Den här studien ingår i Karlstads universitets och fakultetens för samhälls- och livsvetenskaper satsning på mångvetenskaplig forskning om "uthålliga livsmiljöer och komplexa nätverk". Målet med fakultetens satsning är att stimulera forskning och samverkan mellan offentliga och privata aktörer så att Karlstads universitet effektivt kan bidra till och bli en motor i det långsiktigt hållbara utvecklingsarbetet i regionen.

Studien tar sin utgångspunkt i intervjuer med några värmländska familjer om hur vardagen gestaltar sig idag, hur det såg ut historiskt och hur det kan tänkas se ut i framtiden. Intervjuerna kommenteras av forskare från olika ämnesområden. I mötet mellan forskare från olika ämnen och forskningstraditioner uppstår nya sätt att problematisera det komplicerade växelspelet mellan olika sektorer av vår tillvaro. Problemen kan omformuleras, nya möten och kontakter vänder invanda tankegångar mot nya och innovativa riktningar och beredskapen att möta framtida utmaningar såväl för forskare som för regionala aktörer stärks och uppgraderas. Förhoppningen är att studien ska fungera som en plattform för den viktiga diskussionen kring uthållig regional utveckling för kvinnor, män, barn och gamla och stimulera innovationer och forskning som garanterar en framtid där utveckling och tillväxt balanseras mot uthållig miljö för människor och natur.

History can be experienced in many ways, including visits to historical sites. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly common for Swedish schools to organise trips for their students to historical sites; in this case, to concentration camps. This article analyses how cognitive, affective and physical experiences frame students’ interpretations of historical sites, and discusses how visits to historical sites might contribute to history education. The research questions we examine are as follows: What forms of experience did the students express, and how did these forms relate to each other? What implications might these expressed experiences pose for how teachers organise their teaching, including trips to Holocaust memorial sites? This article analyses seminars that comprised part of the examinable work in a course that involved a study trip to Auschwitz concentration camp. Empirical data were analysed using a model in which cognitive, affective and physical experiences were identified and described. The results demonstrate how cognitive, affective and physical responses interact with students’ experiences. Students described how the school trip contributed to their understanding of what is and is not possible to know, and to their will to influence society. Thus, the results indicate that physical encounters with historical sites can create new opportunities for students’ learning of history and the meaning making that comes from it. 

This article explores, through group-interviews and in terms of peer-culture, the ways in which pupils negotiate experiences from school-excursions to three heritage sites, Vadstena Castle, a former Royal Castle connected to the royal dynasty of Vasa; Witches’ forest, the place for interrogation by torture and executions of nine women, accused of witchcraft in 1617, and Linköping Cathedral Ages at the visitor programs “Middle Ages in the Cathedral”. The article, which is part of a larger project on learning processes and historical sites, investigates how pupils collectively load the heritage site with values reflected in immersion by affections, and what significance immersion of affections can have on the pupils’ process of stock of knowledge. The following research questions are asked: What kind of affections are evoked? Which situations and circumstances during the visit at the heritage site, mould impressions and immersion in the collective recalling?

By drawing on affection, peer culture and critical heritage studies’ verb “heritaging”, we have studied how the pupils collectively load the heritage sites with values reflected in immersion by affections, and what significance immersion of affections have on the pupils’ process of historical understanding. To understand how the heritage site in terms of a material and physical place loaded with narratives of the past affects the children, the analysis aimed to explore under what circumstances the immersion took place.

The article localize three situations that led to surprise and thereby friction between the expected (the stock of knowledge) and what was experienced at the site (the immediate experience), namely conflicts caused by expectations and experiences at the site, conflict caused by replicas in relation to originals, and finally conflict between lived experiences and insights at the site.

In this paper we outline an empirical research framework building on the concepts of powerful knowledge and transformation. Powerful knowledge as an idea was coined by Michael Young (2009) to re-establish the importance of knowledge in teaching and curriculum development. Powerful knowledge is defined by Young as a subject specific coherent conceptual disciplinary knowledge that when learnt will empower students to make decisions, and become action-competent in a way that influence their lives in a positive way. 

We develop the concept of powerful knowledge in two important ways. First, instead of only discussing powerful knowledge as an idea related to educational practices, we take a research position suggesting that powerful knowledge could be used as a tool in educational research related to subject specific education. In doing so we, in line with Deng (2015), propose to align the curricular concept of powerful knowledge to the European research tradition of didactics in general, and subject didactics in particular. Second, we develop the concept of powerful knowledge by refuting the dichotomization suggested by Young (2015) that curriculum (‘what to teach’) can be separated from pedagogy (‘how to teach’). Instead we view these two questions as interrelated in didactical research.

We suggest an expansion of the concept of powerful knowledge by using the analytical concept of transformation as a key concept in describing powerful knowledge in different disciplines, institutions and school subjects. The reason for this is that the concept of transformation is a central issue for didactical research from different European research traditions. Transformation as we understand it can be described as an integrative process in which the content knowledge is transformed into knowledge that is taught and learned through various transformation processes outside and within the educational system in relation to individual, institutional and societal level. Such processes of transformation are apparent in concepts related to a number of different frameworks including: ‘transposition’ (Chevallard 2007), ‘omstilling’ (Ongstad 2006) and ‘reconstruction’ (Duit et al. 2012), and are also reflected in the work of Bernstein (1971) in relation to the concept of ‘re-contextualisation’ within the curriculum tradition. The school subject is never a simple reduction of the discipline. The content knowledge is always transformed to fit the educational purpose of teaching. Hence, to study the concept of powerful knowledge within school subjects we need to study its transformation processes, and address the ‘why’ question in addition to the ‘what’ and ‘how’ questions.

Moreover, the concept of powerful knowledge and the transformation processes the content of powerful knowledge undergo, must be placed in a wider context, where questions addressing societal challenges are raised. In a changing society the argument is being made that it is not obvious that powerful knowledge only stems from academic disciplines. For example, how does the emerging and rapidly changing media landscape affect powerful knowledge and how could powerful knowledge be understood in a connected classroom? How should interdisciplinary topics such as sustainability and migration be taught? What is powerful knowledge in such topics then emerges as a relevant question.

In this article, we explore the concept of 'powerful knowledge' which, from a curriculum studies perspective, refers to the aspects of content knowledge towards which teaching should be oriented. We then consider how the concept of 'powerful knowledge' can be developed and operationalized as a research framework within studies in subject-specific didactics across the curriculum by relating it to the analytical concept of 'transformation'. Transformation is perceived in this case as an integrative process in which content knowledge is transformed into knowledge that is taught and learned through various transformation processes both outside and within the educational system. We argue that powerful knowledge cannot be identified based on the discipline alone, but needs to consider transformation processes and be empirically explored. A variety of theories and frameworks developed within the European research tradition of didactics are described as ways to study transformation processes related to powerful knowledge at different institutional levels as well as between different subjects and disciplines. A comparative research framework related to subject-specific education is proposed around three research questions.

Niklas Gericke Brian Hudson Christina Olin-Scheller Martin Stolare Knowledge building in schools can be a transformative and empowering process, transforming pupils’ capacities, sense of self-efficacy and agency, while also acting as a powerful engine of social justice and social transformation (Muller 2016) . Still, knowledge building is notorious for sometimes being a dry and inert process that makes little difference to pupils’ lives and entrenches social inequality (Young and Muller 2010) . This book aims to develop understanding of how educators and education systems can ensure that school-based knowledge building reaches its transformative potential. In so doing, it draws on the concepts ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘epistemic quality’ to help understand knowledge building’s qualities when it is effective and empowering, and how educational processes can build and develop these characteristics. The underlying research studies focus on the ways in which knowledge itself is transformed as it is re-contextualized at the individual,...

In reflecting on the studies outlined in this book, we return to the KOSS research questions with respect to how the nature of powerful knowledge and epistemic quality in different school subjects can be characterized. We also consider how one may describe the transformation processes related to powerful knowledge and epistemic quality. As we do so, we develop a theoretical framework based on the concepts outlined earlier in the volume: powerful knowledge, transformation processes and epistemic quality. Our ambition with this book, and this chapter in particular, is to help create a common conceptual framework as well as a language for subject-specific research and scholarship as concerns different disciplines and school subjects. In this way, we try to find common ground for use by teachers, scholars and educational researchers interested in subject-specific research. In this final chapter, we will not once again...

Drawing together an international author team from Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK, this book examines how we might democratize and open up access to ‘knowledge of the powerful’ for all. This book moves beyond the narrow knowledge vs skills debate of the 20th century to interrogate the epistemic quality of education in schools, and is a valuable resource for reflecting on the design and implementation of teacher education. Based on a range of national studies by the Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education network (KOSS), funded by the Swedish Research Council (2019-22), the chapters explore teachers’ powerful professional knowledge and the implications this has for innovation in teacher education, policy and practice in educational settings.

Drawing together an international author team from Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK, this book examines how we might democratize and open up access to 'knowledge of the powerful' for all. This book moves beyond the narrow knowledge vs skills debate of the 20th century to interrogate the epistemic quality of education in schools, and is a valuable resource for reflecting on the design and implementation of teacher education. Based on a range of national studies by the Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education network (KOSS), funded by the Swedish Research Council (2019-22), the chapters explore teachers' powerful professional knowledge and the implications this has for innovation in teacher education, policy and practice in educational settings.

This paper outlines the development of a comparative research framework in subject didactics and applies this in the process of analysing the transformations from academic disciplines across different school subjects. The theoretical framework builds on the concepts of ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘transformation’ and ‘epistemic quality’ within which transformation processes from the classroom to the societal level are considered as ‘trajectories of powerful knowledge and epistemic quality’. The framework is used to analyse the findings from recent empirical studies across school subjects that have been reported on in publications arising from the Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education (KOSS) network. 1 The paper then focuses on analysing the transformations from disciplines across school subjects, given that the first boundary in defining powerful knowledge concerns knowledge that is specialized in both how it is produced and transmitted. To analyse this boundary, the findings from the empirical studies are grouped into broad subject categories. These are then compared with the corresponding disciplines by using the widely cited Biglan classification scheme of academic disciplines in higher education. Finally, we consider the implications for curriculum planning and teacher education policy and reflect on the concept of subject-specific educational content knowledge (SSECK). 

Haptics in the sense of active touch, as well as internally felt bodily sensations, add an important dimension to learning sessions at historical sites. Drawing on observations of primary school pupils visiting historical sites in Sweden, and interviews with pupils, teachers, and site educators following the visits, this study investigates in which ways haptics affect how young pupils learn history. Three aspects of haptics are identified as important to learning in history education: touch, internally felt bodily sensations, and visual and auditory senses, the latter interacting with haptics. The study argues that visits to historical sites help pupils develop their historical understanding through knowledge by acquaintance. It also emphasises that for historical learning to take place, the experience must be put in relation to a historical frame of reference.

Detta är en rapport från konferensen Miljöhistoria idag och imorgon som arrangerades vid Högskolan i Karlstad 9-10 april 1997. Rapporten innehåller föredrag som hölls den första dagen samt de texter som behandlades i sessioner under konferensens andra dag. Syftet med konferensen var att diskutera vad miljöhistoria är idag och kommer att bli i framtiden. Rapporten ger en god bild av det breda forskningsfält som utgör miljöhistoria och de skilda angreppssätt detta erbjuder. I rapporten återfinns bidrag från historiker, filosofer, idéhistoriker, litteraturvetare, kulturgeografer och humanekologer