Internationalisation of higher education and teacher education has been a key issue since the 1990s and many universities still attempt to increase student mobility ever since. Much research has been done on the topic of internationalisation and higher education, including teacher education trying to show how a certain programme impacts on students’ learning, especially intercultural learning when it comes to programmes in teacher education. These studies are often directed towards programmes that last several months or a whole year. The focus of this study is rather to explore if and in what way experiences in a two-week field study can contribute to a student teacher’s intercultural learning and professional development. The findings of the research show that even a short field study has an important impact on the individual student teacher’s understanding of themselves and on awareness of teachers’ living and working conditions in a different culture like South Africa.

This article explores how four male vehicle engineering students at an upper secondary school in Sweden engage in literature discussion. The study combines a Conversation Analysis (CA) approach with a reception theory perspective and shows that the boys use direct reported speech (DRS) in their interaction as a technique to handle intimate and personal dimensions in the text, but also to construct themselves as skilled readers. Approaching the empirical data in this way makes it possible to go beyond the stereotyped images of (working class) boys presented in so many research papers and provide a more nuanced picture of boys' reception pattern in a school context.

Many countries call for more men to be teachers in early child-hood education and care (ECEC). In Sweden, the issue has beendiscussed since the early 1970s, but despite these discussionsthere is little Swedish research that examines the notions andexpectations associated with male teachers. International researchhas found that perceptions of men in ECEC can be very ambivalentand that physical contact between the male educator and childrenis a sensitive issue. By focusing on the interaction between edu-cators and children, the purpose of this study is to investigategender-specific beliefs about male preschool teachers. The empiri-cal material consists of interviews with 50 informants. Of these, 17are men and 33 are women. The results show that“the fun guy”and“the possible perpetrator”are two gender-specific positionsthat male informants are subjected to. The article discusses howmen take up and resist the two positions, and argues for the needto further challenge gendered stereotypes in preschools

This article aims to gain knowledge on how gender and profession are accounted for and expressed in leisure-time teachers’ (LtTs) work in Sweden, with a specific focus on the caring aspects of the profession. Our results show that LtTs take up various positions in navigating between aspects connected to managerialism and external auditing as well as trust and internal valuation. We argue that the need exists for an expanded understanding of care in order to recognise and reward various gendered actions and activities in teachers’ caring orientation. The article provides knowledge to both researchers and practitioners on gendered nuances of care that by tradition have been connected to women.

In this article, we approach large questions regarding justice and equality in the Nordic classrooms. A substantial body of previous research emphasises the importance of student engagement in teaching and learning. Drawing on video data from Norway, Sweden and Finland, we focus on whole-class teaching, i.e. situations in which the teacher addresses the class from the front of the classroom, to investigate justice trough participation. We have approached our topic through two concerns: student participation in classroom discourse and student engagement as providing access to content. Our findings seem to pose some serious challenges for the Nordic welfare society vision of classrooms as core societal hubs for justice and equality. While whole-class teaching is one of the primary tools available for attempting to achieve justice and equality for all, this interaction format seems to contain inherent constraints that do not support equitable student engagement. Further, the way the Nordic classrooms have responded so far to the massive digitisation in their societies seems to pose serious questions rather than provide comforting answers.

As Sweden drew nearer to the 2006 national election, two themes emerged in the educational debate: a concern for order and discipline in schools, and the ambition to raise educational levels of achievement. The objective of this article is to locate these two themes within a broader framework of understanding by: 1) discussing examples of how the reinforcement of disciplinary power in schools was introduced, justified and deployed by right-wing constellations during this time; and 2) to relate these policy changes to both a Foucauldian theory of power and to current discussions on performativity, assessment and governmentality. Considered as attempts to locate students, teachers and schools within networks of performativity, thereby strengthening the image of Sweden as a "performing knowledge nation", we argue that these policy changes have a much closer relationship with the art of "perception management" than with any genuine interest in education for human proficiency.

By taking two different kinds of role playing as examples, this article explores how semiotic resources are utilised within a certain context. Regarding these role-playing activities as examples of participative narratives, we discuss how the playing and fiction interaction works as semiotic remediation practices for teenagers and young adults. While actively becoming part of the story and ‘making’ themselves in interaction with fiction, they use semiotic resources not usually included in literacy competencies such as the body and various artifacts. This kind of participation in narrative indicates that we have a need for play not only as a first step in our socialisation to become a reader, but also as a tool for reading development throughout life.

This article investigates the potentials for developing advanced reading and interpretative skills in Swedish secondary school. During six weeks four separate study groups in seventh grade participated in an intervention study. The purpose was to gather more knowledge of how different teaching strategies affect students’ development of advanced reading skills. Data was collected from written assignments and from an experiential questionnaire. The study attempts to provide an empirical corroboration of previously theoretically founded propositions. Findings indicate that the choice of teaching strategy plays a significant role to students’ learning. However, in order to make normative judgments on one teaching model’s advantage over the other, further evidence is necessary. Moreover, to study the implementation and the effects of instructional change is a challenging field of research, which requires an array of sophisticated methods that combine qualitative and quantitative analyses.