Gothenburg Studies in Educational Sciences

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://gupea-staging.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/4568

Editors: Elisabet Öhrn, Christel Larsson, Olof Frack and Pia Williams
ISSN 0436-1121
Published by the Faculty of Education of the University of Gothenburg

For a complete list of titles in this serie and for order information

Purchase an Acta publication:
https://www.ub.gu.se/en/find-resources/acta-publications

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 476

Det stillasittande hotet. En studie om hur policyaktörer, fackliga tidskrifter och personal i fritidshem konstruerar barns fysiska aktivitet.
(Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2025-09-19) Johansson, Jonas
Barns fysiska aktivitet inom utbildning är ett fenomen som vuxna i samhället under lång tid har uttryckt skiftande åsikter om och haft olika förväntningar på. Det gäller vad den fysiska aktiviteten ska syfta till och vad den bör innehålla, men även hur den ska gå till samt vem som bör ansvara för att den genomförs. Dessa åsikter och förväntningar har förmedlats av olika aktörer och de har kommit till uttryck i olika sammanhang genom exempelvis tal, bilder och i skriven form. Det har resulterat i att verksamheter inom utbildning organiserats och omorganiserats för att leva upp till rådande samhälleliga normer och ideal om fysisk aktivitet, vilket i sin tur har påverkat både barn och vuxna som vistats inom olika utbildningsinstitutioner. Avhandlingens syfte är att undersöka de diskurser som präglar synen på barn och deras fysiska aktivitet, samt hur dessa diskurser potentiellt omorganiserar den sociala praktiken med fokus på tre olika utbildningskontexter där fysik aktivitet fungerar som: (i) ett avbrott under lektioner i teoretiska ämnen (ii), en rastaktivitet mellan lektioner i skola, samt (iii) som en fritidshemsverksamhet. För det används kritisk diskursanalys som teori och metod. Denna sammanläggningsavhandling består av en kappa och tre delstudier. I de olika delstudierna identifieras och undersöks diskurser om barns fysiska aktivitet såsom de kommer till uttryck i lärarfackliga tidskrifter, bland personal i fritidshem, samt i dokument från WHO och OECD. Resultatet visar att en neoliberal marknadsdiskurs och en folkhälsodiskurs är hegemoniskt dominerande i avhandlingens empiri. Dessa diskurser är influerade av naturvetenskaplig kunskap och har ett interdiskursivt förhållande till varandra. De ger uttryck för en generaliserad och instrumentell syn på barn och deras fysiska aktivitet, och att den bör utföras i enlighet med på förhand strukturerade mallar. De dominerande diskurserna utmanas dock av en socialpedagogisk omsorgsdiskurs som mer präglas av en kontextuell reflekterande kunskap om vad som passar den aktuella barngruppen, och kan ses bygga på barns rätt att påverka de verksamheter och beslut som rör dem. Det innebär att de samhälleliga strukturer som tenderar att dominera talet om barns fysiska aktivitet i avhandlingens empiri färgas av naturvetenskapliga kunskaper, normer och ideal när det gäller innehåll, genomförande och syfte, men att den socialpedagogiska och utbildningsvetenskapliga traditionen och kunskapen stretar emot.
SENCOs’ agency in Swedish upper secondary schools. A lifeworld phenomenological study of how Special Educational Needs Coordinators navigate and manage their everyday worklife.
(Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2025-09-18) Udd, Jonas
The research interest in this thesis concerns what it means to be and to act as a SENCO. More specifically, the thesis explores nine SENCOs’ lived experiences of agency. To study this, focus has been directed towards existential aspects of their everyday worklife, such as intersubjectivity, corporality, temporality, spatiality and ethics. The research gap this thesis wants to address is further knowledge regarding the professional role of SENCOs in upper secondary schools, with a specific focus on agency. The study utilises a lifeworld phenomenological approach. To get access to the participants’ lived experiences, a hermeneutically informed research design was employed. Three interviews were conducted with each participant, and on two occasions between these interviews, the participants wrote diaries. The empirical material generated for the study was analysed utilising the hermeneutic circular motion. The analysis was aided by phenomenological theory. Findings in the study suggest that the participating SENCOs utilised intersubjective relationships to create and maintain agency and to deal with an unclear definition of their role and remit. There seemed to be a continuous push and-pull movement regarding the demarcation of the SENCO role and remit between agents within and outside of school. Between these agents and settings, SENCOs performed competitive and collaborative boundary work. In addition, the participants’ moral responsibilities seemed central to their choices of tasks and missions, as an expression of equity and equality, alluding to a professional ethos. Furthermore, several findings in the thesis highlighted the ways in which existential aspects characterised how the participating SENCOs maintained and created agency, especially when acting as agents of change. A further conclusion of this thesis is that the participating SENCOs everyday worklife appeared to be in a continuous state of becoming. Moreover, dealing with different understandings and attitudes towards inclusion appeared to be prevalent. Finally, the professional role of the participating SENCOs seemed to become political when they displayed a political agency rooted in their morale, understood here as an expression of a professional ethos. In this, the participating SENCOs seemed to represent a view on education that contrasted current neoliberal tendencies, such as marketisation, measurements, standardisation, quality control, and viewing students as customers
Toward an Animal Standpoint in School? Critical Animal Pedagogy as Sustainability Education.
(Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2025-08-29) Kallaste Håkansson, Jonna
The overall aim of this thesis is to explore how critical animal pedagogies (CAP) can contribute to environmental and sustainability education (ESE) by addressing, challenging, and transforming current exploitative human-animal relations and their social, ethical, and environmental ramifications. It explores questions critical to subject matter education and contributes to ongoing debates regarding how nonhuman animals and human-animal relations can be introduced and addressed in ESE. It does so by exploring the potential of CAP to address, disturb, and disrupt exploitative human-animal relations and enable a re-thinking and re-learning of how to live together with other species. The project was carried out as a feminist activist ethnography, in which teachers, students, animal rights activists, and scholars collaborated by discussing, developing, and introducing CAP in Years 1-3 in two Swedish upper secondary schools. Theoretically, the thesis takes its point of departure in critical animal studies and its subfield CAP, or more specifically animal standpoint theory, reading these with and through feminist affect theory, feminist philosophy, educational philosophy, and poststructuralist theory and pedagogy. Starting from this theoretical framework, the thesis is concerned with the didactical conditions upper secondary education provides for working with CAP and how this context, particularly in ESE teaching, informs and possibly transforms what CAP is and can achieve. It explores the (im)possibility for nonhuman animals to emerge and be responded to as subjects and what human-animal relations are enabled or disabled. As such, this thesis contributes ethnographic fieldwork that provides insights into what happens when an openly normative and critical pedagogy standing in solidarity with nonhuman animals is introduced within ESE in upper secondary school. It analyzes possibilities for interspecies sustainability and justice to be envisioned and enacted and questions a sharp division between normative and pluralistic approaches in ESE. The thesis makes visible how an imagined human collective unwilling to change puts boundaries in place for how ethical human-animal relations that can be imagined. It also acknowledges openings in critically addressing animal exploitation within ESE. Drawing upon the overall insights from the project, the thesis argues for the importance of creating space for taking an animal standpoint in ESE and addresses the risks of reproducing and reinforcing speciesism and anthropocentrism if such a standpoint cannot be taken. It acknowledges the potential in engaging with animal rights material, learning more about other species, and asking students to start from the perspective of nonhuman animals. The thesis shows how CAP can contribute to ESE by increasing student engagement and enable critical reflections through engaging with interspecies sustainability.
Att kommunicera historia. Språkliga resurser och kunskapserbjudanden i högstadiets historieundervisning
(2025-08-22) Rahm, Jessica
The overarching aim of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of how substantive historical knowledge is communicated to lower secondary students and what knowledge-building opportunities this communication affords. The thesis explores classroom practice, with a particular focus on how three history teachers organize their instruction and use subject-specific language, particularly first-order concepts, during teacher-led whole-class interactions to support students’ substantive knowledge. Grounded in the view that language plays a crucial role in the construction and communication of knowledge, the thesis draws on social semiotic theory, Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), and history education theory to guide the analysis and interpretation of data. The thesis comprises three sub-studies based on ethnographic fieldwork, including classroom observations and video recordings generated in three linguistically diverse classrooms in Grades 7 and 8 in a Swedish school setting. The findings indicate that teacher-led instruction and whole-class teaching serve as central arenas for introducing, consolidating, and reviewing substantive knowledge. Moreover, the results show that teachers employ various first-order concepts in diverse ways, integrating new knowledge with students’ prior experiences. This integration may enhance students’ opportunities for cumulative knowledge-building. The shifts in how these concepts are employed both in general terms and within specific historical contexts, offer students deeper conceptual understanding of subject-specific language. Furthermore, the teachers’ use of first-order concepts to make comparisons between historical contexts emphasizes connections across time. This indicates that first-order concepts serve as temporal bridges, enabling conceptual understanding and historical thinking. The findings suggest that teachers’ proficiency in using such concepts is crucial for fostering knowledge-building. However, the study also identifies a need for a pedagogical metalanguage that can make the function and use of first-order concepts explicit and accessible to all students.
Educational work beyond carceral logics—Stereoscopic engagements with educational philosophy and abolitionism
(2025-06-13) O'Neill, Maggie
Schools are often burdened with solving societal problems. The way in which these problems are defined by society influences the approaches taken to address them and informs how the work and purpose of schools is understood. In Sweden, one such problem that has received increasing attention in recent years is crime. This dissertation addresses the educational implications of such developments. Framing schools in relation to crime is made possible through carceral logics, which are the taken-for-granted ways of thinking that criminalization, the police, and criminal justice are reasonable solutions to societal issues. The work of this dissertation can be understood as paying attention to the conditions under which education may or may not happen within and beyond carceral logics. This dissertation takes its starting point in the assumption that, if we are concerned about the educational potential of schools, we need to be able to account for the educational implications of and beyond carceral logics within schools. Using a stereoscopic approach that considers both educational philosophy and abolitionism, this dissertation explores the educational implications of and beyond carceral logics within schools through educational-philosophical inquiry. This dissertation argues that educational possibilities are limited in a school of crime prevention and police involvement and proposes how education could be made possible through educational work beyond crime prevention and police involvement. Furthermore, this dissertation imagines practices beyond carceral logics in schools and discusses new possibilities for educational work. The overall contribution of this dissertation offers an argument for what might be educationally lost when the school is framed in relation to crime and imagines beyond the societal demands such a framing imposes. Ultimately, the arguments in this dissertation are discussed through a theorization of educational work beyond carceral logics.
Vad är viktig historia? Att utforska, problematisera, utveckla och synliggöra tankeredskapet historisk signifikans
(2025-05-23) Sjölund Åhsberg, Cathrine
Vad är viktig, eller signifikant, historia, hur avgörs det och av vem? Att synliggöra hur elever resonerar om signifikant historia ger värdefulla insikter i deras historiska tänkande. Trots detta är tankeredskapet historisk signifikans relativt outforskat i en svensk grundskolekontext. Avhandlingen syftar till att utforska, problematisera, utveckla och synliggöra historisk signifikans ur ett elevperspektiv. När mellanstadieelever i avhandlingen resonerar kring historisk signifikans gör de det utifrån olika, och ibland oväntade perspektiv vilket ger en mångfacetterad och delvis ny bild av tankeredskapet. Denna komplexitet utgör avhandlingens intresseområde och undersöks både genom elevers resonemang och genom en fördjupad analys av historisk signifikans som epistemiskt koncept. Avhandlingen består av en kappa och fyra delstudier. Artikel 1, en systematisk narrativ forskningsöversikt, och artikel 2, en teorisyntes, kartlägger och analyserar forskningsområdet och konceptet historisk signifikans. Kartläggningarna utgör en bakgrund till de två studier som bygger på fokusgruppsintervjuer. Artikel 3 undersöker hur mellanstadieelever resonerar om historisk signifikans och artikel 4 fördjupar delar av dessa resultat genom att utforska och definiera två nya kriterier, etisk och affektiv signifikans, i relation till historisk empati. Resultaten visar tre återkommande mönster i elevernas resonemang: de resonerar om en officiell och symboliskt signifikant historia om Sverige, om historisk relevans kopplad till elevnära och aktuell historia, samt om mörk och tyst(ad) signifikant historia med etiska dimensioner. Två motstridiga narrativa mallar tydliggör hur eleverna tolkar och formar sitt historiska tänkande. Sammantaget synliggör elevernas resonemang vilken historia som upplevs ges utrymme i historieundervisningen och vilka perspektiv som utelämnas. Den teoretiska kartläggningen, som resulterar i två kartor över teoretiska ramverk och kriterier, introducerar nya begrepp, synliggör tre befintliga epistemiska dimensioner av historisk signifikans samt pekar på glapp och förskjutningar i forskningsfältet. Sammantaget bidrar avhandlingen till att synliggöra tankeredskapet både i relation till historiedidaktisk forskning och undervisning, samtidigt som introduktionen av en etisk dimension bidrar till att vidareutveckla förståelsen av historisk signifikans.
Does teaching quality matter for student learning outcomes?
(2025-05-23) Asp, Lena
High-quality teaching is assumed to provide students with learning opportunities that may mitigate educational inequities and narrow achievement gaps. This thesis aims to examine aspects of student-perceived teaching quality in relation to student learning outcomes. Measuring the multidimensional construct of teaching quality is a conceptual and methodological challenge. Empirical results are inconsistent, while some studies report significant and positive relations between teaching quality and student learning outcomes, others do not. The thesis is a secondary analysis of data from the international large-scale assessment Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019, Grade 4. Teaching quality is conceptualised using student-perceived teaching quality in the mathematics classroom. Aggregating students’ perceptions of the teacher’s actions in the classroom provides a valid and reliable measure of teaching quality. The hierarchical structure of TIMSS facilitates investigations at the classroom level. Comprising three empirical studies and an integrative essay, the thesis examines teaching quality from different angles. Study I examines the construct validity of the mixed-worded scale of mathematics confidence in TIMSS. The validated construct serves as a mediator when analysing the relations between teaching quality and mathematics achievement. Study II examines the relationships between student-perceived teaching quality (classroom management and instructional clarity) and mathematics confidence and mathematics achievement at student and classroom levels. Study III widens the scope to include four Nordic countries. The Nordic context is suitable for analysis as these countries share educational values such as the compensatory task of the educational system, the Nordic Model. Findings revealed evidence of method effect from negatively worded items. Teaching quality aspects were significantly related to mathematics confidence and achievement. The relationship between instructional clarity and mathematics confidence was substantial at the student and classroom levels. Classroom management related significantly to mathematics achievement at the student level in the four Nordic countries and also at the classroom level in Denmark and Sweden. Results showed classroom-level composition effects across the Nordic countries.
Teachers' Professional Competence and Working Conditions in Swedish Schools. Relationships with Student Achievement
(2025-04-30) Paloniemi Lindström, Mari
The Swedish teaching profession has undergone extensive reforms over the past four decades, leading to variations in teacher competence and specializations. More recently, the teaching profession has also faced challenges related to declining status, as well as difficulties in recruitment and retention. These disparities contribute to inequalities in teacher distribution and a widening achievement gap, yet there is limited understanding of how variations in teacher competence affects student achievement. This thesis investigates how teachers’ professional competence and working conditions relate to student achievement in Swedish middle schools (grades 4-6). It analyses data from TIMSS and PIRLS, combined with Swedish register data, to explore relationships between teacher competence and student outcomes in mathematics, reading, and overall performance in grade 6. The thesis consists of an integrative essay and three empirical studies, each focusing on different aspects of teachers’ professional competence and working conditions. The essay evaluates various models and frameworks of teacher competence while also summarizing research in this field. Study I investigates how formal education, subject-specific specialization, and teaching experience relate to grade 4 mathematics achievement, finding that a latent construct of formal teacher competence is strongly related to student performance. Study II examines teacher qualifications, reading specializations, reading comprehension activities, and cognitive activation strategies in grade 4, exploring their short- and long-term associations with student achievement. Study III examines how teachers’ working conditions and school climate relate to their job satisfaction and student achievement. Findings highlight the importance of formal education in improving students’ mathematics performance and subject-specific expertise in enhancing outcomes in both mathematics and Swedish. A curvilinear relationship emerges between reading comprehension activities in grade 4 and student achievement in PIRLS and Swedish by grade 6. Additionally, cognitive activation strategies appear to have a positive cross-subject relationship. The findings also underscore the importance of a positive school climate for both teacher well-being and student success.
Opportunities and challenges with the shift to climate-adapted food consumption: Balancing nutrition, climate impact, and acceptance in public and private meals
(2025-04-08) Wollmar, Mari
This thesis explores the transition toward climate-adapted food consumption, combining insights from both public and private domains. Through four studies, the thesis investigates the balance between reducing carbon footprint (CO2e) and ensuring nutritional adequacy, revealing overlooked tensions in our shift toward sustainable diets. Rather than presenting findings by individual studies, this thesis organizes results around three interrelated themes that emerged across all four papers. The first theme examines school meals as potential climate champions, revealing both opportunities and challenges in public meal settings. The second theme explores how gender shapes nutritional needs and dietary behaviors in climate-adapted food practices. The third theme investigates the relationship between physical activity levels and CO2e, identifying pathways to unite active lifestyles with sustainability. In school meal menus across Sweden, climate adaptation is taking center stage. Yet beneath these well-intentioned changes lies an unexpected nutritional dilemma. The analysis of municipal school meal programs revealed a troubling relationship, as CO2e emissions decreased, iron bioavailability declined as well. This finding raises important questions about the nutritional adequacy of climate adapted menus, especially for adolescent girls. The paradox became particularly evident in soy-based meals. These meals contained the highest total iron, simultaneously they had the lowest amount of absorbable iron, with minimal bioavailability. None of the analyzed menus provided enough absorbable iron for female pupils with higher needs, highlighting how climate-adapted meal planning may inadvertently create nutritional blind spots. To address this challenge, hybrid recipe formulations that bridged the divide between climate goals and nutritional needs was developed. By combining plant ingredients with modest amount of meat together with vitamin C rich foods, these recipes achieved significant CO2e reductions while maintaining adequate absorbable iron levels. Consumer evaluations revealed that these hybrid approaches maintained high acceptance levels, suggesting that balancing nutrition, taste, and sustainability is entirely possible. Throughout this thesis, gender emerged as a powerful lens for understanding sustainable food transitions. A consistent pattern appeared: women demonstrated stronger climate consciousness in their food consumption but faced greater nutritional vulnerabilities when adopting low-carbon diets. Female participants consistently consumed less energy than recommended, creating a nutritional deficit that impacts micronutrient intake. This was especially pronounced among physically active women, who averaged well below their estimated requirements. This is concerning given their elevated nutritional needs. When examining iron specifically, women’s intake fell below recommendations regardless of dietary preference, with vegetarian and flexitarian diets presenting additional challenges. Gender dynamics significantly shape sustainable food practices beyond just nutritional aspects. The thesis corroborate that women typically lead household shifts toward climate-friendly diets while experiencing more complicated relationships with food choices compared to men. Paradoxically, despite consuming fewer resources and making more climate conscious selections, women experience a greater risk of nutritional deficiencies and health impacts when households transition to sustainable diets. The investigation of recreational athletes and young adults uncovered a clear relationship of dietary CO2e emissions to activity level, with CrossFit athletes exhibiting the highest CO2e emissions, followed by other highly-active individuals and moderately-active participants. The primary driver was not simply higher energy requirements but specifically how these needs were met, predominantly through animal-based protein sources. Yet high CO2e emissions was not inevitable. Several participants achieved notably lower CO2e while maintaining high performance levels through strategic incorporation of plant-based protein sources. These examples challenge the assumption that athletic performance necessarily demands a high environmental cost, suggesting that the barrier lies not in physiological requirements but in cultural norms and established beliefs about nutrition within sports communities. The findings question the assumption that low-carbon diets automatically promote health for all populations. The research shows that sustainable food systems require tailored approaches that consider gender-specific nutritional needs, diverse activity levels, and cultural contexts. The successful hybrid recipes and examples of low-CO2e athletic diets demonstrate that balancing environmental and nutritional goals is achievable with thoughtful planning. The path toward truly sustainable food systems must integrate bioavailability metrics into environmental assessments and address the social practices that shape our food choices. Only then can we create equitable transitions that protect both planetary boundaries and human wellbeing—especially for those leading the way in climate-conscious eating.
Estimating added and free sugars intake in Swedish adolescents - methods, food sources, nutritional implications, and potential food label impact
(2025-03-07) Wanselius, Julia
Excessive intakes of added and free sugars are associated with several adverse health effects. However, due to an absence of objective or standardised methods to measure intake, there is limited knowledge about consumption, including in Swedish adolescents. Adolescence is a critical period for establishing healthy dietary habits, as food patterns formed during these years often persist into adulthood, influencing longterm health. Dietary habits of Swedish adolescents overall fail to meet dietary guidelines. The adolescent diet is generally low in vegetables and fruit, dietary fibre and wholegrains, alongside high in saturated fats, salt, and sugars. Despite these concerns, intake levels of added or free sugars have not previously been quantified in Swedish adolescents. The overarching aim of this doctoral thesis is to examine dietary intake in Swedish adolescents, emphasising added and free sugars intake. This includes refining methods for estimating intake, identifying contributing food sources, investigating contextual and dietary associations, as well as the potential nutritional impact of the Keyhole symbol in guiding healthier food choices. The thesis builds on the findings of four original papers, each addressing a specific research aim and contributing unique insights to the thesis. The thesis presents a systematic approach to quantifying added and free sugars intake, applied to the Swedish Food Agency’s nationally representative dietary survey Riksmaten Adolescents 2016-17. Main findings are that, on average, Swedish adolescents were over-consuming added and free sugars with respect to dietary guidelines; 45% respectively 30% had a lower daily intake of added respectively free sugars than the maximal recommended intake. Main sources of sugars were foods with low nutritional content, with major contributors in sugarsweetened beverages, sweets and chocolates. Intakes of added and free sugars were higher during weekends, and the sugars were mostly consumed outside of main meals, predominantly within the home environment. Furthermore, higher intakes of added and free sugars were observed to be associated with progressively less favourable dietary intakes. A shift to Keyhole alternatives for everyday foods would improve adolescents’ overall nutrient intakes, even with smaller exchanges. However, the impact on reducing sugars were limited as most contributing sources are not eligible for labelling. As a few nutritionally poor food groups are the primary sources of added and free sugars in the adolescent diet, refining dietary guidelines to target these specific foods rather than emphasising sugars reduction alone could enhance clarity and effectiveness in public health communication.
Play-Responsive Teaching: Navigating Semiotic Repertoires and Digital Technologies in Early Childhood Education and Care
(2025-02-07) Shengjergji, Sofije
This thesis focuses on teaching in ECEC and how it can be responsive to bi-/multilingual children’s semiotic repertoires and support their participation in activities involving digital technologies. It is grounded in PRECEC theory and draws on the literature and principles of design-based research. The empirical data comprises video recordings of digital storytelling activities in which teachers and children use tablets and a story-making application to co-construct stories. The video recordings are analyzed using Interaction Analysis. Additional data, such as interviews with teachers and principals, field notes, photographs of the preschool environments, and screen recordings are generated to provide detailed descriptions of the context and participants. The findings demonstrate that teachers’ responsivity to bi-/multilingual children’s semiotic repertoires involved translanguaging practices that acknowledged and included not only multiple languages but also diverse semiotic means of communication. These practices fostered children’s participation in digital storytelling activities and challenged deficit-oriented perspectives. Furthermore, teachers supported children’s participation in digital storytelling activities by being responsive to and mediating their expressions of agency through various strategies. These included (a) asking opinion-seeking questions, (b) being responsive to children’s alterity, (c) meta-communicating their previous suggestions and reminding them of the storyline they created, (d) accepting diverse interpretations of their drawings, (e) inviting children to test their initiatives, (f) assisting them with the application’s tools, and (g) using questions to stimulate their “what if” thinking. Additionally, teachers’ dynamic use of scaffolding and triggering questions emerged as a key teaching practice supporting children’s participation in digital storytelling activities. This thesis offers practical implications for ECEC teachers’ work regarding multilingualism and the use of digital technologies. It makes empirical and conceptual contributions to the advancement of PRECEC theory and contributes new, empirically grounded insights into theoretical concepts such as responsivity, translanguaging, children’s agency, participation, and social and cultural sustainability.
Generationsmötets ambivalenser - Kritiska perspektiv på ålder, tid och rum
(2025-01-30) Davet, Natalie
This thesis examines the production of intergenerational encounters and its function in social life. The aim of this study is to produce knowledge about how municipally arranged intergenerational interventions condition, enable and limit intergenerational relations and education through the co-production of age, time and space. The study was conducted in Gothenburg, Sweden, and combines two research projects: Kulturmöten utan gränser (Cultural Encounters without Borders) and Kulturhus Backaplan—“generationsdialog” i stadsutveckling (Cultural Centre Backa-plan—‘an Intergenerational Dialogue’ in City Planning). Fieldwork was conducted in formal educational and care institutions, as well as non-formal public urban spaces. Both projects involved participants from different generations, aged between three and eighty-four. The theoretical framework of this thesis is influenced by critical theory and social constructionism. It combines theoretical concepts that enable an analysis of linguistic, material and embodied aspects of the ‘un/doings’ of age in relation to time and space. The study’s methodological approach is designed based on multi-sited ethnography and involves participant observation, conversational interviews, analysis of policy documents and other textual material. The analysis is based on Foucauldian discourse analysis and involves an abductive interaction between the theoretical framework and the produced material. The results highlight the following central problem representations that have become prominent in the studied material: 1) the ‘un/doings’ of intergenerational encounters in different institutional environments, 2) the ways in which intergenerational encounters cut through different time regimes, and 3) the normalisation and idealisation of ‘hyper-effective’ intergenerational encounters to save time and money. The main conclusion is that municipally arranged intergenerational encounters are characterised by ambivalent messages in relation to social age, education, time and space. On the one hand, there is a visionary political effort towards increased age integration as a matter of societal survival. On the other hand, intergenerational encounters appear as superfluous or ‘non-existent’ as they lack political recognition, by being absent in the policy organisation of education and care, and in ways in which their practical knowledge tends to be neglected rather than cared for and used as a contribution to society.
Health Promotion in Swedish Schools: Navigating Institutional, Social and Professional landscapes
(2025-01-10) Elsayed, Hadil
This thesis explores school health promotion (HP) as a set of policy discourses and professional practices embedded in the institutional context of the Swedish school. School settings provide a unique opportunity for HP early in life. HP, a legal and ethical responsibility in schools, fosters student well-being and is related to better social and academic functioning. HP practices cannot be seen in isolation from relevant social and institutional contexts. Socially, HP is connected to democratic values such as autonomy and empowerment. It is also interlinked with social variables (e.g., socioeconomic) and developments (e.g., changes in available information seeking tools or in the arrangement of health systems). Institutionally, HP practices can be affected by how they are regulated by policies and governance systems. In Sweden, school HP is regulated by national guidelines. However, the practice is locally governed where municipalities and schools formulate their own health plans. The practice faces several institutional challenges such as mainstreaming it in daily schoolwork and scaling up relevant professional competencies. This thesis addresses questions related to how HP is depicted in policy discourses and how professionals navigate the institutional landscape in the course of HP practice. The thesis also examines how health literacy, as the empowering dimension of HP, is addressed in policy discourses. Moreover, it explores how professional practices are adapted to relevant social developments and subsequently shifting student needs. The thesis addresses these interests via three distinct but interrelated studies. The empirical material consists of four policy documents and nineteen interviews with various school professionals. Study 1, a critical policy analysis, explores how HP is articulated in education policies and how far this articulation acknowledges health literacy as a component of school HP. The study draws on critical discourse analysis to examine how policy discourses function as a form of social practice that can facilitate some actions and constrain others. Studies 2 and 3 are based on data generated from in-depth interviews with school professionals who work with HP. In study 2, practice theory is used to explore how school professionals conceptualize their roles and responsibilities in relation to the increased use of social media among students and how this conceptualization is related to institutional affordances and constraints. Study 3 uses a combination of practice theory and an institutional logic perspective to investigate how school professionals navigate the institutional landscape in schools (policies, regulations, governance systems) in the course of their HP work. Overall, the results indicate that the institutional setup of school HP in Sweden is rather complex and involves multiple levels of governance thus creating substructures and subsystems. The policies informing the practice show a considerable awareness of the social and democratic dimensions of HP despite the existence of some policy ambiguities and inconsistencies. Policies do not semantically acknowledge health literacy but refer to competencies that support health literacy such as critical awareness. Policy discourses are negotiated and (re)contextualized as they travel across organizational levels which may have an impact on how HP is enacted in different settings. The results also indicate that school professionals exhibit a solid commitment to school HP and a willingness for relevant professional development. They also exhibit notable resourcefulness in relating to the institutional setup of HP. Although they use institutional regulations (policies and organizational systems) for structuring their work, they sometimes negotiate and (re)contextualize these regulations to produce what they deem as more situationally appropriate professional responses. The thesis draws attention to the links between HP practices and institutional development and provides some suggestions as to how institutional variables can be manipulated to sustain and improve the practice.
The Quality Dialogue. An Activity-Theoretical Study on Systematic Quality Work in a Municipal Preschool Administration.
(2024-11-14) Karlsson, Marina
Quality dialogues have become increasingly common in systematic quality work which is legally mandated by the Swedish Education Act. The present thesis aims to contribute to knowledge on quality dialogues in local education administrations’ systematic quality work, focusing on the tension between support and control. The research questions are: What is the intended purpose of the quality dialogue, and how does this purpose align with the actions of the quality dialogue participants? How do culturally and historically shaped contradictions influence the development and function of the quality dialogue? The aim and research questions are addressed through a study conducted within a large Swedish municipal preschool administration. The thesis examines quality dialogues occurring at the unit level, the authoritative level, and at the intersection between these two levels of the organisation. A qualitative research design was adopted for the study. The empirical data consists of municipal documents and interviews which were elicited with examples from observed dialogues and participants’ written reflections. The empirical data is analysed through the lens of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, CHAT. The findings show how quality dialogues have developed locally over time, under the influence of culturally-historically shaped contradictions caused by national and local policy, municipal reorganisation, and societal needs. The findings also show that quality dialogues have multiple purposes and that several culturally and historically shaped systemic contradictions influence the development and function of the quality dialogues. Most contradictions were found in the quality dialogue conducted at the intersection between the unit level and the authoritative level. This is also the quality dialogue most focused on control. Quality dialogues at the unit level and the authoritative level, respectively, focus more on support even though control is also at play. Findings further show that the actions taking place in quality dialogues might not entirely be addressing the shared object of activity because quality dialogue participants’ actions are directed towards substitute objects. Participants display to each other sets of interactional and content-related procedures that could count as procedural display. Based on the key findings, the importance of common preparations when designing quality dialogues and careful follow-up is emphasised.
Att lära om statisk och dynamisk proportionalitet - En studie av den didaktiska transpositionen av svenska matematikuppgifter med proportionalitet
(2024-11-12) Lundberg, Anna L. V.
The purpose of this study is to shed light on how static and dynamic proportionality is treated by authors of teaching materials, on national tests and by teachers and students in the classroom, as well as how students encounter mathematics tasks where proportional reasoning is an option. The research is based on two sets of empirical data. In concrete terms, the thesis includes three studies examining three themes that relate to proportionality in classroom interaction and in texts. The first study analyses how proportionality is presented in some Swedish textbooks, in curricular texts and national course tests in mathematics for students in upper secondary school. The second study is a case study of how a teacher instructs and explains a task in a class in Grade 6, where proportional reasoning is a possible solution technique. Finally, the third study concerns how students in Grade 6 handle proportional reasoning when they encounter a patterning task involving proportional relationships. The analyses of textbooks and national course tests show that proportionality is handled differently in these two settings in the context of “Mathematics A” at the upper secondary school. About a quarter of the tasks in the textbooks and the national course tests involved proportionality tasks of one specific kind (missing value). Other types of proportionality tasks were infrequent. The results of the classroom studies show that students are able to engage in early forms of proportional reasoning before being taught about proportionality as a mathematical concept. The concept of learning trajectory is used to identify situations in the learning process during instruction where students meet obstacles and need scaffolding and teacher support. It is shown how a teacher dealing with a mathematical task involving mixtures of liquids encounters a task that has the possibility of making proportional reasoning visible for the students, and how she struggles to make the modelling required intelligible to herself and to the students. The instructional strategy of using everyday problems as a basis for learning implies that the initial modelling phase becomes crucial, and the students have to be aware of the conditions and limitations under which proportional reasoning is applicable. In conclusion, students engage in early forms of proportional reasoning well ahead of formal instruction. The difficulties they experience as they are to develop their proficiency, and where they require support from the teacher, concern how to model the familiar, everyday situations they encounter in exercises in mathematically precise and productive ways. In addition, in textbooks and national course tests proportionality is presented in a standardized, and rather simplified, form, and it is not sufficiently connected to the various areas of mathematics teaching and learning where it is applicable
Interdisciplinary research and youth sport injury: Developing methodological insights
(2024-10-04) Hausken-Sutter, Solveig E. S.
Recognising sport injuries as complex phenomena has urged calls for alternative research approaches to better understand their causes. Instead of adhering to traditional research approaches only, scholars advocate for a methodological pluralism, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative methods and integrating knowledge from different disciplines. Such integrated approaches offer a more comprehensive understanding of sport injuries by addressing their multifaceted and intricate nature. While integrated research approaches in sport science are gaining momentum, their focus has primarily centred on adult athlete health. However, given the prevalence of youth sport injuries and their significant consequences, it is necessary to develop effective approaches for studying them. Moreover, there is a lack of best practices for how to integrate methods and knowledge from different disciplines in youth sport injury research. Addressing these gaps is crucial for informing comprehensive injury prevention interventions. The overall aim of this thesis is to explore and explain the methodological insights that can be gained from conducting interdisciplinary youth sport injury research. Three research questions guide the thesis: 1) What is the base of existing disciplinary knowledge on youth sport injuries and how does this knowledge shape the understanding of youth sport injuries? 2) What contextual and methodological issues are important to consider in interdisciplinary youth sport injury research? 3) How can qualitative and quantitative youth sport injury data be integrated in an interdisciplinary research process? The thesis incorporates four journal papers and presents these in the following framework text embedding the conducted research papers into a broader theoretical perspective. The four central papers are: a research protocol paper, a narrative review of literature, a paper describing the adaption and application of a questionnaire to youth football players, and a methodological paper focusing on the integration of qualitative and quantitative youth sport injury data as part of an interdisciplinary research process. All of these papers were developed within the interdisciplinary research project ‘Injury-free children and adolescents: Towards better practice in Swedish football (FIT project)’. The thesis has generated three broad insights that correspond to the research questions. First, existing knowledge on youth sport injuries stems from several fields, including biomedicine, sport psychology and sport sociology, underscoring the complex and interdisciplinary nature of youth sport injuries. Second, contextual factors significantly impact youth sport injuries, making it necessary for future researchers to account for these influences when developing research tools and addressing ethical concerns during the interdisciplinary research process. Third, integration of qualitative and quantitative youth sport injury data is facilitated through a three-stage procedure that enables common ground, a comparison of different types of data, and dialogue across disciplinary boundaries. Overall, the thesis showcases three vital components crucial to interdisciplinary research: Synthesisation, contextualisation, and integration. The thesis also highlights the need for further exploration of interdisciplinary practices’ possibilities and limitations related to integration and their application in developing complex injury prevention interventions.
The self in the school context: Mathematics self-concept and self-efficacy in PISA
(2024-09-18) Ding, Yi
Self-concept and self-efficacy are important constructs in educational psychology, defining an individual’s general perception of their abilities in school subjects and belief in accomplishing specific tasks. These constructs are crucial in understanding academic achievement, motivation, well-being, and overall educational experiences, particularly within the context of school and in different school subjects. International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) like the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), facilitate comparisons across various educational systems and cultural backgrounds. Utilising ILSA data aids in examining how self-concept and self-efficacy influence educational outcomes across different settings, while also allowing analysis of subgroups by socioeconomic status, gender, and immigration background. This helps guide teaching practice and shape educational policies by providing insights into the psychological factors driving educational success. This dissertation has two purposes: Firstly, it examines the factor structure and measurement invariance of mathematics self-concept and self-efficacy, ensuring valid comparisons across different demographic groups and over time. Secondly, it explores the relationship between these constructs and mathematics achievement, considering student and school characteristics like socioeconomic status and type of school. The analysis uses data from the 2003 and 2012 PISA cycles. The dissertation includes an integrative essay and three empirical studies. Study I assesses the factor structure and measurement invariance of the constructs across 40 education systems participating in the 2003 and 2012 PISA cycles. Study II examines potential paradoxical relationships between self-concept, efficacy, and achievement across multiple educational systems, establishing measurement invariance separately for each PISA cycle. Study III focuses on Sweden, analysing the correlation of sociodemographic factors on the relationship between self-concept/self-efficacy and achievement in mathematics, comparing public and independent schools. Overall, the findings emphasise the importance of validating the measurement properties of these constructs and caution against presuming their uniform application across diverse educational contexts. The studies highlight the significant role of self-concept and self efficacy in enhancing mathematical achievement, considering student and school dynamics.
Doing Knowledge @Scale: Sociomaterial Practices and Professional Learning of Software Developers on Stack Overflow
(2024-09-13) Seredko, Alena
When millions of people gather online to produce and distribute knowledge, the vast digital platforms they use – Facebook, Reddit, X, or the focus of this study, Stack Overflow – become integral to how they learn and work. In many domains, knowledgeable participation on such platforms is increasingly important for becoming and remaining a professional. Understanding practices professionals enact on these platforms is crucial for grasping the dynamics of contemporary professional landscapes and advancing professional education. Recognizing the impact of these platforms, this dissertation investigates how professional knowledge practices are accomplished on a large-scale online platform. The dissertation draws on practice-based and sociomaterial theoretical perspectives and adopts an online ethnographic orientation. Its empirical setting is Stack Overflow, a public large-scale Community Question Answering platform within the software development domain. Focusing on users’ digital traces in the form of threads, it examines how knowledge practices are accomplished through interactions among users, the objects they produce, and the platform itself. The dissertation comprises three articles. The first examines how downvoting on the platform is discursively and materially accomplished as knowledge practices of feedback, curation, and moderation. The second develops a theoretical approach to unpack knowledge production on the platform through posting, commenting, and editing, by conceptualizing epistemic objects as interactional and material accomplishments. The third article addresses the role of scale, exploring the interactional and material coordination of collaborative problem framing, enacted through posting, commenting, and editing. Together, the articles reveal two key sets of knowledge practices on the platform: collaborative problem-solving and the documentation of solutions aimed at creating a comprehensive library of professional knowledge for a wider audience. This dissertation contributes to a broader understanding of professionals’ online knowledge practices, offering insights for the organization of the professional learning in software development and beyond, and providing implications for the design of online platforms. It also enriches theoretical and methodological perspectives on investigating professional practices in online environments.
Reading and learning from civics textbooks: exploring challenges and opportunities from students’ and teachers’ perspectives
(2024-09-06) Rinnemaa, Pantea
Textbooks in civics are one of the main sources of knowledge and a primary instructional tool for teaching civics in Swedish compulsory schools. Given the importance of civics texts for students’ knowledge construction and their development into active and informed citizens in a democracy, developing reading abilities is key, particularly considering the dense, abstract, and discipline-specific nature of civics texts. L2 students, with diverse linguistic and educational backgrounds, represent over 26% of the student population in Swedish compulsory schools. Despite this, research on L2 students’ difficulties in relation to reading and understanding civics textbook texts is limited. Moreover, in studies focusing on L2 students’ civics learning, teachers’ perspectives often dominate over those of the students. This thesis aims to explore possible sources of difficulties that L2 students encounter in comprehending Grade 9 civics textbook texts, focusing on the students’ perspectives. It also investigates resources that L2 students and their civics teachers perceive as useful for enhancing comprehension of civics texts. To closely study the complexities of challenges with civics texts, a four-field model has been constructed and serves as the theoretical framework and analytical tool with which the data in each of the four studies in the thesis are analyzed. This model illustrates four key components and their interplay with each other. These are: a) literacy abilities, b) disciplinary literacy abilities, c) prior knowledge, and d) content-area knowledge. The four studies collectively explore L2 students’ civics learning from various perspectives. The first study is a thematic literature review, examining how components a–d interact in teachers’ descriptions across the ten reviewed studies. The second study employs think-aloud sessions with eighteen L2 students to understand their perceptions of challenges and opportunities with civics texts. In the third study, individual semi-structured interviews with the L2 students’ civics teachers are conducted. In the fourth study, data from think-aloud sessions are revisited, focusing on L2 students’ use of prior knowledge when engaging with civics texts.
Skrivundervisning i svenska som andraspråk inom vuxenutbildning
(2024-09-05) Palm, Clara
I dagens globaliserade värld är behovet stort för många vuxna att lära sig tala, läsa, skriva och förstå nya språk. För att lära sig svenska, till exempel, erbjuder Sveriges kommuner språkutbildning i form av svenska som andraspråk, där dessa delar ingår. I avhandlingen fokuseras skrivandet. Eleverna utgör en heterogen grupp och vi vet lite om vilken skrivundervisning de möter. Avhandlingens övergripande syfte är därför att bidra till ökad kunskap om skrivundervisningen i svenska som andraspråk på grundläggande nivå inom kommunal vuxenutbildning. Avhandlingen undersöker skrivundervisningen utifrån tre olika perspektiv: skrivdiskurser i styrdokument, lärares föreställningar och lärares undervisning. Fyra datainsamlingsmetoder användes: dokumentanalys, enkät, intervjuer och klassrumsobservationer. Avhandlingen utgår teoretiskt från en social förståelse av skrivande och skrivundervisning som bygger på New Literacy Studies. Resultaten visar att föreställningar om skrivande som manifesteras i styrdokument, med en överlappande socialpraktisk diskurs, skiljer sig delvis från lärares utsagor och undervisning, som domineras av en genre- och färdighetsdiskurs. I lärarnas undervisning kommer olika föreställningar om skrivande till uttryck, vilket reflekteras i olika skrivuppgifter och olika sätt att organisera undervisningen, även om det finns en genomgående textnära kärna. Undervisningen innefattar ett genomtänkt upplägg med stöttande inslag i syfte att explicitgöra textkvalitet inför ett avslutande individuellt skrivande. Avhandlingen bidrar till att synliggöra hur litteracitetspraktiker är knutna till kontexten, bland annat genom kollegiala överenskommelser om upplägg och innehåll som till stor del styr undervisningen. Sammantaget visar avhandlingen att lärare inom vuxenutbildning genomför skrivundervisning i ett utmanande sammanhang, där få undervisningstimmar, kontinuerlig antagning, korta delkurser och heterogena elevgrupper sätter ramarna. Detta väcker frågor om likvärdighet och lärares möjligheter att realisera styrdokumentens intentioner om en bred skrivundervisning samt elevers möjlighet att uppnå de krav på skrivförmåga som utbildningens litteracitetspraktiker förutsätter. Didaktiska implikationer av avhandlingens resultat innefattar organisatoriska, innehållsliga och klassrumsnära aspekter samt visar vikten av fortsatt forskning i den specifika kontext som vuxenutbildningen utgör.

Browse

Recent Submissions