Till Örebro universitet

Swedish compulsory schools are committed to work for equality and social cohesion. Increasing school segregation, however, challenges this commitment. Based on survey data from Swedish municipalities, this article maps and analyses local initiatives that counteract school segregation. We identify three main types of initiatives-reinforcement, dispersal, and merging-and the exogenous (school external) and endogenous (school internal) drivers involved in each of them. The analysis reveals several gaps between the national level, the municipal level and local schools that hamper local efforts to counter school segregation. This article contributes to increased knowledge on how local initiatives of counteracting segregation are constrained by national policies about school choice and independent versus municipal schools, but also how local initiatives tend to focus on organizational dynamics rather than on social and pedagogical processes.

This study examines conversations in a Swedish teachers' School Rebellion (SR) group on Facebook, a group that attracts members who wish to engage in activism for a different and better Swedish school system and improved conditions for teachers. The phenomenon of teachers' Rebellion Facebook groups is relatively new. It has emerged in several countries over the past decade and clearly differs from traditional online teacher collaboration and professional development groups. Placing the Swedish SR initiative in the context of discussions on changing teacher professionalism over the last decade, the aim of this study is to examine what content is given presence in SR posts and how it is discussed by members, and to determine the extent to which the communication between the participating teachers has the potential to strengthen collective professionalism. To this end, curriculum theory and the concept of deliberative communication are combined to address questions of content and various relations between actors and levels, such as power and responsibility issues. The analysis shows that many topics related to teaching and education appear in the conversations, deliberative approaches vary from what is termed pre-deliberative to deliberative and even counter-deliberative. Although all participants have a voice, the administrators' role is shown to be of special interest. Based on these findings, the administrators' responsibility to maintain professional collegial deliberation is discussed as a complex mission of deliberation over political, pedagogical, and practical issues.

The objective of this article is to explore differentiation of education through juridification. We examine changes in school governing, including trends towards globalization and marketization, as well as increased regulatory intervention in addressing complex social problems. Drawing on Luhmann’s theory of functional differentiation and Teubner’s problematization of juridification, we scrutinize three sets of distinct legislative regulations in a Swedish context. We uncover a multifaceted juridification alongside a multifunctional school organization nested in a complex web of differentiated and interconnected subsystems. Traditional forms of differentiation persist, albeit with juridification as a lever, thus sparking renewed tensions.

The aim of this article is to shed light on teachers’ actions to counter racism expressed by their colleagues. Based on qualitative interviews with teachers in Swedish upper secondary schools, the article presents a narrative analysis of three teachers. The article highlights the complexity of what it means to be a colleague in anti-racist work and argues that this brings different risks and possibilities for White teachers and for teachers of colour. By relating the narratives to research on racism and teacher professionalism, the article contributes to a better understanding of the prevalence and character of racism expressed by colleagues, and points at the need for further research.

This presentation focus on Swedish teacher’s School rebellion on Facebook, a group whose conversations early in the spring of 2021 were filled with enthusiasm and glowing activism. In about 650 post every month, teachers vividly discussed how to improve the Swedish school and the working conditions for teachers. However, in the following year there was a sharp decrease in the number and type of posts in the group. To understand the changes of the group discussions, the aim of this paper is to study what content is given presence in the posts and to analyse to what extent this is deliberated on between the teachers.

Our theoretical perspective is inspired from research on deliberative communication, where analyses of arguments, stances and concretizations are made (Englund, 2006).  We are particularly interested in how different perspectives in the posts and comments are received and if there is space for tolerance and respect for different viewpoints. 

We have followed the activities (posts, comments and likes) in the rebellion group from March 2021 and intensively for ten weeks, then occasionally until March 2022. As the posts rapidly decreased, we searched among the about 100 posts made by the administrators, from which we selected ten for further analyses. Repeatedly during the year, the administrators tried to initiate and stimulate discussions, by asking for advice on how the group should act, what focus the members wanted the group to have or by challenging the members to react on or think about specific issues. Thereby, we direct a specific focus at the administrators’ roles to create a conversation climate that support the group’s ambitions.

We found that the administrators, besides asking the teachers to present topics of interest, to initiate several different issues to discuss in the group. When we analysed the conversations in the light of the concept of deliberation, we found in some posts no deliberative approach at all, in other posts a pre-deliberative approach and in some posts even a counter-deliberative approach to appear. From these findings, we discuss the administrators’ roles in keeping the spirit and glowing activism alive. The specific Facebook forum for these conversations is discussed in terms of online deliberation and specific limitations and possibilities. 

When it concerns the question of content, it is naturally so that the content is important for the discussion to be liked and commented on by the teachers in the group. However when the conversation does not have a clear agenda, when discussions are not followed up by the administrators, who started the thread - or even when the admin takes over and hijacks the discussion - the interest becomes less among the members and the glowing activism seems to fade out. 

The topic is of high relevance to the Nordic educational research as similar online forum show up in all Nordic countries, discussing issues of relevance for schools’ and teachers’ work. 

This paper analyses and discusses the possibilities and challenges of collegial mutual deliberation among teachers as a way of counteracting racism. It takes its starting point in research on teacher collaboration that emphasises the importance of creating conditions locally for critical discussions, building on knowledge from different perspectives and going beyond simple solutions. With a focus on the practical, the idea of deliberative communication serves as a theoretical lens to analyse discussions among eight teachers on their responses to racism. The study provides theoretical and empirical knowledge about the potential contribution of collegial deliberation to developing a communicative teacher community that counteracts racism.