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The concept of democracy is a central component in education policy at all levels, yet its meaning can be interpreted in a number of ways. This paper examines how democracy is conceptualised and utilised as a legitimising force driving education policy reform. More specifically, attention is given to the use of democracy in the process of promoting programming's inclusion in the Swedish compulsory curriculum. A number of mass-media articles published in Swedish are analysed using the concept of floating signifiers. The context of Sweden is of particular interest, since the notion of democracy has been a driving force in Swedish society for the legitimisation of education policy changes. In this paper, we chose to approach the link between democracy and education from a critical perspective and ask how the concept of democracy is being utilized as a part of political struggles to hegemonize and legitimize educational changes. It is argued that democracy, as a floating signifier, was central to the discursive production of the educational agenda of programming and its legitimisation. This article aims to function as a critique of the promotion of programming in education as a means to democracy.

Education reform efforts stemming from the Programme in International Student Achievement have strengthened in recent years, particularly in response to the growth of global references societies -- high achieving educational jurisdictions such as Finland, Hong Kong-China, and more recently Estonia and Singapore. Despite political rhetoric, evidence-based policy development associated with this international benchmark measure is rarely, if ever, a neutral enterprise that is guided by the best available evidence. Indeed, political discourse and policy framing surrounding PISA often results in the selective use of results to justify contested policy reforms. Brief cases from Japan, Sweden, and Canada illustrate how national policies have been adopted that are not grounded, and may even run counter, to research findings. The discussion examines the politicization of PISA and its symbolic role in adding legitimacy to education reform agendas. Collectively, the analysis offers an alternative perspective to the popular notion that PISA guides evidence-based decision-making.

Scholars have long questioned the impact of teacher education programmes. Persistent claims are that pre-service teachers have fixed ideas about pedagogy when they enter training and that they become enculturated once in the profession. Within physical education (PE), similar concerns have been raised with respect to ball games. Research suggests that pre-service PE teachers typically have substantial experience of ball sports and find it difficult to implement non-traditional ball games pedagogies when they enter schools. Against this background, the aim of the study is to explore how pre-service teachers recontextualise ball games as pedagogic discourse in their transitions from university to school placement. Bernstein's pedagogic device and pedagogic discourse are employed as the theoretical framework. The investigation focuses on a Swedish PETE programme and the participants are six pre-service teachers. The empirical material consists of written assessments, observations of the pre-service teachers' lessons during school placements, and individual interviews. Findings suggest that the pedagogic discourse of ball games at the university was aligned with course learning outcomes and included the need to communicate goals, adapt and modify teaching, and combine different approaches. The pedagogic discourse at school placement involved traditional ball games, minimal curriculum references, progression in two or three lessons, and inclusive, enjoyable lessons. Factors that regulated the discourse were: familiarity with the pupils; the conceptualizing of inclusive teaching; norms regarding ball games in PE; expectations of the pre-service teachers; and the framing of ball games education in PETE. Recontextualising rules highlight challenges in transitions related to ball games.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the motivations that key policy documents have put forward as justifications for Sweden's mother-tongue instruction in immigrant and historical minority languages as a multicultural policy that has endured for nearly half a century. The diachronic development of these motivations is analysed in four periods and interpreted with the help of Ruiz's (1984) orientations in language planning. The corpus consists of 26 key policy documents making up the coordinative discourse among policy actors. Based on an innovative mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the motivations are presented in a three-tiered taxonomy consisting of motivational units, themes and language-planning orientations. The results point to both continuity and change in how mother-tongue instruction has been justified over time. Confirming previous research, the results show that the language-as-resource orientation has played a central role in justifying both the establishment and the maintenance of mother-tongue instruction in Sweden and that language as right complemented this orientation. Furthermore, the study illustrates that the language-as-problem orientation need not always be detrimental to bilingualism and minority-language maintenance. Contrary to some claims in the literature, it is argued that language as extrinsic resource is not necessarily underpinned by neoliberalism, as there are also social liberal and conservative inroads to this orientation. The paper concludes that although the language-as-resource orientation plays an indispensable role in supporting bilingualism in education, not only the language-as-right orientation but also the language-as-problem orientation should not be neglected.

This article proposes and discusses a theoretical framework that combines elements from critical policy sociology and discourse theory to study enactments of policy for research-based music teaching in three Swedish policy contexts. Sweden, being the first country to incorporate legal demands for research-based education into its Education Act in 2010, provides an intriguing case study for the professionalisation and legitimisation of music teachers through academisation processes. The law revision was largely instigated by the policy pressure to address Sweden's decline in international educational quality rankings. Thus, subsequent policy efforts recurrently echo governmental ambitions to restore Sweden's former status as a renowned international knowledge economy. In the suggested framework, policy is defined and analysed in multiple forms, that is, as texts, discourses, practices, and problematisations. The framework also explores a combination of discursive psychology and policy theory to analyse rhetorical negotiations of 'spoken policy texts' among music teacher colleagues. It is hoped that the proposed framework can contribute to future studies on the effects of policy on music teachers and music education.

Background: Scholars have suggested that students' views of what is important for them to know as Physical Education (PE) teachers are a result of what is assessed in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE). Thus, there is a risk that students will reproduce content areas such as sports and assess sport-techniques without much critical consideration. In this study, however, the risk of reproducing what is prioritised in PETE is seen as an opportunity regarding the potential reproduction of other content areas than sports. Based on the regulative principles of PE and PETE that privilege sport skills and hinder creative movement learning, we focus on a content area in PETE that provides opportunities for students to engage in creative collaboration and examine how this content area is realised in school PE. Hence, we have chosen to explore 'Movement Composition', a content area which has a long tradition at one of the PETE universities in Sweden. Based on an overarching interest in whether and how PETE matters, this exploratory study focuses on the potential transferability of Movement Composition as a particular content area in the transition from PETE to PE. Purpose and research question: The purpose of this study is to explore Movement Composition as a content area undergoing the transition from PETE to school PE. The research question is: How is the pedagogic discourse of Movement Composition constructed, recontextualised and realised in the transition from PETE to school PE? Methods: Data was generated through an interview with one of the initiators of Movement Composition. Stimulated Recall interviews and Zoom interviews were also conducted with a group of five PETE students and three experienced PE teachers. In addition, documents such as the study guide, course literature, and written assignments associated with Movement Composition in the PETE programme were included in the empirical material. In the analysis, the combination of Bernstein's pedagogic device and the Swedish didactics of PE research tradition was used to identify the pedagogic discourse of Movement Composition in the transition from PETE to school PE. Findings: The findings show how the pedagogic discourse of Movement Composition as a content area is "constructed," "recontextualised" and "realised" in the transition from PETE to school PE. The construction of Movement Composition as a pedagogic discourse in PETE is about how the content area (the "what") is selected and organised for pedagogical purposes. The recontextualisation of Movement Composition is about how the pedagogic discourse is interpreted and translated in relation to the PE syllabus. The realisation of Movement Composition involves how the content area in PETE is implemented in PE practice. Conclusions: This exploratory study has shown that what is articulated as a relevant content area and the way it is taught, learned, and assessed in PETE in many regards survives the transition to school PE. The transition from PETE to school PE does not only involve reproduction of sports and sport-techniques from one context to another. PETE also contributes to the use of creative, collaborative, and student-centred learning tasks in school PE.

How could the technicality arising from eleven percent of students being excluded from a PISA test in Sweden trigger a polarized debate followed by investigations by both the OECD and national authorities? This question is explored in the study by drawing on discursive institutionalism, especially the concept of normative background ideas, communicative discourse, and the "power in ideas". Communicative discourses can be referred to as discourses explained by logics of position and logics of ideas. The normative background ideas are related to a critique or acceptance of receiving a high number of immigrants during a short period of time a few years before the 2018 PISA test was conducted. The concluding reflection poses the questions of at what point it is reasonable for newly arrived students to participate in the PISA test and whether the PISA test really measures the quality of the school system, as suggested by the OECD.

During the last few years, the Swedish preschool curriculum has undergone several changes. Among those changes is the introduction of the concept of teaching as a goal-oriented activity. Preschool teachers have been given a specific responsibility for leading the teaching in preschool. This study aims to explore how preschool teachers' didactical leadership can be understood in relation to the didactical questions expressed during collegial meetings. The empirical data consist of audio recordings of 17 meetings. The participants were five qualified preschool teachers, a pre-service preschool teacher and an unqualified preschool teacher. The audio recordings were transcribed and analysed using some of the key concepts of Bernstein's theory of pedagogical practice. The results show that preschool teachers' didactical leadership is established in a pedagogical discourse where children's social development and learning is at the foreground while content knowledge is often implicit. Furthermore, the child as a guide is expressed as a core idea, whilst preschool teachers position themselves mostly in the background. The results of the study point to a didactical leadership embedded in an invisible pedagogy.

In this article, we examine how policymakers from three Nordic countries, Finland, Iceland and Sweden, reflect on the future at 2 different points in time: just before the first PISA study (1998-1999) and more than 15 years later (2015-2017). The empirical data consist of interviews (N = 37) with national policymakers, collected in two comparative Nordic education policy research projects. As a result of this study, we identified three common themes according to which Nordic policymakers discussed the future: (a) school, work, and social equality in a changing society; (b) policies and practices of education governance; and (c) the future of the teaching profession and teacher education. Whereas these themes constitute a shared semantic basis for envisioning the future of Nordic education, contrasting policymakers' future reflections across time and space also reveals differences, contradictions and changes in ways of thinking about the future.

Exploring how the information flow of social studies textbook spreads is negotiated in teacher-led interaction, the concern of this study is the conscious and critical use of teaching material in diverse student groups. The study involved a teacher and her Grade 6 students in a school with many migrant language learners. The data was gathered by observations, field notes, voice recordings, and the collection of teaching materials. Using social semiotic theory of visual design, the analysis of the textbook used in instruction shows that the layout perpetuated a Western-centric view of a divided world, along with an individualistic and anthropocentric view of environmental sustainability. The oral interaction, highlighting different text elements, largely reinforced the meaning perspectives promoted in the textbook. However, on occasion, the students were positioned to take a more analytical stance. Implications for using knowledge about information flow in textbooks to promote critical literacy practices in teaching are discussed.

Although visual aids are widely considered a valuable source of scaffolding, the nature and active utilization of these aids in current science classrooms are not well understood. This qualitative study explores interaction in the teaching of concepts related to evolution, with a specific focus on a teacher's use of different visual support material. Based on a classroom study in a linguistically diverse Grade 4 classroom, we employed the perspective of discourse-bridging interaction to develop three broad categories of interactional examples, which we related to three kinds of visual support material used in the instruction: generic visual support images, naturalistic images, and disciplinary images showing examples of natural selection. The findings show that the interaction moved in and out of science discourse in a way that reflected the images' properties. A generic visual support image illustrated the concept of "adaption" as puzzle pieces fitting together, which promoted everyday and anthropomorphic examples of animals and people striving to fit in. When the teacher used naturalistic images, the discourse shifted between a range of perspectives, while visual aids and whiteboard drawings showing the classic examples of giraffes evolving (a disciplinary image) were employed to clarify the notion of natural selection. We discuss the study's implications for using visual support material in a planned way that supports disciplinary understanding.

In Sweden, the Compulsory School for Students with Intellectual Disabilites (CSSID) is currently experiencing political change, as this type of school is being renamed and is undergoing organisational changes. The inclusion of children with intellectual disabilities (ID) in schooling, and in general society, has been challenged and debated for decades; such debates are at the heart of some of these changes. In this study, we have systematically investigated the policy work (e.g. government reports and statements) preceding and governing the changes. Hence, the purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge on how policy documents inscribe meaning to the inclusion of children with ID. Results show that discourses on inclusion are connected to neoliberal values and practices, such as assessment, global comparison, and accountability. It has been suggested that this may have a profound and long-term effect on how children with ID are fabricated and hence, how the child with ID and their education can be understood in terms of being included in the idea of 'all students' in policy, and in addition, in practice.

Distance education has received a lot of attention in contemporary policy as something that makes it possible for more students to participate, but also involves a certain set of challenges. When it comes to distance education, Swedish municipal adult education (MAE) stands out with its long history of flexible education, often provided on distance. Applying Bacchi's poststructural WPR approach, the aim of this study was to scrutinise how distance education is construed, and the discursive effects of this, in comments by MAE school leaders and staff during a quality audit. The analysis shows that it becomes difficult to question or think differently about distance education within the flexibility discourse in adult education. Moreover, the blame for students' lack of goal attainment and increased dropouts seems to be put on external providers, municipalities, and the students rather than on the way that the adult education system is organised or the demands around flexibility in adult education policy. What seems to be left out is a discussion about the pedagogical and didactical implications of distance education.

Against the backdrop of global convergences in education reforms, a growing focus on teacher competences has emerged in European policy discourses about teacher professionalism and professional learning and development that has driven an expanding international and national CPD market involving both state and private operators. Developments in Sweden are an example, and the aim of this article is to identify and explore the discourses on teacher professional learning that seem to proliferate on this newly emerged and expanding market and their connections with and consequences for teacher professionalism. Two sets of data have fed the analysis. These are (a) CPD invoices and (b) interviews with school principals. The analysis indicates that the dominant discourses discursively shape teacher professionalism in relation to ideas about teachers as learners as collegial consumers of knowledge. Policy recommendations about peer learning become a subordinated element of a dominant discourse that prioritises and privileges the agency of knowledge producers, such as consultancies, compared to other actors as intermediaries. Commodification is a new key intermediary process in professional learning for teacher professional development.

This study adopts a conversation analytic approach to present a close analysis of the sequential organisation of a parent-child homework activity in a Swedish-English bi-national family. Families formed within migration contexts are increasingly common in an ever-globalised world, but current research has not fully investigated how parent-child homework practices are affected by parents who possess differing levels of expertise in the societal language. This article examines a number of episodes where the progressivity of a homework activity is halted due to language-related epistemic issues. More specifically, these halts in progressivity are caused due to the homework tasks being written in Swedish in combination with the English mother's lack of language expertise in Swedish. The episodes exemplify how these epistemic deadlocks are resolved through the mobilisation of a more knowledgeable party, the Swedish father, who orients to translation as a trouble resolution tool which facilitates epistemic progression and the progressivity of the homework activity.

In which ways do curricula recognize existential questions of compulsory school students, and what direction is given regarding how to address them? By asking these two questions, this study analyses syllabi for the school subject of religion education and its equivalents in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and in the two German regions of Bavaria and Berlin-Brandenburg. The study forms part of a research project based in Sweden where, in 1969, the theme of 'livsfrågor'--translated here as 'existential questions'--was introduced into the curriculum. A qualitative content analysis of the use of the word 'question' in the respective languages is the basis for the comparative study of the current syllabi. The Berlin-Brandenburg and Danish syllabi recognize and, in integrated ways, address students' questions, while the other syllabi do so considerably less. Significant variations in the relationship between the child and the curriculum are exemplified. The results of the study raise both religion educational and general didactic questions of how existential dimensions and subjectification (cf. Biesta in World-centred education, Routledge, 2022) can find their expression in curricula. Additionally, the question is addressed of whether students' questions can be understood as crucial in their orientation in the world and responded to responsibly, for example in a "Bildung" context.

In this article, we address the questions: How is the purpose of higher education constructed within policy texts from the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), England and Sweden? How does this position students in making the transition from Bachelor to Masters? We do this through analysis of two recent policy documents from each of the EHEA, England and Sweden, identifying key discourses including the meanings, oppositions, contradictions and logics that structure the texts. We look at what aspects of 'global policyspeak' are common across them, what are their particularities and how these are shaped by distinct histories. We argue that all the texts represent neoliberal policies in sharing an economic rationale for higher education and in individualising the benefits of university education. Students are, in their transition from Bachelor to Masters, expected to maximise their employability and their ability to contribute to the national and global knowledge economy. However, there are also differences between the policy documents, tensions within them and alternative discourses, such as a focus on dialogue and academic freedom that challenge the reduction of higher education to the economic.

The doctoral defence is the oral examination of the doctoral thesis. While it is a major milestone for doctoral candidates, this event is often shrouded in mystery. In this article, I explore the doctoral defence from an international perspective. I have studied the format of the defence based on written testimonies as well as the literature on this topic. From this analysis, I distinguish four main elements of the defence format: (1) timing of the defence with respect to thesis publication, (2) number of steps in the defence, (3) public or private defence, and (4) the timeline of the defence itself. I then use these building blocks of the doctoral defence format to discuss differences and similarities between the formats, and finally to categorize defence formats used internationally by analysing the format of 26 countries, 24 of which use an oral defence format. The result is a deeper understanding of the defence format, which is valuable for candidates, committee members, supervisors, and administrators, and which can also serve the current discussions within the European Union on a standard format for the doctoral defence. Ultimately, understanding the defence format removes the mystery surrounding the defence.

This article focuses on Swedish students' understanding of study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. Although about a quarter of all Swedish teenagers visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum each year, with the majority visiting as students as part of their school curriculum, this study is the first to examine these study trips from a student perspective. By applying critical discourse analysis, this article analyses 49 students' reflections, written before, during, and after two study trips. The results suggest that the study trips' discursive practice, which constitutes and is constituted by the study trips' social practice, is regulated by a discursive order termed "democratic pilgrimage." In addition, this article reveals two didactic deviations from previous research on study trips: the students' positive feelings in relation to the Polish environment and the balance between victim and perpetrator perspectives. The latter creates tension within the students and is solved via articulations of democratic values.

This study highlights and discusses power aspects within discourses discerned in articulations on triadic mentoring in degree projects in teacher education in Sweden. Each mentoring triad consisted of a pre-service teacher, a professional teacher acting as co-mentor, and a university mentor. As teacher education is to be based on a scientific foundation and proven experience, a symmetrical and complementary approach was to be implemented. Data from interviews, logbooks, and observations of mentoring were analysed discursively using CDA. Two main discourses were distinguished: "The hegemony of science," and "A gateway to the profession and science: The potential third space." The study shows that the academic paradigm tends to overshadow the symmetrical and complementary approach, but that the third space, the metaphorical meeting outside of the participants' comfort zone, potentially balances up the mentoring triads through the pre-service teachers' ownership of the process.

This article explores how preschool teachers, over time, collectively manage teaching as a new part of their mission. The study's empirical data consist of two related but temporally separated sets of data containing collegial discussions among preschool teachers; talks during a development process and group interviews with the same preschool teachers six months later. Through a theory-driven analysis, using the theoretical concept of teacher agency, different ways of achieving teacher agency are brought into light. When tensions appear, the preschool teachers achieve teacher agency by using professional core values in order to make adjustments, additions or changes to school policy. These professional core values consist of for example, sensitivity to the interests and needs of children, the ambition to perform a pedagogical practice for the greater good of children and the professional tradition of preschool teachers and child minders working together in teams.

Educational discourse is becoming increasingly globalized. This trend is particularly pronounced in the area of assessment, where notions of accountability, comparability, and competition have become prevalent in many countries. Scholars have critiqued this trend. They contend that global assessment discourse provides educators with decontextualized terms and concepts for teaching, which have little connection to the lives of learners. The specific purpose of the paper is to critically consider the encounter between global PE assessment discourse and local educational traditions. The International Association for Physical Education in Higher Education (AIESEP) position statement on physical education assessment is taken as a case of global assessment discourse and is considered in relation to Swedish physical education traditions. Robertson's [(1995). Time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity. In M. Featherstone, S. Lash, & R. Robertson (Eds.), "Global modernities." Sage] notion of glocalization is employed as a theoretical perspective. We begin our consideration by outlining general tenets of the position statement and of Swedish physical education. We then examine areas of synergy and tension. This examination is structured according to six issues: (1) rationales for assessment; (2) underlying views of learning; (3) teachers' role in teaching and assessment; (4) positioning of students; (5) understandings of subject content, and; (6) the ways in which contextual conditions are framed. Using a glocalization perspective, we raise three issues that have a strong bearing on the encounter between global discourse and local educational traditions and which provide insights into how assessment discourse within PE can be understood. These issues concern: (1) the risk of local educational traditions being appropriated by global assessment discourse; (2) the relation between assessment homogeneity and local diversity; and (3) meaningful PE practices. The paper is concluded with general reflections concerning implications for research and practice.

Background: Verbal participation in the classroom is generally considered to contribute to positive student engagement and learning outcomes. Students are often required to demonstrate their learning in class by, for example, raising their hands and answering questions. However, there are students who remain quiet in the classroom, and are not responsive to invitations to participate. As quietness and low levels of verbal participation in class are often perceived and positioned as problematic in many educational systems and settings, more needs to be understood about the notion of students' verbal participation and the implications for supporting all students' learning journeys through school. Purpose: The study sought to explore how students' verbal participation was constructed and positioned in the narratives of parent-teacher conferences. Method: A Swedish corpus of audio recordings and transcriptions of parent-teacher conferences with 24 students in years 5 and 6 (approximate student ages 10-12) across five schools was utilised as the basis for the investigation. Through an interactionally-oriented narrative approach, a collection of stories about verbal participation was identified. These stories were analysed using the concept of narrative positioning. Three stories from the collection were selected to demonstrate, in greater depth, aspects of how students' verbal participation was constructed and how discourses unfolded. Findings: The analysis demonstrated diversity in terms of how discourses were employed and how students were positioned in the narratives about verbal participation. Prevalent discourses drew on notions of learning, affect and assessment and were identified as pedagogical, psychological and performative discourses. Conclusions: The study highlights how verbal participation tends to be constructed as an individual undertaking, with the implication being that students are assigned individual responsibility for this. As students are usually encouraged to make the most of their verbal participation in class, the study gives rise to important and complex questions in terms of challenging assumptions about how best to support student learning, particularly in the case of students who remain quiet in the classroom.

In transnational policy, directives on how to improve "quality" through auditing flourish. However, more research is needed about how these quality audits affect school personnel in local contexts. This paper has scrutinised the discursive effects of how "quality" is construed in school personnel's comments during a quality audit conducted by the Swedish Schools Inspectorate. By drawing on Bacchi's (2009) WPR approach, such constructs were analysed and interrogated. The results indicate that "quality" is construed as an absence of "warning flags", and thus as compliance with standards. In effect, statements about quality seem to become problem-oriented. Moreover, "quality" is talked about as a responsibility, and in effect the concept becomes invisible. It is also suggested that "quality" is construed as something that both enables and obstructs different kinds of discussion and discernments. It silences what it is possible to say and calls into question the organisation of the adult education system.

We present an empirically based model for modeling the quality of pre-service teacher reflection. Conversations from twelve groups of a total of 47 pre-service teachers were video recorded and transcribed verbatim. First, we analyzed their conversations through practical epistemology analysis and an operationalization of Dewey's definition of reflection to identify the moments of reflection that appeared in the pre-service teachers' talk. Thereafter, we employed Dewey's reflective attitudes, responsibility, open-mindedness and whole-heartedness, with the aim of understanding their roles in moments of reflection and how they relate to the quality of reflection. Our results show that the reflective attitudes played different roles and based on these roles and on particular patterns of the attitudes in our data it was possible to use them for modeling the quality of the pre-service teachers' reflection. We suggest that presence of all of the attitudes corresponds to higher quality than absence of any of them. Moreover, identifying absence of one or more attitudes in PSTs' reflection makes it possible to explicitly talk about what aspects of the reflection that should be improved, and why. Our results contribute with a first tentative model which may support teacher educators work with the development of pre-service teachers' reflective practice.

This article deals with the personal epistemologies developed by teachers who undergo academic continuing education on an advanced level at a time when conflicting discourses form the basis of teaching in today's school, i.e. academisation on one hand and measurability and accountability in the name of New Public Management on the other. To give the interviewed teachers in this study an opportunity to clarify and become more aware of their epistemologies and to assist in getting started, we initially presented concepts developed in an academic discourse: Hofer's account of different, interrelated dimensions of 'personal epistemologies', clustered in two areas: the "nature of knowledge," and the "nature or process of knowing." As a result, we interpret the students' epistemological beliefs through a professional perspective, i.e. as justification of the profession's academisation. In their unhesitating confident trust in practitioners' knowledge, as mainly acquired from experience in the field, they express a vocational habitus. One may thus assume that practitioners possess proven experiences, i.e. experience-based knowledge that they have acquired and that should be recognised and added to the knowledge base of the field in an academic and vertical discourse.

In vocational education, the learning content is often considered as concrete and specific, and the vocational learning involves physical work and interactions between participants and artefacts. Furthermore, one teacher has the overall responsibility for several students during classes in the vocational workshop at school, which means that the teacher has limited time for every single student and that the few minutes they meet become very important. However, the documented knowledge about how vocational learning is constituted in the vocational classroom and what learning content is focused on in the interaction between teachers and students is very sparse. In this study, we focus on how the enacted object of learning and its critical aspects are made relevant, when a student and teacher in a plumbing workshop session negotiate the conducting of a task in Swedish vocational education. This will be done by using CAVTA (Conversation Analysis and Variation Theory Approach) to make a close and detailed analysis of video recordings of the interaction between the student and teacher when a task is introduced in the workshop session. The results show a complex process, where the teacher alternates between parts and wholeness, using several semiotic resources at hand when highlighting the learning content.

While writing is undeniably an essential part of higher education, in music education, musical performance skills form the core of assessing students' results. However, higher music education is experiencing growing demands on research activities parallel to heightened requirements on music performance students' abilities to formulate themselves around their main field of study. This paper turns to theses as discursive acts embedded in higher music education. The present study investigates how master theses construct educational ideals by analysing written components of successfully completed theses within music performance programmes in Sweden. The paper shows that the theses treat a variety of subjects which are justified from five different perspectives: "Improve," "Succeed," "Share," "Acclaim" or to "Discover." Two diametrically opposed kinds of purpose statements are revealed; they appear as either impersonal and distanced or intimate and personal. Influences of traditional academic writing manifest themselves while conservatory ideals around craft, individualism and hierarchies are reproduced. It is argued that the self-exploratory approach -- which is a characteristic feature on an overall level -- excludes collective knowledge building as well as social perspectives on art and music.

This study explores the discourse about health promotion and the role of the teacher in Swedish upper secondary schools. The material consists of student health plans from schools and local authorities that were analysed using discourse analysis. The results show that health promotion is largely an empty or floating signifier. The teacher is mainly in discursive shadow. When the teacher is in discursive light, their role in health promotion is connected to ordinary teacher tasks. Schools can set out what health promotion entails to a greater extent and clarify the role of the teacher.

In studies of classroom discourse in early childhood education and care (ECEC), a dominance of the communicative pattern of initiation, response, follow-up (IRF) is shown, and a need of knowledge about extensive dialogue for meaning making is argued. In the present study, communication between children and teacher(s) in play is consider as a form educational discourse mediating language learning. The study, informed by a sociocultural perspective aims to contribute to the knowledge of pattern of establishing a pedagogical dialogue in play activities. What characterizes the communication establishing a joint play in which children come to participate in extensive dialogues is clarified through reanalyzing video-documented data from a project concerning play, learning and teaching in ECEC. The analysis implies a pattern of ICE: children initiating a play (I)--a teacher challenging the initiative (C)--children expanding the content (E). The function of challenging is understood as the critical contribution for opening for and expanding the children's verbal participation. A conclusion of changing the follow-up from evaluating to expanding in a pedagogical dialogue is recommended to study further in different contexts.

The article aims to depict the political framing of three grading reforms in Swedish compulsory school, in terms of the political problem they are supposed to solve and what kind of attention is given to the lowest performing pupils. Discourse analysis is employed, focusing on statement producers. The empirical material consists of policy documents from the late 1930s to 2010. The analyses show that three cases of the same type of policy change, a new grading system, rely on very different problem representations. The changes were launched as an equality tool, an accountability measure and a remedy for declining results, respectively. The discourse about the least successful pupils differs. Reasonable demands and a ranking scale without a failing grade characterize the introduction of a norm-referenced system; a first criterion-referenced system rests on a belief that virtually all pupils will meet the formulated levels for passing, an expectation not met, and a changed focus behind the second criterion-referenced system normalizes that some pupils will fail compulsory school. The article also illustrates the merits of studying educational policy change through the theoretical lens of problem representations and directs attention to how reforms can have discursive effects as well as unintended side effects that matter substantially for some people.

International mobility has caused a need for language education where adults can learn the language(s) used in their new country. In Sweden, the language programme SFI (Swedish for immigrants) provides basic second language education for adult immigrants. For those learners who are not yet functionally literate, basic literacy education is included. This article aims to explore the concept translanguaging pedagogy in relation to the articulated and embodied language norms of one SFI teacher. The empirical data, produced by ethnographic methodology, consists of classroom observations and semi-structural interviews. The method of analysis comprises a set of sociolinguistic questions, three categories of language norms (double monolingualism, integrated bilingualism and polylingualism) and discourse analysis, centering on deictics, indexical signs and reported speech. Findings show that although the teacher does engage in translanguaging practices, her teaching practices cannot be referred to as translanguaging pedagogy because she has made no deliberate decision to include the students' full linguistic repertoires and there are contradictions both within and between her articulated and embodied language norms. It is concluded that it is crucial for educational development in contexts characterised by mobility that teachers in linguistically heterogeneous classrooms increase their awareness of their language norms and the students' linguistic resources.

This study applies multimodal conversation analysis to examine how pupils of L2 English in Sweden make use of online translation tools (OTTs), i.e. bilingual dictionaries and Google Translate, in a range of digital collaborative writing tasks. The collection of sequences where pupils use OTTs comes from 31 hours of video-recorded data from four Swedish upper-secondary schools. In contrast to previous research on OTTs, this multimodal micro-analytic study examines the process of using OTTs and links it to the written product, by analysing actions on the screen accompanied by embodied pupil interaction. Thus the analyses track: (1) how and when pupils deploy OTTs, (2) whether the tools help them to resolve lexical gaps and other lexical issues and (3) what problems arise in the process. The study also discusses what help can be offered to overcome the encountered difficulties of using OTTs.

Sweden aspires to become 'the best in the world at utilizing the opportunities of digitalization' and is internationally recognized for its digital performance. Education has been identified as instrumental for the digital transformation of Swedish society, and efforts are made to accelerate the digitalization of the educational system. As governments' demands for digitalization get increasingly loud and persuasive, it is important to critically explore what values and ideologies are embedded in the argumentation. In this study, we use Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the Swedish Digitalization Commission's report 'For digitalization with the times'. Our results demonstrate that the policy argumentation, despite being anchored in traditional Swedish welfare values, is characterized by a coherent and reductionist neoliberal framing of education. Students are represented as self-managing entrepreneurial citizens with a moral obligation to renew their human capital and adapt to market demands, while the educational system is constructed as a flexible, largely automated, infrastructure for 'life-long learning', in which teaching is reduced to 'facilitating'. We suggest that such discourses around education in Swedish policy rest upon three preconditions: digitalization as an "interconnective policy object," Swedish digitalization policy making as "soft governance," and the Swedish welfare model as susceptible to "discursive drift."

This article explores how female university students' abilities to present themselves as 'authentic' engineers are imbricated with discursive constructions of gender and gender equality. The empirical data comes from interviews and video diaries collected with three female engineering students. The analysis demonstrates the power of the Swedish gender equality discourse to inform the students' talk as they negotiate their gendered identities to become intelligible as engineering students and engineers. We suggest that gender equality is used as a resource in the repertoires, but we also demonstrate that this discourse becomes a dilemma in that it limits possibilities for gender performances to go beyond old patterns. Despite this, the article still shows three unique ways of negotiating gender and other social categories in different situations connected to university learning and participation in internships.

This study investigates how shared understanding is established during a rarely researched instructional and interactional context, namely teacher-student interactions during between-desk instructions (BDIs). Specifically, the authors focus on instructional interactions initiated by students during project-based language teaching in an upper-secondary Swedish classroom and probe into how students' formulations of understanding of a teacher's prior responses shape the subsequent interactional trajectories. Their conversation analytic investigation reveals that the teacher produces either confirming or disconfirming actions following students' formulations of understanding. These response types accomplish two distinct forms of interactional work: (a) when the teacher confirms the students' formulations, she expands the sequence with instruction-related elaborations; and (b) when the teacher does not confirm the formulations, she accounts for that, prompting students to reformulate their understanding. Overall, this study contributes to the body of research on BDIs as a recurring yet under-investigated lesson practice during project work.

The background of this article is an interest in analysing how assessment of professional skills is conducted in higher education contexts, drawing on video data from a course on maritime navigation. The empirical study focuses on a) how students working in a bridge simulator are able to display their knowledge about how to calculate the relation between rate of turn, turn rate and speed when navigating, and b) how their performance is evaluated. The results show that the dynamics of the assessment situation and the interaction between the student and the assessor are decisive in how well students manage the task. When analysing assessment of a professional skill as a concrete practice, knowledge emerges through joint work and cannot be ascribed to the student only. At one level, this may be seen as a threat to the validity of the testing situation, but from a different perspective, the display of knowledge-in-action is always responsive to what happens in the exercise of a professional skill.

The study aimed to disentangle the influence of information status and referential form on the distribution of gestures in sustained discourse. Previous research shows that new and less accessible rather than old and more accessible information, expressed by rich rather than lean referential forms, is more likely to be accompanied by gestures. However, earlier studies have drawn on correlational results. This study probes the relationship between information status and gesture production experimentally. Participants retold stories referring to discourse entities as normal (Control), using only lexical noun phrases (NOUN condition), or only pronouns (PRONOUN condition). The results from the experimental conditions showed that speakers tend to produce gestures with reintroduced rather than maintained referents regardless of referential form. The findings suggest a strong and direct relationship between information status and gesture production when referential forms are controlled for, lending further support to a view of speech and gesture as an integrated system.

When telling a story, a speaker needs to refer to story characters using appropriate expressions, which requires a mental model of the discourse. We hypothesize that, compared to those of adults, children's discourse models are based more on factors that are less cognitively demanding, such as animacy, and as they grow older, discourse factors such as givenness will start to play a larger role. To test this, we conducted a longitudinal study of referring expression use in elicited narratives. Swedish-speaking children (n = 17) were tested three times between age 4 and 7 and compared to adults (n = 20). The results show that children, like adults, take into account if, when and how a character has been mentioned earlier when referring, but that they rely more on animacy than adults. These results indicate that the various cues for referential choices are in place in preschool children's discourse models, but are weighted differently than in adults.

This contribution explores how subject positions and perspectives are negotiated in the discursive practices of teaching social studies. The study involved a teacher and a group of second-language learners in Grade 6, the data being gathered by observations, voice recordings, and collection of teaching materials throughout seven weeks. The analysis, drawing upon discourse theory and sociological theories of education, is conducted from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis. The result, highlighting a curriculum area about living conditions, shows how Western-centric beliefs about a divided world were perpetuated both during introductory activities and in the searching for information about different countries. This mainstream meaning perspective was also sustained when the teacher modelled ways of using language for expressing content knowledge. Throughout, the migrant language learners were positioned as privileged Swedish citizens. Implications for shaping discursive practices of teaching in ways which builds on students' diverse knowledges and experiences are discussed.

Globally, there has been increasing adaptation of curricula frameworks in early childhood education, providing overarching principles of practice rather than subject specific templates for teaching and learning. While such a movement is to be commended as supporting a socio-cultural approach in meeting each child's unique social and cultural needs, the implementation of frameworks is not straightforward (Bateman 2022). By applying an ethnomethodological approach to child--teacher interactions, this article explores how early childhood curricula frameworks in Sweden and New Zealand are implemented in everyday talk-in-interaction between children and teachers. We use an ethnomethodological (EM) approach (Garfinkel 2002) and conversation analysis (CA) (Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson 1974) approach (EMCA) to situate language as context. This approach offers a move away from the broader perspective of context being a static environmental space, to context as co-constructed by the participants through their immediate interactions (Goodwin and Duranti 1992). Contextual resources involve the concrete social situations, background cultural knowledge, language, activity and situation types, participants' knowledge about topics talked about and about each other and their interactional biographies (Linell 2009, 17).

This study explores the instruction of "equestrian feel" as an interactional accomplishment. Equestrian feel is an embodied knowledge encompassing riders' ability to feel the horse's actions and to act appropriately. Building on ethnomethodological and conversation analytic analyses of video-recordings of riding lessons, we explore how equestrian feel is instructed in interaction between riding teachers and students. The results show how teachers use verbal resources, e.g., metaphors, to describe embodied feel, as well as perceptual resources that are made relevant by orienting to the horse's body as a semiotic field. Moreover, the teachers produce online instructions in the shape of directives, metaphorical vocal descriptions, and embodied demonstrations, thus molding the equipage by bringing attention to different aspects that together shape an embodied experience. In all, the study sheds light on communicative practices during riding lessons and on the interactional work involved in the art of instructing embodied knowledge.

As a result of international neoliberal and neoconservative trends, the status of the arts has been devalued in secondary school curricula. This paper examines why the arts are not considered core educational knowledge in pedagogic discourse arising from the New Right policy agenda. In a case study analysis of Swedish educational policy debates, curriculum codes and their underlying principles of recontextualization are weighed as they bear on the arts. Discursive positionings and socio-political networking between political standpoints and stakeholders have been analysed based on official Swedish documents associated with the legislative process of curriculum revision. Our findings show how justifications of arts education clash with coding orientations arising from a strong classification between what is presumed to be valuable and non-valuable knowledge, which in turn is due to an underlying principle of visibility. While advocates argue that artistic practices promote transversal competences and have intangible benefits, this same argument unwittingly strengthens the non-autonomous status of the arts. The illegitimacy of the arts also stems from the belief that they are only marginally related to visible market values. Taken together, the arts are not considered core knowledge because of their perceived relative unimportance for higher academic learning or vocational competence.

In this article, we explore the processes of transfer and translation of education policy in a study focusing on the relationship between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Sweden. The purpose of the study is to investigate how selective borrowing occurs both in terms of references to different types of knowledge sources underpinning the arguments and shared discourse formations. The data were obtained from two policy reports: an OECD review report of the Swedish school system and a Swedish follow-up report proposing actual school reforms. The method was twofold: first, mapping, categorizing, and counting all the textual references in the two documents; second, critically analyzing the discourses emerging in the two policy texts. The results show that international references play a significant role in substantiating arguments for Swedish education policy. Both policy texts share a policy discourse characterized by suspiciousness toward the professionalism exercised by teachers and local education authorities.

This article explores how young people in Sweden talk about and understand violence, with a particular emphasis on how violence, gender, space and time are co-constructed in this discourse. We found that young people display an ambivalent attitude to violence, reinforcing several contradictory discourses of violence. Young people adopt various understandings that "place" violence differently in time (ongoing vs. past) and space (distant/absent vs. close/present). They discursively construct the school as a non-violent space while considering digital spaces to be violent. Yet, they still find that violence occurs at different places and times at school. These 'discursive manoeuvres' highlight how views on violence that territorialises and re-territorialises places as being 'safe' or 'unsafe' is part of the gendered spatial regulation of young people's lives. By specifically analysing time and space in young people's discourse on violence, this article contributes to research on their perspectives on gendered violence.

The education system is still important for establishing and maintaining democracy in society. In relation to this, it is reasonable to suggest that teachers' different interpretations of their mission to teach for democracy will influence their teaching practices. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on student teachers' task perceptions as a dimension of their professional role to teach for democracy in school. An analysis of Swedish student teachers' course texts written as an assignment during a course focusing on democracy is conducted using critical discourse analysis as an analytical tool. The task perceptions are described according to two main discourses: as narrow and broad approaches to teaching for democracy. These two approaches are further analyzed in terms of two corresponding strategies for teacher professionalism: outside-in professionalism and inside-out professionalism. The result partly confirms earlier studies of student teachers, where narrow approaches to democracy have been found to be most common.

Due to the emergence of new forms of preschools and parents' increased freedom of choice regarding early childhood education, more research on parental preschool preferences is needed. Although preschool offers a seedbed for the development of knowledge and competencies, this development matures through interaction with parents. Therefore, parental expectations and wishes are very likely to affect children's learning. The mobile preschool is a new form of educational practice in Sweden where children travel by bus to different places for play and learning. This form of preschool can potentially lay a foundation for social and ecological sustainability because children learn to meet diverse people, explore different places, and spend time in nature. We interviewed 15 parents of children in a mobile preschool, most from a middle-class background. The main aim was to explore how these parents explain their choice of this type of preschool. Another aim was to identify desirable competencies that the parents think their children will achieve through the mobile preschool. Six themes related to preschool choice were identified; of these themes, "being out in nature" and "enlarging the children's reality" were the most prominent. Two clusters of competencies were distinguished: care- and cooperation-oriented competencies, and freedom- and independence-oriented competencies. After analyzing these results in relation to two current educational discourses--education for sustainable development and entrepreneurship in a neoliberal society--we show how parents participate in reproducing these discourses. These findings add novel and important knowledge to the field of early childhood educational practices concerning parental choice and preferences.

The present article focuses on teaching and learning about the Holocaust in Sweden, conducted as study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. Although about a quarter of Swedish teenagers visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum each year, this study is the first to examine these Swedish study trips. Since there are no centralised systems for arranging these study trips, this study regards dedicated teachers as the main stakeholders. By deploying critical discourse analysis of transcripts of nine in-depth interviews with teachers, the study terms the discursive order of the teachers' talk about the study trips "ritual democratic catharsis." The teachers' two main purposes are the use of the study trips as a vehicle for the social dynamics in the group to evolve in order to promote personal growth among the students, and the students' learning about democracy and human rights. Their overarching didactic strategy of focusing on the suffering of the victims is meant to evoke empathy among the students, but lacks an explanatory aim. The study critically points out the teachers' unreflected relationship to historiographic Holocaust content as a subject, making their teaching vulnerable to contemporary political influences, jeopardising the democratic purpose of these trips.

This article introduces the method of "podcast ethnography." The method encompasses three general stages: to "explore" a podcast from a particular social field, to "engage" with it through careful, ethnographic reflexivity and to "examine" the podcast by developing typologies and themes expedient for analysis. Podcast ethnography is beneficial due to its spatial and temporal flexibility; observing a podcast universe can be performed on the move and in parallel with other tasks. This advantage enables a much-needed breathing space for researchers inquiring vehement milieus, such as white radical nationalism. The article uses an example from this precise milieu in Sweden -- the podcast "Motgift" [Antidote] -- to illustrate and flesh out the potentials and challenges of applying the method's three stages. In so doing, the article argues for inclusion of podcast ethnography into the extended family of ethnographic methods.

In this article, we explore the pedagogies of (de)liberation promoted in the sports-based intervention Midnight Football (MF), carried out in a suburban and socio-economically disadvantaged residential area in Sweden. Based on interviews with coaches and managers and on-site observations, we examine how socio-pedagogical rationalities and technologies are articulated in discourse and assumed to operate within the intervention, and how certain ideals of conduct and social inclusion are represented in discourse. The analysis is guided by a Foucauldian perspective on a variety of forms of power. It displays how disciplinary forms of spatial and temporal diversion and dislocation of youth from sites of risk and danger to sites of order and football are formed within MF, where non-authoritative relations between coaches and youth can be facilitated, underpinned by a pastoral form of benign care and guidance. This, in turn, according to the rationality, enables pedagogies of sublime guidance and governing through deliberative and motivational dialogues, supporting youth to conduct themselves and, within the frames of football, choose the right track in life, away from gangs and crime. Making active and responsible choices means not only opportunities for individual deliberation, salvation and social inclusion, but moreover, security in and for the locality, community and society. The analysis illustrates how discipline, pastoral power and technologies of empowerment and of the self are intertwined and constitutive of the government promoted. Notably, dialogues between coaches and participants do not focus on the socio-economic inequalities or the socio-political context of segregation among the youth; instead, salvation becomes a question of the mindset of the youth, legitimizing a pre-given socio-economic and socio-political order of social exclusion. Still, there is unfulfilled potential for critical pedagogy and (de)liberative dialogues for articulating the conditions for participation in sport and in society on the terms of the participating youth.