perceived by young people. By exploring how becoming a physics teacher is entangled with discourses of competence, femininity, and the status of the physics discipline this thesis takes a novel approach to the education of physics teachers. The findings suggest that physics faculty in their role as teacher educators examine assumptions about physics teacher education and trainee physics teachers, and can be used to empower trainee physics teachers to challenge norms of brilliance and masculinity in physics.
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