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Since autumn 2020, boys in the fifth year of school (11-year-old students) in Sweden have been offered human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination for free. Drawing from individual interviews with 21 school nurses working in primary schools in one of Sweden's regions, the aim of this study was to explore nurses' strategies and experiences of informing students and their guardians about the new vaccination programme, HPV and sex. Drawing on feminist theories on respectability and heteronormativity, findings indicate that heteronormative understandings of sexual relations frame school nurses' narratives when informing students about HPV. The results also indicate that including boys in the vaccination programme has been fairly straightforward and when guardians hesitate or refuse to include their children in the vaccination programme, it is often girls' guardians who do so. School nurses' narratives suggest that guardians' main argument for not vaccinating their daughters is because they believe they are too young. These narratives are framed around an understanding of the 'respectable girl'. The results of our study highlight the importance of addressing equality, sexuality, sex and HPV as part of sexuality, consent and relations ("sexualitet, samtycke och relationer") education in Swedish schools.

Research has shown that peer victimization and bullying are common phenomena among pupils in different educational institutions, yet we know little about these issues in the educational context of the leisure-time centre. This study addresses leisure-time teachers' reflections on their work regarding peer victimization in the everyday practice of Swedish leisure-time centres. Methodologically, the study is based on written reflections from about a hundred teachers who have been participating in a continuing professional course. The results indicate that leisure-time teachers hold a quite unique professional position within the school organization due to their opportunities to work with pupils in various contexts during the day and their collaborations with other staff within the school organization. Yet the results also reveal a professional culture and material context where collaborations between different professionals are quite limited. The professional culture does not always support the leisure-time centre teachers' wish to have more opportunities to meet and discuss different issues with other staff members and to create a joint platform for collaboration and understanding about victimized pupils. It is hoped that this study will give professionals and policy makers new insights into how to make the leisure-time centre a safe and secure educational setting.

Studies worldwide indicate that sexual minority students often face different forms of bullying in everyday life at school, and young people growing up in communities with conservative values, such as in rural areas, are often in a particularly vulnerable position. Nonetheless, there is an absence of studies addressing the everyday lives of sexual minority students in rural schools. Drawing on interviews with students in the ninth grade of a rural lower secondary school in Sweden, the current study has investigated experiences of violence and harassment routinely directed at sexual minority students at school. The results indicate that the local gender regime is strongly framed by heteronormative values that position non-heterosexual students as the Other. Sexual minority students are exposed to homophobic name-calling on a daily basis, and threats and physical violence are also common. To fit in and to 'survive' in school, sexual minority students are forced to accept the homophobic name-calling and are sometimes also forced to physically fight back. This study concludes that it is important that schools address issues around violence directed towards non-heterosexual students, and that ways to create a more inclusive and safe school environment be identified.

In Sweden and other countries, children's everyday lives and educational opportunities depend on their living conditions and class backgrounds. The current study examined the manifestation of issues of social injustice and unequal childhoods in the daily practices of leisure-time centres in Sweden. The empirical data were derived from the written reflections of practitioners enrolled in a continuing education course. The results indicate that leisure-time centres play an important role by compensating for unequal childhoods and other inequalities in the society. The practitioners discussed the importance of the centres' maintaining supplies of clothing and equipment for children who lack these essentials for participation in outdoor activities. This compensation for unequal childhoods was also expressed through the provision of a free snack every afternoon and free meals during excursions.

This article provides a meta-analysis of what characterises existing ethnographic research on gender and class in the context of Nordic early childhood education. The encompasses research on education and gender or social class in the Nordic countries published in Nordic and non-Nordic scientific journals as well PhD theses published in the Nordic countries. The analysis suggests that even though Nordic countries have a reputation for being 'role model countries' in terms of equality and social justice, gender and especially social class have rarely been explicitly the focus of ethnographic research in the context of early childhood educational research. In terms of methodology, many of these studies make use of post-qualitative approaches to research, whereas fieldwork practices have been guided by the spirit of interactionism.

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 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.

During the first decades of the twenty-first century, adolescents' perceived stress has been reported to be an important factor in explaining the health problems among students in Swedish schools. Based on interviews with key professionals working in the student welfare team in three secondary schools, the present article aims to contribute new knowledge concerning how the school professionals describe and explain students' mental health with regard to gender and the kind of support the schools offer to vulnerable students. Norms connected to the "supergirl" and respectable girl framed the explanations for girls' health-related problems, whereas the explanations for boys' health-related problems tied to a theme of marginalised masculinities. The findings lead to recommendations concerning the need to recognise and problematise students' mental health, as well as the need for more preventive work on student welfare issues, in schools and in other societal institutions.

Today, an increasing number of students are suffering from different kinds of mental health problems. Still, we know little about how professionals in secondary school and other professionals in society handle and collaborate around these issues. The findings from the present study make an important contribution to the research field regarding professionals' efforts to meet the needs of vulnerable students. The present study investigates how school professionals in two Swedish urban schools and the local police describe their experiences with meeting the needs of students who are suffering from mental health problems and drug use. The study draws on semi-structured interviews with the professionals and observations of the schools' student welfare team meetings. The findings reveal that self-medication, through use of pills or drugs (or both), has become quite common among adolescents, who see it as a way to 'solve their mental health problems.' Although students' wellbeing and school safety were reported to be major concerns, the professionals' collaborations were sometimes obstacles. Issues connected to the complexity of adolescents' mental health not only highlight the importance of collaboration between schools and other societal institutions, but also indicate the necessary resources for such collaboration.

Research relating to children's views on their childhood and everyday activities, as well as comparative studies around this topic, is still lacking. From this background, the current study hopes to contribute new knowledge to this field of research. This study is a comparative study exploring how children aged 6-7 years experience their everyday lives and free time in Sweden and the United States. Methodologically, children's experience of their childhood is central to the study. This study will provide new insights into how children in Sweden and the United States experience their daily lives. The analysis shows that the children's stories are framed from two main discourses: regulated free time and stress. From a methodological perspective, but also from a wider societal perspective, this raises questions about taking children's voices into account.

In society today, there is a tendency towards over-diagnosing. This tendency in society at large seems to reflect the normalization of a diagnostic culture. Some researchers have claimed that this normalization could be defined as the 'medicalization of childhood'. There would seem to be a need for a sociocultural analysis of this phenomenon in schools -- and it is in relation to this background that the present study hopes to generate new knowledge for the research field. This article explores how professionals in student welfare teams relate to and use neuropsychiatric diagnoses. The study draws on interviews with key officials working in student welfare teams in three urban secondary schools in southern Sweden. The main aim has been to investigate how the school officials talk about diagnoses such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism spectrum disorder, and what kind of explanatory value is awarded to these diagnoses. The results indicate that the professional culture in schools plays a key role in how diagnoses are integrated or not integrated into the schools' work with students' behavioural problems. The results also show that the narratives about diagnoses were framed by ideas related to the students' social-class background and gender.

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.

The focus of the present study is on how educators and students create a "sense of belonging" and school identity. The ethnography was carried out at an independent Christian school with children and students aged six to sixteen years. This study's aim is to contribute knowledge about how the identity of a school has become an important factor in the context of the marketisation of education. The identity of the school is articulated as a school with a Christian profile. Further, the results show how diversity and multiculturalism were downplayed. The school can thereby be interpreted as a way to avoid categorisation as an immigrant school. The identity as a Christian school symbolically lifts it from its socio-economic position in the urban geography. This identity becomes central to how the school is presented in an economic market of free school choice.

The present article focuses on how the so-called War on terror discourse has merged into the educational system and brought about a securitization of education. As a part of efforts to prevent young people from becoming radicalized into terrorism, the educational system is expected to be able to detect individuals 'at risk' and deploy methods to prevent radicalization from happening. Through the critical discourse analysis of a collection of educational practices, sampled by the European Union working group "Radicalisation Awareness Network," we have been able to generate knowledge about how the War on terror discourse tends to individualize and decontextualize tensions in society that may ultimately cause terrorism. With this individualized and decontextualized approach to preventing radicalization, it appears more important to control students rather than to develop their ability to analyse complex conflicts in society.

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.

Since autumn 2020, boys in the fifth year of school (11-year-old students) in Sweden have been offered human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination for free. Drawing from individual interviews with 21 school nurses working in primary schools in one of Sweden's regions, the aim of this study was to explore nurses' strategies and experiences of informing students and their guardians about the new vaccination programme, HPV and sex. Drawing on feminist theories on respectability and heteronormativity, findings indicate that heteronormative understandings of sexual relations frame school nurses' narratives when informing students about HPV. The results also indicate that including boys in the vaccination programme has been fairly straightforward and when guardians hesitate or refuse to include their children in the vaccination programme, it is often girls' guardians who do so. School nurses' narratives suggest that guardians' main argument for not vaccinating their daughters is because they believe they are too young. These narratives are framed around an understanding of the 'respectable girl'. The results of our study highlight the importance of addressing equality, sexuality, sex and HPV as part of sexuality, consent and relations (sexualitet, samtycke och relationer) education in Swedish schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

The present study will shed light on peer interaction and children's positioning in preschool. Theoretically, the study takes its point of departure from the concept of interpretive reproduction, which stresses the importance of children's collective actions and participation in cultural production and reproduction. Positioning refers to how children create social order in here-and-now interactions. Video data from three preschools have been used to capture peer interaction during play and mealtime. The study contributes to early childhood research by demonstrating a collective and an individual dimension of positioning connected to children's understanding of institutional norms. In addition, irrespective of age and preschool context, bodily actions are important resources in children's positioning.

In early childhood education, children's daily practice revolves to a great extent around order and discipline. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from a Swedish preschool class, the present study further explores how the task of being a teacher's assistant can be critically understood in terms of how gender, discipline and order are expressed in different duties in daily practice. The children in the investigated preschool class are encouraged to conform to rules of order and discipline by assisting the teachers with different tasks; in the present study, children who play this role are called teacher's assistants. The results show that both boys and girls conform in the role as a teacher's assistant. Another way of establishing order and discipline is to place girls next to noisy boys. This duty, which is defined here as serving as a damper, is reserved for the girls' only, in contrast to the teacher's assistant task.

Research has shown that peer victimization and bullying are common phenomena among pupils in different educational institutions, yet we know little about these issues in the educational context of the leisure-time centre. This study addresses leisure-time teachers' reflections on their work regarding peer victimization in the everyday practice of Swedish leisure-time centres. Methodologically, the study is based on written reflections from about a hundred teachers who have been participating in a continuing professional course. The results indicate that leisure-time teachers hold a quite unique professional position within the school organization due to their opportunities to work with pupils in various contexts during the day and their collaborations with other staff within the school organization. Yet the results also reveal a professional culture and material context where collaborations between different professionals are quite limited. The professional culture does not always support the leisure-time centre teachers' wish to have more opportunities to meet and discuss different issues with other staff members and to create a joint platform for collaboration and understanding about victimized pupils. It is hoped that this study will give professionals and policy makers new insights into how to make the leisure-time centre a safe and secure educational setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies worldwide indicate that sexual minority students often face different forms of bullying in everyday life at school, and young people growing up in communities with conservative values, such as in rural areas, are often in a particularly vulnerable position. Nonetheless, there is an absence of studies addressing the everyday lives of sexual minority students in rural schools. Drawing on interviews with students in the ninth grade of a rural lower secondary school in Sweden, the current study has investigated experiences of violence and harassment routinely directed at sexual minority students at school. The results indicate that the local gender regime is strongly framed by heteronormative values that position non-heterosexual students as the Other. Sexual minority students are exposed to homophobic name-calling on a daily basis, and threats and physical violence are also common. To fit in and to 'survive' in school, sexual minority students are forced to accept the homophobic name-calling and are sometimes also forced to physically fight back. This study concludes that it is important that schools address issues around violence directed towards non-heterosexual students, and that ways to create a more inclusive and safe school environment be identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]