| 1. |
- Hofverberg, Hanna
(författare)
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Crafting Sustainable Development : Studies of Teaching and Learning Craft in Environmental and Sustainability Education
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overall aim of the thesis is to contribute with new and deepened knowledge about the teaching and learning of craft when the crafting activity is considered as environmental and sustainability education (ESE). To achieve this, three objectives have been formulated: to examine what constitutes a craft subject content relevant for ESE, to examine what influences the learning process when the crafting activity is considered as ESE, and to examine how the crafting material participates in the learning process when the crafting activity is considered as ESE. The three research objectives are addressed by four studies: one literature study (Paper I) and three case studies where the empirical data is constructed through observations (video recordings) of a remake project (Papers II and IV) and an embroidery project (Paper III) in the craft subject ‘educational sloyd’ in Sweden. The main theories that the thesis draws on are Tim Ingold’s theory of making as a practice of correspondence and John Dewey’s transactional approach to meaning-making. Several methods that acknowledge learning in action are used, which makes it possible to explore how the student–material relations emerge and how both humans and more-than-humans participate in the learning activity. The findings show that a craft activity, for example a remake project, can have different purposes and pedagogies, which produce different learning experiences and sustainability outcomes. Further, I identify and distinguish a process content from a product content, which deepens our understanding of what students learn when the crafting activity is considered as ESE. By focusing on how the student–material relations emerge in the learning process – with concepts that I use and develop such as correspondence, stories, and transactant – I empirically show how the crafting material not only participates with its materiality but also creates the embodied stories that students recognise when they encounter the crafting material in the crafting activity. How humans learn in socio-material relations and what consequences these have for ESE are two key issues that are further discussed when the crafting activity is considered as ESE.
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| 2. |
- Johansson, Maria C.
(författare)
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The institutionalisation of validation and the transformation of vocational knowledge : The case of admission into Vocational Teacher Education in Sweden
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this thesis was to understand the validation of vocational knowledge prior to entry into vocational teacher education in Sweden with regard to conceptions and understandings of vocational knowledge, and also to understand how institutional conditions, such as ideas of how to organise validation, influence the content and form of the validation practice. From this aim the following research questions were developed: What ideas about the organisation of validation stand out in the policy and practice of validation? What conceptions and understandings of vocational knowledge is the organisation of validation built on and what do they entail? Who has the agency to describe and decide upon vocational knowledge in the policy and practice of validation? What institutional arrangements appear in the practice of validation?To conduct the studies in the thesis a multimethods approach was adopted, combining policy analysis and interviews. For theoretical support, new institutional theories were used and also theories of knowledge. The results revealed that the regulative elements of validation have transformed vocational knowledge to fit a frame similar to formal education. In terms of norms and values, it appears as if validation is more of a social and economic project than one of accounting for vocational knowledge and vocational pride. Cultural/cognitive matters that are taken for granted when considering vocational knowledge differ quite significantly between agents involved in validation. Validation of vocational knowledge exhibits a conceptual confusion having different conceptions of knowledge simultaneously at play. This confusion blurs the boundaries between concepts of knowledge, learning, and the learning context. In the complexity of ideas of how to organise validation and different knowledge conceptions, institutional arrangements appear to be based on a sense of belonging, either to academia or to the trade. The agency of those with vocational knowledge is limited in several ways within validation.
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| 3. |
- Norén, Fredrik, 1984-
(författare)
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"Framtiden tillhör informatörerna” : samhällsinformationens formering i Sverige 1965–1975
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation is about the formation of governmental information in Sweden during the period 1965 to 1975. During this period information related issues were high up on the political agenda, in Sweden and internationally. I argue that the period is of particular interest in order to understand the impact and development of governmental information in Sweden, even for our time. One overreaching research question has guided this study: What ideas and practices characterized how and why the state disseminated information to the public? The thesis uses four tensions to study the formation of governmental information in Sweden during the late 1960s and early 1970s: (1) information as a solution – information as a problem, (2) dissemination of information – control over information, (3) information through mass communication – information through interpersonal dialogue, and (4) governmental information – commercial information. These tensions draw theoretically from John Durham Peters’ notions of communication.The thesis uses strands from three research fields: PR-history, cultural histories of media, and digital humanities. The four papers use different theoretical perspectives in order to shed new light on of the formation of governmental information in Sweden. Adding to that, and to theoretically tie the papers together, the thesis presents an overarching network perspective with a special focus on conceptual history as a means to better understand how governmental information was discussed as well as practiced. Different methods are used to study the formation of governmental information. The latter is partly because of the political issue’s porous boundaries and fragmented-oriented character, and partly due to the lack of previous research with a problematizing and historical approach to governmental information in Sweden. The thesis combines qualitative and quantitative methods to study different aspects how the state communicated with the public.This dissertation presents new findings about the formation of governmental information during the period 1965 to 1975. One regards the different intersections of governmental information. It shows that the production and dissemination of information from agencies to citizens was far from “pure” governmental information, and rather entangled with various actors from industry, academy and civil society. A second finding concerns the language of governmental information. Here, the dissertation shows – through large-scale digital text methods – how the concept of “information” exploded in usages from the 1960s and onwards, and how “information” as a discursive element infiltrated a growing number of political topics from the same period and onwards. A third finding centers on the media of governmental information. One result shows how broadly academics and bureaucrats defined the concept of media in relation to the practice of governmental information. All kinds of media devices, and not only the traditional news media, were considered important for the purpose of disseminating information on large scale to the public. Lastly, this dissertation reveals governmental information as without guaranties. Overall it shows how information from state agencies to citizens was generated through various conflicting tensions that have to be addressed, but without any hope of finding a balance free from communication problems. These problems tend to reoccur in different settings through history, also visible today. This result should however not be regarded as a pessimistic standpoint, rather it calls for modesty in terms of communication in general, and governmental information in particular.
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| 4. |
- Persdotter, Maria
(författare)
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Free to Move Along : On the Urbanisation of Cross-border Mobility Controls - A Case of Roma 'EU migrants' in Malmö, Sweden
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Den här avhandlingen – som jag valt att ge den svenska titeln Fri att röra sig, förvisad att röra sig: Rörlighetskontrollens urbanisering – Fallet med romska EU-medborgare i Malmö – behandlar den lokala politik som utvecklades i Malmö under åren 2014–2016 i förhållande till närvaron av så kallade utsatta EU-medborgare, och utvecklar ett teoretiskt resonemang om hur exkluderande gränser tar plats och blir till i städer. ”Utsatta EU-medborgare” är ett begrepp som används av svenska myndigheter för att beteckna medborgare från andra EU länder som vistas i Sverige utan en fast uppehållsrätt och som befinner sig i situationer präglade av extrem fattigdom och marginalisering. Medparten av dem som klassas som ”utsatta EU-medborgare” är romer med ursprung i Bulgarien eller Rumänien. I avhandlingen konstateras att gruppen i den allmänna debatten i mycket hög utsträckning omskrivs som oönskade migranter. Med detta som utgångspunkt ställs således frågan hur kommunala och andra lokala myndigheter i Malmö agerar för att hantera närvaron av ”utsatta EU-medborgare”, och hur detta i sin tur påverkar deras möjligheter att utöva sin ”fria rörlighet”. Avhandlingen gör en ansats att utveckla ett teoretiskt resonemang kring urbana gränspraktiker inom EU. Särskilt undersöks de mekanismer som utgör grunden för urban rörlighetskontroll: hur de fungerar, vilka effekter de medför och vad detta i sin tur innebär för den som blir måltavla för sådana praktiker. Avhandlingen är uppbyggd kring en fallstudie av konflikterna kring det så kallade Sorgenfri-lägret – en provisoriskt byggd bosättning som utgjorde ett hem för en stor andel av Malmös ”utsatta EU-medborgare” under åren 2014–2015. Sorgenfri-lägret revs efter en invecklad och mycket omtvistad process genom ett beslut i Malmö stads miljönämnd. Dessförinnan kom bosättningen som omnämnts som ”Sveriges största slum” att stå i centrum för heta politiska debatter gällande frågan om olovliga bosättningar. Med utgångspunkt i fallet med Sorgenfri-lägret undersöker avhandlingen hur myndigheterna i och bortom Malmö resonerar kring och agerar i förhållande till de juridiska gråzoner, moraliska-politiska dilemman och sociala konflikter som omgärdar just denna fråga. Särskilt behandlas fallet med Sorgenfri-lägret som ett nyckel-exempel på hur ”utsatta EU-medborgare” och deras bosättningar framställs och hanteras som en sanitär olägenhet och görs till föremål för ordningspolitiska insatser. Analysen präglas av en poststrukturalistisk ansats och för samman två huvudsakliga forskningsfält: kritiska migrations-studier och rättsgeografisk forskning kring social och rumslig kontroll. Därtill utgör teorier om det som inom forskningen kallas för skalpolitik en viktig referenspunkt. Analysen behandlar den diskursiva framställningen av Sorgenfrilägret de som bodde där som en sanitär olägenhet och undersöker vilka effekter denna framställning fick för den juridiska process som i slutändan ledde till att lägret utrymdes och revs. Avhandlingen som helhet pekar på staden som en arena där komplexa förhandlingar kring uppehållsrättslig status, rättigheter och tillhörighet utspelar sig. Ett bärande argument är att lokala myndigheter i Malmö har kommit att hantera frågan om ”utsatta EU-medborgare” på ett sätt som sammantaget kraftigt inskränker gruppens tillgång till stadens rum, och som därför kan beskrivas som en slags exkluderande gränspolitik på den urbana skalnivån. Detta bidrar i sin tur (i praktiken) till att omforma och inskränka villkoren för den fria rörligheten.
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| 5. |
- Roos, Helena, 1974-
(författare)
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The meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics in student talk : Inclusion as a topic when students talk about learning and teaching in mathematics
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis contributes to research and practice within the field of special education in mathematics with more knowledge about, and an understanding of, students´ meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics education. Three research questions guide the study: What meaning(s) is/are ascribed, and how is inclusion used, in mathematics education research? What meaning(s) do the students ascribe to inclusion in mathematics learning and teaching? And what frames students´ meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics learning and teaching?The first part of this study began with a systematic literature review on the notion of inclusion in mathematics education research, and the search resulted in 1,296 research studies. Of these, 76 studies were retained after the criteria for time span and peer-reviewed research were applied and 19 duplicates had been removed. The second part of the study involves a case study of three students and their meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics education. The selected school was a lower secondary school in an urban area of Sweden. The school had set out to work inclusively, meaning their aims were to include all students in the ordinary classroom teaching in every subject and to incorporate special education into the ordinary teaching with no fixed special education groups. Three students were chosen for this part of the study: one in Grade 7 and two in Grade 8. Edward, one of the students in Grade 8, was chosen because he was thought to be a student in access to mathematics education. The other two students were chosen because they were thought to be struggling to gain access to mathematics education: Veronica in Grade 7 and Ronaldo in Grade 8 (the same class as Edward). In this study, the object of the study is the meaning(s) of inclusion in student talk. This study is an instrumental and collective case (Stake, 1995), as it involves several students’ meaning(s) aimed at developing a more general understanding of inclusion in mathematics education. The case is also an information-rich case (Patton, 2002), with contributions from students in mathematics education at an inclusive school. Applying Flyvbjerg’s (2006; 2011) notions, one can also call this kind of selection “information-oriented”, and the case is an extreme one – a choice made in order to get “a best case scenario”. An extreme case is a case used to “obtain information on unusual cases which can be especially problematic or especially good in a more closely defined sense” (Flyvbjerg, 2011, p. 307). The data in this study consists of both observations and interviews conducted during the spring semester 2016. The observations took place in a Grade 7 and Grade 8 classroom at the same school where the interviewed students were enrolled. At least one mathematics lesson each month for each class was observed, and student interviews followed each observation. The observations were used to provide a context for the interviews and to support the analysis. In this study, discourse analysis (DA) as described by Gee (2014a; 2014b) was chosen as both the theoretical frame and as an analytical tool because of its explanatory view on discourse, with description foregrounded. With the help of DA, this study describes both the meaning(s) and the use of the notion of inclusion in mathematics education research. It also describes students’ meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics education as well as framing issues in student talk of inclusion in mathematics education. From Gee´s point of view, DA encompasses all forms of interaction, both spoken and written, and he provides a toolkit for analysing such interaction by posing questions to the text. Gee distinguishes two theoretical notions, big and small discourses, henceforth referred to as Discourse (D) and discourse (d). Discourse represents a wider context, both social and political, and is constructed upon ways of saying, doing, and being: “If you put language, action, interaction, values, beliefs, symbols, objects, tools, and places together in such a way that other recognize you as a particular type of who (identity) engaged in a particular type of what (activity), here and now, then you have pulled of a Discourse” (Gee, 2014 a, p. 52, Gee’s italics). When looking at discourse (with a small d), it focuses on language in use – the “stretches of language” we can see in the conversations we investigate (Gee, 2014a, 2014b), meaning the relations between words and sentences and how these relations visualize the themes within the conversations. These small discourses can inform on how the language is used, what typical words and themes are visible, and how the speakers or writers design the language. According to Gee (2015), big Discourse sets a larger context for the analysis of small discourse. The results of the first part of the study answer to the research question, What meaning(s) is ascribed, and how is inclusion used in mathematics education research? They show that research on inclusion in mathematics education use the term inclusion when both referring to an ideology and a way of teaching, although these two uses are usually treated separately and independently of each other. The results of the second part of the study answer to the following research questions: What meaning(s) do the students ascribe to inclusion in mathematics learning and teaching? And what frames students´ meaning(s) of inclusion in mathematics learning and teaching? These questions show how meaning(s) of inclusion in student talk can be described by three overarching Discourses: the Discourse of mathematics classroom setting, of assessment, and of accessibility in mathematics education. Within these Discourses, smaller discourses make issues of meanings of inclusion for the students visible in terms of: testing, grades, tasks, the importance of the teacher, (not) being valued, the dislike of mathematics, the classroom organization, and being in a small group. This study shows the complexities and challenges of teaching mathematics, all while simultaneously handling students’ diversity and promoting the mathematical development of each student. To enhance students’ participation and access demands that the teacher knows her or his students, is flexible, has a pedagogical stance and tactfulness, and is knowledgeable in mathematics and mathematics education. It also demands that the teacher is able to take a critical stance and resist the prevailing discourse of assessment that can sometimes overshadow the mathematics education, and in a sense, almost become mathematics for the students. Furthermore, this study also shows how complex and challenging it is to be a mathematics student: they are required to relate to, understand, and participate in many Discourses existing at the same time in a single mathematics classroom. These Discourses interrelate and are embedded in power relations between students and teachers and institutions. This demands that the students are alert and able to use various symbols and objects as well as recognize patterns, and then act accordingly. Hence, to be able to fully participate, you have to be able to talk the talk and walk the walk (Gee, 2014a). This means that not only do you have to use the language correctly, but also you have to act properly at the right time and place.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Sjöstrand Öhrfelt, Magdalena, 1967-
(författare)
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Ord och inga visor : konstruktioner av förskolebarnet i kunskapsekonomin
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Historically, changes in preschool policy have been legitimized in relation to ideas about the preschool child and the various problems that the education of this child is supposed to be able to “solve”. From an early age, children have been considered the most effective tool for dealing with a variety of social, economic or environmental issues of central importance for maintaining and developing society.Against this background, the purpose of this thesis is to examine representations of the preschool child in different policy texts (textbooks, research- and educational policy) related to changing requirements and targets affecting contemporary Swedish preschools. Discursive constructions of the preschool child are considered as important central aspects, used to legitimize political reforms in accordance with pedagogical ideas and prevailing social contexts. The thesis focuses on the tensions within contemporary constructions of the preschool child in the so-called “knowledge economy”: i.e. the tensions between a competent child, who is both able and willing to take advantage of education, and a “newcomer” – the vulnerable child – in need of obtaining the benefits of education in order to be able to cope with the future.The simultaneously competent and vulnerable preschool child is thus an efficiently designed target for the interests of economic transnational organizations viewing education mainly in terms of human capital development, as well as an important factor for economic competitiveness.In the thesis’ final analysis, I study how the OECD, EU and IEA are developing methods for measuring and evaluating the results of preschool education, with the intention of being able to "streamline" it by finding universally successful concepts that are both cost-effective and of high quality. The construction of the preschool child as simultaneously competent and vulnerable is used to legitimize shifts in power over the definition of the Swedish preschool agenda, the fundamental ideas of what preschool is about, what its aims are, and for whom it is intended. As these ideas are disguised as being the result of supposedly "objective" forces far from the ideological contradictions of the political sphere, a critical discussion concerning the goals and aims of early childhood education becomes almost impossible to achieve.
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