We will present a study in progress. The aim is to generate insights about thecontent-related feedback student teachers receive within the context of mathematicsteaching during their practicum period. Students perceive feedback as an importantprompt for developing their further knowledge within disciplines and courses that arepart of their programme. Similarly, lack of feedback has a negative impact on students’motivation. For feedback to be of relevance, it needs to both relate to course contentand provide guidance for future tasks. The main challenge faced by the provider offeedback is to ensure that feedback is explicit, since vague or unclear feedback iseither ignored by students or experienced as frustrating. Thus, mentors tend toobserve student teachers so they can provide explicit feedback that will guide studentteachers as they develop their teaching practice. Being able to provide feedback toa student teacher in the context of a lesson requires the observer to not only havepractitioner knowledge, but also a command of the relevant content knowledgerelating to the discipline. So far, we have established that that student teachers tendto seek generalised feedback, and that mentors rarely provide feedback that targetsdiscipline specific teaching considerations. Based on relevant research, we seek toinfluence mentors’ discipline specific feedback to student teachers, since that in turnenhances the learning outcomes for their students. The present study explores howmentor articulate feedback to student teachers who teach mathematics in the primaryyears, to pupils aged 6-9. To improve feedback both mentor and student teachersundertook a series of action research cycles as a part of their professional developmentinto providing and receiving discipline specific feedback. The emerging findings will bediscussed with mentors and students after the practicum period has been completed.

This article presents an action research project conducted in a Swedish compulsory school. In the project the participants explored ways of identifying actions to improve in the practices of a professional learning community in order to develop teaching. This is important for participants in such communities, since the outcome of developed teaching is challenging to achieve. The exploration is guided by practice theories and is based on three practices: teachers’ peer observations of teaching, teachers’ plan-ning of these observations, and teachers’ and a researcher’s joint conversations based on the observations. By identifying actions in these practices and the relations between them, the findings show that how participating teachers formulated the direction of peer observations influenced the feedback that colleagues gave during observation practices, which in turn influenced both the input to and outcome of the conversations that followed these observa-tions. The study not only shows that this happened, but also how and why it happened, as well as how it can be visualised. Overall, the findings clearly demonstrate what promoted and what pre-vented the teachers’ professional learning and what needed to be improved. © 2023 The Author(s).

This thesis focuses on how principals’ practices in improvement work are formed and how these practices affect principals’ possibilities to work with planned change. The study takes its departure from ten Upper Secondary School principals’ improvement work concerning enterprise education. The study has an action research approach and was carried out between June 2009 and September 2010. The aim of the study is to generate knowledge about principals’ practices in improvement work and of action research as a strategy for principals in planned change in relation to these practices.               

The theoretical framework is based on practice theories (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Schatzki, 2002). According to these theories, a practice is formed in a project that shows what the practice is aiming for by practitioners’ sayings, doings and relatings. Furthermore, Kemmis and Grootenboer (2008) claim that practices are shaped by arrangements outside the practitioners; cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements.                                                                       

Findings show that what becomes meaningful for principals to engage in is not formed only by the aim of the planned improvement work, but also by already existing practices competing for space and by arrangements constraining principals’ possibilities to work with planned change. Many practices and projects were competing on the arena where the improvement work was planned to proceed. Some of the projects, ‘leading the improvement work’, ‘understanding what enterprise education is about’ and ‘making changes for enterprise education’ promoted the planned change. Others, projects like ‘organizing the daily work’, ‘avoiding dispute with teachers’ and ‘pretending to succeed’, constrained the planned change. Furthermore, cultural-discursive arrangements like abstract ideas of what the principals were supposed to create conditions for, as well as social-political arrangements like asymmetric relationships between the principals, and expectations from the local school board for quick solutions, enabled practices that constrained the planned change. Practices and arrangements like those in the study made it difficult for the principals to engage in action research as a strategy for change.                                                                                                                                         

Based on the results, principals’ possibilities to work with planned change are discussed in relation to the matter of context, dialogue as an improvement strategy, the aim for the improvement work and demands for quick solutions. 

The thesis contributes with knowledge about planned change and it contributes to the discussion about what kind of arrangements could support principals to initiate and lead school improvement. It also shows the importance of practice analyses in school improvement processes.  

Denna artikel presenterar en studie om hur lärares autonomi möjliggörs och begränsas i två olika samverkansprojekt mellan forskare och lärare. Sådan samverkan sägs riskera att styra lärare snarare än att stärka dem. Den presenterade studien visar dock att autonomi kan utvecklas i styrd samverkan, men också undergrävas vid utebliven styrning. Att samverkansmodeller delvis också är styrningsmodeller behöver således inte vara ett problem. Ledarskap, ägarskap och ansvar krävs i samverkan för lärarautonomi. Forskare och skolledare bör ta ett gemensamt ansvar för att hörsamma lärare och i partnerskap utveckla den samverkanskompetens som behövs för balans mellan autonomi och styrning.

Research Topic: This paper illustrates how we can use theory of practice architectures to understand what becomes meaningful for principals to do in school improvement. We often simplify principals’ possibilities to improve schools, which does not support principals’ improvement practices. Instead, we need to make the complexity in improvement practices visible.

Theory and Aim: The study focus principals’ actions in improvement in relation to context. It takes its departure from ten principals’ improvement concerning conditions for enterprise education. The research questions are: 1) what do principals do in a school improvement work and how do their actions change over time, and 2) how do the context form their actions?

Methodology: The analysis is based on the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis, et al, 2014). A practice is formed by sayings, doings and relatings that hang together in a project. A project is what a practice is aiming for. Furthermore, cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements shape and constrain the practice. So how a practice turns out is dependent on cultural-discursive, material-economical and socio-political arrangements. By analysing projects in principals’ improvement work, I show what principals are trying to uphold and what dilemmas they are trying to solve in their practice. By analysing the arrangements, I show why some projects overshadow other projects.The participants are a team of eleven upper secondary school principals at the same school. The research object was the arena where the principals met to discuss, reflect on and to create conditions for enterprise education. The empirical material, collected during one year, consisted of field notes from observations of joint principal meetings, transcripts from focus group conversations with the principals about their improvement practices, and of principals’ as well as mine written log notes.

Findings: The results show six practices competed on the arena where the principals where supposed to work with the improvement work. Three of them enabled the intended improvement practices. The other three constrained the intended practice. In addition, over time they overshadowed the first three. Cultural-discursive arrangements like abstract ideas of what the principals´ were supposed to created conditions for as well as social-political arrangements like asymmetric relationships between the principals and expectations from the local school board on quick solutions enabled practices that constrained the planned change. What became meaningful for the principals engage in were not the planned improvement practice, but other already existing practices.

Relevance to Nordic research: With the theory of practice architecture, it becomes obvious why school improvement from principals point of view is challenging. Analyses based on the theory contributes to the discussion about what kind of arrangements could support principals to motivate, initiate and lead school improvement. It also shows the importance of analyzing every unique context when planning improvement work to be able to understand what needs to be changed to strengthen principals’ improvement practices.

This article nuances an ongoing discussion among researchers about external researchers in emancipatory action research in the educational field. It examines opportunities and challenges for emancipatory action research for participants in top-down and bottom-up initiated action research projects with external researchers. An analysis based on variables for studying critical emancipatory action research highlights four central questions in both projects: whose choice, improvement for what, whose voice and improvement for whom. An external researcher could empower the understanding of the participants involved in terms of what to improve, contribute to all voices being heard, and strengthen improvements in those who were not in position of power in both top-down and bottom-up initiated action research. However, in the top-down initiative, the external researcher could not emancipate the participants in relation to the question whose choice it is to conduct action research, unlike in the bottom-up initiative. The findings indicate that involving external researchers in action research aiming for emancipation or not is not the relevant question. Instead, the question of relevance is what is required from external researchers in order to contribute to emancipation, a central question for all participants, for developing meaningful collaboration between school organisations and universities. © 2022 The Author(s). 

This article deepens the knowledge of practices within school cultures and their dynamics in relation to improvement work. It investigates: Which practices can be identified in school improvement among principals at upper secondary school level? How are these practices shaped? How do they promote or prevent the improvement work of the principals? Three of six identified practices challenged the planned improvement. The significance of the study is the practice perspective which visualizes and concretizes the complexity within school cultures in relation to the dynamics of improvement work; it illuminates changes and subcultures as well as external factors shaping the culture. The practice perspective used in the study avoids descriptions of general culture types and results based on experiences, which are common challenges within school culture research. The study suggests researchers conduct practice analyses to illustrate complexity within school cultures and improvement. © 2020 The Author(s).

This article deepens the knowledge of middle leaders’ impact on school improvement and organisation development. More precisely, it focuses on how middle leaders from comprehensive schools and preschools translated improvement strategies and tools from a municipal course on leading school improvement into their own organisations. It is based on interviews with middle leaders, teachers, and principals at two schools and two preschools. Translation theory is used as a theoretical frame. The findings show that the middle leaders translated improvement strategies based on local needs, and for several reasons: for clarification and reduction of roles and improvement areas; structuring improvement work; engaging and involving colleagues in school improvement; and developing a professional culture. When taking the role of translators, the middle leaders became central to progressing the developmental elements of local school organisations. The study recommends investing to provide middle leaders with improvement strategies and an understanding of translation theory to enable translations that aid the development of school organisations. © 2021, The Author(s).

In a previous report, 2013, results from questionnaires and interviews showed how a new middle leader role among preschool teachers and teachers had been implemented 1,5 years after a course focusing on leading processes. The course took place in one school district in the city of Helsingborg, Sweden. The present report tells the story of what has happened within the 13 schools and 13 preschools and with the 62 middle leaders three years after the first report.

The middle leaders were originally called process leaders. Their main function was to stimulate and guide their colleagues in developmental work, in close cooperation with principals. They have been working as administrative assistants, mentors to colleagues, leaders of improvement projects and consultants for larger school development. During the years an emphasis on micro tasks together with colleagues, have further developed to include an emphasis on macro tasks for the whole units. The preschools are all still using the process leaders, while nine of the schools have chosen other options. Some schools use first teachers (a government sponsored teacher role) as middle leaders instead. Some schools have stopped using middle leaders all-together since they do not fit principals’ view of an efficient and strict organisation. The staff at half the units do not consider process leaders as useful as before, while the staff at the other half of the units view them as just as or even more useful.

Middle leaders are one facet of organisational change in the school district. The introduction of process leaders correspond with an increased tendency for 6 staff to engage in different change projects. This coincides with the organising of a task and process driven organisation for both routine work and development. During interviews at four sites, we noticed and named the emergence of such organisations. Teachers are assigned tasks (communicated with the rest of the staff) directly from the principal. Most preschool teachers and teachers have had tasks within specific areas, in which they are resources for their colleagues. Middle leaders, more often than their colleagues, have coordinating tasks.

The four sites show considerable improvements in staff attitudes in relation to cooperation, perceived job relevance of in-service training, developmental projects and evaluation, and most of all support when having problems in class and needing help in order to achieve change. There is also an increase in the perception of empowerment in work correlated with an increase in taking on tasks. This was registered by staff questionnaires, which also measured individual teacher efficacy, and collective efficacy within staffs. Over the three years, these two measures have got a higher correlation, especially for preschool teachers. Thus, teachers let their own self-efficacy be more influenced by cooperative achievement at the sites, or vice versa.

No special factor was especially outstanding in influencing collective efficacy. Instead, the numbers and direction of change played the most important role. Many negative changes in attitudes correlated with decreased collective efficacy. Both positive and negative changes correlated with no change in collective efficacy, while many improvements in measured factors predicated improved collective efficacy. What worked as enhancing or depressing on collective efficacy seems to be a contextual and local affair.

Certain generative mechanisms were found to have important impact on the emergence and growth of task and process driven organisations. The generative mechanisms are: staff opens for visibility, cooperation across borders, improved deliberative structure of meetings, better coupling between leadership and staff, getting staff ownership from many tasks and wide participation in activities, more systematic developmental processes, improvements visible for children and students, in-take of news from other sites and research. These mechanisms also express meaning to staffs’ use of the concept ‘process driven’. In many of these processes especially process leaders used artifacts and templates learned during the course. Our analyses indicate that an important facet of task and process driven organisations were that a temporary developmental organisation was drawn up and modelled. Similar structures were not in place, or malfunctioned, in the operative organisation for routine work. © 2017 Nehez, Gyllander Torkildsen, Lander, Olin & Blossing.

This article explores external facilitation for school improvement; more specifically, it examines the practical work of external facilitators. It is based on a Swedish case in which facilitators at the Swedish National Agency for Education support low-performing schools. The article aims to develop knowledge about how external facilitators in their practical work both promote and prevent developed understanding and improvement capacity. Based on observations and documents, facilitators’ endeavours and critical situations in their work to support school improvement are identified. The findings show five different endeavours to promote development of understanding and improvement capacity. However, they also show how taking ownership, simplification, and model focus, three of five identified recurring critical situations, prevent such development. The conclusion is that there are several aspects for external facilitators to balance to promote school improvement and turn around low-performing schools. When planning for external facilitation, it is important to consider how the facilitators’ practical work can be adapted to the local contexts of those who are facilitated in order to promote their ownership of the processes. Without balance and adaptation, external facilitation can lead to deprofessionalisation instead of development of improvement capacity. © The Author(s) 2024

Today many classrooms in Sweden are multilingual, characterized by a diversity of linguistic, cultural and epistemological resources available for teaching and learning. Handling this diversity puts certain demands on teachers in order to provide all students equal learning opportunities in a context where the language of instruction is Swedish. As a response to this, local school development projects based on multilingualism as a resource have been initiated. This study focuses on two such projects with the aim to deepen the knowledge about how translanguaging teaching practices can be developed. To make visible what characterizes as well as enable and constrain translanguaging teaching practices under development, the theory of practice architectures is used. Three different practices are identified The Multilingual, The Ambivalent multilingual and The Monolingual teaching practice. The practices are formed by differing cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements. Above all, cultural-discursive arrangements such as norms and ideas affect the differences between the three practices. Existing norms and ideas affect how material and economic resources, mostly identic in all three practices, are used. Furthermore, monolinguistic norms seem to form hierarchical relations. Thus, we argue to develop translanguaging practices multilingual norms are important to develop.Article Details 

This article aims to generate knowledge about the introduction of new professions and additional competences in schools. The article presents a case study based on a project to promote increased student attendance in a primary school. Existing staff working with student health care and staff with additional competences were involved in the project. The research questions are: What do staff with additional competences do in the work done in a school to promote student attendance? What enables or constrains this work? Documents, field notes and interview transcripts have been analysed by using practice theory, a theoretical perspective that is lacking in previous research within the field. The results show that in a short space of time additional competences can improve the conditions for work done in a school to promote attendance by putting absenteeism issues on the agenda, contributing to new ways of working and creating reliable relationships and good communication for students and those responsible for them. At the same time, the work is constrained by such factors as unclear roles, unclear delimitations of responsibilities and territorial thinking, as well as current and previous routines in the school for dealing with problems of absenteeism. The prerequisites need to be refined and highlighted for additional competences to be integrated into the life of the school, and for equal conditions for the lifelong learning and health of students to be created.

Research shows that leadership is crucial for professional learning, often highlighting principals' or middle leaders' leading practices. However, in leading, professions with differing roles work together. With a decentring perspective on leadership, we shift the focus from the individual principal or middle leader to joint leading practices. Based on a practice theoretical perspective, this article explores how educational leadership unfolds in shared leading practices in a Swedish case where professional learning is led by principals, middle leaders, and an external development leader. The findings visualise a web of practices focusing on understanding roles, changing structures and changing content for professional learning. The shared leading practices are enabled by shared ideas, different positions, and common arenas for communication, but constrained by simplified assumptions and exclusion of teachers. In this web, single dilemmas are handled in different practices from differing perspectives, with changes in plans for professional learning as an outcome. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Research shows that leadership is crucial for professional learning, often highlighting principals' or middle leaders' leading practices. However, in leading, professions with differing roles work together. With a decentring perspective on leadership, we shift the focus from the individual principal or middle leader to joint leading practices. Based on a practice theoretical perspective, this article explores how educational leadership unfolds in shared leading practices in a Swedish case where professional learning is led by principals, middle leaders, and an external development leader. The findings visualise a web of practices focusing on understanding roles, changing structures and changing content for professional learning. The shared leading practices are enabled by shared ideas, different positions, and common arenas for communication, but constrained by simplified assumptions and exclusion of teachers. In this web, single dilemmas are handled in different practices from differing perspectives, with changes in plans for professional learning as an outcome. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Denna artikel beskriver ett ULF-projekt där sjuförskollärare på övningsförskolor har lett och spelat in professionsseminarier med lärarstudenter. På högskolan har förskollärarna utforskat inspelningarna tillsammans med tre forskare. Syftet har varit att förbättra kvaliteten och likvärdigheten i seminarier där ett teoretiskt analysredskap med tre dimensioner av praktiskt yrkeskunnande användes. I projektet har bland annat förändringar i ledarskapet av seminarierna undersökts. Resultatet synliggör förändringar i ägarskap av analysredskapet, tillit till det egna professionella omdömet och professionellt mod att undersöka egna tillkortakommanden. Förändringarna har påverkat kvaliteten i seminarierna.

The report details a follow-up study commissioned by the municipality of Helsingborg and conducted by a research group in School Development at Gothenburg University. The study is designed to build a partnership between the municipality and the research group, where the results from this study will serve as a starting point for further collaborative projects. A new kind of middle leaders has been introduced into the school and preschool organisations, socalled process leaders. In previous research, similar roles as development leaders or change agents have been described. The local authority aims at promoting school improvement and professional development. The study aims at reviewing the introductory phase of implementing process leaders in the school and preschool organisations. The questions in focus are: • How is the process leaders’ work organised? • How is the process leaders’ work steered? • What tasks do the process leaders work with? Two types of methods have been used: (a) a survey to all schools/preschools where process leaders have been implemented and (b) interviews with all principals at those schools/preschools and the head of the school administration department. All teachers at the schools and preschools in the area, including the process leaders, have answered the survey. The results from the survey, focusing on collective self-efficacy, show that so far the process leaders’ have not influenced their colleagues’ work in any major way, especially not for those already having a good and critical collaboration going on. The impact of the process leaders’ work in this phase, also to a small extent, reaches the class room work. However, impact is apparent in the practice of meetings between teachers. The interviews were conducted as focus group discussions with two to four principals in each group. The topics focused on (a) what the process leaders were doing at each school/preschool and (b) what the principals thought about their work. Results show that the process leaders so far mostly work with micro processes such as facilitating peer meetings about pedagogical issues, which therefore have been improved. Still there is a general aspiration among the principals that the process leaders should be more involved in macro processes of the organisational work, such as planning and leading the strategic work of school development. However, we notice that the study also reveals that there are different opinions about the benefit of having process leaders in the schools/preschools at all. Some principals, describing the need to be in control of all the processes going on in their organisations, see the process leaders as somewhat of a threat. On the other hand, other principals describe a distributed leadership as their vision, and highlight the possibility to better improve school development with the help of their process leaders’ work.

Teachers are expected to develop and follow up their practices in order to create thebest possible opportunities for student learning and growth. Action research providesprocesses and tools for such an approach and for this reason, some universities inthe Nordic countries have integrated action research into their teacher educationand in-service programs. Action research is not primarily technical when it comes toinvestigating practices but rather strives for critical thinking and thereby empowermentfor teachers. Expectations and traditions collide under those circumstances and thequestion is what action research education leads to.

In this symposium we want to explore (1) if and how teachers, through studyingand practicing action research, develop their practices and knowledge, (2) How theeducation itself and the schools where the teachers work nurture or constrain teachers’development work.

In Sweden, we have interviewed teachers participating in master programs givenat two universities (Gothenburg and Halmstad). The focus in the interviews was onwhether their practices in schools have changed and if so how the education hasinfluenced those changes. In Finland, teachers, who have conducted action researchas part of an in-service course at Åbo Akademi University, have been interviewedwith the same research focus. In Sweden, one teacher, who participated in the masterprogram in Gothenburg, has studied herself in her new role as teacher educator/facilitator at the University and present results from this study.

Our results contribute with knowledge on how educational action researchemerges, sometimes easily and sometimes with more difficulties, in two Nordiccontexts as a way for teachers to become owners of their own development work.

This chapter focuses on a data team as a Professional Learning Network. Data teams are teams of teachers and school leaders who collaboratively use data to solve a specific educational problem in their school. The focus is on school improvement and professional development in data use. The chapter explains the concept of data use or data-based decision making. Examples of data include student achievement results, student background information, surveys, and classroom observations. Data-based decision making pertains to using these systematically collected quantitative and/or qualitative data to base decisions on. The chapter describes the specific data team intervention. The data team intervention focuses on professional development of teachers and school leaders in the use of data, with the ultimate goal of school improvement. The chapter also focuses on one specific data team from Sweden. It provides the factors that can enable or hinder the work of a data team.

Teachers’ professional learning is closely connected to and dependent on different leading practices. Teachers professional learning is regarded as a key factor in successful school development, and development leaders at different levels are assigned to provide for and support such learning. However, the connection between leading and learning needs to be further explored. In this article, we focus specifically on development leaders’ leading practice when leading professional learning. Based on the theory of practice architectures, the study explores the interplay between development leaders and teacher leaders in a professional development programme, where the leading and learning practices of the different leaders meet. The findings show that development leaders’ leading practice is characterised by responsiveness to ideas of successful leading, to experiences and observations of leading practices, to teacher leaders’ understanding and to their own leading practices. Through these types of responsiveness, a formative aspect of leading unfolds where the interplay between development leaders’ leading and teacher leaders’ learning practices appears. We refer to this as learning leading. © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

There is increasing attention to the role of education in teaching environmental issues such as climate change (Teach the Future, n.d.). Whilst environmental issues are science-dependent, science is not sufficient to respond to today’s environmental challenges. Yet internationally, science and geography are those subjects most likely to include environmental content (UNESCO, 2021). In England, students can expect to learn about environmental challenges including climate change, biodiversity and pollution during their compulsory science education (DfE, 2013). These topics are often controversial, rife with moral tensions (Zeidler, Herman, & Sadler, 2019), and characterised by both descriptive facts and normative values. The values often deal with solutions to the problems, what kind of actions can be taken on an individual or societal level and even what kind of society is preferred. This makes the issues both scientific and political. Yet little is known about how politics enters the science classroom. In this study, we aim to understand how environmental politics enters the classroom, and how science teachers address different approaches to political participation with their students.

In order to develop democratic environmental governance, there is a need for representation of different groups of people, opportunities for participation and for spaces for deliberation (Lidskog & Elander, 2007), i.e. for politics. Schools are potential sites for participation and deliberation and for learning democracy (Biesta & Lawy, 2006). Politics can be defined in different ways, from a narrow focus on electoral processes to broader conceptualisations which include different ways of making decisions and shaping power relations. In this study, we are concerned with power and social change (Dahl & Stinebrickner, 2003) i.e. “the capacity for agency and deliberation in situations of genuine collective or social choice” (Hay, 2007, p. 77) through science education. This definition of politics goes beyond electoral and party politics and includes activities outside formal political institutions. This is in accordance with Heywood (1999)’s characterisation of politics as an a social activity that arises out of interaction between or among people, which develops out of diversity (the existence of different interests, wants, needs and goals), and which relates to collective decisions which are regarded as binding upon a group of people. Carter (2018) identifies the environment as a policy problem for several reasons, including that the environment can be considered a public good, with complex and interdependent relationships between people and ecosystems acting across national borders with consequences felt into the future.

This characterisation of politics is relevant to the study context as education is a social activity which brings together people with different views, interests and goals in relation to the environment, and it is a context in which collective decisions can be made, for example, about how the school function, what is taught (and how), and what actions or outcomes are desirable as a result of education. Not all of these actions and outcomes can be considered political and we see politics as related to societal engagement and political participation more broadly. Ekman and Amnå (2012) have developed a typology of different forms of participation in society. They distinguish between (a) non-participation (disengagement); (b) civic participation (latent political), whether social involvement or civic engagement; and (c) political participation (manifest political), which can be formal political participation or activism. Each of these three types of participation are further classified in terms of individual and collective forms. In this study, we use Ekman and Amnå’s (2012) typology to understand the ways in which teachers address the political dimensions of the environment in school science. The research question we set out to explore in the study is: how do science teachers address political participation in science education?

Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedAn exploratory qualitative approach was used to understand science teachers’ perceptions and approaches to environmental politics. We focused on science teachers with responsibility for teaching students aged 11-16 in England because we were interested in what students experience during their compulsory secondary science education, where the curriculum demands that they learn about ecosystems and the environment. 

A deductive approach to instrument design was used, drawing on Ekman and Amnå’s (2012) typology of latent and manifest political participation and non-participation (see Table 1 above) in the design of the interview guide and in the analysis of data to understand the ways in which politics enters the science classroom. Given the potentially sensitive nature of some of the questions, we used one-to-one interviews, conducted online to increase the geographical reach, and minimise the need for travel.  The interview guide contained open-ended questions on science teachers’ perspectives on and experiences of teaching environmental politics in science education.  We deliberately did not ask about educational policy; only about teachers’ own experiences, practices, personal perspectives and barriers they encountered.  

Participants were provided with an infographic using examples from Ekman and Amnå’s (2012) typology and asked to mark ways of participating in society which they had:planned and taught (green); mentioned in passing or in response to a question from a student (orange); and, never addressed (red).  The interview focused on reasons for these decisions.  Interviews were conducted by three members of the research team and took place in January - June 2022. Each lasted approximately 1 hour. 

Interviews with 11 teachers were recorded and transcribed and interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) (Smith, 2004) used to analyse the data.  This approach aims not at generalisation but rather to understand how individuals make sense of their own experiences (Guihen, 2019), namely, how politics enters the science classroom.  IPA is typically used to generate meaningful insights from a small dataset, often in psychology and health sciences.  It is appropriate here because it provides a way to understand how participants make sense of their social world, it allows for diversity of perceptions rather than looking for a single objective truth and it allows researchers to interpret these experiences and understand the perspective of an insider and then interpret what it means for them to have this perspective (Reid, Flowers, & Larkin, 2005). An iterative approach to data analysis was used, with reflexive discussions between each stage of analysis.   Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsTeachers participating in this study saw a place for politics in science education.  However, it  was described as almost absent in lessons. Teachers were more likely to discuss individual, legal, forms of participation, focusing on civil (latent political) actions rather than collective, manifest forms of participating. Even when politics enters the classroom, it tends to be students rather than teachers who introduce the topic, unless there are links to the curriculum or other legal and political frameworks. Policy (national and school) and colleague and student perceptions prevented teachers from planning to discuss manifest forms of political participation with students.  

Politics (especially collective aspects) are experienced as off-limits to teachers in the study. This post-political logic distances people (here, young people but also teachers) from involvement in decision-making and reduces their capacity to be involved in environmental decision-making now and in the future.  These absences, we argue, contribute to a broader societal trend which closes off spaces to discuss and celebrate disagreement (Blühdorn & Deflorian, 2021), and which diminish the potential for young people to learn democracy. In order to develop democratic governance of environmental issues, there is a need for representation, opportunities for participation and for spaces for deliberation (Liskog & Elander, 2007).  Schools are in many ways ideal sites to encourage political participation as they are shared spaces of learning - both about forms of participation but also how to participate and to deliberate across disagreement, or as one of the teachers in this study put it ‘we need to teach them how to use their voice properly and how to be heard’. This requires those who are in positions where they can act to listen to these voices and engage in deliberation and bring politics - as the capacity to deliberate and make collective decisions - into the science classroom.

The purpose of this study was to generate knowledge about digital triadic conversations for the development of student teachers’ practical professional skills. The study was conducted in a distance context for triadic supervision during the final practicum period for student teachers. The analysis of 16 conversations showed that most students had processed the observation documentation, that the students became legitimate participants in the conversations and was given a considerable time to speak. Three themes were identified: students justified their teaching choices, they provided different courses of action, and they identified consequences for their pupils. We found a relation betweenquality in conversations, digital documentation in observation and time for preparation before the triadic supervision. The results implicate that the level of quality in documentation was good enough for reflection on teaching and for students’ legitimate participation.

This study involved six Swedish and Canadian doctoral students who shared interests in using action research in professional education in different disciplines. We employed Noffke’s three dimensions of action research as a theoretical framework (i.e., the Professional, the Personal, and the Political). Using collective biography as a methodology, we cooperatively examined how our personal and professional agendas and macro-level structures have been shaping our intentions to conduct action research projects in our respective disciplines. The key findings of this international and interdisciplinary collective biography relate our growing awareness of the intimacy between research and life in various professional and geographic contexts. Collectively addressing our shared frustrations, we celebrated action research as a methodology that attends to the dynamic and concrete lived experiences of our participants in various spatio-temporalities. Reflecting upon the hybridity of our own researcher identities, we were also able to see the intimate relation between ourselves as active citizens and critical action researchers who are determined to take up the challenges and engage in critically oriented action research that could nurture more “caring,” “empowering,” and “transforming” public spheres. Copyright © 2014 by SAGE Publications

Förskollärarprogrammet på Högskolan i Halmstad har under perdioen 2014-2019 ingått i en försöksverksamhet med övningsförskolor tillsammans med kommunala huvudmän i Falkenberg, Halmstad, Laholm, Båstad, Ängelholm, Höganäs och Helsingborg och en fristående huvudman i Halmsta.

I denna rapport beskrivs hur det nationella uppdraget om övningsförskolor har utformats på Högskolan i Halmstad. Rapporten består av två delar. I den första delen presenteras hur försöksverksamheten har organiserats för koncentration, kompetens och samverkan, utvärdering och lärdomar gjorda av Högskolans personal. I den andra delen presenteras övningsförskolornas egna självvärderingar i form av åtta fallbeskrivningar.

Rapporten har skrivits i samverkan med övningsförskolorna och är baserad på data kopplad till försöksverksamhetens etablerande, prövande och granskande skede. De resultat som presenteras visar att försöksverksamheten har förändrat grundsynen på verksamhetsförlagd utbildning bland alla involverade. Samtliga parter lyfter fram samverkan och relationsskapande mellan lärosätet, programmets VFU-ledare och övningsförskolorna som centralt för den förändrade grundsynen. Högskolan har utmanats i att balansera samverkan med övningsförskolorna med intern kommunikation om försöksverksamheten. Det krävs fortsatt arbete för att VFU-frågorna ska bli allas angelägenhet på Högskolan.

Övningsförskolornas fallbeskrivningar pekar på att försöksverksamheten har bidragit till ökad kompetens på förskolorna kopplat till VFU, något som i sin tur har skapat bättre förutsättningar för progression i studenters praktiska yrkeskunnande. Övningsförskolorna har erövrat rollen som lärarutbildare och vill fortsatt vara med och påverka morgondagens kollegor, trots att rollen är krävande och att strukturer även forsättningsvis behöver förfinas. Resultaten visar att övningsförskolor skapar förutsättningar för studenter att bli en del av en professionell gemenskap för lärande vilket främjar studenternas utveckling av en professionell identitet.