Formal writing is an essential part of teaching Swedish and is fundamental for higher education and professional career. The aim of my essay is to research what didactic methods Swedish teachers utilizes in upper secondary school to improve students' abilities to write formal texts. I will also examine students’ project papers in an attempt to measure the extent of formal word choice.  In the presentation of the literature I decided to use, for example, Per Olov Svedner’s perspective on writing as a process, Siv Strömquist’s manuals for essay writing and various literature regarding linguistic correctness and essay layout. Interviews with three upper secondary school teachers reveals that active feedback is a basis for students development regarding formal writing in both school and professional career. An analysis of the project papers points to insecurities regarding subjectivity, objectivity and punctuation as common issues within academic writing.

The thesis of this essay is how literary texts are selected in the teaching of Swedish in upper secondary school, and how teachers reflect upon gender in these selections. To answer the thesis question three methods have been used. Firstly interviews were held with five teachers of Swedish, which have been the primary source for the essay. In addition to the interviews, I have examined two literary anthologies used as teaching aid in the teaching of Swedish and lastly I analyzed the literature and authors that the teachers explicitly express that they use in their tutoring. The secondary sources of this thesis contain research on selections of fictional texts, literary canon and students’ re-production of gender. The conclusion of the essay is that four components affect the selection of texts. The superior components to the selection are the students and the teachers, mostly by the students’ ability to identify with the text and the level of knowledge of both teachers and students. The subordinate components to the selections are the materials in form of teaching aids as well as the school via the curriculum and a literary canon. The essay also concludes that teachers do not reflect upon gender in the same way in their actual selections as they do in their rhetoric about the selections of texts.    

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.

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...

This book provides critical perspectives on issues relating to writing norms and assessment, as well as writing proficiency development, and suggests that scholars need to both carefully examine testing regimes and develop research-informed perspectives on tests and testing practices. In this way schools, institutions of adult education and universities can better prepare learners with differing cultural experiences to meet the challenges. The book brings together empirical studies from diverse geographical contexts to address the crossing of literacy borders, with a focus on academic genres and practices. Most of the studies examine writing in countries where the norms and expectations are different, but some focus on writing in a new discourse community set in a new discipline. The chapters shed light on commonalities and differences between these two situations with respect to the expectations and evaluations facing the writers. They also consider the extent to which the norms that the writers bring with them from their educational backgrounds and own cultures are compromised in order to succeed in the new educational settings.

Vocabulary experts recommend first language (L1) translation equivalentsfor establishing form–meaning mappings for new second language (L2) words, espe-cially for lower proficiency learners. Empirical evidence to date speaks in favor of L1translation equivalents over L2 meaning definitions, but most studies have investigatedbi- rather than multilingual learners. In our study, we investigated instructed Englishvocabulary learning through an intervention study in six language-diverse secondaryschool English classrooms in Sweden (N=74) involving three conditions for presen-tation of word meanings: (a) definitions in the L2 (English), (b) translation equivalentsin the shared school and majority language (Swedish), and (c) translation equivalents inthe shared school and majority language plus other prior languages among the learners(Swedish and other). Based on overall weighted mean effect sizes and mixed-effects modeling, the results showed that conditions that involved L1 translation equivalentsyielded higher scores than did target language definitions in immediate posttests with asmall effect size but no differences in delayed posttests.

The aim of this study is to investigate the view of literature that shines through in the Swedish curriculum for secondary school, Läroplan, examensmål och gymnasiegemensamma ämnen för gymnasieskola 2011. The idea is that this view of literature becomes visible when analyzing the curriculum’s ways of legitimating the teaching of literature and its relation to the use of a literary canon. The analysis compares the phrases from the curriculum regarding the teaching of literature and compares these phrases with the various literary visions that earlier scholars advocate. Based on these comparisons, discussions are raised about the pros and cons of the curriculum's ways of legitimating the teaching of literature and its relation to the use of a literary canon. My conclusions are that literature does not necessarily carry an inherent goodness and that all literature – regardless of genre or text type – can have a place in the teaching of Swedish as long as the way that the literature is being used is tailored to the purposes of literature-centered education.

Motivational strategies are underresearched, and studies so far conducted have been in sociolinguistic contexts where English is not extensively encountered outside the classroom. Given also that little is known about strategies relating to the design and content of classroom activities, the purpose of this study is to identify and critically evaluate strategies focusing on activity design and content in classroom activities that, in a setting where students have extensive extramural English encounters, teachers have found to be effective in generating motivation. Using Dörnyei’s (2001) taxonomy of motivational strategies as an analytical tool, 112 descriptions of motivational activities provided by a randomly drawn sample of secondary EFL teachers in Sweden (N = 252) were content-analyzed with a focus on design and content. Providing support for D€ornyei’s proposals, the results reveal the prominence of activities that enable students to work with authentic materials (cultural artefacts produced for a purpose other than teaching) and in ways that can be experienced as authentic. Activities involving digital technologies which provide opportunities for creativity are also prominent. Use of authentic materials places high demands on teachers’ pedagogical and linguistic skills. In contexts where students respond positively to such activities, teachers’ language awareness skills become of significant importance.

Nordic Gothic traces Gothic fiction in the Nordic region from its beginnings in the nineteenth century, with a main focus on the development of Gothic from the 1990s onwards in literature, film, TV and new media. The volume gives an overview of Nordic Gothic fiction in relation to transnational developments and provides a number of case studies and in-depth analyses of individual narratives. It creates an understanding of this under-researched cultural phenomenon by showing how the narratives make visible cultural anxieties haunting the Nordic countries, their welfare systems, identities and ideologies. Nordic Gothic examines how figures from Nordic folklore function as metaphorical expressions of Gothic themes and Nordic settings are explored from perspectives such as ecocriticism and postcolonialism. The book will be of interest to researchers and post- and- undergraduate students in various fields within the Humanities.

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). 

In these concluding remarks, we reflect upon and envision the possible future of the notion of race in Sweden. We foresee a continued emergence of the new multiracial and super-diverse Sweden. Following this, the maintenance and defence of the colourblind hegemony of contemporary public life in Sweden must inevitably become more and more challenging as inequalities continue to grow and segregation structured by race eventually becomes impossible to ignore. Thus, while the colourblind fantasy of post-1968 Sweden lives on, and provides cover for the emergence of an increasingly emboldened far right, we suggest that things must change. We, therefore, express our hope that coming generations of Swedes will break with the current white melancholy period. Instead, we hope that tomorrow’s Swedish antiracists, white and non-white alike, will be both more willing and more capable to engage with the concept of race, the language of race and the lived reality of race in a more substantial and critical way.

Race in Sweden is an introduction to, and a critical investigation of, the Swedish relationship to race in the post-war and contemporary eras. This relationship is fundamentally shaped by an ideology of colourblindness, with any kind of race talk being taboo in public discourse and everyday language use, and in practice forbidden in official and institutional language.

A study of a country which was until recently strikingly white but has become extremely diverse, yet where the legacy of Swedish whiteness co-exists with a radical, colourblind, antiracist ideology, Race in Sweden will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in race and ethnicity, whiteness and Nordic studies.

This paper focuses on language practices in multilingual English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms in lower-secondary education. Based in the Ethnography of Language Policy, it presents a case study of a lead teacher of EFL and a year-8 class in a large urban multilingual school in Sweden. The study aims to map and understand language practices used in this classroom as being part of a larger sociocultural context, focusing on the perspectives of the teacher and four successively trilingual students who had had between four and eight years of schooling in Sweden. Field notes, lesson observations and interviews revealed that practices can be described as English Mainly + Swedish, referred to here as ‘English-Swedish translanguaging pedagogy’. While English was the base language in lessons, Swedish was used judiciously but consistently, serving different specific purposes. Discourse analysis of ethnographic data showed that the teacher’s practices can be traced to his lived experience and to discourses in policy documents. Student participants expressed positive attitudes to the language practices used, which can be explained by them having developed sufficient command of Swedish in the school domain and being loyal to an institutional policy document, their teacher and fellow students.

Classroom language ecologies are increasingly diverse as a result of mobility, migration, and information technology. In these spaces, interlocutors may draw upon shared linguistic and cultural resources but also bring in others. Prime examples are additional-language (AL) classrooms, where there is a shared target language, but where students may have different first languages from their classmates and teacher. In this chapter, we review empirical research on interaction in multilingual classrooms in approaches such as ethnography, translanguaging, and conversation analysis (CA), and discuss methods and findings in relation to the growing field of intercultural pragmatics (IP). Additionally, we offer an empirical illustration from video ethnography research in multilingual English AL classrooms in Sweden. With a CA approach, we demonstrate how a group of students participating in a vocabulary game manage an instance of diverging understandings of an English word. We show how, in resolving this interactional trouble, participants draw on the target language English and the societal/school language Swedish, and we discuss the observations in light of the IP concepts of salience and common ground. Finally, we argue that classroom studies detailing social actors’ language repertoires by using audiovisual data are essential in advancing our understanding of multilingual AL classrooms.

The purpose of this paper is to study the image of Strindberg that is conveyed in four different textbooks for the upper secondary school. How do the teaching authors choose to portray Strindberg? Do they focus on any one particular aspect of his writing? Adjacent to this a subsidiary aim is to see if teaching authors highlight the fictional nature of Strindberg’s works or choose to encourage a biographical interpretation. The work consists of a study of four literary history textbooks in the subject of Swedish for the upper secondary school, from 2000 to 2012. In the selected material the sections focusing on Strindberg and his writings are closely read and critically analysed. The teaching materials have then been compared to each other, with the purpose of trying to find similarities or differences in the way Strindberg is portrayed.

What emerged from the analysis is that the aspect of Strindberg that is consistently provided with the greatest scope is his prose. Alongside and in interaction with the writing, much space is given to the person Strindberg and incidents from his life that has influenced his writing. The works and the facts about Strindberg which are given special emphasis are generally the same, what distinguishes the materials from each other is the actual image of Strindberg and the attributes and epithets used in the transmission of this image. A biographical interpretation of the works is indeed used throughout, like in the teaching materials of the 1980- and 1990s. 

För de flesta elever är läxor en väsentlig del av vardagen och skolarbetet. Det är också genom läxor som skoluppgifter förflyttas till hemmiljön. Skolforskningen har uppmärksammat hur läxläsning ofta förutsätter att eleverna får hjälp av någon hemma och att därför olika hemförhållanden riskerar likvärdigheten i undervisningen (Cooper, 2001). Få studier har dock intresserat sig för hur det går till när flerspråkiga elever gör läxor samt hur och om de använder sina och familjens samlade språkresurser (Duek, 2017; Ljung Egeland, 2015; Alvarez, 2014).

I ett pågående forskningsprojekt har vi därför med teoretisk utgångspunkt i dels translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014), dels learner beliefs (Kalaja, Barcelos, Aro & Ruohotie-Lyhty, 2015) riktat fokus mot dessa frågor. Genom intervjusamtal syftar projektet till att öka kunskapen om flerspråkiga elevers villkor för läxläsning och samspelet mellan hem och skola. Deltagare i studien är 25 elever, som är mellan 6 och 13 år gamla och som alla har utländsk bakgrund. Några är födda och uppvuxna i Sverige och några är nyanlända. Materialet har konstruerats inom ramen för tre olika forskningsprojekt med narrativ respektive etnografisk ansats. Materialet har analyserats genom tematisk analys. Resultatet visar att elevgruppen ofta lägger ner mycket tid på skolarbete hemma, men också att de har särskilda utmaningar med läxor som grundar sig i hur läxorna är konstruerade och hur de följs upp. Detta får konsekvenser för elevernas föreställningar om sig själva som elever och om flerspråkighet som resurs.

This paper targets the role of homework for multilingual pupils. The research topic deals with young children living in Sweden and their experiences and beliefs of homework.

The wider discourse on homework points out the homework's importance for school achievement and the requirements for parents to support their children with their homework. However, previous studies have scarcely focused on multilingual children. The primary research objective addressed in this study is to understand what conditions and means of action are reflected in relation to homework activities among young children with immigrant backgrounds.

Drawing on the concept of translanguaging (García and Wei, 2014), the study examines how children make use of all their language resources in homework activities and in literacy development. The work of Cummins (2007; 2015), suggests that if multilingual children get the opportunity to use all their languages to engage in literacy activities, this is linked to higher achievement in reading comprehension.

Based on interview data originally collected for two dissertation studies, the two datasets were here reanalyzed with a specific focus on homework activities. The project brings new perspectives on experiences and beliefs of homework from the view of young multilingual children. The preliminary results show that the children put much effort and time on homework activities and that they often use all their languages, but despite this, they do not live up to the expectations of their teachers.

Den svenska föreningen för tillämpad språkvetenskap (ASLA, Association Suédoise de Linguistique Appliquée) är den svenska avdelningen av internationella AILA (Association Internationale de Linguistique Appliquée). ASLA grundades 1966 och har till uppgift att främja forskning kring praktiska problem med anknytning till språk, förmedla kontakt mellan språkforskare i Sverige och andra länder, samt rekrytera till de forskningsnätverk som AILA organiserar.

ASLA-föreningen arrangerar regelbundet symposier vid olika svenska lärosäten där såväl svenska som utländska deltagare möts. För närvarande hålls symposiet vartannat år och den 12–13 april 2018 välkomnade Karlstads universitet deltagare från inte mindre än 15 länder. Temat för ASLAsymposiet 2018 var ”Klassrumsforskning och språk(ande)”, på engelska ”Classroom research and language/languaging”. Föreliggande volym representerar fjorton av de bidrag som presenterades vid symposiet och som på olika sätt anknyter till symposiets tema. Volymen speglar den bredd och det djup som den tillämpade språkvetenskapen och ASLA:s verksamhet representerar: från barn till vuxna, från aktionsforskning med lärare till språkandets många faser och både i och utanför skolan.

En central dimension av lärares undervisning handlar om hur man organiserar arbetet så att inte bara läraren utan även eleverna ges så stora möjligheter som möjligt till samspel och dialog med andra om ett undervisningsinnehåll. Klassrumsinteraktion ser naturligtvis olika ut i olika sammanhang och i olika ämnen, men övergripande finns tre typer av arbetsformer som skapar skilda förutsättningar, nämligen helklassundervisning, grupparbete och individuellt elevarbete. I kapitel 7 beskriver vi mönster av fördelningen mellan dessa arbetsformer i de tre olika ämnen vi fokuserar på, liksom de skillnader som finns mellan ämnena. I det här kapitlet belyser vi närmare den vanligt förekommande arbetsformen helklassundervisning, det vill säga undervisning där läraren leder ett undervisningssamtal som riktar sig till en större grupp elever, i syfte att fördjupa bilden av hur lärare på olika sätt agerar för att engagera elever i sådana samtal. På så vis vill vi också nyansera vår förståelse av fenomenet undervisningskvalitet ytterligare, genom att uppmärksamma olika sätt som lärare kontinuerligt anpassar och formar helklassundervisningen på i förhållande till elevers respons, deras förmodade förkunskaper eller till sina (lärarens) egna personliga förutsättningar. För att kunna visa detta använder vi oss här av en annan analysmetod än de vi använt ovan, nämligen samtalsanalys eller CA som metoden ofta förkortas (från engelskans Conversation Analysis). Kapitlet inleds med en bakgrund till fenomenet helkassundervisning, följt av en introduktion till några grundläggande utgångspunkter för metoden CA, som vi sedan tillämpar i analyser av hur undervisningskvalitet i helklassundervisning framträder i fyra olika klassrumsexempel.

In a changing world, Nordic societies face the challenge of maintaining a just and inclusive society while undergoing rapid ideological, economic and social changes. In this development, basic education as well as teacher education play a key role but also faces new challenges related to increasing diversity among students’ backgrounds. On-going digitalisation and hybrid sociality made possible by mobile phones and computers have contributed to increased individualisation and to weakening of the classroom as a shared space where students from different backgrounds meet. These are challenges that education systems at large, including teacher education, has to prepare for in relation to a future we know little about. This presentation is part of a Nordic research project that examines how the ideals and practices of “One school for all” as a core of the Nordic welfare state has developed from the 70’s until today. Through multidisciplinary studies of four different Nordic schools, we explore their changing role for inclusion and exclusion over a time-span of approximately 50 years, attempting to shed light also on future challenges related inclusive and knowledge based education. The research material consists of policy documents and archive material from the selected schools, interviews with former students about their life histories, small projects carried out collaboratively with students, video material, field notes, and interviews from the schools today. Taking the Swedish school as our case, this presentation mainly draws on some initial data from interviews and observation studies with former and present students attending the same school, but 50 years apart. Based on these preliminary findings, we aim to discuss possible contributions from our project and what could be implications for teaching and teacher education. 

Through a wide range of international and national policies (cf. Redecker 2017; Unesco 2018) , education in Sweden and many other countries today faces strong demands to become digitalized. Hence, teachers are under pressure to implement digital resources in instruction (Player-Koro, Bergviken Rensfeldt and Selwyn 2017) . This has been shown to profoundly reframe the classroom as a learning space. A general change that the digitalization of the school seems to contribute to is a movement from collective forms of work to a greater individualization (Selwyn 2016) . While ‘one-to-one’ approaches that equip each student with digital resources seem to provide many practical benefits for teaching, the school is less able to prepare students to participate in a more critical approach to the digitalized society (Davies 2017) . New technologies are often subordinated to traditional classroom teaching practices and negotiated away when the new...

Den här artikeln sätter fokus på samtal mellan lärare och forskare om utmaningar kopplade till undervisningens digitalisering på en skola som har satsat på införandet av digital teknologi i alla ämnen. Syftet är att belysa transformationsprocesser i olika skolämnen i digitaliserade och uppkopplade klassrum, genom att analysera hur lärande om dessa frågor tar form i samtalen mellan deltagarna. Åtta fokusgruppsamtal genomfördes under fyra läsår och har analyserats med samtalsanalys för att synliggöra fysiska, semantiska och sociala dimensioner av de läranderum som formas. Resultaten visar att samtalsarrangemanget kan stödja lärandeprocesser både under och mellan samtalen, och kan överbrygga brott i kontinuiteten som kan relateras till organisatoriska förändringar på skolan. Vidare visar analysen att gruppsammansättningen med lärare från olika ämnen inte främst gynnade fördjupning av ämnesdidaktiska aspekter av undervisningens digitalisering utan framför allt gynnade fördjupning när det gäller ämnesövergripande frågor.

The aim of this article is to make visible Nordic lower secondary teachers’ experiences of the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic, guided by three research questions: 1. What challenges and strategies can be identified in teachers’ descriptions of teaching during the pandemic outbreak? 2. What appears to be the role of digital technology in these challenges and strategies? 3. How can we understand the readiness and educational priorities of these Nordic schools in this time of crisis? Theoretically, we draw on the three main domains of purposes of education coined by Biesta (2015); qualification, socialisation and subjectification. The empirical data consists of online qualitative interviews with 17 lower secondary teachers from Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden, teaching in different school subjects. A thematic content analysis was conducted, finding three main areas of challenges in relation to organisation of teaching, classroom dialogue and assessment of student learning. Our analysis makes visible how besides digital readiness, the readiness of the studied schools relied on the teachers' ability to act independently in finding professional solutions in a time of crisis. The teachers did not just sit and wait for instructions on what to do, but took initiatives and managed the situation as best as they could drawing on their professional competence.