| 1. |
- 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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| 2. |
- 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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| 3. |
- 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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| 4. |
- 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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| 5. |
- Tullgren, Charlotte
(författare)
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Den välreglerade friheten: att konstruera det lekande barnet
- 2004
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of the thesis is to shed light on pre-school as an arena for governmentality, where play is a tool for governing the child. The study focuses what in play-situations may become an object of governance and what techniques the teachers use to govern the children when they play. The theoretical framework is the work of Foucault and his perspective on power and knowledge. The empirical study took place in pre-schools with altogether four groups of children. Data consist of play-situations with 1-6 year old children, with a focus on children between 4 and 6 years of age. The play situations were observed and recorded with a video camera. The results of the study make visible how governing is active in play, and some of the technologies necessary for the governing are pointed out. The object of governance can be described through three themes: that children play, what children play and how children play. In each of these themes the children are being steered away from something considered not to be desirable towards something else, seen as desirable. To perform the regulatory work teachers use different techniques such as supervision, normalisation and pastoral techniques that create kindness and well-being among those governed. In conclusion it is argued that play, generally considered as a possibility for children freely to express themselves, should rather be understood as a well regulated activity in order to construct a future child with certain future competencies.
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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. |
- Berkhuizen, Carina
(författare)
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Barns samspel bortom förskolans väggar : Om yngre barns samspel och platsskapande på förskolegården och i en mobil förskola
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The general aim of this thesis is to explore the relations between children’s interaction and places within preschool activities. How children’s interaction opportunities are conditioned by the physical and social environment in the preschool yard (study I), as well as place-making processes in various contexts in mobile preschool activities (studies II and III), are examined within the framework of this purpose. As these three sub-studies have different research focuses, they use different theoretical perspectives. In study I, special attention is given to how the physical environment and teachers emerge in the contexts of children’s (aged 1–3 years) interaction in the preschool yard. Study II focuses on how children (aged 3–4 years) use the spatiality of a mobile preschool to create places in a recurring fantasy play. In study III, the focus is directed on both children’s place-making within fantasy play and how children and teachers create “place” together in a mobile preschool. Destination choices can be part of place-making processes of a mobile preschool; therefore, which aspects considered as important, in choosing a destination, are investigated. The first study starts from sociocultural perspectives on children’s interaction (e.g. Vygotsky, 1930/ 1995). Taking an abductive approach, the concept of artifacts (Wartofsky, 1979) and concepts from an environmental psychological perspective (see Gump, 1969; Westlander, 1999; Wicker, 1985, 1987) are added to explore how the social and physical environments relate to opportunities for different interactions. The results show how children reveal "interaction junctions" and "interaction swathes" in their activities within the preschool yard. In order to investigate place-making within a mobile preschool, the second and third studies combine a relational perspective on spatiality (Massey, 2005) with a sociology of childhood perspective that emphasizes children’s agency and collective activities, such as fantasy play (e.g. Corsaro, 2015). The results show how children create their own “play-places” in their place-making and how teachers choose destinations. Through its chosen perspectives and focus on younger preschoolers, this thesis provides further knowledge on how opportunities for interaction can arise in the preschool yard. Furthermore, this thesis reveals a new kind of spatiality within the preschool – that is, a mobile preschool – by using a relational perspective on place-making. Thus, this thesis contributes additional knowledge in the interdisciplinary field of Childhood Studies regarding children’s (possible) interaction in diverse places.
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| 9. |
- 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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| 10. |
- Ekstrand, Britten
(författare)
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Småbarnsskolan: vad hände och varför?: en sekellång historia studerad med fokus på förändring av pedagogisk verksamhet från 1833 och framåt
- 2000
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Some fields in the research about the history of childcare in the nineteenth century in Sweden is lacking. In popular textbooks infant schools (småbarnsskolor) are thought of and described as a pedagogical and social activity, while a later phenomenon, the nursery schools, seemed to lack all pedagogical insight, care-taking was exclusively at hand. I have questioned this dichotomy. What happened to the infant schools when nursery schools appeared? My intention has been to focus on pedagogical change in infant schools. I had to start with a description of infant schools in Sweden, answering the questions when, where, how and why infant schools appeared and how they developed. Traces from infant schools in ten cities have been thoroughly examined and followed over the years. About thirty infant schools have existed. All of these are referred to, which have been possible thanks to anniversary publications and scientific documents in a mix. Focusing on pedagogical change and development, and inspired by the frame factor theory, I have analyzed organizational and economical factors, factors concerning the teachers, the children and the schoolwork. Factors concerning the management, the school control and the administration show an astonishingly rigid form over more than a century. The age of the children however, as well as qualifications and titles of the teachers change according to the pedagogical change. Two very clear phases in the history of infant schools can be distinguished. In the early years the infant schools in Sweden worked as primary schools. Moving on to the late 19th century, there was an institutional change in those infant schools, which had not been part of the national school system. The institutions were organized as nursery schools in which the pioneers of Froebelian work in Sweden appear. They continued to direct their work towards children from the lower classes. The results are discussed in a social, economic, political and ideological context. Above all the close relationship to three fields is recognized. These are the national school system at the time, the growing acknowledgement of psychology with the changing view of the child and the education of women. The domains are reflected about in relation to the course of events in infant schools in Sweden. In an attempt to understand the material some terms belonging to Pierre Bourdieus epistemological theory are used in the discussion.
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