To Örebro University

This article focuses on the who of anti-racism education by examining who the teachers are that are doing anti-racist work and what experiences influenced them to counter racism in their education practices. Taking a pragmatic approach, I use data on racism and anti-racism in schools from interviews with 27 upper secondary school teachers in Sweden to capture notions of becoming. To that end, I present five types of experiences: 1) personal experiences of racism, 2) personal experiences of other forms of oppression, 3) political socialisation, 4) encounters with anti-racism in education, and 5) experiences of racism in the professional teaching context. This plurality of experiences offers different paths to becoming an anti-racist teacher and emphasises the need to situate questions of anti-racist education in the day-to-day struggle of teachers' lives.

I den här artikeln analyserar Emma Arneback lagar, styrdokument och likabehandlingsplaner för gymnasieskolan för att undersöka hur uppdraget att bemöta främlingsfientlighet i skolan har förändrats under de senaste 20 åren. Hon undersöker vilka konsekvenser olika bemötanden kan medföra för a) yttrandefrihetens gränser i skolan och b) vem eller vad som ses som främlingsfientlig eller främlingsfientligt. Resultatet visar att uppdraget har gått från att vara ett decentraliserat etiskt ansvar (1994–2006) till att bli ett centraliserat juridiskt ansvar (2006–). Förskjutningen påverkar yttrandefrihetens gränser i skolan och för med sig olika uttolkningar av i vilken mån det är möjligt att tala om det som är svårt och kan såra i skolans värld. Arnebacks analys av likabehandlingsplanerna visar även på att skolorna i hög grad fokuserar på att bemöta främlingsfientliga individer, medan frågan om att motverka de strukturer som skapar förutsättningar för individer att verka förtryckande lämnas därhän.

In this paper I elaborate on five philosophical perspectives on how teachers can respond to expressions of racism in education. By comparing them I wish to highlight the philosophical discussion on school as a moral and political space. In this research process, two tensions emerged: the first between different perspectives on moral/ethic, and the second between different perspectives on the effect of speech acts. Following John Dewey, I finally argue that these tensions could remind us that we need to reflect on our (choice of) action over and over again.

The problem of living together gives school a communicative and democratic task – to live democracy. In the Swedish national curriculum (Lpo/Lpf 94) democracy is a central concept, that regulates the values the school should promote, but it also supports the idea of free speech for pupils. The occurrence of xenophobic expressions in schools presents to the democratic task a specific challenge: How can schools respond to xenophobic expressions in relation to free speech and the right not to be violated in school?

This paper focuses on three local policy-documents that regulate how staff in school should respond to xenophobic expressions. The theoretical approaches are based on the tension between free speech and human inviolability, and philosophy of communication by Jürgen Habermas and Moira von Wright. My purpose related reading focuses on three questions: 1) How do the documents define the content in xenophobia, 2) what or/and who is the xenophobic and the xenon (the foreigner) in the documents, and 3) in which way do the documents prescribe how to respond to xenophobic expressions? Finally, I discuss what possible consequences different way of thinking can have for how to look upon teachers’ assignment and limitations in the grey zone of free speech.

The aim of this dissertation is to map and analyse planned responses to expressions of racism in upper secondary schools. Three questions are in focus: (1) What courses of action, in response to expressions of racism, are advocated in philosophical texts and equal treatment plans for upper secondary schools? (2) What consequences have these courses of action for the formation of the mission of schools, the responsibility of teachers, and the limits of free speech? (3) What kinds of expressions of racism are these courses of action intended to be a response to? The study takes its point of departure in two theoretical traditions: Pierre-André Taguieff’s categorisations of racism are used to define the problem in the dissertation, while John Dewey’s moral philosophy provides the methodological base.

From an analysis of equal treatment plans four temporal phases are identified. In the first phase, preventive measures, the purpose is to prevent students from developing racism. In phase two, limitations in schools, the dominant course of action is to prohibit violations in schools. The third phase, corrective measures, is concerned with how to handle situations that are contrary to the limitations in schools. The final phase, limitations on schools, relates to when schools are required to transfer responsibility for action to the social services, work environment or police authorities.

The results indicate that the national laws (since 2006) have a strong impact on equal treatment plans, and that ‘non-violation’ becomes a dominant moral principle that displaces or subsumes other views of morality. How the non-violation principle is applied also affects the space for political conversations on topics that can be hurtful. Finally, the analysis indicates that equal treatment plans are mainly concerned with expressions of racism among students, and pay little attention to expressions of racism that occur in the organization of schools. The plans thus describe schools as a force for good that seeks to combat (potential) racism among students.

This article is about moments when teachers experience hate speech in education and need to act. Based on John Dewey’s work on moral philosophy and examples from teaching practice, I would like to contribute to the discussion about moral education by emphasizing the following: 1) the importance of experience, 2) the problem with prescribed morals, and 3) the need for moral imagination in education. My Deweyan proposal for teachers responding to hate speech in education is to use moral imagination in education and take contextual elements into consideration when deciding how to act. Doing this would facilitate work related to doing morals and help to prevent prescribing morals as something that has already been done and that teachers (and students) have to adjust to in schools without being part of the process.

This paper focuses on policy making against expressions if racism in Swedish education. Pierre-André Taguieff’s categorisations of racism as exclusionary and exploitative are used to define the problem, while John Dewey’s moral philosophy provides the methodological base. By analysing local policy document from upper secondary schools in Sweden, different courses of action are visualized and how they form schools as a moral and political space. The results indicate that the Swedish national laws (since 2006) have a strong impact on equal treatment plans, and that ‘non-violation’ becomes a dominant moral principle that displaces or subsumes other views of morality. How the non-violation principle is applied also affects the space for political conversations on topics that can be hurtful. It also indicates that equal treatment plans are mainly concerned with expressions of racism among students, and pay little attention to expressions of racism that occur in the organization of schools. The plans thus describe schools as a force for good that seeks to combat (potential) racism among students.

Skolsegregationens negativa konsekvenser har på senare år kommit alltmer i fokus. Den här rapporten har studerat Örebro kommuns arbete med integration och måluppfyllelse vid kommunens skolor, och då specifikt nedläggningen av högstadiet på Vivallaskolan och dess omorganisering till fyra anvisningsskolor i kommunen under 2017–2020.

Forskarna har följt arbetet på de fyra skolorna under två och ett halvt års tid och intervjuat 128 personer: elever, lärare, skolpersonal, skolledning, politiker och tjänstemän – tillsammans bildar de en väv av röster som beskriver från en rad olika perspektiv hur omorganiseringen av Vivallaskolan har uppfattats och vilka effekter det har fått på olika nivåer.

Rapporten visar på både möjligheter och utmaningar att lära av, och genom det kastar den ljus över vilka processer som har bidragit till minskad segregation, samt ökad integration och måluppfyllelse. I en förlängning kan kunskap om dessa processer komma att gynna alla elevers lärande och utveckling.

This contribution is based on an ongoing study on teachers' anti-racist actions. The project is based on John Dewey's moral philosophy with an interest in teachers' experiences of racism and anti-racism in education. In the 25 teacher interviews conducted so far, teachers express that they have a moral responsibility to counteract racism among the pupils. But what should they do when a colleague expresses racism?

Our study shows that this is a common experience among the informants, visible in colleagues’ racist jokes, speech and actions. In situation like this, there seems to be an uncertainty about their moral responsibility leading to professional ambivalence. On the one hand, the teachers feel that they are obligated to the values in the curriculum, on the other hand, they are uncertain about whether the moral responsibility could be applied in relation to colleagues.

The interviewed teachers act in relate to this ambivalence in different ways. Some describe their moral responsibility as general and choose to counteract all kinds of racism in school, even among colleagues. Other states that this is beyond their moral responsibility as a teacher, and choose not to act or to inform the principal. The choice not to act has in previous research also been explained in terms of loyalty between colleagues. The uncertainty that occurs among the informants shows how the boundaries of moral responsibility becomes erased when moving from classroom to staff room.

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 contribution is about situations in classrooms when students express racism, leaving teachers feeling uncertain about how to act. The study is mainly a theoretical contribution inspired by John Dewey’s (1908/1978, 1916/1985, 1922/1983) work on, if, and how deliberation can be used in such situations. It also uses recently carried out interviews with teachers on how to respond to racism in education, to illustrate situations related to the theoretical argumentation in the text. In this presentation “expressions of racism” refers to interpersonal racism where racism is expressed between people, based on race-biological and/or cultural divisions. The aspects highlighted are: 1) the student’s (expected) potential for growth, 2) the class composition and classroom climate, 3) the teacher's own knowledge and experiences.

This article focuses on teachers' deliberation on communicative potentials in classrooms when students express racism. More precisely, we are interested in what aspects are of importance when teachers reflect, deliberate on, and decide how to act. To elaborate on these aspects we turn to John Dewey's work on intra- and interpersonal deliberation, and to interviews with 27 Swedish high school teachers. In the results, we present three aspects of importance in teachers' reflections: (1) individual students' potential for growth, (2) classroom climate and violations, and (3) teachers' knowledge and experiences. Based on the results, we argue that if teachers' experiences of these aspects are positive, they are more open to a deliberative communicative approach. From our perspective, the limits of deliberation in classrooms need more attention, since they expose crucial tensions in teachers' work and dealings with issues related to power, politics, and morality in schools.

At core will be the responsive interaction with teachers and peer students and what role different forms of responses play; university teachers’ formative feedback and peer assessment play, and how they influence the development of teacher students’ writing and their sense of what matters in writing. By using two different learning and writing environments in teacher education, preschool teacher education and teacher education, we distinguish between different forms of ideals, demands and feedbacks on their writings as they are articulated and practiced in different disciplines. Thereby we analyze ‘academic literacies” and discuss what kind of ‘formation scripts’ that seems to emerge in the interactions in different social practices within teacher education.

In what way might writing of different kinds contribute to the development of a professional identity? By analytically distinguishing three discourses of communication, everyday, professional and academic, applied to three preschool student teachers’ conceptions of writing during their education and in their initial phase at work as preschool teachers, we attempt to understand the role of writing in their development of professional identities. What we have found is that the professional discourse which all three have achieved is something each of them creates and develops in very different forms. Their independent final projects show that all three have a mastery of academic discourse, but only in exceptional cases do they make use of that discourse in contexts other than this specific piece of work and to some extent earlier papers written as part of their teacher education. However, judging from our interviews and their responses to our questions, it seems as if they have acquired modes of expression quite close to an academic discourse, but have primarily developed and use different variants of a professional discourse. This professional discourse also seems to be an important element in their development of a professional identity.

This study focuses on a selection of student teachers’experiences of academic writing in different disciplines in teacher education. By studying two different learning and writing environments at a Swedish university – teacher education for preschool teachers and for secondary school teachers – we distinguish different forms of writing ideals resulting from disciplinary shifts during the first two years of teacher education. In the preschool group, all the student teachers express the idea that writing ideals change during their education, as if they move between different worlds of writing. The student teachers specializing in secondary school education express the view that, overall, the writing ideal remains the same, and have a sense of staying in the same neighbourhood. These different experiences most likely create different barriers and possibilities in their formation as writers and future teachers. The results also indicate that, in their writing during the first two years, the participating students’ focus is on becoming students and adapting to different disciplines in higher education.

This article presents a longitudinal study of three students’ experiences with learning to write academic texts in preschool teacher education.  Through in-depth interviews and drawing on an academic literacy approach combined with a “before, within and after education” perspective, their different struggles with learning academic writing are identified. A significant finding is that students experience different ways of being in and out of control. Another finding is that the institutionalized framing represents a control from above that helps two but not the third. The result indicates preschool teacher educators should pay close attention to the variation in students’ resources in writing.

Förskolan och skolan har ett tydligt demokratiskt uppdrag, vilket framgår av såväl allmän lagstiftning som styrdokument. Inga barn och ungdomar ska utsättas för rasistiska föreställningar, handlingar och strukturer. Därför är det viktigt att förskolor och skolor får stöd och kunskaper om hur de på ett systematiskt och konkret sätt kan tänka och arbeta om och när det sker.

Den här onlinekursen ger kunskaper, kartläggningsverktyg och metoder att använda i det dagliga arbetet för en likvärdig pedagogisk verksamhet. Utöver en teoretisk inramning innehåller kursen filmade föreläsningar, fallstudier och diskussionsuppgifter, övningar och didaktiska förslag att använda individuellt eller kollegialt.

Onlinekursen vänder sig till blivande och verksamma lärare, förskollärare och rektorer i förskola, grundskola, gymnasieskola, och vuxenutbildning, men är också relevant för huvudmän.

Förskolan och skolan har ett tydligt uppdrag att motverka rasism. Samtidigt visar studier att rasism tar sig en rad olika uttryck, på olika nivåer och får allvarliga konsekvenser för de barn och elever som utsätts. Rasistiska föreställningar, handlingar och strukturer gör att vissa löper högre risk än andra att utsättas för kränkningar och diskriminering. Därmed motverkar rasism barns och elevers likvärdiga möjligheter att lära och utvecklas.

Behoven av insatser för att motverka rasism är stora. I denna bok beskrivs förskolans och skolans uppdrag att motverka rasism. Här behandlas olika sätt att förstå och analysera rasism och hur rasism kan komma till uttryck i pedagogisk verksamhet. Boken redogör också för en bred palett av arbetssätt som kan användas för att motverka olika former av rasism i förskola och skola – från normkritik, interkulturell och frigörande pedagogik till kunskapsutvecklande, demokratiska och relationella arbetssätt.

I detta kapitel diskuteras behovet av en breddad förståelse av rasism och antirasism i pedagogisk verksamhet. För att verka i enlighet med skolans uppdrag och ge barn och elever mer likvärdiga förutsättningar att lära och utvecklas, behöver personal utveckla förståelser och arbetssätt som kan uppfatta och möta både individuella och strukturella uttryck för rasism. I kapitlet betonas rasismens komplexitet, och hur de individorienterade arbetssätt som länge dominerat skolans arbete behöver kompletteras med mer strukturorienterade arbetssätt. Det innebär att också rikta ett kritiskt öga mot den egna verksamheten och att utmana mönster som även skolan kan vara en del av att skapa och återskapa.

Rasism kopplas ofta ihop med individers ideologiska uttalanden. Men ofta tar den sig snarare uttryck i strukturer och i allmänna föreställningar om den Andre. Skola och förskola har ett tydligt uppdrag att motverka rasism, men ibland är den svår att upptäcka. Emma Arneback och Jan Jämte skriver att personal i skola och förskola behöver kunna identifiera olika former av rasism och utveckla olika former för antirasistiska arbetssätt.

Hur formas en inkluderande social samvaro i skolan? Och hur uppstår motsatsen; sociala miljöer präglade av misstro, intern segregation och kränkningar? Frågorna är viktiga för alla skolor, men ställs på sin spets vid försök till styrd skolintegration, där kommuner arbetar aktivt för att skapa en mer socioekonomiskt och etniskt blandad elevsammansättning.

Empiriskt fokus för denna artikel är ett kommunalt initiativ där elever flyttats från ett strukturellt missgynnat område till fyra andra skolor i en medelstor stad i Sverige. Med utgångspunkt i Axel Honneths teori om moraliska erkännanden analyseras de flyttade elevernas upplevelser av erkännanden och kränkningar och hur dessa påverkat deras förut-sättningar att bli en del av en ny gemenskap.

I artikeln fokuseras särskilt på hur förekomst av eller brist på omsorg, respekt och solidaritet påverkar elevers möjligheter att utveckla en positiv relation till sig själva och andra, något som spelar en avgörande betydelse för deras lärande och utveckling. Sammanfattningsvis presenteras en konceptualisering av olika former av erkännanden och kränkningar i skolans sociala samvaro och hur dessa kan komma till konkret uttryck.

In this article we develop a typology of anti-racist action in education. Using teachers' practices and experiences, we highlight six approaches on how teachers counter racism in their schools. Each approach entails a different set of actions and aims to address different manifestations of racism. They range from actions that seek to challenge structural racism (the emancipatory, norm-critical and intercultural perspectives), to approaches that engage individualized forms of racism (the relational, democratic and knowledge-focused perspectives). Our analysis makes the complexity of both racism and anti-racism visible. It provides an opportunity to navigate the various types of anti-racist actions, and make conscious decisions regarding what type should be used in relation to different manifestations of racism. The analysis is based on interviews with 27 high-school teachers working in the Swedish educational system.

Snabbspåret är en arbetsmarknadsutbildning som har till uppgift att skapa förutsättningar för nyanlända att återetablera sig på svensk arbetsmarknad. I denna utvärdering fokuseras Snabbspåret för nyanlända lärare vid Örebro universitet, ett av de lärosäten som genomfört flest kursomgångar sedan starten 2016. Rapporten bygger på 40 intervjuer (33 deltagare och 7 personal vidSnabbspåret), kombinerat med analyser av intern dokumentation som utvärderingar, studie- och kursmaterial. Studien inriktar sig främst på deltagarnas upplevelser av tiden på Snabbspåret och vilken betydelse de anser att utbildningen har haft vid försök till återetablering på arbetsmarknaden.

Resultaten visar på de möjligheter Snabbspåret erbjuder, men också på de utmaningar deltagarna ställs inför. Kursen beskrivs ge en rik introduktion till svensk förskola och skola, där deltagarna får möjlighet att möta och reflektera över likheter och skillnader mellan erfarenheter av läraryrket i ursprungslandet och i Sverige. Samtidigt är vägen från avslutad utbildning till anställning som lärare fortfarande lång, kantad av såväl formella som relationella och individuella hinder. Extra allvarligt är hur mötet med den svenska skolan, både under utbildningens praktikperioder och efter kursens slut, riskerar att präglas av erfarenheter av exkluderande praktiker, där deltagarebeskriver upplevelser av utestängning och kränkande behandling.

Sessionen fokuserar frågor som berör rasism och antirasism i skolan. Här presenteras fyra papers som fokuserar hur lärare agerar när de upplever olika former av rasism, både bland kollegor och elever som i skolans organisering. Sessionen presenterar preliminära resultat från det pågående forskningsprojektet "How to counteract racism in education" (Vetenskapsrådet), men tar också avstamp i boken "Att motverka rasism i förskolan och skolan" (Arneback & Jämte, 2017). Sessionen är öppen för alla som är intresserade av frågor som berör rasism och antirasism i skolan. Det kommer också lämnas utrymme för gemensamma samtal och frågor kring forskningsfältet i stort.

Paper 1:

Att motverka rasism i skolan (Arneback & Jämte)

Presentationen fokuserar lärares antirasistiska handlingar och visar en palett av didaktiska arbetssätt lärare använder för att möta olika uttryck för rasism i skolan. Vidare fokuseras hur lärares egna erfarenheter av rasism påverkar deras agerande och förståelse av problemet.

Paper 2:

Mediediskurser om rasism och antirasism i skolan (Wiklund)

Lärares antirasistiska arbete är beroende av hur de förstår begreppet rasism och mediers sätt att använda begreppet är viktiga källor för denna förståelse. Dessa antaganden ligger till grund för denna presentation av hur rasism definieras i medietexter om händelser där rasism aktualiseras i skolsammanhang.

Paper 3:

Om kommunikationens möjligheter och begräsningar i arbetet mot rasism (Arneback & Englund)

Bidraget behandlar villkor för lärares agerande i bemötandet av elevers rasistiska uttalanden. Vår teoretiska referens är primärt John Deweys (1922) bok Human Nature and Conduct. Bidraget analyserar den deliberativa kommunikationens möjligheter och gränser i förhållande till elevers potential, klassrumsklimat samt lärares egna kunskaper och upplevda kapacitet.

Paper 4:

Har lärare ett ansvar att agera när kollegor ger uttryck för rasism? (Bergh & Tryggvason)

Uttryck av rasism är utmanande frågor som lärare möter och hanterar i och omkring undervisningen. Läroplanen är tydlig med att lärare har ett ansvar att motverka alla former av rasism i skolan. Men hur agerar lärare när kollegor ger uttryck för rasism? Den här presentationen utforskar ett ansvar som många gånger är osäkert och riskfyllt.

A trend in recent times is that vocational training in Sweden is becoming more connected to the world of work, where work places have become an increasingly important place for education (Nylund 2013). Especially so in the recently established apprenticeship education where 50 per cent of the education is conducted at the workplace. This reorganization of vocational training has implications for school content since knowledge and learning on a general level are organized according to different principles in school and work places (cf. Boreham 2002). New principles for the assignment of teaching values in upper-secondary schools have also emerged in recent times. Before, school had the task to anchor certain values in their teaching, such as democracy and human rights. Since 2006, the task of teaching values has been complemented with a legal mandate to work against discrimination, harassment and offensive treatment in schools (Arneback 2012).

In the intersection of these two trends, the following study aims to examine which values that emerge in apprenticeship training. In this pilot study interviews with teachers in two apprenticeship programs in Sweden are conducted to investigate: 1) How the teaching of values are expressed in the apprenticeship program, 2) Around what values there is consensus and conflict, within and between the two practices of apprenticeship education (school and workplace)? Our hypothesis is that the organization of apprenticeship education carries challenges in the realization of the assignment of teaching values that need to be further elucidated and problematized (cf. Lagström 2012).

The school and the workplace often represent two different cultures in terms of what is valued as important skills and values. The role of vocational teachers in apprenticeship education is to ensure that apprentices are embedded in both these cultures. However, because of significant differences between the school and the workplace, this task poses a professional challenge and a potential for value conflicts. In this study we analyse interviews with voca-tional teachers in the apprenticeship training for the building and construction programme using concepts based in Pragmatism and Curriculum theory. Our ambition is to highlight values often upheld by unreflected habits, and discuss how these condition the work of the vocational teacher. The main results indicate the importance of recognizing that two different types of curricula seems to interact in the apprenticeship education; a workplace curriculum that emphasize, “work ethics” and a school curriculum that emphasizes stu-dents ́ “safety”. These different curricula interact in specific ways through the work of the vocational teachers that can be described as a ‘balancing act’. How this ‘balancing act’ is done have significant consequences for what kind of education students are offered and what value conflicts that emerge.

This article explores how racism is located in an educational policy chain and identifies how its interpretation changes throughout the chain. A basic assumption is that the policy formation process can be seen as a chain in which international, national and local policies are ‘links’ – separate entities yet joined. With Sweden as the national example, the article analyses how racism in education is framed at different policy levels and which anti-racist actions are proposed. The article thereby clarifies who or what is, at different policy levels, perceived to be the location of racism. A first finding concerns terminology: throughout the policy chain the problem of racism is discussed in terms of ‘discrimination’. At European, national and local level, discrimination is mostly associated with ‘ethnicity’, thereby removing from policy a possibly stronger language for combating racism. A second finding is that the location of racism in education moves gradually through the chain from an institutional to an individual location of racism, with an increasing focus on the significance of the student rather than the importance of societal structures. The importance of circumstances for policy formation is a third main finding in the article.

In this semi-longitudinal study we follow three student teachers (Sara,Eva and Helen) in preschool teacher education (PTE) during two years. They can be described as non-traditional students with working class background (cf Bertilsson 2014), but at the same time representing groups of students with different attitudes to academic writing. A core research interest is to capture the students’ individual struggles with academic writing. The data stems from the students’ written self-presentation, focus group and individual interviews, text samples and observations of group workand examination seminars. The paper is part of the ongoing project “The struggle for the text” financed by the Swedish research Council. Three research questions are in focus: a) how student teachers’ experiences from the past influence their approaches to writing in higher education, b) how the student teachers struggle with different academic discourses over time, c) how they relate to their future identity as preschool teachers in their writing. By combining a before, within and after perspective we relate their struggle with the text in higher education to the question of present and future processes of life (Ivanic 1998, 2004, Lillis 2001). The result shows that students experience different kinds of struggles in academic writing, depending on earlier and current experiences within and outside of PTE. We can also see how the same norms and rules of academic writing are supportive to some of the students, but obstacles for others. In a time when recruitment to teacher training has changed in Sweden, there is a risk that the talk about student teachers becomes the talk of the unprepared student who needs clarity. Based on the study's outcome there is a need to problematize such notions.

The main purpose of this article is to focus what meanings the concept of quality is given in the political development of Swedish upper-secondary school. By using Quentin Skinner’s speech-act theory comparisons are made between the meanings formulated in the early 1990s and the now current investigation Framtidsvägen (SOU 2008:27). The result shows consequences for the goal- and result oriented steering system as well as changes in the perspectives of citizenship education and ideolology.

How does juridification condition the teaching profession’s work with educational knowledge and values? Over the last twenty years the governance of Swedish education has radically changed. As a specific part of this transformation, the aim of this article is to investigate how juridification conditions the teaching profession’s work with educational knowledge and values as formulated in the national curriculum. The article makes use of two governing logics – the management of placement and the management of expectation – that position teachers’ assignments and possible actions in different ways. The empirical material consists of national policy texts. The analysis points to different dilemmas that result from juridification, namely that teachers are expected to shoulder a decentralized moral responsibility and at the same time be controlled against nationally formulated rights and obligations.

In this chapter, we take interest in a specific part of the extensive changes that have been made in the governance of Swedish education during the last two decades: the increase of legal regulations. This increase is a sign of what in earlier research is called juridification, which may lead to a variety of tensions that we currently know too little about. More specifically, the aim of this chapter is to study how juridification of education conditions teachers’ work on the knowledge and values expressed in national policy documents. The empirical material consists of Swedish national education policy texts produced from the early 1990s and onwards. Methodologically, we make use of two theoretical concepts that position teachers’ assignments and possible actions in different ways: management of placement and management of expectation. The results demonstrate that the increase of a juridical language clearly condition teachers’ professional work. In the worst case, the legal concepts may result in more instrumental relationships where teachers focus on their role as assessors and monitors. At the same time, it depends on how the legal concepts are interpreted and enacted by school staff. Here, there is a need of further studies on how different emphasises and combinations of a juridical vocabulary and a pedagogical vocabulary condition the relationships that are formed in local school practices.

How does juridification condition the teaching profession’s work with educational knowledge and values? Over the last twenty years the governance of Swedish education has radically changed. As a specific part of this transformation, the aim of this article is to investigate how juridification conditions the teaching profession’s work with educational knowledge and values as formulated in the national curriculum. The article makes use of two governing logics – the management of placement and the management of expectation – that position teachers’ assignments and possible actions in different ways. The empirical material consists of national policy texts. The analysis points to different dilemmas that result from juridification, namely that teachers are expected to shoulder a decentralized moral responsibility and at the same time be controlled against nationally formulated rights and obligations.

This paper sheds light on how teachers act and reflect on their actions in response to expressions of racism among colleagues. The empirical data consists of qualitative interviews with 27 high school teachers in Sweden, but, in order to dig deeper into the experiences of teachers, this paper focuses on three teachers (Tove, Fatima and Hannah). The result points at a professional ambivalence on how to act, since there is no common ground among teachers for how to act when colleagues express racism. To act against racism comes at high costs and very much depends on each teacher’s previous experiences of life and work. Consequently, each teacher is provided a unique space and resource base for reflection and action.

In this study we follow seven students in their writing in preschool teacher education during two and a half years: From their second semester in higher education, to a finished essay in the end of their sixth semester. The study is conducted at a Swedish University with the aim to capture the formative impact of writing over time, with a specific focus on how writing in teacher education influences students' understanding and view on their future profession as preschool teachers. Three research questions are in focus in this paper:  a) how student teachers look at the function of writing during their education, b) how the student teachers develop as writers over time, c) how their future identity as teachers is visualized and gicven character in their writing.

Theoretically we take our point of departure in academic literacy, in the sense that we understand academic writing as a social and cultural practice in higher education (cf. Ivanic 1998, Lea & Street 1998, Lillis 2001; Blåsjö 2004; Macken-Horaik et al 2006). In contrast to research that consider academic writing as a pre-defined set of rules that student teachers need to adapt to, an academic literacies approach focuses on writing as a social practice where students take part in and develop different literacies, implying its formative impact.

This essay elaborates on the notion of risk in relation to democratically challenging situations in education. This refers to situations in which liberal democratic values are potentially challenged, such as in teaching about controversial issues and in moments of expressions of hurtful speech, which can create in teachers an ambivalence for how to act. The essay takes an understanding of risk as holding a plurality, viewing risk as both undesirable and desirable, to be both reduced and embraced. By considering perspectives that implicitly relate to risk in various ways, this essay explores what can be made possible by embracing risk or its reduction in democratically challenging situations. These perspectives envisage tension between different approaches to risk and visualize how risk may be viewed both as possible moments of change and as possible moments of violence. The essay advances the argument that a one-sided approach to risk may thus pose a challenge to the struggle for democracy, arguing instead for a complex approach to risk. Making use of Jonna Bornemark’s work on the “paradox of action,” the essay proposes the viewing of risk as a paradox, spanning our world of action. The paradox formulates a mutual dependence, in which more is required of one side in one moment and more of the other in the next; neither can be neglected. The essay proposes an approach forteachers: “living the paradox of risk,” which is to act in the space between reducing risk and embracing risk in democratically challenging situations.