The presence of digital technologies in classroom settings is relentlessly getting stronger and has shown to have powerful playful qualities. In recent years, digital game-based learning (DGBL) have been introduced in schools. In this paper we investigate an innovative approach to game-based learning, namely to use game design activities as motivators for developing children’s creative and social skills as well as other kinds of learning scenarios, e.g. computational. It is based on two cases, where game design activities by means of a narrative approach were applied in both analogue and digital form. The unit of analysis is game design activities. Hence, game design activities with the participating children (3 rd graders, 9–10 years of age), creative materials and technologies, and children’s actions as well as interactions are analyzed. The research questions posed in this study are: (1) What activities develop when school children design games in two cases, as an analogue activity, and as an activity including technology?; and (2) How do the learning environment, including the artefacts, employed mediate these activities? The outcomes of the study indicate that the game design workshop session which included both creative material and technology unfolded more combinational activities, which indicate that the inclusion of technology facilitated a more critical design decision making. However, the game design workshop session including only creative material exhibited a more thorough knowledge about what the material could do and what the children themselves could do with the material, which seemed to result in more playful interactions between the children. © 2019, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

The presence of digital technologies in classroom settings is relentlessly getting stronger and has shown to have powerful playful qualities. In recent years, digital game-based learning (DGBL) have been introduced in schools. In this paper we investigate an innovative approach to game-based learning, namely to use game design activities as motivators for developing children’s creative and social skills as well as other kinds of learning scenarios, e.g. computational. It is based on two cases, where game design activities by means of a narrative approach were applied in both analogue and digital form. The unit of analysis is game design activities. Hence, game design activities with the participating children (3 rd graders, 9–10 years of age), creative materials and technologies, and children’s actions as well as interactions are analyzed. The research questions posed in this study are: (1) What activities develop when school children design games in two cases, as an analogue activity, and as an activity including technology?; and (2) How do the learning environment, including the artefacts, employed mediate these activities? The outcomes of the study indicate that the game design workshop session which included both creative material and technology unfolded more combinational activities, which indicate that the inclusion of technology facilitated a more critical design decision making. However, the game design workshop session including only creative material exhibited a more thorough knowledge about what the material could do and what the children themselves could do with the material, which seemed to result in more playful interactions between the children. © 2019, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

Den här delen avslutar modulen samtidigt som den blickar framåt mot arbetslagets och skolans utveckling. Syftet med delen är att bidra till hur skolans personal kan arbeta med att utveckla en skola som har som mål att i verksamheten som helhet arbeta med hållbarhet.

I delen presenteras en modell för hur en skola kan arbeta med skolutveckling som en demokratisk process. Delen diskuterar Framtidsverkstad, som är en metod för att starta en förändringsprocess. Den visar ett exempel från en skola och hur ett arbetslag genomför en framtidsverkstad. Ni får även möjlighet att pröva att genomföra en framtidsverkstad på den egna skolan. Delen tar också upp idéer om organisationsförändring.

Kapitlet ger en introduktion till lärande i hållbar utveckling. Det görs genom att ge en bild av hur de komplexa och ämnesövergripande hållbarhetsfrågorna kan karaktäriseras. Kapitlet lägger vikt vid att diskutera och problematisera de viktiga frågorna, varför behövs en undervisning i hållbar utveckling, vad ska undervisningen innehålla samt hur ska den organiseras.

Upplevelser och händelser som sker i elevernas vardag kan ibland problematiseras utifrån en naturvetenskaplig kontext. I denna studie har vi analyserat vi hur lärare,som undervisar elever i årskurs nio, använder sig av elevernas vardagserfarenheter då de undervisar, analysen bygger påKamberelis och Wehunt (2012) definition av hybrid diskurs-praxis. Analysen fokuseraspå den första inledande delen av lektionen, då läraren oftast är den främsta aktören i undervisningen. Denövergripande anledningentill att göra dessa analyser är indikationerna i PISA som visar att de svenska eleverna upplever den naturvetenskapliga undervisningen relevant men ointressant. I detta sammanhang blir det därför relevant att undersöka hur lärare talat om naturvetenskap i relation till elevernas vardagserfarenheter. Studien gjordes vid 6 olika skolor där totalt 44 lektioner spelades, dessa lektioners inledningar analyserades. 67 situationer detekterades och kategoriserades i tre övergripande grupper; Vardaglig kontext, Skolkontext och Språklig kontext. Vardagligkontext delades sedan i underkategorier ett exempel är: underkategorin, förklarande berättelser (12 situationer), har vi samlat de situationer där läraren, till synes spontant, hittar på berättelser för att kontextualisera naturvetenskapen. Noterbart är att inga längre berättelser förekom utan samtliga historier var korta kontextualiserande berättelser. Skolkontext hade inga underkategorier utan samtliga situationer referenser till andra skolämnen innebär att läraren relaterar till andra skolämnen genom att beskriva ämnesinnehållet som en del av en större enhet och skapar därmed en hybriditet mellan de olika skolämnena. Vid sex tillfällen gjordes sådana kopplingar till andra ämnen. Språkligkontext har tre underkategorier var av en är, Sammankopplar naturvetenskapliga ord med vardagsord, i denna underkategoriåterfinns främst på en av skolorna och då i ämnet kemi, när eleverna arbetade med ämnesområdet organiska syror. Genom att namnge de organiska syrorna med både vetenskapliga och vardagligt språk ger läraren eleverna möjligheter att se sambandet mellan det kemins ordval, askorbinsyra, och det ordval som görs i vardagen, C-vitamin.

Syftet med delen är att bidra till hur skolan kan arbeta med komplexa sammanhang, människans betydelse i förhållande till lokala och globala perspektiv av påverkan och ansvar, betydelsen av hur vi tolkar kunskaper genom olika värdegrunder och vilken betydelse vi ger individens handlingar. Det konkretiseras med exempel på fördelar och nackdelar med olika val. Det förs även resonemang om hur människans handlingar bidrar till och ifall de har betydelse för en hållbar utveckling i en komplex värld.

Deltagarna får genomföra en undervisning som bygger på livscylelanalys (LCA) och redogöra för den. Erfarenheterna används för ämnesövergripande diskussioner om hur undervisningen kan utvecklas.

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.

Introduction: Sustainable development is often described as a global project, including everyone everywhere in the fight for a better ‘common future’. Theaim of this paper is to problematize this inclusive project through an analysis of how good intentions in Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE)construct and maintain differences between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. We are interested in exposing social constructions of normality and otherness in the taken-for- granted good intentions within ESE.Objectives: The analysis focuses textbooks used in Swedish schools, how texts and pictures operate as cogwheels in what we call Otherness machinery,discursively constructing who is ‘normal’ and who is ‘the Other’. We examine how representations of race and nationality construct (un)desirable subjects inside the discourse of ESE. The theoretical framework builds on 1) critical race theory and whiteness studies and 2) theories on double gestures of inclusion and exclusion in education. When trying to help or foster the Orher, we are, at the same time, in a double gesture, constructing the ones in need asabjects, those who ‘need to be saved’ into a specific norm.Methods: The empirical material consists of teaching material about sustainable development: five textbooks in science, civics and geography for primary and lower secondary school and two thematic fact books for school. From the books, we extracted parts that were concerned with sustainable development and environmental issues for a closer analysis.In the analysis of the material, we studied how normality (in this case Swedishness) and Otherness are constructed and who (in terms of the entanglement ofrace and nationality) is representing what. The question is how Sweden, or ‘We’, is constructed in relation to the Other and what discursive consequences these positions have attached to them.Results: The result is presented through five dichotomies structuring the ESD discourse: Tradition/Civilization, Dirtiness/Purity, Chaos/Order, Ignorance/Morality and Helped/Helping. Through these dichotomies we show how differences between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ are constructed and maintained inthe textbooks about sustainable development and environment. Sweden, and Swedishness, are with help from different - uncivilized or immoral others - constructed as exceptional. We claim that these representations of race and nationality imply a colonial gaze.Conclusion: The paper addresses the risk that a child who engages in the ESE practice come to meet the world with a colonial gaze and an aim to foster the Other into a specific way of living. It discusses how the global project of sustainable development is transformed through a discourse of “Swedish exceptionalism”. In a double gesture of inclusion and exclusion, the rest of the world appears in need of help, development, or – in some cases – higher moral standards. The including ESE project must thus be understood as a colonial, and excluding practice – a form of epistemological imperialism.

Denna rapport är en del av utvärderingen av landsbygdsprogrammet 2007–2013. Fyra grupper med forskare från universitet och högskolor har gjort slututvärderingen. Den publiceras i fyra delrapporter varav detta är en. Frågor som handlar om hela programmet besvaras huvudsakligen i delrapport IV. Frågor om enskilda åtgärder besvaras i de tre andra delrapporterna. En översikt av vilka frågor som besvaras i vilken rapport finns på följande sidor.

Slututvärderingen görs för att besvara EU-gemensamma och specifika svenska utvärderingsfrågor om vilka effekter programmet har haft, i vilken utsträckning det har bidragit till att uppfylla målen och hur effektivt detta har gjorts.

Utvärderingssekretariatet vid Jordbruksverket ansvarar för att de svenska EU-programmen där Jordbruksverket är förvaltande myndighet blir utvärderade. Det innebär att utvärderingssekretariatet beställer och genomför utvärderingar av landsbygdsprogrammet, havs- och fiskeriprogrammet samt programmet för lokalt ledd utveckling inom regionalfonden och socialfonden. Programmen utvärderas dels var för sig men också tillsammans. Utvärderingarna görs i relation till målen i programmen och de övergripande EU 2020-målen.

De flesta utvärderingarna genomförs av externa aktörer. Vi tar hjälp av forskare för att kvalitetsgranska rapporterna innan de publiceras. I slutet av rapporterna finns ett utlåtande från granskarna. Rapporterna publiceras i en särskild rapportserie och rapportförfattarna är ansvariga för slutsatserna. Slutsatserna utgör inte Jordbruksverkets officiella ståndpunkt.

/Utvärderingssekretariatet vid Jordbruksverket

Elevers förmåga att resonera ska genomsyra alla ämnen i grundskolan. Man kan se förmågan som en demokratisk aspekt i ett flerstämmigt klassrum och som oerhört väsentlig ur ett samhällsperspektiv. Vårt fall visar att elevers förmåga att resonera kan utvecklas på relativt kort tid när lärare samtidigt studerar sin egen praktik. I kapitlet diskuteras fallet ur perspektiv som: bedömning, kommunikation, ämnesdidaktik och skolutveckling. 

Denna studie avser att bidra till att öka kunskapen om språkets betydelse för lärande genom att analysera språkanvändning i autentiska situationer i naturorienterande undervisning i ett flerspråkigt klassrum på mellanstadiet. Studien beskriver hur nyanlända elever använder sina språkliga resurser genom att kodväxla mellan första- och andraspråk i växelverkan mellan en vardaglig diskurs och mer vetenskapliga diskurser som elever möter i undervisningssammanhang. Elevernas språkliga rörelse mellan och inom de olika diskurserna analyseras genom att tydliggöra de samtal eleverna för i kommunikativa undervisningssituationer. Resultatet pekar på att elevernas användning av kodväxling som en resurs i undervisningen ökar deras diskursiva rörlighet vilket i sin tur kan ha en avgörande betydelse för deras språkutveckling och lärande inom ämnesområdet.

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.

Kapitlet beskriver hur lärare kan intervjua elever med avseende på arbete med lärande och hållbar utveckling.

Den här texten behandlar formativ bedömning som, eftersom den har fokus på elevers lärande, också går under namnet lärande bedömning. Texten kommer att knyta an till såväl utbildning för hållbar utveckling som ämnesövergripande undervisning. Anknytningen rör komplexiteten i frågorna, autenticiteten, det pluralistiska perspektivet och det demokratiska handlingsperspektivet. När det gäller formativ bedömning görs nedslag i autentiska problem, autentisk bedömning, planering genom formativt förhållningsätt samt matriser.

Kapitlet belyser två perspektiv på lärande och hållbar utveckling. Det ena perspektivet behandlar demokratisk handlingskompetens. Det andra behandlar intressekonflikter i utnyttjandet av naturresurser.

This paper deals with an important part of the school's mission - education for sustainable development (ESD). It describes a teacher training and professional development module produced by the Swedish National Agency for Education, the central administrative authority for the public school system. The module is cross-curricular and aims at teachers in secondary school. When following the module, teachers work in project groups with collective and collegial learning. Five researchers representing the areas of ESD, education, science education and political science author the module.

The module raise questions as; why should we educate for sustainable development?, what content should we deliver and how should we teach? These questions connect to pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).

The why question, the purpose of ESD, is described as composed of three interconnected functions . The functions are defined as:

• Qualification - learning to be able to act and contribute to society • Socialisation - to grow into current norms and values • Subjectification - To develop a personal approach in social contexts and to visualize subjects not previously noted.

The other main issue concerns the question "what". What subject content will be taught in the classroom and what questions will be addressed? The central point is that content issues in ESD always rest on values that lead to conflicts of interest between people. Consequently, they should be treated from a pluralistic point of view.

The third question addresses how ESD should be instructed. It is through activities that students train to use knowledge and thus develop it.

The teacher training and professional development module consists of eight parts dealing with different perspectives on ESD.

Each part is divided in four moments. The participants are working with theory and classrooms activities and reaserach based studies on ther own practice.

Syftet med kapitlet är att ge idéer om samspelet mellan innehållet i hållbar utveckling, skolans övergripande uppdrag och undervisningens organisation. Kapitlet utgår från hållbar utvecklings komplexa, konfliktfyllda och ämnesövergripande karaktär där det empiriskt faktabetonade möter det normativa politiska.

Kapitlet presenterar också hur undervisningen kan organiseras med hjälp av grupparbete, värderingsövningar och rollspel.

According to previous research health is, in contemporary western societies, seen as an increasingly non-political issue. Rather than being at the centre of collective decision-making and democratic politics, health is more and more regarded as resting on individual responsibility. In our study we address the question of health education in schools as well as the question of citizenship. Our study consists of two parts. Firstly, we analyse whether health is portrayed as a political or non-political issue in teaching material, that is, whether health is regarded as a governmental or as an individual issue. Secondly, and informed by the results from our analyse, we dissect and problematize what kind of citizen (citizenship) that is constructed in teaching material. Our empirical data consists of Swedish textbooks for secondary and upper-secondary school in three school subjects’ biology, home economics and physical education and health. Our preliminary results are that the issue of health is quite strictly de-politicized and regarded as the responsibility of the individual, which not only corroborates previous research on health and citizenship. It also reinforces the currently predominant construction of the individual as detached from politics and democracy.

According to previous research, in contemporary western societies health is seen as an increasingly non-political issue. Rather than being at the centre of collective decision-making and democratic politics, health is regarded as resting on individual responsibility. In our study, we address the question of nutrition education in schools as well as the question of citizenship and democracy. The study consists of two parts: firstly, we analyse whether health – more precisely nutrition and diet – is portrayed as a political or non-political issue in textbooks for secondary school; secondly, and informed by the results from our analysis, we dissect and problematize what kind of citizenship that is constructed in textbooks. From a theoretical framework of politics, the article explores how citizenship emerges. Our findings so far show that health, and more precisely stress, is depoliticized in the textbooks.

I läroböckerna blir hälsa en moralfråga. Stress och övervikt är individens ansvar, lösningarna heter motion och mindfulness. Politiska perspektiv existerar inte.

Hälsa och hållbar utveckling är två aktuella, utmanande och globala problemområden som för att närma sig en lösning behöver hanteras på såväl nationell som global nivå. Då utbildning ges en avgörande roll i att förmedla kunskap och värden, får dylika frågor därmed en framträdande plats i läro- och kursplaner samt i den dagliga undervisningen. På så sätt får utbildning en nyckelfunktion i att såväl kvalificera som att socialisera elever att bli aktiva individer och medborgare i ett demokratiskt samhälle. Följaktligen bör undervisning om hälsa och hållbar utveckling betraktas som samhällsfrågor med naturvetenskapligt innehåll.

Syftet med den redovisade studien är att analysera och diskutera hur hälsa och hållbar utveckling beskrivs i svenska läroböcker för skolämnena biologi, naturkunskap samt idrott och hälsa. Demokratisk politik är en teoretisk utgångspunkt, och studien lägger specifikt fokus på skillnader mellan individuellt och samhälleligt ansvar.

Forskningsstudien visar att läroböckernas framställning av hälsa och hållbar utveckling skapar det som vi kallar ansvarsparadoxen. Paradoxen innebär att frågorna är avpolitiserade och individualiserade genom att ansvaret för dess lösning placeras på individnivå snarare än på samhällelig / politisk nivå, även då samhälleliga och politiska lösningar vore mer passande.

Hur läroböcker framställer lösningar på problem rörande hälsa och hållbar utveckling kan ha stor betydelse då dessa framställningar rimligtvis påverkar elevers förståelse av problemen och dess tänkbara lösningar. Vi argumenterar för att hälsa och hållbar utveckling i skolan alltid ska beskrivas som både individuella och samhälleliga / politiska frågor för att ge eleverna möjlighet att förstå och hantera frågorna på ett mer adekvat sätt.

Few studies have a focus on progression in teaching and learning mathematics. An assumption for this study was that progression in teaching between school stages was important. The approach of the study was based on action research. Four teachers from preschool to 9th grade (age 1-16) were invited to a temporary team, a community of practice. The overall aim of the study was to develop knowledge about teaching fractions when teachers used students’ understandings as a point of departure for their action plans. A second aim was to illuminate what influences progression in their teaching.

The team of teachers used the four phases of action research: plan, act, observe and reflect, during their learning processes. The teachers’ learning sessions were videotaped and transcribed and this provided the main data that formed the basis of the results. Wenger’s dimensions of social learning were used as an analytical tool: joint enterprise, mutual engagement and shared repertoire.

Four themes that described teachers’ negotiation of qualities in mathematics instruction were identified: interpreting students’ understandings, basing instruction on students’ understandings, visualizing fractions and ensuring students’ understanding. When teachers, regardless of what stage was involved, reified similar instructions, it did not benefit students’ learning opportunities. In order to improve progression in teaching fractions, it was important that teachers succeeded in identifying students’ understandings and that the team negotiated different qualities in their community of practice. The shared repertoire (the pre-tests and the video recordings) formed the core of negotiating progression based on students’ understandings. The team showed a mutual engagement, with students’ learning as their joint enterprise. An implication of the study is that teachers from different educational stages can negotiate progression and improve it.

Topic, aim and framework

Progression in mathematics instruction can be seen as a quality in teaching that entails gradually increased demands on the student (Säfström, 2017). If there is a lack of progression in teaching or the demands increase too much, this can reduce students’ opportunities to learn. An assumption for this study was that progression in teaching between school stages was important. Furthermore, teachers should take joint responsibility for learning within their teams to develop the quality in teaching (cf. Wennergren, 2016).

The approach of the study was based on action research. Four teachers from preschool to 9th grade (age 1-16) were invited to a temporary team, a community of practice. The overall aim of the study was to develop knowledge about teaching fractions when teachers used students’ understandings as a point of departure for their actions plans. A second aim was to illuminate what influences progression in their teaching. In addition, I intend to highlight the importance of the team’s negotiation of teaching fractions. Wenger’s dimensions of social learning were used as an analytical tool: joint enterprise, mutual engagement and shared repertoire.

Methodology/research design

The team of teachers used the four phases of action research: plan, act, observe and reflect, during their learning processes. The teachers’ learning sessions were videotaped and transcribed and this provided the main data that formed the basis of the results.

Findings

Four themes that described teachers’ negotiation of qualities in mathematics instruction were identified.

Interpreting students’ understandings: By analysing students’ understandings through videotaped instruction, the teachers interpreted students’ understandings and observed which kind of instruction enabled learning.

Basing instruction on students’ understandings: The teachers reified mathematical instructions based on students’ understandings, which entailed an expanded content.

Visualizing fractions: There was not always an automatic correspondence between visualizing fractions with everyday materials or manipulative materials and the conventions regarding fractions within mathematics, which affected students’ learning opportunities.

Ensuring students’ understanding: Even if the students seemed to be united about fractions, the teachers were uncertain how to ensure students’ understanding. The teachers were uncertain whether every student had an understanding of the concept and whether they were able to use their knowledge in another context.

Conclusions

When teachers, regardless of what stage was involved, reified similar instructions, it did not benefit students’ learning opportunities. In order to improve progression in teaching fractions, it was important that teachers succeeded in identifying students’ understandings and that the team negotiated different qualities in their community of practice. The shared repertoire (the pre-tests and the video recordings) formed the core of negotiating progression based on students’ understandings.

Relevance to Nordic educational research

This study contributes knowledge about diverse qualities in analysing students’ understandings by means of pre-tests or video recordings. The study also contributes knowledge about professional learning when participants have diverse experience.

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.

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 anthology describes heritage preservation, development and management from different theoretical views and disciplines. It integrates perspectives from history, human geography, archaeology, social anthropology and heritage conservation. The texts revolve around different dimension of culture and heritage via examples from varying contexts and locations. 

The aim of this paper is to develop science teachers ́ PCK through their participation in a learning study. The research question that frames the study is “How do science teachers ́ learning about science teaching (PCK) develops as a shared practice through their participation in a learning study? As such, the project aims to investigate how teachers ́ increased (or not) professional knowledge of teaching is enhanced, and further, how students ́ learning might be developed as a consequence. During one semester, three secondary science teachers and a science education researcher worked together in a learning study in which the object of learning was to understand the concept of ion and how ions are formed. Data were collected from video recorded lessons and stimulated recall sessions in which the teachers and the researcher reflected on the lessons to analyze how the teachers developed knowledge of students learning and the impact of that knowledge on their own teaching. The results indicate that teachers ́ participation in the learning study proved to be helpful in their (re)considerations of their science teaching in that it points to the particular role of research-based learning in providing a metacognitive lens through which to analyze science teaching and learning.

During the past decade, early childhood teachers have been faced with new needs to develop their content knowledge and pedagogi- cal content knowledge (PCK) for different science subject areas. In order to meet these challenges there is a strong need for professional learning programmes for early childhood teachers that focus on the development of knowledge, and skills to work with science activities in their own context. In this article, 46 early childhood teachers participated in a professional development programme aimed at helping teachers capture and further develop their content knowl- edge and PCK for teaching science through the use of content representations (CoRes). A CoRe is a holistic reflective tool for making explicit the different dimensions of, and links between, knowledge of content, teaching, and learning about a particular topic. The aim of the project was to investigate in what ways the use of the CoRe helped the teachers in planning and reflecting on their science teaching and in developing their PCK. Thus, the project was based on opportunities for teachers to develop and reframe their knowl- edge of science teaching in ways that stimulated children's curiosity for scientific phenomena. The result indicates that with its content- specific focus, the CoRe helped the teachers to highlight the science content in their activities, not only the general pedagogical knowl- edge. The use of the CoRes also helped the preschool teachers to establish the fundamental ideas of the topic they were teaching and to develop confidence in what they were teaching, why, and how. © 2017 Association for Science Teacher Education

I en serie av tre artiklar tar vi upp erfarenheter från arbete med rika matematiska problem. I den förra artikeln presenterade vi problemet Att dela smörgåsar. I denna andra del har vi valt en enkel variant av ett klassiskt kombinatorikproblem i en elevnära kontext. Vi har samlat in lösningar från elever i årskurs 2–3 och synliggör olika uttrycksformer.

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.

Many understandings about norms and norm criticism are based on imaginations of inclusion and exclusion, as if values about right and wrong, and acceptable and non-acceptable behaviors belong to a world of relations that can be separated from embodied and physical things and practices. Norm confirming or norm critical imaginations are difficult to judge and even more difficult to change if they are separated from the physical performance reflecting these imaginations. This preparatory study is based on interviews conducted with children with and without varied forms of disabilities. The aim of the study was to investigate how children describe their ability in relation to collaboration, materialities, disability and norms within Physical Education and Health (PEH). The results from this study show that embodied and collaborative goal-oriented practices generate imaginations of community and belonging through a notion of contributing. The results indicate that informing, teaching, and learning about inclusion and exclusion do not naturally produce physical and embodied practices. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group