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This article explores how schools define situations in which students have been exposed to violence at school. The purpose of the study is to explore and investigate whether and how school violence is gendered and whether acts of violence are being coded as either masculine or feminine. The data were gathered at Swedish secondary schools. The results indicate that gender influences how professionals categorise violence, with physical violence often being considered masculine and relational violence often being considered feminine. As a consequence, boys are perceived as less violent when they are involved in relational violence, and physical violence among girls is not always taken seriously.

Cooperation and partnerships between schools and public organisations, private companies and non-profit organisations have become a common model as a form of governance for addressing social problems. The aim of this article is to explore the strategies used by professionals to counteract segregation at a school located in a multi-ethnic suburb, using the model of a school-community partnership. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork and has been analysed from a sociological-narrative perspective. The results show how the partnership examined was designed to address students' low achievement. In order to change this, the officials planned to involve the local community. However, the officials were ambivalent about collaborating with partners in the local community and instead chose to collaborate with established associations and organisations located outside the local community. The school-community partnership thus became a market where private companies and non-profit organisations traded their services to the local district.

The present study examines how a number of Swedish schools define and categorize students who have been exposed to different forms of violent or abusive acts in school. The study will shed light on how categorizations and forms of explanation used in the schools by professionals emerge from central institutional and professional discourses. The data are gathered from interviews with key officials and observations from school health team meetings. The results indicate a tendency toward more and detailed legal regulations concerning how schools act and react in relation to violent behavior.

The actions and behaviour among students in Swedish schools previously described as teasing, fighting and 'school trouble' have gradually come to be positioned and understood within a legal discourse. Self-assessment surveys conducted with students in grade nine, from 1995 onwards, do not, however, reveal any marked increase in violence among young people over time. Consequently, it is possible to identify signification spirals, where certain issues of concern are identified, certain groups of people are targeted, and the issues are gradually multiplied and linked together, leading to an escalation of the threat and a call for firm steps of action. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how different professional groups -- school health teams and police officers -- related to and understood various measures taken to handle school violence. The authors focused in particular on the increasing tendency to report crimes in schools and the consequences of this trend. The results indicated, on the one hand, an ambivalent attitude towards filing police reports on the part of school health teams. On the other hand, the police officers were highly critical of the reluctance among school health teams to report 'crimes' to the police.

In the last decade, neo-liberal movements have entered parts of the Swedish society, bringing increased accountability and public management to preschool (catering for children aged 1-5 years). While early childhood education research has generally focused on preschool, children and teachers, few studies have explored the perspectives of preschool directors in contemporary times. This study helps fill this void by exploring the perspectives of eleven preschool directors about leadership and associated organization within Swedish preschools. Using content analysis, key findings suggest preschool directors take on many leadership roles within a preschool as they work with teachers, parents and upper administration leaders. The roles are sometimes conflicting and create unintended tension with teachers and parents as neo-liberal perspectives emerge.

The present study explores how officials in Swedish secondary schools define and categorize situations in which students have been exposed to violence in the school. The study is designed as a case study of two secondary schools, situated in two demographically different urban neighbourhoods. The results indicate that different socio-economic conditions influence how professionals categorize and explain violence, but also what strategies are used to deal with different incidents. In the socially disadvantaged area, there is closer collaboration with the police, and filing police reports is more common. In the school located in a middle-class area, professionals handle similar situations by collaborating with parents and using diagnoses as the main explanation for students' problematic behaviour.

The focus of the present study is on how a number of Swedish schools define and categorise students who have been exposed to different forms of abusive acts and violence at school. The empirical study was designed to explore six Swedish urban secondary schools. The results indicated a recurrent pattern in school officials' narratives, which is that officials often express difficulty defining the actual problem or crime. The results also revealled ambivalence when students' problems were taken over by other professionals. Reporting to the police and the social services was sometimes a relief, it can provide an opportunity for professional advice; at the same time the informants reported a lack of information and control during this process. Consequently, there was also a socio-political struggle involved in defining 'problematic' situations and solutions to relational difficulties.

This article is from a study about the integration of refugee children (aged one to five) and their families in Sweden. Refugee children and parents who have received a residence permit are entitled to be introduced into the Swedish society. One of the first encounters refugee children and families have with Swedish society is with the preschool. Many refugee families have been forced to leave their homes during difficult conditions. Those working with refugee children and their families may therefore encounter people who have endured trauma for example, while living in or fleeing from areas of violent conflict. The aim of this article is to explore the norms and aims that govern the educators' strategies in the reception of refugee children and their families. The result reveals that different aims and strategies are used by the educators: (1) Culturally reflexive and flexible strategies aiming to empower; and (2) Fostering strategies aiming to teach the parents to adjust to routines and norms in the Swedish preschool. Ethnographic techniques were used to generate observational data, focusing on the educators' everyday practices and concerns.

This article explores Swedish secondary school's strategies for supporting students who lack parental care. The study was designed as a case study of six Swedish urban secondary schools located in different demographic areas in southern Sweden. The study draws from individual interviews with school officials, focus group interviews with schools officials and observations from the schools' student health team meetings. Contemporary research shows that there are several reasons why children and adolescents are neglected: parents' mental illness, drug abuse, unemployment and living in poverty are some of the main factors explaining why children are neglected. The aim of this article is to explore school officials' narratives about supporting students with different class backgrounds who are negatively affected by neglect and lack of parental care. The aim is also to explore schools' collaborations with families, the social services and child and youth psychiatric care to support this group of students. Analytically the study takes its point of departure in how school officials read and position students and their families as classed subjects. Of interest is also to explore how the school professionals' narratives connect to discourses on neglected children, social class and the schools' responsibilities for handling these issues. The results indicate that students' class background is central to the explanations given for social problems as well as to how different student groups are categorized. Discourses of family disorder and dysfunction are provided as the main explanations for neglect and lack of parental care among students growing up in child poverty, whereas discourses explaining middle-class students' problems are related to young people's loneliness and parents' lack of time.

There is a strong case for stating that during the past decades there has been a shift in perspective when addressing questions of how to handle and preserve social order in Swedish schools. As an institution that has focused on social order and education since the 1990s, the Swedish school system has also become an institution that focuses on social order in terms of law and legal issues. The overall purpose of the article is to explore in which contexts and in what ways degrading treatment is articulated in policy documents that relate to social order in Swedish schools. Methodologically, the authors use a discourse analytical approach. They study how contexts and articulations identified in policy documents relate to discourses of degrading treatment, and thus contribute to an understanding of how degrading treatment as a concept is constituted. Articulated in different contexts and in different ways, the results show that degrading treatment is constituted as a somewhat ambiguous concept -- for example, social psychological perspectives are sometimes articulated within a legal discourse. Articulations of degrading treatment in policy documents cannot be comprehended as totally mutually dependent events, but rather as multiple and partly mutually independent events. Accordingly, the authors believe that the significance of degrading treatment is best understood as a conjunction of different articulations, contexts and interests. Additionally, the tendency of schools to treat degrading treatment increasingly as a crime has resulted in changing subject positions. The previous position of 'the bullied pupil' is now instead increasingly interpellated and moulded as 'a victim of crime'.

This article explores and investigates school officials' narratives about how schools involve and collaborate with families, social services, the police, and other agencies to support students who are suspected of being exposed to domestic violence. School officials' describe their work as positioned within legal restrictions and official policies, and they express a strong wish to create good relationships with families and other authorities to support vulnerable students. The narratives also indicate that school officials construct different explanations for child abuse according to the family's background. Abuse and neglect of children by Swedish parents are understood and explained in terms of social, psychological, and psychiatric problems, whereas the same behavior in immigrant parent is framed and explained in terms of culture or ethnicity.

This article reveals how test-based performativity pressures interfere with the pedagogical approaches preferred by teachers of second-language learners. Our findings derive from ethnographic research conducted in two non-mainstream high schools: one in a US city and other one in a Swedish city. Both schools serve immigrant students who speak English/Swedish as a second language, the majority of whom are from low-income, non-mainstream backgrounds. Unlike many schools that serve low-income immigrants, both are fairly well-resourced schools; teachers at each school foster productive learning environments and pedagogical practices conducive to academic success. Yet these practices are eroded by a mode of regulation that is hyper-fixed on "performativity" as discussed by Stephen J. Ball. Swedish teachers report less pressure than American teachers but teachers at both schools provide clear examples of the instances when performativity pressures intrude upon preferred pedagogical approaches.

Our aim in this article is to analyse the impact of the standardised test on classroom practices in grade 5 in a compulsory school in western Sweden. In our analysis, the use of the concept of the pedagogical device (Bernstein 1996) provides a framework for understanding how high-stakes, standardised testing regulates classroom discourse and teachers' and students' classroom behaviours. The study was conducted during 2006-2007 as part of a larger ethnographic inquiry. The results reveal how the demands of the test impact upon the daily work in the classroom. In the neo-liberal approach to governance, standardised tests have become an important measure of quality. School practices run the risk of being viewed as valuable, only relative to the performance of teachers and students at the individual level. This view shifts the focus from a discussion about a societal responsibility to ensure that all children have equitable access to education, to a debate centred on the individual's responsibility to perform. The analysis reveals that the test was not carried out as intended. However, both teacher and the students respond to the test situation and the results "as if" it had been and "as if" the test really mattered.

Today there is a strong tendency to involve local citizens in community work, and to mobilize social forces in poor urban districts. We will focus on one specific method used to educate and help immigrant parents raise and foster their children. This method is described as part of a wider ambition to integrate and involve immigrants in Swedish society. The aim is to get parents involved, and to create a dialogue and the necessary requirements for equal conditions. However, although the emphasis is on dialogue and shared experiences, this model is also based on and coloured by "governmentality". Through an empirical material consisting of a number of interviews with parents and teachers, we have focused on four thematic subjects: educational policies, homework, values and identities, and the importance of space and belonging. The results indicate that although the Swedish teachers try to create a dialogue and communicate with the parents, they do not succeed particularly well. The results indicate that when communication breaks down, the teachers often use different strategies of governance to implement their values, norms and ideas. In conclusion, it is not merely the clash between different value systems, and the different views on pedagogy and learning that contribute to distortions in the communication between teachers and parents, we also have to look more closely at the material and social conditions that create distance and alienation. Against the backdrop of the perception of whiteness and segregation, many of the communicative failures are understandable and logical. (Contains 1 note.)

In this article we aim to present an overview of some of the ways in which issues of race and ethnicity are represented and researched in educational ethnography in Scandinavia. Several things are suggested. Amongst them is that educational ethnographers in Scandinavia rarely use the concept of race. The term (im)migrant(s) is used instead and the relationships in education between Scandinavians and (im)migrants and between educational results and (im)migrant culture and/or languages are often in focus. Integration has also been an issue. History may give an indication as to how this may have become so. Research on immigrants, immigration and integration has been promoted in national policies and these policies highlight language, culture and diversity but for historical and political reasons they often avoid ethnicity and ignore race and colour altogether. Moreover, when ethnicity is used it seems to be used more as an ontological marker than as an epistemological concept. This has repercussions we suggest for understanding the politics of race and ethnicity relations in relation to education. (Contains 5 notes.)