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Though research on inclusive education makes up a considerable part of the special education research field, very few studies have explored how beliefs and ideas about inclusion and exclusion emerge in general media discourses of education and schooling. Using positioning theory as a theoretical framework, this paper explores public discourses on inclusionary/exclusionary schooling by analysing newspaper articles about a segregated type of school in Sweden for pupils with intellectual disability. Seventy-nine articles meeting the criteria for inclusion and published between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2018 were identified in the two national daily newspapers of Sweden. Four general storylines and associated positions were identified. The four storylines, together and in different ways, construct a rationale for a segregated school system based on notions such as equality, equity, justice, and democracy. We argue that this rationale is embedded within a discourse that we propose calling a discourse of 'segrequality'. Education plays an important role in the development of an inclusive society and inclusive education is a goal supported by many countries and their school systems. Even so, the percentage of pupils educated in segregated settings have increased in many countries in Europe. This article explores how Swedish news media portrays education for pupils with intellectual disability. The research found a dominant rationale where segregated educational settings are seen as essential. Four main narratives were identified. All of them, in different ways, argue for the importance of segregated education in order to give every child an education based on notions such as equality, equity, justice, and democracy. Researchers of inclusion are suggested to take a more active part in a public discussion of education as well as in policy-making on both national and local levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we take as a point of departure an assumption that innovation governance matters as a local and regional policy instrument, and consequently we investigate whether local policy can be linked to local industry. To do this, we use Swedish survey data on policy and hightech agglomeration at the level of municipalities and present evidence on innovation governance nexuses, i.e. locations with greater industrial specialization paired with stronger formalization of innovation governance. Theoretically, this paper follows the literature on regional advantage, but a novel approach is used in which innovation governance literature is linked to that advantage. The findings indicate that these types of policy instruments are useful by creating networks that channel and direct resource and knowledge flows, particularly at locations with higher education institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we theorize on local school governance through a multi-method case study of a large-sized Swedish municipality by drawing on neo-institutional theory. In light of a changing governing landscape in Sweden in terms of a 're-centralization', new conditions between the state, the local education authorities (LEA) and the schools have emerged. The aim of this study is to examine what policy actions the LEA employ for governing the school and in what ways that principals respond and handle these policy actions. The results point to the fact that the LEA uses a bench-marking strategy through its quality assurance system and intervene if results are poor. Principals seek support from the LEA, but are anxious that their autonomy will be diminished and therefore function as 'gate-. The system for quality assurance is appreciated by principals, but standards aimed at framing discursive communication on quality are criticized. Principals turn to managers below the superintendent, which creates a tension between managers. The study shows that different levels and actors must be taken into account in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the multi-layered field of local policy enactment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the increasing interest of Swedish schools to construct, analyze, assess and control the individual progression and social integration of students using biographical registers. I argue that this tendency - involving biography as a form of governance - can be seen as a revision of early 20th-century biographical research by the Chicago School of Sociology. In this paper I consider the theoretical, methodological and political background of the Chicago work in order to compare it to the Swedish use of student biographies. Their current use involves a twofold subjectification of students - as "objects" of assessment and as "relays" for assessment. Finally, this subjectivity is understood in relation to international initiatives in education restructuring where new ways of governing - often labeled as progressive - impose social control, heighten individual responsibility and, not least, create new forms of social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a specific phenomenon of early-modern education in Sweden, the school jail, as a point of departure for a broader analysis of educational policy in the areas of discipline and moral instruction. The paper demonstrates how the jail evolved as a part of a wider network of objects, pedagogical technologies and social routines in this area and how this gradually came to change. From being part of a disciplinary rationale leaning on public corporal punishment, the prison was successively set aside in favour of new symbolic and more productive forms of discipline. This process of modernisation also enforced spatial and material reconfigurations, as the classroom acquired a more prominent role as an arena for regulatory practice. The paper also suggests a shift of the general scope in formal policy from a religious frame of reference towards a more secular and independent positioning of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on school situations students experienced as meaningful and how these experiences can guide educational improvement. Participants included 15 students in grade 3 from a Swedish school. In this qualitative study, the data consisted of drawings, multimodal productions, interviews, and field notes. The analysis resulted in four themes: Having the opportunity to learn in different spaces; Being free and able to participate; Experiencing caring and sharing, and Recognizing one's own growth and achievement. The findings suggest that situations students find meaningful involve aspects of both learning and wellbeing. The practical implication for these results is that student-generated qualitative data can help indicate needs for educational improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the dual dependencies apparent at the intersection of the media society and the audit society by empirically exploring and discussing the relationship between Swedish local newspaper coverage and school inspection activities. The research questions pertain to the Inspectorate’s media strategy, how inspection is represented and conveyed, the messages sent, and who gets to speak. Literature on governance, and the role and function of the media in the wider audit society is applied theoretically. Four municipalities were selected to represent different demographical and economical structures and previous inspection experiences. The empirical material includes interviews with leading inspection officers and newspaper articles. The local newspapers portray the Inspectorate as a legitimate institution acting on behalf of and protecting the public, and even more so, the educational consumer. The current format used by the Inspectorate – a succinct reporting only on deviations – links with a favored format of the media, reinforcing the tight media–inspection relationship and leading to implications for education governance and policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the use, functions and constitutive effects of evaluation systems in local school governance, and identifies how contextual factors affect various uses of evaluation in this context. This case study of three Swedish municipalities demonstrates that local evaluation systems are set up to effectively sustain local school governance and ensure compliance with the Education Act and other state demands. Local decision makers have learned to navigate the web of evaluations and developed response strategies to manage external evaluations and to take into account what can be useful and what cannot be overlooked in order to avoid sanctions. The study shows that in contexts with high issue polarisation, such as schooling, the use of evaluation differs between the political majority and opposition, and relates to how schools perform in national comparisons and school inspections. Responses to external evaluations follow the same pattern. Some key performance indicators from the National Agency of Education and the School Inspectorate affect local school governance in that they define what is important in education, and reinforce the norm that benchmarking is natural and worthwhile, indicating constitutive effects of national evaluation systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether the Swedish steering documents for English-language education are ethnically biased, that is, whether Swedish culture and language or “Swedishness” are used as norms when teaching and assessing students. To examine whether such bias exists, the central curricula and syllabi from 1994 and 2000, as well as local steering documents, work plans, and grading criteria for English language studies from 85 Swedish compulsory schools, have been analyzed. The analysis of the steering documents focuses on what they say about grammar, translation, and intercultural understanding. The results of the study suggest that, in many cases, the starting point for schools is still Swedish culture and “Swedishness.” The most noteworthy result of the study is that nearly one third of the schools had objectives and criteria for English language studies that use the Swedish language and Swedish conditions as their reference point. This gives students with Swedish backgrounds better preconditions for attaining the learning goals and receiving better grades in English then those of students with other cultural backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Swedish educational system states that work in schools should depict and mediate equality. One way of achieving this is through fiction, which according to the syllabus provides students with knowledge about the living conditions of women and men during different epochs and places. The present paper examines gender in a Swedish school, analysing 'book club' discussions, using a discursive approach. The data consist of video-recorded teacher-led booktalk sessions, involving small groups of pupils in grades 4-7. It was found that the teachers and/or the pupils invoked gender issues in all book club sessions. The fictive events were, at times, discussed in gender-stereotyped ways. Yet, the teachers and pupils also transcended gender stereotypes in several cases. In many of those cases, there was a generational pattern, in that the participants tended to apply less stereotyped thinking when talking about fictive characters of their own age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education and assessment in Swedish schools have been affected by several reforms during the last two decades. The educational system has moved from centralization to decentralization and a goal-oriented approach has been introduced on all educational levels. This paper provides an historical overview of the Swedish educational system, educational and assessment policies and principles, to explain why and how the reforms have been carried out. This is followed by a discussion on the effects and consequences of recent reforms, based on findings in recent education and assessment research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence-based information and communication technology (ICT) interventions to enhance school participation among students with special educational needs (SEN) are required. To evaluate the impact of an ICT intervention on school participation among upper secondary school students with special educational needs. Data on 300 students' assessments with the School Setting Interview (SSI), grades and school attendance were used in this quasi-experimental study, with a one-group pretest-posttest design. Descriptive and inferential statistics and effect size were used, as well as Rasch analysis to generate interval data on the students' ordinal SSI ratings. In the ICT intervention (median time eight hours), 54% of the students received a tablet, and software concerned with planning and structure was received by 85%. After the ICT intervention, a significant decrease in perceived need for adjustments in school activities was found on a group level and 30% of the students improved their school attendance. Students who benefitted the most from the ICT intervention had few adjustment needs in school activities and no special educational support at baseline. An ICT intervention is promising for improving school participation among upper secondary school students with SEN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vulnerability of gender nonconforming young people is all too well documented. Arguably, "trans issues" in schools are not restricted to transphobic comments, and need to be analyzed intersectionally. Guided by Lugones' discussion of the politics of purity read together with the analysis of cisnormativity, this article draws on interviews with Rakel, Robin and Mika, who were part of a larger study with 13 trans and nonbinary young people and young adults in Sweden, the first of its kind in Sweden. It engages their analyses of how schools and teachers express a desire for cisnormative purity in their interactions with gender nonconforming students. Normative whiteness and fat-phobia, as well as adultism and schools' reluctance in instituting nondiscrimination regulations and policy frameworks into appropriate, affirming and reliable practices, violently affect gender nonconforming young people just as much as schools' and teachers' poor knowledge about gender identities. In examining participants' negotiations with schools, this text reads both cisnormative oppression and gender nonnormative transgression as a condition of a specific moment in the Swedish political landscape marked by the simultaneousness of control and liberation, of imposed cisnormative purity and concurrent negotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working with a posthumanist approach, this article explores how the computer software Dexter, used for the registration of students' absences and presences, is part of the production of different practices of time, place, space, and matter in Swedish schools. The empirical material engaged with comes from two schools, and the students involved are in grades 7–9. The article creates knowledge on how the digital registration of students' presences, absences, or late arrivals is dependent upon material-discursive practices. The “bodily presences” of students are continually destabilized in relation to Dexter, showing that school absences and presences are (re)shaped depending on relations of spacetimematter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Sweden, pupils eat tax-funded school lunches, often in the company of teachers. This article focuses on Swedish compulsory school grade (ages 7–15) teachers' (n = 823) perceptions of the school lunch in terms of intentions and daily practice. Analysis was based on written answers for an open-ended question that was part of a questionnaire focusing on teachers' attitudes towards school lunch as a pedagogical activity. It was found that participating teachers saw the potential of the school lunch, placing emphasis on the social interaction that takes place in the school restaurant and the possibility of meeting pupils in a more informal setting. However, a key outcome was teachers' depictions of the struggle between ideals and reality with the effect that teachers were not always provided with favourable conditions for school lunch interactions. It is important to address this in order to improve meal-time practices and the experience of school lunch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a field experiment in which fictitious parents of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) sent inquiries to schools in Sweden about admission of their children to the mandatory preschool class. Results show that inquiries concerning a child with no medical condition were more likely to receive an invitation for a visit and more likely to receive a promising placement response than inquiries concerning a child with ADHD and T1DM. Discrimination was more prominent in the private sector and when the child was a boy or had ADHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Children's results on school-related achievements tests, such as aspects of math, reading and writing, have been shown to decline following a lengthy summer vacation. Few studies have investigated whether this also applies to vocabulary skills. The purpose of this study is to investigate how lexical organization and retrieval, assessed by a semantic verbal fluency (SVF) task, develops during a lengthy summer vacation versus formal schooling. Method: Sixty-eight children with mean age of 7.9 (ranging from 6.5 to 9.1), were assessed pre- and post-summer vacation and post-fall semester using two SVF categories (Animals and Clothes). The number of words produced in both categories gave the total score. Results: The result of the SVF tests decreased following summer vacation. The loss was recouped at the post-fall semester assessment, but no gains compared to initial testing were shown. Neither level of parental education, general language ability, non-verbal IQ, nor bilingualism explained the variance in development during the summer vacation or the fall semester. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that a lengthy summer vacation causes a recess in the expected development of SVF ability and that this recess is recouped after a semester of formal schooling. The findings are in line with previous research indicating that summer vacation may have negative impact on the development of important scholastic abilities in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Children with cerebral palsy (CP) face particular challenges, e.g. daily pain that threaten their participation in school activities. This study focuses on how teachers, personal assistants, and clinicians in two countries with different cultural prerequisites, Sweden and South Africa, manage the pain of children in school settings. Method: Participants' statements collected in focus groups were analysed using a directed qualitative content analysis framed by a Frequency of attendance-Intensity of involvement model, which was modified into a Knowing-Doing model. Results: Findings indicated that pain management focused more on children's attendance in the classroom than on their involvement, and a difference between countries in terms of action-versus-reaction approaches. Swedish participants reported action strategies to prevent pain whereas South African participants primarily discussed interventions when observing a child in pain. Conclusion: Differences might be due to school- and healthcare systems. To provide effective support when children with CP are in pain in school settings, an action-and-reaction approach would be optimal and the use of alternative and augmentative communication strategies would help to communicate children's pain. As prevention of pain is desired, structured surveillance and treatment programs are recommended along with trustful collaboration with parents and access to "hands-on" pain management when needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Induction programmes including assessments of suitability were introduced in Sweden 2011 and were in use for three years. The purpose of this study is to examine the conditions for and the consequences of giving the induction programme a gatekeeper function to the teaching profession. The empirical basis consists of a web-based survey, which involves approximately 100 school principals and preschool heads. The study shows that the conditions for a fair assessment of suitability were not established. The assessment task was complex; those responsible for the assessments were not sufficiently prepared. The induction employments varied in coherence and in demands. The results support bringing the gatekeeper-function back into teacher education and focusing the induction programme on support and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under a recent national curriculum reform in Sweden within a highly decentralised, competitive, and marketised education system, access to post-16 education is restricted. In this study, we map and analyse the early onset of new preparatory programmes. We draw on interviews with local politicians and school staff in six different municipalities, along with documents and statistics. The study is positioned within a framework of analysis of policy ideas and theoretical perspectives on inclusive education, equal education opportunities, and marketisation. Bernstein's theoretical concept of "pedagogic rights" serves as a lens for the interpretation of the findings. The study suggests that the preparatory programmes tend to have marginalising effects for vast numbers of 16 plus students, in contrast to wider policy aims of social and economic inclusion and employability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Children with acquired brain injury (ABI) often present with functional deficits that influence their societal participation and well-being. Successful reintegration into school calls for individual support to meet each child’s adjustment needs. The adjustment needs of children with ABI in school settings have not previously been explored. Aim: The objectives of the present study were (a) to describe adjustment needs in school settings for children with ABI and (b) to explore differences and similarities between reports from the children and their teachers. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 20 children with ABI (mean age 12.8 ± 3.4 years; class grade 1-10) and their teachers were interviewed individually, using the School Setting Interview (SSI). Data were analyzed with descriptive and with non-parametric statistics. Results: (a) In the overall group, children rated that 55.6% of the 16 activities in the SSI needed no adjustment. The corresponding percentage for teachers was 48.4%. (b) In the child-teacher pairs, there was a positive relationship between teachers’ and children’s responses only in 3 out of 16 school activities and agreement varied strongly according to the activity in question. Conclusions and significance: It is important for occupational therapists and other professionals to specifically consider adjustment needs relating to school activities from various perspectives when aiming to provide individualized interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In migration research there has not been much work on temporal dimensions of migration experiences (with the exception of Griffiths in this journal). This article investigates migrant students' temporal framings of their lived versus imagined school careers, drawing on participant observation and interviews with students in language introduction classes in upper secondary school in Sweden. The findings document student experiences of temporal desynchronies: as seen in reports of slow time and repetition, suspended time, temporal uncertainty and blockage. The analyses highlight the students' experiences of being temporally out of line (in Ahmed's words). The narratives of their past and future school lives reveal a discontinuity between the students' lived school experiences, on the one hand, and imagined school careers on the other, contrasting life as lived with both their own hope and plans and with the school careers of other students. The analyses highlight the importance of including temporal dimensions in the analyses of post-migration school landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last decade there has been on-going discussions about students’ declining interest and low achievement in science. One of the reasons suggested for this decline is that teachers and students have different frames of reference, whereby teachers sometimes communicate science in the classroom in a way that is not accessible to the students. There is a lack of research investigating the effects of coteaching with senior students in science in upper secondary schools. To improve teaching and to narrow the gap between teachers’ and students’ different frames of references, this study investigates how an experienced chemistry teacher gains and refines her pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) by cooperating with two grade 12 students (age 18) as coteachers. The teacher and the two coteachers coplanned, cotaught and coevaluated lessons in chemical bonding in a grade 10 upper secondary class. Findings indicate that the coteachers contributed with their own learning experiences to help the teacher understand how students perceive difficult concepts. In such way, the coteachers were mediating between the teacher and the students, thus bridging the gap between the teacher and the students’ frames of references. The teachers’ PCK was refined which in turn lead to improved teaching strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the psychometric properties of a teacher-reported version of a Swedish school climate instrument called the Pedagogical and Social Climate (PESOC), which consists of 95 items covering cultural, structural and social factors. A sample of 348 teachers from 19 Swedish secondary schools was used. Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis conducted within a structural equation modelling framework indicated that the PESOC had a two-factor structure at the teacher level and a one-factor at the school level. The PESOC’s convergent validity was supported by the school-level correlations between PESOC and another established instrument (i.e., the Team Climate Inventory). Further validation studies of PESOC are needed with larger, more representative samples, and with information on important outcomes such as student achievement and wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to identify the mechanisms behind the occurrence of teaching practices of seatwork and recitation across lessons. The study is based on an analysis of 74 video recorded lessons from 4 school classes in Swedish comprehensive schools during 2013. Firstly, the results suggest that teaching practices such as seatwork dominated across lessons when compared to, for example, reciting. Secondly, the study gives a detailed analysis of teaching practices by analyzing video transcripts. Thirdly, using Cox regression the study lends a weak support for the school subject’s impact on seatwork and recitation. A weak support was found for recitation and no support was found for seatwork. However, no statistical generalization was possible and further research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During recent years, many schools have started to implement information and communication technologies (ICTs)-based learning devices (such as laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and active boards) in the classroom settings in order to increase learning outcomes. The aim of this study is to find which activities and outcomes are evident in the usages of computing devices and how those devices aid elementary-level students in their learning activities. The study includes five overt participant observations at some schools in a Swedish municipality including unstructured interviews and explains the findings through activity theory and the Alberta Education Framework for Student Learning . The major activities found were dealing with the (1) educational application assignments, (2) storytelling, (3) report writing and (4) practical interaction assignments. We concluded that ICTs aid students in becoming more concentrated, focus driven, engaged and amused, thus learning becomes more interesting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background:From previous research among science teachers it is known that teachers’ attitudes to their subjects affect important aspects of their teaching, including their confidence and the amount of time they spend teaching the subject. In contrast, less is known about technology teachers’ attitudes. Purpose:Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate Swedish technology teachers’ attitudes toward their subject, and how these attitudes may be related to background variables. Sample:Technology teachers in Swedish compulsory schools (n = 1153) responded to a questionnaire about teachers’ attitudes, experiences, and background. Methods:Exploratory factor analysis was used to inwvestigate attitude dimensions of the questionnaire. Groupings of teachers based on attitudes were identified through cluster analysis, and multinomial logistic regression was performed to investigate the role of teachers’ background variables as predictors for cluster belonging. Results:Four attitudinal dimensions were identified in the questionnaire, corresponding to distinct components of attitudes. Three teacher clusters were identified among the respondents characterized by positive, negative, and mixed attitudes toward the subject of technology and its teaching, respectively. The most influential predictors of cluster membership were to be qualified for teaching technology, having participated in in-service-training, teaching at a school with a proper overall teaching plan for the subject of technology and teaching at a school with a defined number of teaching hours for the subject. Conclusions:The results suggest that efforts to increase technology teachers’ qualifications and establishing a fixed number of teaching hours and an overall teaching plan for the subject of technology may yield more positive attitudes among teachers toward technology teaching. In turn, this could improve the status of the subject as well as students’ learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background:Textbooks are integral tools for teachers’ lessons. Several researchers observed that school teachers rely heavily on textbooks as informational sources when planning lessons. Moreover, textbooks are an important resource for developing students’ knowledge as they contain various representations that influence students’ learning. However, several studies report that students have difficulties understanding models in general, and chemical bonding models in particular, and that students’ difficulties understanding chemical bonding are partly due to the way it is taught by teachers and presented in textbooks. Purpose:This article aims to delineate the influence of textbooks on teachers’ selection and use of representations when teaching chemical bonding models and to show how this might cause students’ difficulties understanding. Sample:Ten chemistry teachers from seven upper secondary schools located in Central Sweden volunteered to participate in this study. Design and methods:Data from multiple sources were collected and analysed, including interviews with the 10 upper secondary school teachers, the teachers’ lesson plans, and the contents of the textbooks used by the teachers. Results:The results revealed strong coherence between how chemical bonding models are presented in textbooks and by teachers, and thus depict that textbooks influence teachers’ selection and use of representations for their lessons. As discussed in the literature review, several of the selected representations were associated with alternative conceptions of, and difficulties understanding, chemical bonding among students. Conclusions:The study highlights the need for filling the gap between research and teaching practices, focusing particularly on how representations of chemical bonding can lead to students’ difficulties understanding. The gap may be filled by developing teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge regarding chemical bonding and scientific models in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented which discusses role of evaluation in local school governance in Sweden.

This article synthesises the role of evaluation at the municipal, school, classroom and parental levels of governance, and discusses the results of the articles appearing in this special issue. The discussion concerns the role of evaluation in school governance, the value of evaluation for local school development, the constitutive effects of evaluation, what explains the present results, how knowledge produced by evaluation can be used, and methodological issues. The results indicate that evaluation systems legitimise and support governance by objectives and results, parental school choice, and accountability for fairness and performance. Evaluation systems emphasise measurable aspects of curricula and foster a performance-oriented school culture. The most important evaluations for improving teaching and schools are teachers' own evaluations. The article suggests two explanations for the actual roles of evaluation in local school governance. First, both the governance structure and applied governance model delimit and partly shape the role of evaluation at local governance levels. Second, how local school actors use their discretion and interpret their role in the education system, including how they respond to accountability pressure, explains how their roles are realised and the fact that actors at the same level of governance can develop partly different roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to explore, describe and analyse the assessment process in two different Swedish year-five classrooms. The study is mainly based on observations and interviews with pupils and teachers. The data were analysed in relation to Bernstein's (1977, 2000) theoretical concepts of classification, framing, codes, and pedagogic device. The analysis indicated differences in the assessment process between the two classrooms: first, in the systematicity and transparency of the learning goals; second, in the approach to teaching; and third, in the focus of the assessment in the classroom. This study argues that the assessment process in the classrooms was affected by external influences. Direct impacts on it include the official national guidelines, the tools provided for pupil documentation and the teachers' in-service training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a small-scale qualitative study of gender equality discourses as constructed and employed by pedagogues in three Swedish preschools. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse the preschool pedagogues' constructions of work on children's gender equality, while also examining local variations and the influence of societal discourses and structures on the more localised discourses used in the particular preschool settings. The goal is to highlight how the pedagogues, through statements and discussions in interviews and documents, construct and position themselves and the children in relation to different discourses and current norms. The study is based on interviews with nine pedagogues from three preschools and an analysis of documentation from these preschools. The pedagogues' constructions of gender equality in interviews and documents mainly relate to preschool pedagogy, although there is also some consideration of the future labour market. The pedagogues position themselves as 'lead characters', and children as 'recipients' or as 'girls' and 'boys' who are to be treated either as unique individuals or as two uniform opposing groups. Gender-equal girls are positioned as strong(er), brave(r) and (more) independent, whilst gender-equal boys as (more) socially and linguistically competent. Although there are some differences between the preschools, in line with heteronormative masculinity the primary focus is on 'redoing' the girls, especially traditional 'girly' girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents some unexpected findings from a study of the upper secondary school voucher system in Sweden. This publicly funded but relatively unregulated quasi-market offers a large number of alternatives to teenagers choosing an education. The choice situation is relatively complex and the stakes are high, but the youths themselves find the decision unproblematic. A possible explanation for this is that the future upper secondary students mistake information for knowledge. In lack of knowledge they follow a norm of conformity according to their outer circumstances. This leads youths from different socioeconomic groups to experience different choice situations and outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents research from a school in a multicultural suburb on the outskirts of a large Swedish conurbation that used a particular pedagogy with strong classification and framing to address an identified problem of academic failure amongst its pupils. The analysis shows that the pedagogy was chosen based on an assumption that pupils needed to be 'saved' from their backgrounds and assumed characteristics of their neighbourhood and that its inhabitants were lacking positive pedagogical resources. The article indicates a disparity between these assumptions and statements made by the pupils. Moreover, it shows how the chosen pedagogy positions the pupils between two discourses that strongly affect the possibilities they have to develop as learners and participate equally in education and society in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Sweden, according to the present curriculum lower secondary schools are responsible for providing and tutoring all students in information and communication technology (ICT) as a tool in the search for knowledge and learning. In this article, it is proposed that schools have different preconditions to fulfil these obligations, depending upon how they integrate ICT into their pedagogical practices. The aim of this article is to examine the relationship among classrooms, ICT access, and pedagogy by comparing three Swedish lower secondary schools with different social compositions. The data consist of observations, interviews and policy documents. It is suggested that it is necessary to have sufficient equipment and strong pedagogy for all schools to fully use the potential of ICT as an educational, learning and teaching tool. It is concluded that the schools do not have equal opportunities to provide students with a pedagogical practice that can enable ICT skills and knowledge due to unique mandatorships and social acting spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus in this article is the extent to which the school subject of Swedish in the new national curriculum in Sweden introduced in 2011 (compulsory school) has been updated in relation to ways of discussing mother tongue education. Discourse analysis is used to analyse the syllabus for Swedish from 2011. A comparison is made with the previous syllabus from 1994 in order to see if any changes have been made. The main finding is that the syllabus from 2011 is primarily updated with fundamental aspects of the genre approach. This is interpreted as a reason for the observed foregrounding of language and downgrading of literature in the curriculum. Further, two traditions of the teaching of Swedish in school are discussed. The first tradition concerns the focus on the formal aspects of language. The second tradition concerns the invisible socio-political perspective in the lower grades, and this perspective's low-key character in the upper grades. It is concluded that these traditions are still alive and strongly influencing the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I discuss a number of excerpts from interviews with class grandparents; that is to say, older people helping out in schools for children in Sweden. The interviews focused on experiences of taking part in class grandparent projects. Indirectly, however, they dealt with identity. By treating the interviews as stories, as ways of storying people’s lives, I show how some of these discourses seemed especially central to producing subject positions in the narratives on class grandparent experiences. I also suggest that the studied stories are ideological in character, in the sense that they constitute fantasies that cover over the contingencies of everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study approaches inclusive schools by looking at how conditions for participation are expressed for pupils with additional support needs in education policy documents in Sweden and Scotland. By using five dimensions of the environment - availability, accessibility, affordability, accommodability and acceptability - expressions of conditions for participation are explored in 41 documents. This is done in a vertical manner by analysing national laws, regional policy documents, and local-level documents that directly influence classroom practices. A deductive content analysis approach using a protocol based on the five environmental dimensions is used to extract information and identify meaning units. In the meaning units, meaningful concepts are identified and linked to International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: Child and Youth (ICF-CY) categories. These are used as reference points. It is suggested, from the documents analysed, that conditions for participation are easy to express as available, accessible opportunities, or affordability issues, but not as involvement experiences linked to accommodations made and acceptability issues within a context. Documents in Scotland and Sweden also have different foci in terms of conditions for participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the study is to compare gender patterns of student attitudes toward school, teachers and peers in grade 6 over time. In 1967-68 and in 2003, 1500 pupils responded to the same 40-item questionnaire. A confirmatory factor analysis was applied. In the gender comparison the within-class level was used. The more traditional school factors, Interest in School, View of Teacher, and Work Atmosphere, showed no differences between the two time periods. The factor Interest in School showed that girls were more positive than boys. In contrast to this, changes with more positive attitudes had occurred especially in boys' peer relational factors. In Relations with Classmates and in View of Fuss, the scores were now equal between the two genders, but in View of Peers, and Lack of Anxiety the boys' attitudinal scores were significantly higher than those of the girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indoor air in our homes, workplaces and schools is a global concern, an issue in policy and science, and part of the World Health Organization's programme on environmental awareness. In the present article, the official discourse on sustainable development in Sweden is related to a specific problem of the indoor environment, namely sick-building syndrome (SBS) and the notion of “sick” buildings. This health problem will be analysed here from different perspectives: political, scientific and practical. In the context of sustainable policy, Swedish authorities are taking measures to ensure that citizens can breathe good indoor air in “healthy” buildings. With regard to scientific evidence, SBS is not a clear-cut risk, and there is no known cause-mechanism-effect chain. It is a diffuse risk, and in society, it is also typically associated with social conflicts and mass media interests. In practice, the conflict confirms the difficulties inherent in defining sick and healthy buildings. Different societal interests and different professions are competing with each other to take the upper hand in defining the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents policy and theory as they apply to diversity, equality and equity in Swedish social and educational policy. All education in Sweden should, according to the curriculum (Lpo 94, 1994, p. 5) be of equivalent value, irrespective of where in the country it is provided and education should be adapted to each pupil's circumstances and needs. The research question guiding the study was: In what ways do principals facilitate access to schools for all children? Our article reports the results from interviews with principals, teachers and pupils at a school for grades 7 to 9 in Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational arenas are important sites for understanding how diversity and democracy become operationalised since they constitute and at the same time must attend to students' different needs. This article focuses on diversity from two specific angles: how research activities allow for particular ways of understanding human differences and how human pluralism is conceptualised in the organisation of education. These discussions emerge from the position that our use of language itself shapes human realities. The organisation of the segregated Swedish special schools for the deaf and research that focuses on this specific “human category” are used to illustrate and discuss issues pertaining to diversity and democracy. Pupils in special schools are conceptualised both as “handicapped” as well as belonging to a “linguistic-minority” group. Democratic tensions related to maintaining a separate school and conducting research on the human category defined on the basis of “deafness” are discussed and alternatives raised. Implications regarding (the lack of) pluralism in research perspectives and agendas are also discussed and the need for integrating studies of marginalisation into mainstream academia is highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the theme of individualisation of teaching is described and analysed. In the light of a fairly long tradition of a comprehensive school system embracing the idea of individualisation, we expected this to be an important aspect of ongoing changes in Nordic schools. Individualisation can be seen as continuity in the pedagogical ideas—at the same time the meaning of individualisation changes along with other changes in school and society. While in Sweden and Norway the appearance of self‐regulatory individualised ways of working in the end of the twentieth century is quite strong, it is not so obvious in the other countries. In the article the theme of individualisation is treated from the perspective of each country. Based on these case descriptions, similarities and differences are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of the state in Swedish education governance in relation to local actors. Transformation of the Swedish education politics and governance from 1975 to 2005; Model of education governance based on the Education Governance, Social Inclusion and Exclusion in Europe (EGSIE) project and on a research project on changed time governance; Efforts of the state to govern through fostering self-governing schools and teachers.

What makes a headmaster successful? And what does a successful headmaster do? This article presents some results from a research project - Successful school leadership in different school cultures - that aims to provide answers to these questions. The results derive from interviews, questionnaires, observations and pupils' essays, and comprise the criteria by which different parties involved in schools assess the success of headmasters. As with other research in this field, this article establishes that headmasters find themselves in tension fields that are constituted by the varied interests of the different parties involved in schools. These relationships are analysed with regard to three tension fields that affect Swedish schools today: between employer and employees; between pupils and adults; and between change and continuity. However, the work lives of headmasters isn't characterised by tensions only, but by alliances as well. Hence, headmasters' alliances with various other parties within the school are also analysed. These alliances are both a way of dealing with the tensions that headmasters meet on a daily basis, and a way of creating both success and a leadership based on the school culture. However, the general development trend that we find in Swedish schools, which lift the headmaster out of the school to become the last among superiors rather than the first among equals, constricts the latitude for more culture-specific school leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to create guidelines for stress management intervention by investigating the relationship of 12 factors with stress reactions (emotional exhaustion and irritation) and feelings of mastery among Swedish comprehensive school teachers. Data were collected via a questionnaire distributed to 928 teachers in 27 schools. The response rate was 89%. Multiple regressions were conducted on colleague support, cooperation, coordination problems, goal clarity, learning orientation, manager support, negative feedback, positive feedback, pupil misbehaviour, teacher age, work control and perceived work demands, all as independent variables. Perceived work demands was treated as a dependent variable in an additional regression analysis. Teacher stress reactions were best predicted by perceived work demands, pupil misbehaviour and negative feedback. Feelings of mastery were best predicted by learning orientation, positive feedback and goal clarity. In the additional analysis perceived work demands was best predicted by pupil misbehaviour, coordination problems and (low) work control. Practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some important studies have recently used Statistics Sweden's register data on educational levels and annual earnings to estimate the economic return on schooling. This is a powerful way of getting large samples and of adding information to data sets with other useful information. By using detailed information in the Level of Living Surveys, we investigate two potential flaws with this approach. First, the register data on education do not pick up some partial studies at high school and college which do not lead to formal degrees. Our results show that such studies have a significant positive economic return. Nonetheless, the use of this information as independent variables in regression models does not change the original estimates. So omission of partial studies does not flaw the results based on registers only. Second, also using the Level of Living Surveys, we compare estimates based on annual earnings as the outcome measure with those using hourly earnings. We find a marked difference, particularly for higher education levels. However, by eliminating observations with low earnings one gets results for annual earnings that are similar to those for hourly earnings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes experiences from creating a quality culture for continuous improvements in the Swedish school sector by using self-assessments. Concept of total quality management (TQM); Technique for TQM; Different tools for assessment; Features of the Adult Education Initiative program.

The article discusses key issues concerning the radical transformation of the educational system of Sweden and Ontario. Key issues discussed include the key features of educational reforms implemented by the countries' governments, criticisms against the educational priorities of the different political parties in power, attempts to create a comprehensive school system in Sweden and Ontario, a comparison of the educational systems of the two countries and the issues' implications for educational policy.

The article reports that the educational policy in Sweden should be evaluated in a socio-economic perspective. The approval of an Education Act provided for the establishment of a unitary school which proved the usefulness of the first nine years of schooling. The reform meant a break with the organizational set-up. The academic type of school was opened to children from all walks of life and admission was based on competitive entrance examinations.