For a good four decades, a communicative approach has been promoted as an effective way of teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). In short, in a communicative classroom, learners engage in a range of interactive and creative tasks that not only encourage practice with language systems, language learning skills, and subject specific content, but which also encourage use of the whole body, and the whole classroom space with the incorporation of arts-based elements of music, poetry, drama, art etc.

Despite the Swedish national curriculum for English also promoting a communicative approach, and despite much good practice, an analysis of trainee teacher narratives detailing personal experiences of learning English reveals that it is still not uncommon for English lessons in Swedish schools (at all levels) to be constructed in a way best described as “a painting-by-numbers” approach. The narratives depict classroom environments where learners sit in rows and work chronologically through a textbook guided by teacher instruction (often in Swedish) to turn to a specific page, read the text silently/aloud, and to write down the answers to any accompanying exercises. Typical homework exercises require the learning of a glossary of ten unconnected words for a future test.

Thus, an aim of our teacher training programme is to encourage the adoption of a communicative approach. In doing so, an interesting phenomena has occurred in which the students consider the course in English as “more aesthetic” than courses where drama, music and dance etc. exist as independent subjects. This has given rise to a research project which explores the dissolving of boundaries between English and the Arts in Teacher Education.

In this workshop, participants will experience how new life can be breathed into a chapter from any language text book/written or spoken text by lifting the content off the page and transforming it into a cohesive lesson complete with dynamic and integrated activities of a creative and communicative nature. 

In this paper recent findings about how the lesson content is changing at Swedish community music and art schools is discussed. The change is not a consequence of active strategies for change but as a course of different tendencies in late modernity. The teachers are experiencing a decreasing influence of their own teaching practise. This is explained as an effect of a more democratic approach where their students both take and want a greater impact. The students are bringing their own music to the lessons, music styles that often connect to popular culture. An increased student influence is also constructed as something self-evidently good and is well in line with the idea of a more egalitarian relationship between teachers and students. Under those circumstances teachers find it more difficult to offer resistance and enforce their own ideas. The implication for the lesson content also seems to be rarely problematized and discussed among the teachers. Teachers are often well educated in the area of western classical music and find themselves playing hard rock and the latest hits with their influential students on traditional instruments used in western art music. But what possibilities are offered outside the field of popular music in late modernity? Are those tendencies just an inevitable development in our time or is it time to restore modern ideas in order to save valuable knowledge? Data consists of group conversations with teachers from six schools. All together 27 teachers in music (instrumental teaching), drama, media (photo and film), dance and art were participating. The theoretical and methodological approach is founded in social constructionism and post-structuralistic theory using the combination of discursive psychology and discourse theory. This two-sided approach is considered to be productive as it opens up for both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective.

For many reasons, different perspectives on music and the arts are of great importance to the field of music education. For example essential both to aesthetical education research, and to music and art teachers everyday work, because it can improve teaching and learning qualities and contribute to knowledge in society at large. The aim is to discuss various actors’ constructions of music and art by examining the handling of ontology in different texts. The ambition is to problematize and discuss the consequences of these constructions related to research and to musical praxis. The theoretical approach is founded in social constructionism and poststructuralism, and a combination of discourse psychology and discourse theory is used as a methodological framework. Four excerpts have been chosen for the analysis, two research articles and two interviews with professionals from two contexts of practice; the opera and the community school of music and art. The result shows that the ontology of music and art is continually being redefined. Ontological perspectives with epistemological claims are on the battlefield with more relativized perspectives. A critical discussion is made where the ontology of music and art is related to everyday praxis and research.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the problems I have encountered under the development of the theoretical perspective of my thesis. First, discourse analysis is founded in social constructionism and post-structuralistic theory. Second, discourse analysis is a concept including different perspectives, where both more critical approaches with focus on discourses as determining and more relativistic approaches with focus on the actor and language appear. With the critical approach there is an epistemological possibility, a claim of knowledge. That would be unacceptable in relativistic discourse analysis where pluralism is a keyword and every stake is equal. Does a relativistic study add anything of value or is a critical approach most fruitful? I find it interesting to discuss consequences for a study from both a critical and a relativistic perspective. Furthermore, it is challenging to try to merge the two approaches.

Fundament, construction and tools – discursive psychology at work in music education This article addresses how discursive psychology can be used in the discipline of music education. Engaging examples from the field are chosen to provide an introduction to the analysing tools in discursive psychology. Empirical data consist, amongst others, of interviews with students and teachers in Swedish music- and culture schools, and of video observation of choir rehearsal. These provide enlightening examples of how fact construction is built up or undermined in descriptions and also how accounts are involved in action, all considering the rhetorical construction in everyday social inter- action. Some of the tools illustrated are “category entitlement”, “stake inoculation”, “footing”, “out-there-ness”, “active voicing” and “ontological manipulation”. The article also highlights the importance of the theoretical framework, the fundament that is tightly bound up with the perspective of discursive psychology. Here a brief description is made, considering the social world, knowledge and the person as socially constructed, as well as an idea of language as the focus and topic of investigation. – In particular this text intends to give a brief overview of the discursive psychological approach and serve as an introduction to the field.

This project investigates how teachers in the Swedish Music and Culture school are positioning themselves, how they construct their students and the teaching conditions. In this paper I will present the preliminary results of group conversations with teachers from six schools and discuss the findings in relation to theories of modernity. All together 27 teachers in music (instrumental teaching), drama, media (photo and film), dance and art were participating. On empirical level three different themes concerning teachers’ talk about changed attitudes among students are found, which have implications for teaching strategies. In the first theme, The Change, the teachers’ descriptions explain how the change of attitudes among the students have had an impact on teaching methods. Here, teaching “like before” is expressed as something impossible because “the students of today are different”. In the second theme, The Frustration, the teachers articulate a frustration about why the students do not behave like before. Here, the teachers talk about a change among the students, but they have not changed their teaching methods. Instead they express a frustration concerning the changed conditions. In the third theme, The Wish, the teachers also talk about a change. In doing this, stories about what could be different in teaching are discussed. These results express a discursive fracture concerning the performance of teachers’ profession all related to the different behaviour of the students. In the discussion of the findings in relation to theories of modernity concepts like detraditionalization, esthetization of everyday life and mass consumption are used in an attempt to explain why this breakage in the Swedish Music and Culture schools has taken place.

This thesis focuses on the education at Swedish community school of music and art. The aim of the study is to investigate how teachers at those schools talk about their own activities, and thereby also to explore, describe and analyse how the teaching is manifested. In the study 27 teachers from six different community schools of music and art participated. All together about 10 hours of group conversation were recorded and subsequently transcribed in to text for further analysis. In line with the theoretical approach of the thesis naturally occurring talk was strived for. The study uses two discourse analytical perspectives, both founded in social construction- ism and post-structuralistic theory. Discursive psychology, influenced by ethnomethodology and conversation analysis in the field of social psychology, and discourse theory, inspired by the work of Foucault. The combination of the approaches is considered as more productive than a one-sided use of one or the other. In order to create options for discussing the conditions society offers on the basis of the macro-discourses generated by the data, theories of modernity has been chosen as a relevant approach. The results are divided into four areas; Change (Förändringen), Future (Framtiden), Frustration (Frustrationen) and Freedom (Friheten), all describing distinctions between systems of difference. Each area is extensively analysed. In the discussion the changed conditions in the teachers work at the schools of music and art are discussed in relation to the tendencies of late modernity. The teachers in the present study are experiencing a loss of influence concerning teaching and are explaining this in terms of an in- creasing demand for participation from the students. At the same time, the changed students are seen as responsible for the changes in the lesson contents. The changed condition in society consequently illuminates what has happened at the schools of music and art. Both teachers and students are by cause of the cultural liberation more free as the norms of the traditional have lost most of its power. This gives consequences for the students, who more actively seek influence according to the music of the lessons. On behalf of the teachers one consequence can be seen in their increasing openness to new ideas and in a higher wish to manage a pleasant teaching for their students. In conclusion, as long as traditions were able to guide the contents of the activities and the students adjusted to it, there was no need for greater clarity. However, in late modernity, when ideas that were once obvious are getting questioned, things come to another situation. A scenario for the future without control documents, would, according to this study, lead to an abandoning of the ambition, and the schools of music and art would transfer into an amusement park for the ”ego children”. But with an increasing distinctness on the mission, it is my conviction that the cultural heritage will also be better able to survive in late modernity. There is no doubt that community schools of music and art have capacity to carry on a market adapted activity and at the same time to mediate a tradition.

In the field of teacher education the rising popularity of using social media technologies as a resource in the teaching activities has contributed to an extension of new possibilities and tools for learning. However less often the implementation is followed by a discussion about what learning qualities those environments offer. This paper is work-in-progress dealing with student conversations in such learning forum. Data consists of the posts made by five teacher students on a Web based forum during five weeks. Within this period they started thirty conversations that all together resulted in 67 pages of text. All the conversations were printed out and thoroughly analysed. The main questions of interest during the reading of the data material was: 1) What issues are discussed in the student conversations? 2) How are they writing about those areas according to the rhetoric? At the next analytical level questions of subject positions and discourses are handled. The study uses two discourse analytical perspectives, both founded in social constructionism and post-structuralistic theory. Discursive psychology that mainly is focusing on the actor and the resources used in a conversation, and discourse theory that large extent is focusing on the discourses. The combination opens up for a two-sided analysis where the interesting relationship between agency and structure may be analysed. The aim of this research project is to analyse and discuss teacher students web based conversations in an educational science course. The preliminary results show that a variation of subject-positions is made possible in the conversations, where the subject educational science is extended and related to more personal and private spheres in the students’ everyday life. The project is interesting because it opens up for a discussion of learning qualities in relation to Web based platforms.

The teaching in music and culture schools is an activity that involves approximately one third of the children in Sweden, but there are only a few scientific studies conducted on the subject. The most of its participants will have music as a hobby in their future lives, but the vast majority of the students in higher music education once started their carriers in those schools. In this way music and culture schools can be seen as having a great impact on both cultural and musical activities in Sweden. This also points at the importance of knowledge concerning this institution, which this paper hopefully supplies for. The study has a social constructionist and post-structuralistic approach where both discursive psychology and discourse theory are used in the analysis of the data. The empirical material consists of group conversations with teachers in the music and culture school. The results are presented as two discourses. In The Teacher Tradition the teachers are passing on a tradition to the pupils. Here is a tendency to describe music as high and low. In The Pupil Preference the music taste of the pupils is regarded as essential and the task of teachers is to support their pupils. Here a relativistic approach to music is found where the pupils music taste determine the content of the teaching.

The discourse psychological approach used in this study contribute to a relativistic and praxical understanding of teachers strategies, knowledge and identity constructions.

In our work as teacher educators we have identified an interesting problem. Teacher students consider a course in English as “more aesthetic” than courses where e.g. drama, music and dance exist as independent subjects. This has aroused our curiosity, and made us want to study the phenomenon further. What activities are implemented in the English course? What teaching activities do the students describe as aesthetic? What knowledge content can be identified? How are those contents related to English methodology? The aim is to study how English and different aesthetic subjects are combined within the course English for Primary School Teachers Earlier Years.

The study is based on a discourse psychological methodology and has an ethnographic approach. Empirical data consists of student evaluations, filmed observations and group conversations with students participating in the course. This initial study will form the foundation for the design of a larger national project about aesthetics in different parts and subjects in teacher education. The production of empirical data has started and will continue during spring 2015.

Preliminary results show that the dissolving of boundaries between the English subject, the Arts and English methodology creates an integrated/interwoven totality. Aspects of student influence and flexibility, both considering content and form, appears as vital. The results are important especially to the development of teaching in compulsory school and in teacher training. By extension, our hope is that increased knowledge also will lead to improved quality in respect of the inclusion of the Arts in all teaching, regardless level of education or subjects.

The public and academic debate about mathematics education has been intensified during the last decade. In relation to this it is important to investigate what ideas concerning mathematics education that are expressed by teachers and students. The aim of this article is to study how teachers and students in primary school talk about the math book and to emphasize, discuss and problematize emerging discourses. The article is part of a larger project about mathematical education. Data consists of group conversations with 120 students and 8 teachers in two elementary schools in Sweden. The math project was supported by the National Agency for Education 2010-2012. All together 17 hours of video and audio documentation were produced. The theoretical framework is built on poststructuralist and social constructionist theory and two approaches to discourse analysis are applied; the micro oriented discursive psychology as formulated by Potter, and discourse theory as formulated by Laclau and Mouffe. Findings show three prominent discourses emerging from the empirical data: School mathematics, Balance and Mathematical ontology. Related to earlier research in mathematics education this article represent a shift of interpretation as it highlights how teachers and students themselves are talking about and describing what is desirable and not. The results are then discussed with respect to quality in mathematics education.

The public and academic debate about mathematical education has been intensified during the last decade. In relation to this it is important to investigate what ideas concerning mathematical education that are expressed by teachers and students. The aim of this article is to study repertoires and discourses related to mathematics education articulated by teachers and students in elementary school. The article is part of a larger project about mathematical education. Data consists of group conversations with 120 students and 8 teachers in two elementary schools in Sweden. The math project was supported by the National Agency for Education 2010-2012. All together 17 hours of video and audio documentation were produced. The theoretical framework is built on poststructuralist and social constructionist theory and two approaches to discourse analysis are applied; the micro oriented discursive psychology and discourse theory as formulated by Laclau and Mouffe. Findings show that the math book is central in the construction of the “good” mathematical education and can be seen as an ideological dilemma. On the one hand, the book becomes a symbol for security and support and is articulated as something associated with traditional and abstract mathematical education. The book becomes the home of mathematics, with power effects in the classroom activities. The book decides who is smart and who is not; it decides who needs help and when to wait for help. On the other hand, the ‘good’ mathematic education is excluding the math book. It is practical and built on students’ participation and delight at the same time as it is structured around the norms of the book. The results are discussed in relation to quality in mathematical education.

Mathematics education in Sweden has during the last decade been under consideration in varied ways. Reports from PISA and TIMSS indicating that the results in mathematics goes from bad to worse has started a rescue-army departing from the Ministry of Education. Money has been investigated, addressed to further education of mathematics teachers and to increase the time in mathematics during the years in compulsory school. In line with this also the Swedish National Agency for Education has taken initiatives to develop mathematics education. Here the development of quality of mathematics education and the learning outcomes are at focus.

To investigate this further our research group has followed two schools supported by the Agency initiative during 2010-2012. All together 120 students and 8 teachers were interviewed twice, in groups. The aim of this ongoing research project is to analyse and discuss students and teachers construction of mathematics and mathematics education and to carry out a radical discussion in relation to theories of modernity and political documents. In this presentation the ambition is to communicate the first preliminary results.

Discursive psychology and discourse theory, both founded in social constructionist and poststructuralist theories are used to analyse the extensive empirical material. The combination opens up for a two-sided analysis where the interesting relationship between agency and structure may be analysed with a trustworthy methodology. In relation to mathematics education we find this approach useful as it opens up for a critical discussion.

Four categories have emerged from the empirical material. The students are constructing mathematics and mathematics education as a resource, as an effort, as boredom and as pending. Our research group find those results interesting to discuss per se, but also in relation to the national initiatives where the approach to find solutions in mathematics itself appears to be governing. It could be considered as important to discuss and problematize the political solution “more of the same” as a way to develop mathematics education in the 21st century. The ambition in this presentation is to contribute to the debate about mathematics education by transforming the problem into a concern of society.

In the last decade different forms of discourse analysis have emerged in research on Arts education in Sweden. It includes macro- as well as micro oriented studies and embraces perspectives such as discursive psychology, critical discourse analysis, discourse theory and Foucault inspired analysis. The application is spread to a wide range of educational contexts from pre- and elementary school to higher education at universities as well as to schools of music and art. The purpose of this paper is two-folded: i) to give some examples on how discourse analysis have been used in Swedish research on Arts education and ii) discuss this in a meta-perspective focusing on similarities and differences according to empirical material and results. Data consists of four larger research projects completed during the last five years, all conducted by the authors. In a meta-perspective, all four studies enclosed, two kinds of approaches are shown: Word-level analysis, identified as rhetorical actions in group-conversations, and practice-oriented analysis, identified as rhetorical actions in classroom praxis. Both approaches aim to identify hegemony and antagonistic discourses, and also to problematize the subject agency and what possible subject positions they open up for. The relation discourse-subject also contributes to the analysis of the over-determined subject and ideological dilemmas. According to the results, the area of Arts education in Sweden seems to be a battlefield of different discoursers. For example, this is shown by different ideological dilemmas related to activities in the music classroom and in the questions of democracy and pupil influence that rises in the studies. Among teacher educators in arts education two prominent discourses are shown: The first is a relativization of the concept of quality, and the second is that lack of subject knowledge is articulated as a teacher quality. With Foucaultian discourse analysis, questions of power and control in arts education are handled. In line with this, democracy and knowledge formation are then put into focus, something that is also discussed in this presentation.

Arbetet med en pågående studie kring förskolans musikverksamhet, där surfplattans närvaro i de pedagogiska aktiviteterna är vital, har väckt vår nyfikenhet kring teorier som förmår fånga in tekniken och det materiella i den vetenskapliga förståelseramen. I linje med detta vittnar teorier om det moderna och posthumanistiska samhället om en post-antropocentrism där tron på människans överordning har övergivits. Detta skapar sammantaget behov av nya tankesystem som kan ledsagas av ett immanent och icke-hierarkiskt perspektiv. Avsikten med föreliggande artikel är också att bli ett bidrag i detta avseende. Syftet är att pröva posthumanistisk teori på specifika pedagogiska situationer i förskolans musikverksamhet och att utveckla metodologiska verktyg som kan hantera ett utvidgat subjekt, där även det materiella kan tilldelas aktörsskap. På så sätt är förhoppningen att etablerade vetenskapliga undersökningsmetoder och tillvägagångssätt kan radikaliseras. Videoobserverade aktiviteter i förskolan bearbetas utifrån ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv där de centrala begreppen Rhizom, Intensitet, Liv, Hopp, Flyktlije sätts i rörelse i förhållande till empirin. Resultaten skrivs fram i form av tre specifika och empirigenererade ingångar i rhizomet: Ingång-Låten, Ingång-Mästaren och Ingång-Ipadmannen.

There is a lack of empirical studies that examine the influence of neoliberal ideas in preschool music and teaching. Neoliberal ideas have primarily been studied in a broader educational perspective and related to preschool policy reforms. The aim of this paper is to study preschool teachers’ rhetoric concerning music contents and music activities related to neoliberal ideas. Data consist of group conversations with preschool teachers and of video observations of daily music activities, at one preschool in Sweden. Discursive psychology has been used as a micro-sociological methodological approach. The findings show that music in this preschool is characterized by popular music, and varied consequences for knowledge content and early childhood learning are highlighted and analyzed. Also, it is argued that neoliberal ideas, in varied ways, determine the establishment of music content. For many reasons, rhetoric concerning the choice of musical content is of great importance to the field of preschool education. For example, it is essential to music education research and to preschool teachers’ everyday work, as it can improve teaching and learning qualities and become a knowledge contribution in society at large. © 2016 informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis group

The aim of this article is to re-think the results of four larger studies conducted by the authors during the last decade, all with a discourse analytical approach. The studies are empirical and concern the Swedish field of arts in education and deal with a comprehensive material consisting of interviews, observations and field notes. In the results of these studies three prominent discourses emerges. A Curriculum discourse, where content knowledge is connected to traditions, norms and values of educational institutions, a Feel-good discourse that deals with content knowledge where social and personal aspects are essential, and a Snacking on knowledge discourse where content knowledge is portrayed as something students are able to pick and choose according to their own preference. Ideas of late modern society and arts in education are then used as a basis to carry out a critical discussion about the emerging discourses. Also different teacher and student positions are problematized.

During the last decades neoliberal ideas have increased its influence in society at large, as well as in education and preschool. Children’s freedom of doing and becoming what they want, and that everything is possible, become central issues in this perspective. However, this freedom could be a treacherous chimera as individual choice also is constrained by economic logics and the power of the market. The aim of this ongoing project is to study how children’s everyday music culture is related to activities in preschool and to discuss this in the light of neoliberal ideas and theories of modernity. Data consists of group conversations with preschool teachers and video observations of music activities during spring 2013. The theoretical framework is built on social constructionist and poststructuralist theory with discursive psychology and discourse theory as methodological approach.

The result shows that the yearly TV-broadcasted song-contest in Sweden makes a great over all influence on children and adults. Our empirical result also indicates that preschool children are imitating the contest by staging their own song contest shows, while the preschool teachers are positioned as a passive audience by themselves and by the children. During group conversations the 1970^th politicized education, with a clear upbringing goal according to preschool music, is discussed. Pedagogues explain that such governing would not be accepted in today’s preschool.

The findings indicate that children’s initiatives are superior to teachers’ impact in preschool activities, but the content is simultaneously subordinated the laws of the market. At the same time the power of the market becomes legitimated by the idea of the independent child. This governing of preschool is considered to be in great need of further discussion and problematization. 

This paper is based on preliminary results of an on-going study. The aim is to investigate entanglements of children, teachers and digital technology, where humans as well as materiality are considered as actors. Learning is a main concept in the research field of didactics and preschool practice. Research is also highly dominated by a deterministic and dialectic approach. Instead, this study investigates the becoming of an entangled child, where the child continuously is in intra-actions with other humans and digital technology. In this setting Barads (2007) agential realism becomes a way to problematise widespread beliefs about the learning child. In this study, the concept intra-action (Barad, 2007) is used to analyse the becoming of the digital child. Preschool children 4-5 years old, preschool teachers and preschool teacher students participated. They explored a digital App (Toontastic 3D) and created a story with sound and moving images in a Digital Laboratory Centre (DLC). Field notes and video registrations were used for documentation. Ethical standards were assured through written informed content by all parents and personnel, and oral consent from the participating children. Results show that children together with digital technology are strongly bound to each other during the activities. In these entangled becoming actions is reliant both of the children and the technology. Also, the spectrum of action possibilities increases during the process. It is interesting to further discuss the concept of learning in an agential realism perspective as learning emerges without any involvement of teacher students or preschool teachers.

The aim of the project is to study students’ learning in a transformed course in Theory and Methodology of Science (TMS), a compulsory course in all teacher education programs in Sweden.

The students perceive the course TMS as difficult and abstract. At the same time it offers an important foundation for their continued education such as their final thesis and other research-related courses. Hereby it’s important for students to successfully pass, not only for the course itself, but also for subsequent courses. In a wider perspective, it is also sigificant for the development of the educational field, and to the students’ future workplaces. Our students should be able to understand and apply research for years to come. Heavy courses can also be problematic for economic reasons. Since few students are passing, they do not generate as much money as courses that many students pass. There are also examples where teachers are asked by the management to lower the requirements to increase the pass rate.

As teachers we have put a lot of effort into the course to support and help students learning. Despite this, only 35% passed the exam in spring 2016, which gave rise to the learning experiment we designed and studied this fall. The pedagogical idea is based on a problem-oriented learning, participatory learning and self-organized learning. This means that the students themselves are largely responsible for the organization of their learning. Teachers work with lectures and seminars, as well as coaching and scaffolding. The course is designed as an authentic empirical research project where both quantitative and qualitative data is used as a starting point. Students work in teams. They organize their work in the project by them selves and write a common research rapport. Through the reformed course, learning is combined with a great student responsibility, where students meaning making, socialization and co-learning are central. Hence, the most important research group work takes place is the project-office-rooms where the students’ main course work is performed. The organization of the course involves that students themselves designates project managers and that they take responsibility for their joint work, week by week. They can also request extra support from the teachers, if necessary.

The result of the study shows that 86% of the students received a passing grade. The aspects that matter most to the success are: 1) common spaces, the project office, which creates opportunities to exchange knowledge and experience IRL, 2) problem-oriented learning, participatory learning and self-organized learning, increasing participation and motivation, 3) Collective responsibility for knowledge formation during the project period, and 4) Authentic approach of the course, which by its design as closely as possible should simulate real research projects.

The aim of this article is to discuss and problematize how teachers in civics in upper secondary school construct drama, and how it relates to teaching, and students’ knowledge formation in civics. A study like this is important as the aesthetic subjects are becoming more prominent in young people’s everyday life at the same time as school by recent reformations is increasing the adjustment to efficiency and measurability. The theoretical framework is built on discursive psychology, which emanates from social constructionist and poststructuralist theory. Data consists of interviews with four upper secondary teachers in civics. Findings show that drama can be a valuable resource for teaching and learning civics, but also a problem when it comes to assessment. The position of the student as an object, teaching as entertainment and the domination of text is also discussed and problematized. Findings are considered as problematic as drama in civics, in relation to assessment, rather enhances a text-focused three-subject school than offering an alternative challenge.

The aim of this study is to investigate norms and constructions of children in previous research concerning preschool children and digital technology. Digital technology is an important part of preschool activities. The number of children and preschool teachers who have access to computer tablets and clever boards in their everyday practice has increased in recent years (e.g. Couse & Chen, 2010, Edwards, 2013). This development has led to the need of extended knowledge concerning the critical contextual factors of digital technology use in preschool context (e.g. Lindahl & Folkesson, 2012). In the analysis of the material, social constructionism and discursive psychology (Wheterell & Potter, 1992, Potter, 1996) were used. This paper is based on a critical integrative literature review (Torraco, 2005) regarding research on preschool children and digital technology. The review draws from a number of scholarly research articles conducted between 2000-2015. Ethical considerations were met by showing respect and responsiveness to other researchers work (e.g. codex.vr.se). Preliminary results indicate that children often are marginalised in research and focus is more likely to be on an adult's point of view (such as the teacher or the parent). In this sense, children have a weak "voice" in research regarding digital technology use in preschool, therefore, the lack of the child's perspective is evident. The results, we argue, have important implications for researchers, preschool teachers and teacher educators in further discussions of how, when and for what purposes digital technology should be used in preschool children's activities.

In recent years, posthumanist perspectives have become increasingly influential in the pedagogical research debate. The need for theories also capable of handling materialities as actors can be related to the increasing amount of technical devices present in everyday life, as in teaching contexts from preschool to university. Today, human´s use of different materialities is taken for granted, but materialities´ influence on the human has not been as obvious. From a posthumanist perspective characterized by anti-anthropocentrism where immanence and non-hierarchical approaches are emphasized, opportunities to understand materialities as acting subjects are created.

Within this perspective, different ways of handling the subject have evolved which we find both interesting and important to further explore. The aim of the study is to analyze and problematize posthumanist subjects in pedagogical research. Thus, the ambition is to clarify subject formations and specify subjects that appear, which in turn contributes to visualizing different subject forms. Methodological tools from posthumanist theory are used to find different Entrances in the research Rhizome. The findings are presented as specific Entrances in the Rhizome. The Entrances show different subject formations, where subjects with similarities to poststructuralist perspectives, subjects in a critical framework, as well as more radical posthumanist subjects emerge. Finally, the subject variation that has appeared is further discussed and problematized. 

During the last decades, neoliberal ideas have increased their influence in society at large, as well as in higher education. As teacher educators, we experience a growing trend that emphasizes the teacher's ability to be “liked” and “popular” at different levels of the educational system. Also, teacher education at large seems to profile through management, where a good reputation becomes weapon in the race to gain market shares. As a consequence of this emphasis is placed on quantification of students´ apprehensions, as it becomes a tool for success in the popularity-rankings, which in turn create possibilities to attract more students. For students already in the system, we have identified that they are more concerned about them selves and their own education than they are taking collective responsibility for a mutual education.

This is in great need of further studying, enabling a more complex discussion, giving emphasis to varying consequences of neoliberal ideas in teacher education. Such a discussion opens up for issues as student freedom related to knowledge, teaching and becoming a teacher in a market-driven logic as well as issues related to the educational system at large and to society.

Based on these considerations, the aim of this ongoing project is to study dialogues between students and teachers related to activities in teacher education and to discuss this in the light of neoliberal ideas. Data consists of written correspondence between teacher students and teachers produced during two months in 2014. The theoretical framework is built on social constructionist and poststructuralist theory, with discursive psychology and discourse theory as methodological approach.

Findings show several aspects in the dialogues between teachers and student teachers, presented as different interpretative repertoires. From a student perspective, the repertoire of demands implies claiming to be served at all costs, while the repertoire of resignation implies appealing to be rescued from difficulties. The students are positioning themselves as consuming children in need of support whereas the teachers are positioned as helping facilitators. From a teacher perspective, the repertoire of adherence is characterized by responsiveness, whereas the repertoire of resistance means questioning students´ matter. Here, the teachers position themselves as facilitators or as critics, where the latter is seen as an expression of a competing idea, challenging the repertoires from a student perspective. From an educational perspective, several problematic aspects on education quality as well as on the supply of teachers to society appears. Finally, implications for teacher education settings are discussed in addition to neoliberalism as an influential tendency. 

Traditionally, pedagogical research has been child centered, where materialities often have been considered as objects and tools. However, in recent posthuman research, attempts have been made to consider human materiality combinations to have impact on pedagogical activities in preschool, but to a large extent music as an issue has been neglected. Therefore, the aim of this research study is to discuss pedagogical quality and knowledge content in music activities in preschool by focusing on combinations of human and materiality subjects as “cyborgs.” Particularly, this is essential for preschool, teacher education, and research, contributing alternative understandings of learning settings. A theoretical framework emanates from posthumanist theories, where the authors apply methodological concepts used in their earlier work to study music activities. The empirical material was produced in Spring 2013. The analysis of video observations identifies two different characters of a cyborg, the guitar-human, and the CD human having quite different impacts on the music activities. Nevertheless, they have in common that they create intensities with the children, where entanglements between human and materiality become the activity. Finally, the cyborgs are discussed, where issues and dilemmas related to pedagogical quality, knowledge content, agency, and competence are addressed.

In recent years, digital technologies have become more important in educational contexts in general and in preschool educational activities in particular. This paper is a part of a larger study focusing on every day activities in preschool where educators and children are using I-pads as musical and physical movement resources. More specifically, the aim in this paper is to study how musical activities with sounding I-pads in preschool are staged. The theoretical framework is built on discursive psychology, which emanates from social constructionist and poststructuralist ideas. Discursive psychology has been used in an extensive micro-analysis of video recorded I-pad related music activities in preschool. Data was collected during March/April 2013. Findings show that an increased space for children's participation and agency constructs an educator position that is challenged, transformed and opened up for negotiation. The educator position is questioned by the child's alternative music repertoire and prominent position related to the sounding I-Pad. At the expense of other sounding musical resources that enable the teacher to position him-/herself as a competent educator, the I-pad permeating the music activities implies a resource that both teachers and children have mutual access to. Hereby, the educator position becomes open to both teachers and children. Altogether, this legitimates a dismantled educator responsibility, Findings are considered problematic referred to quality and available knowledge formation in the music activities.