Villkoren för skolans demokratiuppdrag har förändrats. Det offentliga huvudmannaskapet har utsatts konkurrens från privata initiativ och en ökad kulturell mångfald har konfronterat skolan med nya utmaningar.
Vad betyder detta för skolans möjligheter att bidra med demokratisk utveckling hos skoleleverna?
I den här forskarantologin presenteras en fördjupad analys av svenska elev-, lärar- och skoldata från den internationella utvärderingen ICCS 2009. Rapporten innehåller beskrivande analyser av förutsättningarna för skolor och lärare att hantera kontroverser och av vad eleverna har för medborgarkompetens.
Avslutningsvis görs även preliminära försök att förklara de mönster som präglar svenska elever, lärare och skolor när det gäller medborgarkompetens.
This special issue of Education & Democracy – Journal of Didactics and Educational Policy (in Swedish: Utbildning & Demokrati – tidskrift för didaktik och utbildningspolitik) is dedicated to the challenges raised by current conditions in higher education when it comes to promoting civic and professional responsibility. The four articles emerged from a collaboration between research centres in Örebro and Oslo, initiated
at the NERA Conference in Copenhagen in 2003, which has been followedup with seminar meetings and presentations, most recently at the NERA Conference in Copenhagen and the ISA Conference in Oslo, both in 2008. Our shared ambition has been to interrogate and critically discuss central aspects of the recent development of mass higher education, with regard to its role in educating towards engaged citizenship and professional responsibility. The cases are situated in a Scandinavian context, yet discussed in relation to the influence of European higher education policy.
At a time when the dominant language
In recent years, reports have drawn attention to an ongoing instrumentalization of academic actions, governed by economic power. In the light of these reports higher education in Sweden is analysed combining Deweyan pragmatism with the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe to construct a theoretical conception of professional and personal responsibility. At the beginning of the 1990s and the 21st Century it is possible to observe a discursive domain filled with variations in language use - the existence of a classical academic discourse, a discourse of Bildung, a discourse of democracy and a discourse of economic globalization - that causes both conflicts and oppenness regarding the meaning of higher education and professional responsibility. The closer we get to 2007, the more this variation in language use is reduced and the narrower the meaning we find, owing to the hegemonic tendencies of the discourse of economic globalization.
The purpose of the study from which this paper emanates is to investigate and discuss how aspects of professional and civic responsibility in higher education can be motivated in terms of self-reflexivity. The research questions are: What kinds of arguments are provided by social theory and educational policy regarding the role of higher education and self-reflexivity? Which specific cultural life styles for students and institutions are established through the different arguments? What are the concepts and views suitable for a theory of self-reflexivity in higher education? In the paper we draw on mainly Dewey’s concept of individuality and on arguments promoting the university as an open reflexive institution supporting students’ autonomy. By discursive text analysis, we study the arguments provided by social theory and Swedish educational policy (1990-2006). Our findings show that social theory stresses the critical role of higher education and provides arguments for a self reflexive life style. Educational policy tends to stress the economic role of higher education and thereby promotes a more instrumental life style. However, our analysis indicates that the educational policy area simultaneously represents a complex net of interwoven and ambiguous aims, which makes it impossible to reduce higher education to an institution living or promoting only one life style.
The specific interest of this dissertation is to analyze and discuss the Swedish political struggle of defining the purposes and aims of higher education during the time period 1992-2007. Underlying this specific interest is a broader interest to take part in a multifold discussion concerning the role of higher education in relation to issues of societal and democratic development and of individual identity and citizenship, in times defined in terms of globalization and pluralism.
The study takes its point of departure in discourse theory that directs the research interest to language use and the analysis of the political struggle as a contested discursive practice. The main aims of the study are: (I) To analyze the different discourses concerning the purposes and aims of higher education that are (re)articulated in the political struggle. (II) To analyze how the subject student is positioned in the different discourses. (III) To discuss hegemonic tendencies within the political struggle. The material studied in the dissertation consists of national and European policy texts, including government bills, official government inquiries, departmental reports and declarations from the Bologna process.
From the analysis four discourses and subject positions provided for the student are constructed and derived; the classical academic discourse and the critically trained student; the discourse of globalization and the employable student; the discourse of democracy and the actively participating student; and finally the discourse of individual identity and the reflexive student. From the analysis it is concluded that it is possible to observe a variation in language use – in terms of the occurrence of (re)articulation of the different discourses – in the 1990s and the beginning of the 21st century in the political struggle. The closer one gets to 2007 the more this variation in language use is reduced, and the narrower definitions of the purposes and aims of higher education one finds, owing to the hegemonic tendencies of the discourse of globalization. It is also concluded that national politics then assume a more bureaucratic shape and guide itself towards administration of supranational (European) definitions.
Vad undervisar vi om på bibliotek? Hur undervisar vi? Och varför undervisar vi om det vi gör? Vilken pedagogisk roll har biblioteket och bibliotekarien? Detta är de övergripande frågor som behandlas i de texter som ingår i antologin Pedagogiskt arbete i teori och praktik. Om bilbiotekens roll för studenters och doktoranders lärande. I kapitlet Uppsatsskrivandets institutionella villkor och bibliotekariens ansvar och roll behandlas dessa frågor med utgångspunkt i resonemang om studenters uppsatsskrivande som akademiskt utbildningsmoment.