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Lundahl, Christian, ProfessorORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0001-8173-7474
Alternative names
Biography [eng]

Christian Lundahl (b. 1972) is Professor of education at Örebro University. Lundahl is specialized in the history of assessments, evaluation and of Swedish educational research. Lundahl is presently involved in research projects concerning the production and internationalization of data in education systems. He leads an international research project about the history of comparative education financed by the Swedish Science council (Vetenskapsrådet).

Biography [swe]

Christian Lundahl (f. 1972) är professor i pedagogik vid Örebro universitet sedan september 2014. Han disputerade vid Uppsala universitet 2006 och blev docent där 2010. Fick ett lektorat vid Stockholms universitet 2011 och en professur vid Karlstad universitet 2012. Lundahl har studerat vid Örebro universitet 1991–1993 och var extern ledamot vid Lärarutbildningsnämnde vid Örebro universitet 2013–2014. Lundahl forskar om utbildningshistoria, internationella jämförelser och kunskapsbedömning. Lundahl ingår i flera internationella nätverk kring bedömning, utvärdering och utbildningspolitik och samverkar med Humboldt universitetet i Berlin, Universitetet i Edinburgh samt Oslo universitet.

Publications (10 of 120) Show all publications
Piepenburg, S. & Lundahl, C. (2024). Begåvningsreserven som vetenskapligt och politiskt faktum. In: Anders Burman; Joakim Landahl; Anna Larsson (Ed.), Pedagogikens politik: Utbildningsforskning och utbildningspolitik under efterkrigstiden (pp. 19-47). Huddinge: Södertörns högskola
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Begåvningsreserven som vetenskapligt och politiskt faktum
2024 (Swedish)In: Pedagogikens politik: Utbildningsforskning och utbildningspolitik under efterkrigstiden / [ed] Anders Burman; Joakim Landahl; Anna Larsson, Huddinge: Södertörns högskola , 2024, p. 19-47Chapter in book (Refereed)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2024
Series
Södertörn Academic Studies, ISSN 1650-433X ; 99
National Category
Pedagogy History of Ideas
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-115866 (URN)9789189504929 (ISBN)9789189504936 (ISBN)
Available from: 2024-09-11 Created: 2024-09-11 Last updated: 2024-09-11Bibliographically approved
Lundahl, C. (2024). Histories of education: historiographic perspectives on educational science, policy and practice. In: ESHS Barcelona 2024: Book of Abstracts. Paper presented at 11th Conference of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS 2024), Barcelona, Spain, September 4-7, 2024 (pp. 298-299).
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Histories of education: historiographic perspectives on educational science, policy and practice
2024 (English)In: ESHS Barcelona 2024: Book of Abstracts, 2024, p. 298-299Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

The field of educational science displays some specific features that are closely intertwined with temporal and spatial contexts, historical and educational knowledge, the need for reform, and scientific self-reflection. This paper investigates the impact of various contextual factors on the history of educational science in Sweden, covering the period from the 1910s to the 2020s. In the early 20th century, the first education professors primarily came from backgrounds in psychology and philosophy. Their scholarly work focused on exploring the historical evolution of educational thought, delving into influential figures such as Descartes, Rousseau, The Jesuits, and various teaching and learning practices. This early historical discourse played a key role in legitimising education as a structured domain of knowledge with a rich tradition.

Another notable aspect of historiography in education arose concurrently with the comprehensive school reforms of the mid-20th century. The story that enveloped these reforms, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, was closely tied to the idea of ‘social engineering’ in education. This branch of historiography aimed to corroborate the reforms and the ever-growing nexus between educational science and policy. Over the subsequent decades, there was a rising interest in education within the History faculty, with a focus on micro and social aspects. However, there was little attention paid to the role and development of educational science. Currently, there is a new approach to the history of educational science that can be seen, encompassing its knowledge production from both a global, transnational perspective and a social constructivist viewpoint and thus introducing a self-reflection both in educational science and historiography. 

National Category
Pedagogy
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-116258 (URN)
Conference
11th Conference of the European Society for the History of Science (ESHS 2024), Barcelona, Spain, September 4-7, 2024
Available from: 2024-09-24 Created: 2024-09-24 Last updated: 2024-09-24Bibliographically approved
Lundahl, C. (2024). The Reproduction of Episteme in Swedish Education, 16th to 18th century. In: : . Paper presented at The Foucault Circle, Boston, USA, May 23-26, 2024.
Open this publication in new window or tab >>The Reproduction of Episteme in Swedish Education, 16th to 18th century
2024 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

In his groundbreaking work[CL1] , The Order of Things, Michel Foucault analyses the evolution of different knowledge systems and scientific discourse throughout various historical periods. The concept of ‘episteme’ is introduced as a means of dissecting the overarching frameworks that governed pre-modern era modes of thinking and understanding. Foucault illuminates how distinct epistemes underpinned specific scientific inquiry forms and the institutionalization of sciences. Moreover, these epistemes organized the means by which the world is perceived and comprehended. This paper explores formal education, specifically how examination practices in the grammar schools re/produces a distinct 'epistemic culture' by using knowledge organization and validation techniques to shape how learners understand the world and themselves as subjects. In these schools, examinations were regulated in the curriculum. The paper departs from a close reading of Swedish curriculums from late 16th century to early 19th century.  One of the prevalent applications of Foucault in education concerns his delineation of examinations as instruments for organizational discipline and control of candidates, effectively making them objects for organizational (and mental) differentiation on the basis of their performances. In this paper, we examine examinations in relation to how oral and written tests shape different abilities, such as memory, judgement and imagination, and their connection to truths and reasoning in various school subjects. Our discussion expands on the typical understanding of Foucault's examination concept and introduces the organization of students as both objects and subjects of knowledge. Thus, examinations can be delineated into two categories of knowledge-producing practices: one administrative practice focused on organizing individuals and teaching practice on organizing knowledge and learning. The examination, as an administrative practice, can be construed as the production of knowledge about an individual's understanding. It served multiple purposes in relation to a more traditional Foucauldian understanding of examinations, such as admitting disciples, employing teachers, transferring disciples between classes, monitoring students, and ultimately dismissing teachers and disciples based on their knowledge adequacy. This function involved assessing either inadequate or full knowledge, contributing to the organization of individuals within the educational system. Simultaneously, the examination played a role in the organization of knowledge. It served as a rehearsal of crucial information, imprinting it in the disciples' minds. Moreover, it identified what was retained in the disciples' minds, transferring this knowledge to the schoolmaster's cognition or notebook. This dual ‘inscription’ effectively divided the educational experience, as disciples acquired Christian experience and memory while, concurrently, the process of acquiring this experience educated a new administrative memory. The examination, functioning as a knowledge assessment practice shaping the minds of the subject, laid the groundwork for an administrative assessment practice organizing them as objects. At the same time we can see how this practice of ‘the will to know what others know’ produced an ‘epistemic change’. Examining early school ordinances reveals an episteme characterized by an attempt to reconcile God, truth, and language. Speech and writing were deemed essential skills, with memory and judgment identified as spiritual qualities to be cultivated. The emphasis on memory aligned with the idealization of a nearly absolute reproduction of the Christian experience in Latin. David Hamilton's assertion in Curriculum History that this ‘absolutism’ tied knowledge to language underscores the necessity of separating language from truth to organize curricula for broader purposes. The onset of a transformative shift in the mid-1700s is discernible though, through two tendencies evident in Swedish school ordinances. Firstly, the transition of memory from oral communication to written text allowed for a clearer historical trajectory and facilitated comparisons over time; i.e. the possibility to assess change. Secondly, perhaps due to its ability to be documented, memory underwent a downgrading. Judgment, defined as the capacity to navigate the present with assistance from the past rather than dwelling in the past with present guidance, assumed a more prominent role; paving the ground for a more critical thinking. This transformation aligns with Reinhart Koselleck's thesis that the notion of the past as a repository of examples for correct living gave way around the mid-1700s to the concept of history as a dynamic process. The transmitted experience diminished in value as an organizing principle of society, replaced by emerging institutions such as economy, ideology, and management with a forward-looking perspective forming their own memory. In this new era, memory's value shifted from a reproduced experience to a produced experience, creating a disconnection between the learning mission of schools and their administrative functions.    [CL1]Gör tydligt från början att det verkar orimligt att examinationen primärt tog form som kontroll, utan här söks en närmare koppling till lärandet

National Category
Pedagogy
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-116257 (URN)
Conference
The Foucault Circle, Boston, USA, May 23-26, 2024
Available from: 2024-09-24 Created: 2024-09-24 Last updated: 2024-09-24Bibliographically approved
Grek, S., Landahl, J., Lawn, M. & Lundahl, C. (2024). The World as a Laboratory: Torsten Husén and the Rise of Transnational Research in Education 1950s–1990s. Cambridge: Springer Nature
Open this publication in new window or tab >>The World as a Laboratory: Torsten Husén and the Rise of Transnational Research in Education 1950s–1990s
2024 (English)Book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

This book covers the construction of international education research community in the 1950s-1990s, and the growth of its ‘disembedded’ laboratory i.e. networks, spaces, materiality, travelling, translations. The book follows a sociology of science theoretical framework in order to examine the research-archive of the Swedish internationally renowned educational scholar Torsten Husén (1916-2009). The archive reveals the shifting and heterogenous transnational networks that contribute to the development of social science research beyond fixed time and space dimensions, and that extends social science beyond individual ideas, researchers, environments, institutions and universities. These are practices that create, mobilise, sustain and challenge relations between actors in innovations, knowledge creation and various social activities. In other words, the archive represents the socio-material manifestation not only of the intellectual trajectory of a key education actor but the growing organisation of a whole scientific field at the time. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Cambridge: Springer Nature, 2024. p. 204
Series
Global histories of education, ISSN 2731-6408, E-ISSN 2731-6416 ; 1
Keywords
Global education, transnational education, Torsten Husén, comparative education, 20th century, UNESCO, education research, IEA
National Category
Pedagogy
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-116251 (URN)10.1007/978-3-031-68090-8 (DOI)9783031680892 (ISBN)9783031680908 (ISBN)
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2019-03653
Available from: 2024-09-24 Created: 2024-09-24 Last updated: 2024-09-24Bibliographically approved
Lundahl, C. & Serder, M. (2023). Figures fighting figures – unpacking state authority's mis/trust in PISA statistics. Discourse. Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 44(6), 829-843
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Figures fighting figures – unpacking state authority's mis/trust in PISA statistics
2023 (English)In: Discourse. Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, ISSN 0159-6306, E-ISSN 1469-3739, Vol. 44, no 6, p. 829-843Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

How can we understand the uncertainties in high-stake measures such as PISA in relation to the claims that different authorities make from them? In this paper, we use a rather remarkable case from Sweden involving conflicting interpretations of the PISA 2018 results at a national political level and afight over statistics between two national agencies: National Agency for Education and the National Audit Office. The aim of this paper is to unpack processes of interpretations and claims that are often black-boxed in PISA debates: How can we understand the process that led up to the fight and what followed? Our data consist of media articles, broadcasts from the national television and radio (2018–2021), reports and memos from the two-state authorities involved in this debate, and email conversations between the two. Our results stress the need for further transparency in how PISA data are collected and calculated.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
John Wiley & Sons, 2023
Keywords
PISA, Statistics, State authorities, Science and technology studies (STS), Controversies, Black-boxing
National Category
Pedagogy
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-105184 (URN)10.1080/01596306.2023.2186374 (DOI)000949501800001 ()2-s2.0-85150636959 (Scopus ID)
Available from: 2023-03-25 Created: 2023-03-25 Last updated: 2024-02-05Bibliographically approved
Lundahl, C. & Sundström Sjödin, E. (2022). Choreographies of Emergency Examinations in Pandemic Times. In: : . Paper presented at AERA Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, USA, April 21-26, 2022.
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Choreographies of Emergency Examinations in Pandemic Times
2022 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Keywords
Covid, Examinations
National Category
Educational Sciences
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-96276 (URN)
Conference
AERA Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, USA, April 21-26, 2022
Available from: 2022-01-06 Created: 2022-01-06 Last updated: 2022-06-01Bibliographically approved
Lundahl, C. & Landahl, J. (2022). Creating Curriculum Facilitators: American Experts and Students from Developing Countries at a Six‐Week Seminar on Curriculum Development in Sweden 1971. In: : . Paper presented at International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE 43), Milan, Italy, August 31 - September 6, 2022.
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Creating Curriculum Facilitators: American Experts and Students from Developing Countries at a Six‐Week Seminar on Curriculum Development in Sweden 1971
2022 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
National Category
Pedagogy
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-105187 (URN)
Conference
International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE 43), Milan, Italy, August 31 - September 6, 2022
Available from: 2023-03-25 Created: 2023-03-25 Last updated: 2023-03-27Bibliographically approved
Lundahl, C. (2022). Ethnography of historical texts as a way of understanding scientific knowledge production. In: : . Paper presented at The 8th Nordic Education History Conference (NEHC2022), Aalborg, Denmark, May 25-27, 2022.
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Ethnography of historical texts as a way of understanding scientific knowledge production
2022 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

Ethnography of historical texts as a way of understanding scientific knowledge production.  How does a fact become a fact? This question puzzled the Polish-Jewish microbiologist Ludwik Fleck (1896–1961) who in the 1930s developed the first system of the historical philosophy and sociology of science. In Fleck’s footprint followed Kuhn, Knorr Cetina, Latour, Woolgar and others who from different angles contributed to what todays is acknowledge as Science and technology studies (STS), where questions concerning knowledge production and disseminations are discussed (see further Serder & Lundahl 2021). Even if the forerunners such as Fleck and Kuhn made use of history it is not that common today within the tradition of STS to have a historical perspective. In this paper ethnography of historical texts (Nimmo 2011) is used to make an observable laboratory for knowledge production out of the rich archive of the educational scholar Torsten Husén (1916-2009), and then in particular the part of the archive concerning the editing of the International Encyclopaedia of Education (1984, 1995). Encyclopedias often claim to be collections of facts. Facts are usually perceived as naturally given or 'unconstructed by anyone' (Latour & Woolgar 1979). The International Encyclopaedia of Education in particular claimed to be geographically and culturally non-biased – i.e. not ethnocentric. But producing an encyclopaedia is not an independent and objective editorial process. Describing how an encyclopaedia comes into being can clearly be seen as an investigation of a very specific social knowledge practice, that is biased and circumstantial while at the same time claiming to be objective and permanent (Primus & Lundahl 2020). The chapter builds on an analysis of over 4000 pages of correspondence concerning the management and editorial process for the two editions of IEE. It will be described how this data illuminates different processes of editing and publishing knowledge: e.g. administrative and management matters, social aspects (friendship, trusts/distrust in authors, resolving conflicts), content and dissemination matters. 

References 

Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton University Press.

Nimmo, R. (2011). Actor-network theory and methodology: Social research in a more-than-human world. Methodological Innovations Online, 6(3), 108-119.

Primus, F., & Lundahl, C. (2020). The peripherals at the core of androcentric knowledge production: an analysis of the managing editor’s knowledge work in The International Encyclopedia of Education (1985). Paedagogica Historica, 1-17.

Lundahl, C. & Serder, M (2021). Vetenskapsstudier (STS) och aktör-nätverksteori (ANT). Jober, A. & Serder, M. (2021). Vetenskapliga teorier för lärare. Stockholm: Natur och kultur

National Category
Pedagogy
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-105185 (URN)
Conference
The 8th Nordic Education History Conference (NEHC2022), Aalborg, Denmark, May 25-27, 2022
Available from: 2023-03-25 Created: 2023-03-25 Last updated: 2023-03-27Bibliographically approved
Lundahl, C., Mickwitz, L. & Skott, P. (2022). Skolutveckling för hållbart lärande - teoretiska och praktiska perspektiv. Lund: Studentlitteratur AB
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Skolutveckling för hållbart lärande - teoretiska och praktiska perspektiv
2022 (Swedish)Book (Other academic)
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Lund: Studentlitteratur AB, 2022. p. 206
National Category
Educational Sciences
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-104880 (URN)9789144161525 (ISBN)
Available from: 2023-03-11 Created: 2023-03-11 Last updated: 2023-03-14Bibliographically approved
Lundahl, C. & Piepenburg, S. (2022). The pool of ability as a discursive construction in the second wave of mass education. In: : . Paper presented at The 8th Nordic Education History Conference (NEHC2022), Aalborg, Denmark, May 25-27, 2022.
Open this publication in new window or tab >>The pool of ability as a discursive construction in the second wave of mass education
2022 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
National Category
Pedagogy
Research subject
Education
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-105186 (URN)
Conference
The 8th Nordic Education History Conference (NEHC2022), Aalborg, Denmark, May 25-27, 2022
Available from: 2023-03-25 Created: 2023-03-25 Last updated: 2023-03-27Bibliographically approved
Organisations
Identifiers
ORCID iD: ORCID iD iconorcid.org/0000-0001-8173-7474

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