| 1. |
- Larsson, Joakim, 1975-
(author)
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Disciplin och motstånd : Pedagogisk-filosofiska perspektiv på samtida svensk skoldisciplin
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- As Sweden approached its 2006 national election, issues on order and discipline in educational environments came to the forefront of educational interest, debate, and reform. This thesis aims at a critical discussion of the discourses in question, making use of educational, post-structural as well as political philosophy. In a series of articles, disciplinary policies are contextualized within current understandings of major trends in global educational politics; empirically investigated with a focus on resistance and political subjectivation; but also theoretically/ philosophically examined with the intention of bringing alternative conceptualizations of discipline to light.As a result, it is concluded that the political platform supporting contemporary school discipline is highly ambiguous, especially in terms of the different subjectification ideals that it embodies. In consequence, substantial possibilities for resistance, political influence and creative subjectification emerge in the breaks and ruptures between neoliberal and neoconservative territory. As for the disciplinary policies themselves, this thesis highlights the possibility that they amount to little more than a powerful simulation; a mode of perceptual management rather than a hands-on engagement with the real demands of contemporary education.An alternative route, the thesis suggests, would be to radically re-conceptualize the meaning and relevance of discipline – using, for instance, philosophers like Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Jacques Rancière – but also while taking notice of relevant discussions in the fields of complexity and chaos theory. Such a re-conceptualization would allow for an immanent form of discipline, one that affords a circular segmentation to emerge; contextualized and sensitized to the particular demands of each learning situation rather than pre-stratified, pre-territorialized according to the ideals of classical discipline.
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| 2. |
- Larsson, Kristoffer
(author)
-
Kritiskt tänkande i samhällskunskap : En studie som ur ett fenomenografiskt perspektiv belyser manifesterat kritiskt tänkande bland elever i grundskolans år 9
- 2010
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this study a phenomenographic theoretical perspective is taken as departure for research on manifested critical thinking in civics among Swedish ninth-grade compulsory school students.According to the phenomenographic perspective students’ manifestations of critical thinking are linked to the way of experiencing the phenomena inducing a manifestation of critical thinking. Thus differences between students’ manifestations of critical thinking are linked to differences in the way of experiencing the phenomena inducing a manifestation of critical thinking.The empirical investigation in this study revolves around how 19 ninth-grade students experience four different tasks designed to induce manifestations of critical thinking. In broad terms the main aim of the study is to describe the students’ different ways of experiencing each specific task and furthermore, to link each specific way of experiencing a specific task to a specific type of manifested critical thinking in relation to that task. A more overarching aim is to offer and test the phenomenographic theoretical perspective as a way of conducting research on manifested critical thinking.The empirical results show how the way of experiencing a specific task plays a decisive roll for the type of manifested critical thinking, made possible in relation to the specific task. A more complex way of experiencing the task can be linked to a more complex manifestation of critical thinking in relation to the task. A less complex way of experiencing the task can be linked to a less complex manifestation of critical thinking in relation to the task. The study also suggests how these empirical results can be used in a pedagogical situation in order to enhance students manifested critical thinking in civics. Concerning the more overarching aim the study strongly points to a further use of the phenomenographic perspective when conducting research on students manifested critical thinking.
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| 3. |
- Liljekvist, Yvonne, 1967-
(author)
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Lärande i matematik : Om resonemang och matematikuppgifters egenskaper
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Since mathematical tasks are central to the teaching of mathematics, it is crucial to extend our knowledge of the characteristic features of tasks that are conducive to student development of problem-solving and reasoning abilities as well as conceptual understanding. The aim of the dissertation is to investigate how different types of mathematical tasks affect student learning and choice of learning strategies. This is done through a twofold approach: 1) to test the hypothesis that tasks affording students the opportunity and responsibility for constructing knowledge are more effective learning tools than tasks for which the solution is presented, and 2) to analyse the educational message embedded in the teacher’s formulation of the mathematical tasks on the Internet. The main conclusion is that the type of task students engage with is important for their learning of new things. The participants who were engaged in creating their own solutions were less successful during practice but performed better on the tests in comparison with the participants who were involved in solving the tasks with a given method. The results of the sub-studies indicate that in a learning situation consisting of repeated practice of a solution method, the results are closely related to the students’ cognitive ability. The investigation shows that tasks inviting the opportunity to be solved through creative reasoning, to a certain extent serve a compensatory function in relation to students’ cognitive resources. This means that the participants need not put in so much effort in the test situation if they have practiced creative reasoning. One conclusion to be drawn from the study of the educational message in Internet documents, when it comes to teachers’ formulation of tasks, is that there are many teachers who design tasks that encourage young students’ creative reasoning. However, the educational message in the documents shows that the teachers demand relatively little of the students in the majority of the tasks. The result indicates that there is some uncertainty about how to formulate and use tasks to support the older student’s mathematical development. The way the tasks are formulated indicates a lack of discursive tools to clarify the intended educational situation. Thus, the qualities in the tasks are hidden resources.
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| 4. |
- Lindblad, Michael, 1957-
(author)
-
"De förstod aldrig min historia" : unga vuxna med migrationsbakgrund om skolmisslyckande och övergångar mellan skola och arbete
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study aims to deepen knowledge of young people with a migration background in Sweden, particularly those with non-European backgrounds, and their transitions from school to work. The focus is on young people with uncompleted upper secondary education (USE), drawing on their life stories, and exploring their perceptions and experiences around school failure, entering the labour market, and/or not being in education, employment or training (NEET).Theoretically the study analyses individuals’ career decisions from an agency-structure perspective, drawing on careership theory, in particular the notions of pragmatic-rational choices, routines, turning-points and horizons of action (Hodkinson & Sparkes 1997), combined with theories on ‘otherness’ (Hall 1990; 1999, Anthias 2002, Balibar 2004, Trondman 2007), and the notion of socio-geographic space (Bourdieu 1986a; Bourdieu 1999, Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1996).Methodologically, the thesis is based on narrative research, and the empirical material comprise life stories of twenty young people (men and women) about their lives, school experiences and time after leaving school. The careers of the young people were developed in fields where they had subordinate positions, based on their family’s mostly limited social, economic and cultural capital, their own short education and limited experience, and the otherness they encountered. Against this background, their educational and labour market career choices are understood as pragmatic-rational, enabled and limited by the resulting horizons of action. However, the collected narratives suggest that their horizons of action developed from the time they left school when they made different pragmatic-rational choices that changed their positions. Nevertheless, career choices were often made within a bounded agency and reduced opportunities as a consequence of school failure and their own scarce resources. The learning and interaction taking place within the routine periods are both crucial for understanding processes that result in school failure and the subsequent extended period of establishment in working and adult life, and change of horizons of action and habitus.The narratives of the young people showed that school failures and dropout are complex and extended processes that are related to education and family, as well as access to power and capital. They also encountered difference-making through the predominant images and discourses of 'immigration' as a social problem and by being located in a specific socio-geographic space that limited their possibilities for action. The family was highly significant and, in most cases, represented security and continuity. The family’s present situation and future was crucial to the young adults, which affected their choices. Hence, their own horizon of action also included the family’s opportunities and horizon of action. The study indicates that there is sometimes reason to speak of a collective horizon of action rather than just an individual one. Institutional and informal support together with young people’s agency may enable positive career development in spite of a lack of resources provided to the young, particularly if schools and other institutions would provide more professional and timely support. The overall conclusion is that it would not have taken much investment of resources and effort to have prevented school failure for a large proportion of the twenty young adults in this study. That is the good news.
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| 5. |
- Asplund, Stig-Börje, 1973-
(author)
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Läsning som identitetsskapande handling. : Gemenskapande och utbrytningsförsök i fordonspojkars litteratursamtal.
- 2010
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this dissertation literature discussions which include students of Vehicle Engineering at a Swedish upper secondary school will be discussed. The students are all boys. The study is focused on these boys’ small-group literature discussions, and the aim of the study is to describe what happens when they discuss four of the novels that form an integral part in the context of their Swedish studies. Principal fields of interest are the readings and the reception that the boys give utterance to in the literature discussions, as well as the identity-constructing processes which set in when they interact in the light of what they have read.The empirical material consists of eleven video recorded small-group discussions, and a conversational analytic perspective is combined with a reception theory perspective in the dissertation.The study shows that a sense of community is vital to the core of the boys’ literature discussions, and this has an influence on the reception and the readings that come up in the discussions. The boys are anxious to come to an agreement and voices which threaten to shatter the sense of community that has been constructed in the discussions are opposed in different ways. The literature discussions are not only arenas where the boys construct themselves as readers but are also considered as a forum where various identity-constructing practices take place.As readers these boys are bound to what can be read, and what cannot be read, in literary texts, but it is possible to see a certain development in their readings towards a more complex attitude, such as they find expression in the discussions. The boys also carry out the literature discussions, and the constructed sense of community is based on the reading of the novel to be discussed in a small-group discussion. Thus the boys take on the responsibility for their own learning as well.Many of the processes in which the boys are involved during the literature discussions could be described as processes of social reproduction, but various dividing lines which could be identified in the study also show that there are openings for other directions of the discussions.
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| 6. |
- Cooper, Ami, 1965-
(author)
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Skolan som demokratiprojekt : En poststrukturell diskursanalys av demokratiuppdrag och lärarsubjekt
- 2019
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Based on a poststructural discourse-theoretical perspective, the aim of this thesis is to critically examine the construction of the Swedish compulsory school’s democratic education and its consequences for the teacher subject, in educational policy texts. Set against the backdrop of what is commonly referred to as a crisis of democracy, the study takes its point of departure in changes in educational politics in recent decades and the new national curriculum for the compulsory school in 2011.The thesis uses the poststructural discourse-theory of the political philosophers Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as its theoretical and methodological framework. Their main objective has been to revive socialist politics by suggesting a radical, plural democracy as an alternative for a new left.A number of national policy texts were chosen for the analysis. The selection covers official reports and government bills on the Education Act and on the Teacher Education Reform Act, the Education Act, the National Curriculum and a selection of documents from the Swedish National Agency for Education, ranging from 2008 to 2018.The main results show that democratic education rests on a notion of the democratic society which creates relations between a democratic universalism based on individual rights and an unspoken national homogeneity. Democratic education is constructed as a broad and complex task aiming at the fostering of democratic competence, assuring equivalent education and counteracting abusive behaviour. The impact of neoliberal policy and new public management philosophy is evident in the empirical material analysed.The study concludes that democratic education is constructed as part of a management perspective where democracy becomes the means of achieving a goal – the governed subject – which relates to pupils and teachers alike. In addition, the focus on consensus and rational thinking as well as the tendency to locate conflict resolution in the legal sphere contribute to the notion of a school free from abuse.
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| 7. |
- Hansson, Kristina, 1956-
(author)
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Skola och medier : Aktiviteter och styrning i en kommuns utvecklingssträvanden
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Over time, the state has undertaken various reforms to govern the development of education. The issue of using new media may be seen as such an example. A change in the use of media in education imposes great challenges on both municipalities and teachers. This thesis aims to visualise and discuss governance in the contradictions that arise in practical activities aimed at integrating new media in school teaching, based on three actors’ perspectives, namely the dilemmas of the teacher, the media pedagogue and the media developer. The study is based on systemic thinking about governance and I employ both activity theory and the concept of governmentality to visualise and discuss the governance.The study is conducted in the form of a case study. The case consists of a municipality where, based on the curriculum’s mission, teachers have tried to find ways to integrate new media into their teaching. My own connection to the case consists of having been a driving and governing force in the work as a teacher, media pedagogue and media developer. The case was chosen because the municipality’s work on the national level and via the media has been held up as a good example.The empirical part consists of both my own life narrative and studies of different documents, texts, images, films and sound recordings that show how governmentalities are formed and take shape on the micro, macro and meso levels. I use a methodological prism, a combination of different analytical perspectives, discourse, activity, narratives and governmentality.The results reveal that the driving actors are innovatively handling the systemic contradictions that arise in the work of carrying out the curriculum’s mission. The governance of the activities is based on a trust rationality. The more the use of new media is spread in the municipality’s schools, the more contradictory it becomes for the middle level’s actors. The trust rationality has been superseded by a distrust rationality, creating a growing gap between the administration and the activities.
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| 8. |
- Lidström, Lena, 1967-
(author)
-
En resa med osäkra mål : Unga vuxnas övergångar från skola till arbete i ett biografiskt perspektiv
- 2009
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- School-to-work (STW) transitions have become more protracted over recent decades, with increased risks of unemployment and social exclusion for young people. Moreover, young people are expected to plan their own career and enhance their employability, although gender and social and cultural background still significantly influence employment prospects. Policies have been developed in an attempt to facilitate young people’s pathways into work. However, STW-transitions are one of the weakest points in Swedish welfare system; in addition the quality of career guidance has been questioned. This dissertation aims to describe and analyse young adults STW-transitions from a biographical perspective. It is based around life story interviews with 52 unemployed young adults’, 25-29 years old, including men and women with varying educational backgrounds, living in three different Swedish local contexts. Four research questions are examined: How do the young adults’ describe their STW-transitions in retrospect? What characterized their horizons of actions at the time of the interview? What is the impact of public career guidance? How did ethnicity, gender and locality affect answers to the above questions - and how may such differences be interpreted? The analysis of the young adults’ narratives was based on the careership theory developed by Hodkinson and Sparkes. In retrospect the young adults described their STW-transitions as an attempt to find and achieve personal goals. They emphasized turning points, i.e. when education or a job begins or ends, but also highlighted experiences when studying or working that make them realize what they wanted or what they would not accept. Four transition patterns, partly connected to gender and locality, were identified among the respondents: yo-yoing between workplaces, education and unemployment; mainly working; mainly in education; or mainly excluded from work and education. These patterns involved varying experiences, current situations and future expectations. At the time of the interview the young adults’ horizon of action involved interrelated aspects of life, but getting a stable job and settling down was pivotal to most of them. The strategies of the interviewees for navigating between dreams and reality diverged. However, they shared an ambition “to put one’s talents to good use” and feared not being able to do so. Experiences of career guidance were generally reported to have been sporadic and meaningless. However, in some cases, interventions are influential for example, when choosing an upper secondary school or during times of unemployment. The young adults’ employed various strategies when interventions adversely affected their goals; of these “to managing by one’s self” was the most common. In addition, guidance varied according to ethnicity and local structures. It is concluded that STW-transitions are challenging journeys, mainly undertaken without professional support, which the young adults perceived as uncertain.
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| 9. |
- Lindgren, Joakim, 1971-
(author)
-
Spaces, mobilities and youth biographies in the New Sweden : Studies on education governance and social inclusion and exclusion
- 2010
-
Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The main theme of this thesis is the relation between education governance and social inclusion and exclusion. Overall the thesis is based on a life history approach were biographical interviews with young people are complemented with other contextual data such as survey data, longitudinal statistics, interviews with local politicians and school actors and local reports. Data were generated in three Swedish areas: a rural area in the North, an advantaged segregated area, and a disadvantaged segregated area in the South. The thesis consists of four articles that use the concepts of biography, space, and mobility. Article 1. examines the increasing usage of biographical registers in school. It suggests that biography as a form of education governance serves to construct the students as both objects for assessment and as a relay for continuous self-assessment. As such, this is a socio-political technology that is important to acknowledge in order to understand processes of social inclusion and exclusion. Article 2. addresses the following empirically generated question: How is it possible to understand the fact that disadvantaged students from a segregated area have such optimistic future orientations in relation to further education and work? Building on life history interviews with a small sample of refugee youth from a disadvantaged segregated area the paper presents a concept labelled Utopian diaspora biography (UDB). UDB describes a process whereby a high level of aspiration concerning education and labour is accumulated as a consequence of the social, temporal and spatial dynamic of the biography. Article 3. is an attempt to develop new understandings about local production of social inclusion and exclusion in a decentralised, individualised and segregated school landscape. Using a wide range of data the article suggests that local differences concerning schooling and the outcomes of schooling – both in terms of statistical patterns and the identities produced – are interrelated and are based on an amalgamation of local policy implementation, material conditions and spatially guided representations. Article 4. deploys the concept of mobility in order to explore how space and class become related to education and social inclusion and exclusion in the three chosen areas as young people are spatially situated but move, want to move, dream about moving, try to move, and fail to move through, in and out of different forms of communities. This paper shows that the possibilities of moving to desired places on the education- and labour market are unequally distributed between young people and between places. The analysis also seeks to move beyond schematic typologies such as those of ‘immobile working class’ and ‘mobile middle class’ by exploring how mobility is made meaningful and how notions about mobility are structured and enable action. In summary, the thesis contributes to the discussion on processes of inclusion and exclusion in contemporary society. These processes are understood as inter-disciplinary problematics that include the social production of spatiality, historicality, and sociality at both the societal level and on the level of identity. Crucial aspects concern aestheticisation and performativity in education which imply an increasing focus on discursive, or textual, dimensions of identity formation and the competitive strategies developed by students in order to secure social inclusion through the marketing of oneself. Under these circumstances, new identities and new forms of social inclusion and exclusion are produced.
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| 10. |
- Löfgren, Håkan, 1968-
(author)
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Det sitter inte i väggarna : Yrkesidentiteter i lärares berättelser om skola och arbete
- 2012
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation deals with the changing conditions for schools and the teaching profession from a teachers’ perspective. The process of the global restructuring of national educational systems that gained momentum in Sweden in the 1990s, involved the introduction of a school voucher system, competition mechanisms and the decentralization of responsibilities to schools and teachers. The aim of this dissertation is to examine teachers’ professional identities in relation to changes in local and global conditions for schools and the teaching profession. Empirically, this study is anchored in 15 life history interviews conducted with eight teachers who have been working at the same secondary school in a Swedish mid-sized town. The school opened in 1965 in a residential area and closed down 2007 facing difficulties in attracting students. The teachers’ professional identities are analyzed in terms of identity performances, that is, the socially situated actions embedded in the stories and the interviews, in which they express and negotiate who they are or would like to be as a teacher. Methodologically this study contributes to a new way of investigating the relation between local school contexts and teacher identities by analyzing the institutional memories of a school. Results show that educational restructuring in this local school context entailed shifts in the meanings of previously known social relationships and phenomena, such as the school’s mixed student base, reputation and forms of cooperation, and that the local press became an important actor when market mechanisms were introduced. The study highlights the complexity and variability when professional identities take shape in the teachers’ stories. Some features of the professional identities focused on in this study appear to be relatively stable, while others appear to be more varying. Self biographical factors, culturally available narratives of the teaching profession, as well as local factors tend to have a stabilizing effect on the identities shaped in the stories. However, diverse professional aims, life events and changing working conditions contribute to changes in the identity constructions. In the analysis of the institutional memories presented in the thesis, it is evident that identity performances are shaped in the teachers’ retellings of those memories. In different teachers’ versions of institutional memories, identity performances that stress e.g. the importance of discipline in school and opposition to women’s subordination are shaped.
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| 11. |
- Mellroth, Elisabet, 1971-
(author)
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Harnessing teachers’ perspectives : Recognizing mathematically highly able pupils and orchestrating teaching for them in a diverse ability classroom
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- There is a lack of research that explores teachers’ perspectives on teaching highly able pupils (HAPs) in the diverse ability classroom. Instead, pupils’ perspectives are common, such studies often concluding that teachers need more professional development or that they fail to support HAPs. Consequently, previous research does not support teachers in how to implement teaching that includes HAPs. This thesis aims to harness teachers’ perspectives of pedagogical possibilities that enable learning opportunities for mathematically highly able pupils (MHAPs). By comparing pupils’ (n=264) relative achievement on two different tests, traditional and non-traditional, the first part of this thesis explores teachers’ possibilities to recognize MHAPs. The results show that pupils who achieved highly on the non-traditional test, but not on the other, have higher problem-solving competence compared to pupils who achieved highly on the traditional test instead. The second part presents a teacher-initiated investigation of pupils’ perceptions of challenging mathematical tasks. The findings indicate that the developed tool can help teachers find suitable tasks for MHAPs. The final part uses positioning theory to analyze teachers’ (N=17) discussions and probe their perceptions on orchestrating teaching MHAPs. The findings show that the teachers have knowledge of how to recognize and support MHAPs. Specifically, the teachers express possibilities with challenging tasks and differentiated education to meet MHAPs’ learning needs. Furthermore, the teachers perceived fewer rights than duties to orchestrate teaching for MHAPs’, for example, to continuously asses them. The studies in this thesis support teachers to orchestrate teaching including MHAPs in the diverse ability classroom. Both practice and research can be guided by what the teachers in these studies perceived as possible to do to orchestrate such teaching. Thereby support is given to teachers, from teachers, through research.
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| 12. |
- Olsson, Roger, 1969-
(author)
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Samhällskunskap som ämnesförståelse och undervisningsämne : Prioriteringar och nyhetsanvändning hos fyra gymnasielärare
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis seeks to contribute knowledge to how professional teachers in social studies express their subject conception, and its relation to the subject manifested in teaching. The data consists of 48 hours of observed teaching and interviews. A first sub-study shows that the teachers prioritise a content dominated by political science, which reveals a strong content tradition and nuances the picture of an unclear identity seen in the review of previous research. It is also found that the use of news is prominent.The second sub-study confirms the theoretical assumption that the teachers’ conceptions are complex, seeking to harmonise both the internal academic goals and the external civil goals found in social studies. This complements previous research based on the written curriculum where the internal and external goals have been regarded as dichotomous.The results of the third sub-study reveal how news is used in two ways, news coverage and news integration, where the teachers express knowledge aligned with their individual subject conception. However, the external goals tend to be less emphasised in the subject manifested in teaching in favour for the internal interim goals. Differences between news coverage and news integration are also found as news coverage seems to be more focused on civil goals.A contribution with this study is that we now in Swedish research can talk about social studies teachers’ subject conception as a complex phenomenon. It also encourages a more precise conversation about social studies. A more precise vocabulary can enable teachers to develop their understanding of the relation between goals, content and teaching methods. Furthermore, the revelation of news and its relation to the teachers’ subject conception and teaching hopefully can inspire future explorations on news as a teaching tool.
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| 13. |
- Strandberg, Max, 1953-
(author)
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Läxor om och för kulturell mångfald med föräldrars livserfarenheter som resurs – några kritiska aspekter
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of the thesis is to explore how parents' life experience can become a resource to strengthen teaching about, and for, cultural diversity with the help of homework assignments and teacher feedback. Two of the four articles included are based on data from the Läxprojektet (2004-2006) [The Homework Assignment Project], which was a practicebased, collaborative research project at a multi-lingual and multi-cultural secondary school. The material collected from project and used in this thesis consists of collaborative homework assignments, audio recorded lessons, student texts and interviews with parents, students and teachers. Article A concerns teachers' feedback during classroom discussions. Results consist of seven categories of feedback and show that all feedback, in contrast to previous research, does not support students' learning. Article B show that collaborative lessons that are based on parents' life experience may fulfill the function of boundary objects (Star & Griesemer 1989) between home and school. Article C deals with the relationship between homework and feedback, which is studied in a research review. Article D revealed that issues concerning how cultural diversity was highlighted at the municipal level and in school planning were primarily featured in the municipalities with the highest proportion of multilingual immigrant students.Thesis results suggest that:Feedback is a challenge for teachers when the content of what the students present is unknown.Parents' life experiences can be a resource in a content-based partnership between home and school.Teaching about cultural diversity is facilitated by the existence of cultural diversity among students and parents.In summary, results indicate that there are several factors that influence whether and how content and teaching about, and for, cultural diversity succeeds in schools. These factors affect the individual level, the classroom level and partially also the municipal level.
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| 14. |
- Wieslander, Malin, 1979-
(author)
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Ordningsmakter inom ordningsmakten : Diskurskamp, dilemman och motstånd i blivande polisers samtal om mångfald
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis identifies and describes the diversity aspects of police discourse based on the accounts of police trainees in their final year. Specifically, the focus is on culture, religion and ethnicity, and four main questions are addressed: What is said about diversity? How is it articulated? What subject positions are offered and assumed? In what ways are discourses of diversity sustained and challenged?The analysis of discourse in use is based on field studies conducted at the Swedish National Police Academy and focus group interviews with police trainees in the educational setting and during their trainee placement period. The analytical concepts of interpretative repertoire, ideological dilemmas, subject positions and discursive devices are employed to identify how different meanings are ascribed to diversity. Three central discourses of diversity are presented: diversity as inescapable difference (a hegemonic practice), diversity as political goal (recognition of diversity) and diversity as potential likeness (regulation of diversity). These are competing discourses on how police officers should be and how their role is understood in relation to a pluralistic society. The study shows that the contradictory diversity discourses reflect a struggle of different ‘us’, which regulates the conception of the ideal police officer, professional conduct and the performance of policing.In addition, five dilemmas originating in the tension between the discourses are outlined. Diversity is found to involve ideological dilemmas regarding how policing should be conducted in relation to profiling and social categories, how humour and jargon are viewed and handled, and how lack of knowledge may mean attributing subject positions to others with discriminatory implications. The thesis contributes to showing how diversity discourses reproduce the social order by affirming the social categories that the representatives of diversity are assumed to embody. It closes with a discussion of some practical and theoretical implications of its findings.
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| 15. |
- Åstrand, Annika, 1959-
(author)
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När PBS kom till byn : Berättelser om erfarenheter av ProblemBaserad Skolutveckling
- 2009
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis presents a study on different school actors’ narratives about how they have experienced a participation in a school development collaboration called PBS, problem based school development. A school development and research project based at Karlstad University. The analysis is inspired by a narrative approach and a critical perspective on policy, were policy is understood as both text and discourse. The aim of the study is to show how the carrying through of this new policy (PBS) is received and reconstructed in three Swedish municipal settings. In the analysis the participant’s narratives are also related to the reconstructions of the field of education politics that has been carried out the last decades, here in Sweden as well as in other countries around the world. In this study 46 interviews were carried out. Official texts from each of the three school organizations have also been studied. As analytical tools parts of a model called the zoom-model and three different concepts, taken from the field of organization studies have been used. The overall result shows that those who work in schools today are engaged in a large amount of development works, claims and ways of working that they themselves choose to enact. The results also show how the interviewees receive and charge these ideas with their own previous experiences and how this is done in discursive contexts that shape what is considered normal and evident. One conclusion is that further attention ought to be made to the significance of the local context when it comes to carry through a new idea on development and change. A conclusion drawn from how interpretations and reconstructions of both development models prior to PBS and of the national steering model came to play important roles in how PBS was received and reconstructed in the studied municipalities. But different interpretations of the PBS model also led to tensions within and between the different areas of the organizations. Tensions that can be described as dilemmas, implicated by an ongoing cacophony of policy voices, whose prescriptions pull on different directions. When the PBS-policy arrives in this discursive room the results show how this policy can become a tool in line with new discursive narratives of education, regardless the intensions formulated in the context of policy text construction.
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| 16. |
- Öhman, Anna, 1962-
(author)
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Cykler och loopar i Salongen : En studie av återkoppling i frisörklassrummet
- 2015
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The interest in this empirical study aims at assessment, more precisely feedback as part of ordinary activities within hairdressing education. The study investigates feedback practices related to assessment of knowing during production, with focus on communication between student and teacher. Communication is regarded as interactively constructed and is investigated through a multimodal social semiotic perspective which implies studying verbal as well as nonverbal resources in meaning making. Speech and body movements are not subordinate to each other and are studied as contributing in communication on their own terms.Video observations were used to investigate feedback practices in the hairdressing classroom, during a couple of lessons when last year’s students received customers for various treatments. From one hour recording, a selection was made showing communication between student and teacher with joint focus of attention during production. The selection is based on the assumption of feedback as interactively constructed and represented in a multimodal way.The analysis of the feedback practice shows a multifaceted result, since each interaction between a student and a teacher is unique. Nevertheless, a recurrent pattern of feedback construction could be discerned. Three important functions of feedback were distinguished, that of control, instruction and evaluation. Furthermore, these functions interact in temporal processes of cycles and loops. The core of feedback practice is found within the loop, where questions and wonders from the student are brought into a joint investigation.
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| 17. |
- Öhman, Anna, 1962-
(author)
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Återkoppling i interaktion : En studie av klassrumsbaserad bedömning i frisörutbildningen
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The present dissertation concerns social organization of feedback in ongoing hairdressing education. The central aim is to explore feedback between teacher and student in multimodal interaction within classroom assessment, as co-production of action and student’s participation. Classroom assessment and feedback are understood as social actions situated in interaction.The empirical data consists of video recordings from two vocational schools. From 31 hours of video material, selections of feedback interactions were made. At first, teacher and student communication in feedback cycles and loops was analysed from a social semiotic perspective. Secondly, examples of student initiated feedback loops were analysed from a conversation analytic perspective. Thirdly, a single case of a teacher and a student interacting through feedback related to creative subject content was analysed from a conversation analytic perspective. The analyses show the importance of collaborative use of artefacts and embodied communication in the production of mutual understanding; opening for student initiatives in actions of assessment as well as feedback. Silence and body position were found to be important resources giving the student space to display concern. Participation in feedback practices within creative subject content emerged in a trajectory of problem detection to problem solving, resulting in tacit dimensions of hairdressers’ knowing made explicit.The findings indicate the importance of taking a participatory perspective on multimodal interaction when exploring actions of assessment and feedback between teacher and student. This study shows how feedback is not only given from the teacher, but also locally produced as a collaborative practice between teachers and students, displaying tacit dimensions of professional knowledge and subject content.
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| 18. |
- Asghari, Hamid, 1967-
(author)
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Från uppväxt till lärargärning : En livsberättelsestudie med åtta yrkeslärare på industritekniska programmet
- 2014
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The thesis is based on eight vocational teachers’ life stories with the aim to provide knowledge about vocational teachers and their work with pupils in teaching in the industrial-technology programme, in the context of both a working life and a vocational education which is continuously changing. The thesis answers two research questions: 1) the themes that recur in vocational teachers’ life stories about how they meet and teach their pupils and 2) the teaching goals and strategies which emerge from vocational teachers’ life stories. All in all fifteen interviews were conducted from which life stories and teacher profiles were constructed.Results show five recurring themes in the teacher profiles. The themes are; to be a caring adult for vocational pupils, to teach them basic knowledge considered important for the education, to teach them respect and discipline, to teach them the value of fighting and not giving up, and to show them the possibility of international employment. Moreover, the teacher goals and strategies emerging from the life stories show that the teachers can be said to educate different types of industrial workers. In line with these results, vocational education can be seen as more than a preparation for working life. Vocational teachers with different life experiences create different relationships with their pupils in order to create opportunities for them to manage school and to succeed in a life after school. In an industrial-technical education and in a working life which is constantly changing, vocational teachers have received various educations and worked in various industries during different time periods. They both educate their pupils and prepare them for a future working life based on these experiences.
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| 19. |
- Holmdahl, Gudrun, 1961-
(author)
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Skolutveckling som diskursiv praktik : Några ideologiska implikationer
- 2011
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This study aims at highlighting the ideological implications of school development as a discursive practice. More comprehensively the aim is also contributing to rearrangements and shifts in perspective when school development is the matter. One of today´s most widespread and dominant discourses are said to be the one which concerns development, and according to many interpreters, development is one of the most prominent commandments in the modern as well as the post-modern narratives. School development as a concept has for the last 15 years established itself firmly in both Swedish school policy and in Swedish school research. It may sound obvious and commendable but also such axioms may be questioned.The design of the study lies in the field of discourse research and more specifically within critical discursive psychology, which draws on both a post-structural and a postmodern conception of discourse. The study is based on the idea that the ideological potential of arguments occurs, develops and changes in discursive practices and not anywhere else or at any abstract level. The starting point is a perception that certain issues and topics within e.g. conversation, depending on time and context will be seen as controversial, while others will be taken for granted.One part of the basis of the study consists of texts with a direct bearing on a specific school research and development project which took place between 2003 and 2008. Participating partners in the collaboration were the Swedish National Agency for School Improvement, Karlstad University, Dalarna University and 13 municipalities in Sweden. Another part of the basis of the study consists of texts in which ‘school development’ is considered and negotiated in more general terms, usually without reference to the project. All texts derive from the period 2003 – 2006.The analysis shows that school development as discursive practice often rely on a set of stereotypical expressions and ways of arguing. Stereotypes, which among other things, tend to divide people into suitable and non-suitable, capable and non-capable, which may be regarded as a somewhat unexpected implication of school development. The material has been dramatized by an intrigue inspired by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman´s texts. He has written extensively on the modern in relation to the postmodern and about the ambivalence which resides in between and school development as discursive practice can be understood in much the similar way.
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| 20. |
- Karlsson, Annika, 1966-
(author)
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Samhällsguide, individualist och moderator : Samhällskunskapslärares professionella förhållningssätt i betygsättningsrelaterat arbete
- 2011
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this study is to highlight civics teachers’ professional attitudes to grade related work in Samhällskunskap A (Civics), a compulsory course at upper secondary school. The methods employed are qualitative interviews and a compilation of tasks forming the basis of assessment in the current course. To gain a greater understanding of teachers’ grading difficulties, grading related dilemmas and strategies to deal with them have been identified. These are divided into three groups; dilemmas connected to the steering documents, dilemmas involving teachers’ own convictions, and dilemmas related to the school subject in question. Both dilemmas and strategies are mainly generic and the overall purpose expressed in the strategies is to help manage a demanding job situation. The professional attitudes reflect three areas of teacher work. The first is PCK aspects of assessment where teachers emphasize fact deepening tasks (faktafördjupare), news discussions and written tests (nyhetsdiskutant), a varied basis of assessment (samhällsguide), or pupils’ involvement through PBL and seminars (katalysator). Concerning the exercise of grading authority, teachers act as informal observers of pupils in the classroom, bureaucrats who clearly inform pupils of the grading criteria, professionals who are dependent on the cooperation with colleagues, and individualists who work alone. The development of democratic competence displays the teacher as a moderator who focuses on having pupils problemising and questioning social issues, as a co-operator who regards pupils as customers, or as a deliberator who emphasizes a permitting and open climate for discussions.
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| 21. |
- Lindholm, Ola, 1957-
(author)
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Ögonblick i klassrummet : Samtal och interaktion om elevers fotografier på gymnasiet
- 2014
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Licentiate thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- En kamera fångar ögonblick av det ljus som människan kan uppfatta, eller verkligheten som det ibland kallas. Dessa ögonblick i form av fotografier, arbetar de elever och den lärare med, som Ola Lindholm har följt på gymnasiet. Läsaren kan följa hur eleverna interagerar, hur det sociala samspelet organiseras under lektioner och redovisningar, vad som görs viktigt samt hur bildteoretiska- och yrkesmässiga kunskaper framträder i interaktionen.I studien framträder ett arbetssätt som ger eleverna ansvar och möjlighet att visa vad de kan i interaktionerna och vid redovisningarna av deras fotografier. Resultatet visar hur läraren försöker få eleverna att se skillnader i fotografiets uttryck, skärpedjup, bildbeskärning etcetera. Ibland gör eleverna motstånd och förhandlar med läraren där eleverna hävdar sin kunskap och sina åsikter om sina bilder. I bildanalysen av ett elevfotografi framträder två olika intentioner med de förslag som läraren och eleven förhandlar om. Studien visar att bildteorier, bildspråket och vad bilden kan berätta, inte är lika framträdande i interaktionen som frågor om teknik och process.Ola Lindholm, är bild- och medielärare på Sundstagymnasiet i Karlstad. Licentiatavhandlingen har skrivits inom Forskarskolan i yrkesämnenas didaktik.
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