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This article investigates the function served by embarking on a teaching career in the Latin school system for recruitment to the clergy in early modern Sweden. The study is restricted to the eighty-nine teachers serving at Pitea Grammar School in Northern Sweden in the period from 1650 to 1849. The investigation pays considerable attention to the impact of the system of double evaluation of teaching merits that was introduced by the School Act of 1724. When applying for low-and medium-rank pastorates, teachers' experience counted twice as much as ministers' did. The study examines how this system influenced the social recruitment of teachers to the Latin school, as well as the recruitment of teachers to clerical positions. The hypothesis is that the double evaluation system opened a career for candidates without a clerical background. Aimed at compensating for low salaries and providing a secure old age, the double evaluation system should have encouraged the teachers to seek clerical promotion. By analysing the teachers' participation in synodal meetings, the study sheds some light on the question as to whether the teachers actually prepared their clerical careers when serving in school. However, the Latin school offered different opportunities for different categories of teachers. The principal and assistant principal were better paid than the ordinary teachers, and consequently the article pays special attention to differences in social background, study merits and career opportunities between the two categories. Furthermore, the status of the different teacher categories is related to the status of the ministry in order to explain why teachers stayed in school or changed careers. The conceptual tools of this study were developed by Ralph H. Turner in 1960, when he discussed the differences between British and American educational systems. Contest mobility signifies an open and inclusive system, where elite status is granted to the most qualified contenders. Sponsored mobility refers to an exclusive system of controlled selection by which young recruits are inducted into the elite. In 1988, Anthony J. La Vopa showed that sponsored mobility dominated the clergy in eighteenth-century Germany. This study investigates the recruitment policy of the Swedish clergy, with special reference to the role of the Latin school. The Swedish clergy comprised one of the four estates of the national Parliament and, in order to maintain the status of the clerical estate, the clergy developed certain strategies. One strategy is manifested in clergymen's preference for taking ministers' daughters as their wives. Another strategy is indicated by a high rate of self-recruitment, meaning that many clergymen were sons of ministers. From the perspective of the clerical estate's recruitment policy, the self-recruitment rate is of vital importance. Ministers could promote their sons' clerical careers by tutoring them and employing them as curates and assistants. Sponsored by their fathers, the sons of the clergy most frequently managed to take a Master's degree, which was a formal requirement for receiving a pastorate. Previous research has shown that the self-recruitment rate was very high among the Swedish clergy. This is also the case with the Harnosand Diocese, where the city of Pitea was situated. In this huge diocese, covering the entire northern half of present-day Sweden, the self-recruitment rate was 40%, while 30% of the clergy came from the peasantry, and 25% from the "middle classes". In comparison with Germany, the self-recruitment rate was not conspicuously high, and taking into consideration the great contribution from the peasantry, the recruitment policy of the clergy in Northern Sweden qualifies for the designation contest mobility. Consequently, the Latin school system, through which all future ministers were prepared for their clerical careers, served as an open and inclusive instrument of recruitment. There were huge variations in income between the two teacher categories, the principal earning between two and four times as much as his lower-ranked colleagues. The difference in status is also indicated by the differentiated insurance contributions to the clergy's poor relief funds. An analysis of three different revisions of the size of the contributions from 1787 to 1806 shows that the teachers in grammar schools were usually divided into two different categories. The principal and assistant principal used to be placed among the higher clergy, while the regular teaching staff always belonged to the lower clergy. The distinction between two categories of teachers is not founded only upon financial status; there was also a significant difference in study merits. Before 1724, nine of thirteen deputies and principals had taken their Master's degree, while only two of twenty-two ordinary teachers held the same merit. After 1724, the difference is less remarkable. Obviously, the favourable system of merit evaluation increased the recruitment of teachers with Master's degrees. The teachers of Pitea Grammar School did not have a clerical background as often as the clergy of Harnosand Diocese (27% and 39%, respectively). The teachers came more frequently from the "middle classes", while the peasantry was more weakly represented. Consequently, the teachers' social backgrounds were more diverse and secular, especially after 1724. This leads to the conclusion that the grammar school served as an alternative career for those of a secular background. The present study does not verify the hypothesis concerning an increasing transition from teaching to clerical positions after 1724. On the contrary, of a total of forty career changes, twenty-two took place before 1724 and only eighteen after, a difference even more marked when related to the increasing number of teachers serving in Pitea Grammar School. Before 1724, three out of five teachers left school for a clerical position, while only one out of three shifted careers in the later period. No principals or assistant principals accepted lower clerical positions, and even most of the career-changing staff were promoted to a vicarage, almost exclusively after 1724. Consequently, the double evaluation system seems to have offered staff teachers greater opportunities for receiving a vicarage. Many teachers prepared their clerical careers when serving at school. They used to fill in temporarily for the clergy in Pitea parish, and in some cases they were on leave to serve as acting vicars in distant parishes. This means that ordination could be offered during teaching service, but many teachers were already ordained ministers before starting their teaching careers. The synod served as a meeting place for the teaching and preaching branches of the clerical estate. Well trained in theology and classical languages, the teachers often gave the Latin oration and served as opponents at the disputation over the synodal dissertation. During the nineteenth century their participation gradually declined, a development indicating the gradual separation of the clerical and teaching professions. The year of 1849 represented a milestone, when the double evaluation system was abandoned. At the same time teachers' salaries and retirement conditions were regulated. Secondary schools no longer served as waiting rooms for clerical promotion, and teaching was recognized as a profession in its own right.

This article presents some major research themes and findings of the leading Swedish research group in the field of literacy in history. The informal and encouraging leadership of Professor Egil Johansson was of vital importance to the creativity and productivity of the group. Prior to 1985, a few large projects on Swedish alphabetization were closely inter-related to the development of methods and resources. After 1985, research benefitted from the competence represented by the Demographic Data Base, the Swedish Archival Information, and the Research Archives. The thematic variety of the second period was promoted by the multi-disciplinary composition of the research group. Religious instruction was the primary focus of interest, and cross-cultural, multi-confessional, and comparative aspects were incorporated. The international orientation became a constitutive characteristic, contextualizing the Swedish Lutheran experience. Literacy skills, textual history, literacy practices, and print culture signify the general evolution of themes.

In the organization and ideology of the Lutheran state churches, Tim Knudsen has identified the roots of universalism in the Nordic welfare states. This article applies a similar perspective to the aims and contents of early modern Nordic popular education. Historiographically, universalism was emphasized by Egil Johansson, who recognized the universal aim of Christian teaching as the prime mover of Swedish alphabetization. The present article tries to problematize this perspective by demonstrating the long-term divergence of Swedish bourgeois and popular print cultures, representing parallel processes of secularization and christianization, and by discussing particular meanings of parts of the alleged universal early modern reading culture, viz. reading as a vehicle of Swedishness in colonial America and religious identity in Northern Sweden, respectively. The elementary school is identified as a major instrument of homogenizing reading culture, and the article concludes by indicating universalism as a living legacy in Swedish educational policy.

A method for simulation-based development of robotic rock loading systems is described and tested. The idea is to first formulate a generic loading strategy as a function of the shape of the rock pile, the kinematics of the machine and a set of motion design variables that will be used by the autonomous control system. The relation between the loading strategy and resulting performance is then explored systematically using contacting multibody dynamics simulation, multiobjective optimisation and surrogate modelling. With the surrogate model it is possible to find Pareto optimal loading strategies for dig plans that are adapted to the current shape of the pile. The method is tested on a load–haul–dump machine loading from a large muck pile in an underground mine, with the loading performance measured by productivity, machine wear and rock debris spill that cause interruptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the educational history in the Nordic Region. Topics discussed include the Nordic Conferences in Educational History arranged every third year since 1998 and the 2015 conference to be hosted by the Uppsala University, Sweden in August, Committee for Educational Sciences (CES) founded by the Swedish Research Council to identify educational history as a field of encouragement and funding and several multidisciplinary postgraduate program financed by CES at Uppsala University.

The present article analyzes methodological awareness and use of methods in Swedish history textbook research, represented by five doctoral dissertations defended during the period 1997-2010. In a dissertation where textbook analysis comprises only a minor part of the study, methodological discussion tends to be limited. However, when textbook analysis is the primary focus, the most innovative methods are found and thus paid considerable attention. A number of methodological problems are identified, including inconsistencies between stated methodological choices and actual application. In general, the most recent textbook analyses contain more methodological discussion than earlier counterparts, a development that can be linked to the establishment of history didactics as a distinct research field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Yearbook of the International Society of History Didactics / Jahrbuch der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichtsdidaktik is the property of Wochenschau Verlag GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of History of Education & Children's Literature is the property of History of Education & Children's Literature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The reinforcement learning control of an underground loader was investigated in a simulated environment by using a multi-agent deep neural network approach. At the start of each loading cycle, one agent selects the dig position from a depth camera image of a pile of fragmented rock. A second agent is responsible for continuous control of the vehicle, with the goal of filling the bucket at the selected loading point while avoiding collisions, getting stuck, or losing ground traction. This relies on motion and force sensors, as well as on a camera and lidar. Using a soft actor–critic algorithm, the agents learn policies for efficient bucket filling over many subsequent loading cycles, with a clear ability to adapt to the changing environment. The best results—on average, 75% of the max capacity—were obtained when including a penalty for energy usage in the reward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on the social and economic studies of literacy and other on the traditional concept of literacy.

This article analyses Swedish educational policy and practice in Sápmi (Lapland) from a theoretical perspective of colonialism as associated with power and domination. The study is based upon the Saami School Instruction of 1735, which regulated the system of boarding schools established in the 1720s, and a description of educational practice at Jokkmokk Saami School in the 1760s written by a former schoolmaster. Following historian Richard Gawthrop's study of the Pietist educational institutions of German Halle and the postcolonial theorist Valentin Yves Mudimbe's analysis of Catholic priest seminaries in twentieth-century Congo, the article identifies similar characteristics in the Saami schools: the principles of isolation, surveillance and self-examination created favourable conditions for ideological indoctrination. Placed in a colonial setting, the Saami schools not only aimed at annihilating the religion and culture of the colonized, but also endeavoured to imprint suitable aspects of the colonizers’ culture upon the colonized. By transferring standards of obedience and subordination, the Saami schools served the purpose of domesticating the colonized people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the function served by embarking on a teaching career in the Latin school system for recruitment to the clergy in early modern Sweden. The study is restricted to the eighty-nine teachers serving at Piteå Grammar School in Northern Sweden in the period from 1650 to 1849. The investigation pays considerable attention to the impact of the system of double evaluation of teaching merits that was introduced by the School Act of 1724. When applying for low- and medium-rank pastorates, teachers' experience counted twice as much as ministers' did. The study examines how this system influenced the social recruitment of teachers to the Latin school, as well as the recruitment of teachers to clerical positions. The hypothesis is that the double evaluation system opened a career for candidates without a clerical background. Aimed at compensating for low salaries and providing a secure old age, the double evaluation system should have encouraged the teachers to seek den cal promotion. By analyzing the teachers' participation in synodal meetings, the study sheds some light on the question as to whether the teachers actually prepared their clerical careers when serving in school. However, the Latin school offered different opportunities for different categories of teachers. The principal and assistant principal were better paid than the ordinary teachers, and consequently the article pays special attention to differences in social background, study merits and career opportunities between the two categories. Furthermore, the status of the different teacher categories is related to the status of the ministry in order to explain why teachers stayed in school or changed careers. The conceptual tools of this study were developed by Ralph H. Turner in 1960, when he discussed the differences between British and American educational systems. Contest mobility signifies an open and inclusive system, where elite status is granted to the most qualified contenders. Sponsored mobility refers to an exclusive system of controlled selection by which young recruits are inducted into the elite. In 1988, Anthony J. La Vopa showed that sponsored mobility dominated the clergy in eighteenth-century Germany. This study investigates the recruitment policy of the Swedish clergy, with special reference to the role of the Latin school. The Swedish clergy comprised one of the four estates of the national Parliament and, in order to maintain the status of the clerical estate, the clergy developed certain strategies. One strategy is manifested in clergymen's preference for taking ministers' daughters as their wives. Another strategy is indicated by a high rate of self-recruitment, meaning that many clergy men were sons of ministers. From the perspective of the clerical estate's recruitment policy, the self recruitment rate is of vital importance. Ministers could promote their sons' clerical careers by tutoring them and employing them as curates and assistants. Sponsored by their fat hers, the sons of the clergy most frequently managed to take a Master's degree, which was a formal requirement for receiving a pastorate. Previous research has shown that the self-recruitment rate was very high among the Swedish clergy. This is also the case with the Härnösand Diocese, where the city of Piteå was situated. In this huge diocese, covering the entire northern half of present-day Sweden, the self- recruitment rate was 40%, while 30% of the clergy came from the peasantry, and 25 % from the "middle classes". In comparison with Germany, the self-recruitment rate was not conspicuously high, and taking into consideration the great contribution from the peasantry, the recruitment policy of the clergy in Northern Sweden qualifies for the designation contest mobility. Consequently, the Latin school system, through which all future ministers were prepared for their clerical careers, served as an open and inclusive instrument of recruitment. There were huge variations in income between the two teacher categories, the principal earning between two and four times as much as his lower-ranked colleagues. The difference in status is also indicated by the differentiated insurance contributions to the clergy's poor relief funds. An analysis of three different revisions of the size of the contributions from 1787 to 1806 shows that the teachers in grammar schools were usually divided into two different categories. The principal and assistant principal used to be placed among the higher clergy, while the regular teaching staff always belonged to the lower clergy. The distinction between two categories of teachers is not founded only upon financial status, there was also a significant difference in study merits. Before 1724, nine of thirteen deputies and principals had taken their Master's degree, while only two of twenty-two ordinary teachers held the same merit. After 1724, the difference is less remarkable. Obviously, the favorable system of merit evaluation increased the recruitment of teachers with Master's degrees. The teachers of Piteå Grammar School did not have a clerical background as often as the clergy of Härnösand Diocese (27% and 39%, respectively). The teachers came more frequently from the "middle classes", while the peasantry was more weakly represented. Consequently, the teachers' social backgrounds were more diverse and secular especially after 1724. This leads to the conclusion that the grammar school served as an alternative career for those of a secular background. The present study does not verify the hypothesis concerning an increasing transition from teaching to clerical positions after 1724. On the contrary, of a total of forty career changes, twenty-two took place before 1724 and only eighteen after, a difference even more marked when related to the increasing number of teachers serving in Piteå Grammar School. Before 1724, three out of five teachers left school for a clerical position, while only one out of three shifted careers in the later period. No principals or assistant principals accepted lower clerical positions, and even most of the career-changing staff were promoted to a vicarage, almost exclusively after 1724. Consequently, the double evaluation system seems to have offered staff teachers greater opportunities for receiving a vicarage. Many teachers prepared their clerical careers when serving at school. They used to fill in temporarily for the clergy in Piteå parish, and in some cases they were on leave to serve as acting vicars in distant parishes. This means that ordination could be offered during teaching service, but many teachers were already ordained ministers before starting their teaching careers. The synod served as a meeting place for the teaching and preaching branches of the clerical estate. Well trained in theology and classical languages, the teachers often gave the Latin oration and served as opponents at the disputation over the synodal dissertation. During the nineteenth century their participation gradually declined, a development indicating the gradual separation of the clerical and teaching professions. The year of 1849 represented a milestone, when the double evaluation system was abandoned. At the same time teachers' salaries and retirement conditions were regulated. Secondary schools no longer served as waiting rooms for den cal promotion, and teaching was recognized as a profession in its own right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the history of education in Sweden, religious goals have always been intertwined with secular ones. The literacy campaign of the late 17th century was inaugurated to foster national stability and coherence by creating a confessionally-founded nation of Lutherans. The Saami mission was part of this national project, but the Saami school curriculum of 1735 reveals massive Pietist influences. In Pietist pedagogy, religious instruction was directed not only towards the mind, but also towards the will, aimed at reshaping the total personality by creating a sensitive consciousness and imprinting new moral standards. By the 18th century, the status of religion was motivated by its promotion of morality and virtue, the foundation blocks of society. In order to achieve “the improvement of the whole man, in terms of intellect, will and way of living”, the new catechism of 1810 both presented a developed moral teaching and stressed reading comprehension of essential texts in favour of the prevailing memorising tradition, which during the 18th century had come to embrace an increasing number of religious texts, among which Luther's Haustafel was significant for reinforcing the patriarchal norms of society. Both the conservative view of restricted home instruction and the liberal school model with general civic education were focused on the same goal of moral improvement. When the school reform bill of 1842 was implemented, the traditional ecclesiastical curriculum proceeded to dominate. The Lancaster method contributed to the prevalence of the memorising tradition within catechetical instruction. Not until the “small school” and the school inspection reforms were undertaken, and new pedagogical directions had been issued, did the dominance of the memorising tradition start to break down. Most important for the breakthrough of the civic education was the ministry's decision to make the school minimum level a requirement for admittance to confirmation instruction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Swedish system of primary education before the 19th century relied almost entirely on informal domestic instruction, aiming at reading ability and catechetical knowledge. During the era of Enlightenment, efforts were made to extend the curriculum to uniting, arithmetic, history, geography, etc. At the turn of the 18th century, many parish schools were founded, most of which couldn't offer more than writing and arithmetic in addition to the prevailing ecclesiastical curriculum. School records and church examination registers reveal how the growing writing skills were restricted not only to the male part of the population, but also to the upper strata of the rural society. This pattern of ‘commercial literacy’ is especially marked in those parts of Sweden, that were characterised by the commerdalisation of the agriculture. Primarily serving the needs of the nouveau-riche and self-confident peasantry, the parish school from the early 19th century represented an educational pattern of Margaret Archer's substitution model, the characteristics of which prevailed several decades after the school reform bill of 1842. The presented results on Swedish writing ability rates, coupled with new evidence on widespread European reading skills, independent of signing ability, implicate a more general Western pattern of alphabetisation characterised by high reading rates and restricted writing skills. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Esports is an often time-consuming activity that has become increasingly popular with billions of players all over the world. The objective of this study was to investigate if there is a relationship between skill level in the strategy video game Dota 2, a game that places many demands on decision making to be successful, and decision making under ambiguity and experience as measured by performance in the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), a task known to have ecological validity. Two indicators of players' performance in Dota 2, namely match-making rating (MMR) and Medal, were used as predictors of performance in the IGT in path models. Results showed that Medal was a significant predictor of performance in IGT, while MMR score was borderline significant. The cognitive reflection task, included in the models as an indicator of the ability to engage in conscious, analytical, rational, and logical thinking, was a significant predictor of performance in IGT, and was significantly and positively related to MMR. The findings from this study give insight into the cognitive demands related to performance in Dota 2. Although results suggest that strategy video gaming may be a factor that contributes to increased decision making abilities, a reversed relationship is also possible, whereby individuals who are better at decision making are also more likely to become successful in Dota-2. More studies, preferably longitudinal, are needed to replicate the findings of this study and to establish the directionality between factors., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.