To Örebro University

Rapporten undersöker hur skolors samarbete med vårdnadshavare kan utvecklas för att skapa bättre förutsättningar för elevers trygghet, lärande och måluppfyllelse. Utgångspunkten är skolans uppdrag enligt Lgr22, där skola och hem delar ett gemensamt ansvar för barnens utbildning, samt forskning som visar att vårdnadshavares engagemang har stor betydelse för elevers skolframgång. Samtidigt pekar tidigare studier på att relationen mellan skola och hem ofta präglas av misstro, bristperspektiv och ojämlika maktförhållanden.

Studien bygger på ett praktiknära forskningsprojekt (ULF) vid två skolor i socioekonomiskt utsatta områden och fokuserar på två samverkansmodeller: "Familjestödjare" och "NÄT – nätverk för vårdnadshavare, skola och myndigheter". Syftet är att analysera hur dessa modeller används, vilka effekter de har och hur de kan vidareutvecklas. Datamaterialet består av enkäter, intervjuer, gruppsamtal och reflektionsprotokoll från lärare, skolledare och vårdnadshavare.

Resultaten visar att modellerna bidrar till att bygga tillitsfulla relationer mellan skola och vårdnadshavare genom dialog, icke-dömande bemötande och ett tydligt föräldra-perspektiv. Rapporten gör en analytisk distinktion mellan "evidensbaserad tillit", som grundas i föräldrars prestationer och uppfyllda förväntningar, och "existentiell tillit", som utgår från en grundläggande tilltro till föräldrar som kompetenta, engagerade individer. Det är framför allt den senare som visat sig främja samverkan, föräldraengagemang och elevers närvaro och välbefinnande.

Modellerna möjliggör även kompletterande stödinsatser – pedagogiska, föräldraskaps-relaterade och personliga – som lärare ofta saknar tid eller mandat att genomföra. Samtidigt identifieras spänningar kopplade till roller, ansvar och professionella gränser. Rapporten avslutas med förslag på vidareutveckling, bland annat behovet av gemensamma skolnormer, ett gemensamt språk för samverkan samt stärkt handledning och samspel mellan lärare, familjestödjare och vårdnadshavare.

Cet article examine l’interaction complexe entre les politiques d’internationalisation et leur mise en œuvre dans l’enseignement supérieur en mettant en lumière le rôle souvent négligé de la langue. Il soutient que les politiques d’internationalisation ne constituent pas des cadres neutres, mais qu’elles sont façonnées par des dynamiques de pouvoir et les intérêts des parties prenantes, pouvant entraîner la marginalisation de certains groupes. L’étude identifie les défis et les opportunités rencontrés par les étudiants internationaux et doctorants dans le cadre de ces politiques et souligne la nécessité de placer la langue au cœur des démarches pour favoriser l’inclusivité et des expériences éducatives significatives. En adoptant une perspective dynamique de la politique comme processus évolutif influencé par divers acteurs, l’article remet en question les conceptions linéaires traditionnelles de sa mise en œuvre. Il avance que l’engagement réfléchi envers la langue peut combler le fossé entre les directives politiques et les pratiques locales, enrichissant ainsi le paysage éducatif. En s’appuyant sur des données qualitatives recueillies auprès d’enseignants et d’étudiants, cette recherche contribue à une compréhension approfondie de la manière dont la langue façonne les interactions et les identités dans le contexte de l’internationalisation. En définitive, elle appelle à une réévaluation des dimensions linguistiques des politiques d’internationalisation afin de mieux refléter la complexité des pratiques dans l’enseignement supérieur.

This paper examines the complex interplay between internationalization policy and practice in higher education, emphasizing the often-overlooked role of language. It argues that internationalization policies are not neutral frameworks but are influenced by power dynamics and stakeholder interests, which can marginalize certain groups. The study identifies the challenges and opportunities faced by international and PhD students within these policies and highlights the necessity of centering language to promote inclusivity and meaningful educational experiences. By adopting a dynamic perspective towards policy as an evolving process influenced by various actors, the paper critiques traditional linear understandings of policy implementation. It posits that meaningful engagement with language can bridge the gap between policy directives and local practices, thereby enhancing the educational landscape. Drawing on qualitative data from teachers and students, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of how language shapes interactions and identities within the context of internationalization. Ultimately, it calls for a reevaluation of language dimensions in internationalization policies to better reflect the complexities of practice in higher education.

Governments have long focused on supporting parents through social services and schools as key platforms for promoting health and addressing educational and societal issues. However, while civil servants believe schools underestimate their capacity to support parents, educators argue that parenting support is not part of the curriculum. In Sweden, teachers are required to inform parents about their children's development, rather than offer parenting support services. Research shows, however, that parental involvement increases children's success in school. Against this background, the intervention of a family support 101 worker (FSW) is a novel educational move. Two questions are addressed, “How does the FSW promote school-home relationships?” and “What effect does this work have on pupils’ prerequisites to succeed in school?”.  Georg Simmel describes trust as "a hypothesis certain enough to serve as a basis for practical conduct," emphasizing that it can bridge the gap between the known and unknown. He introduces the triad, involving three elements, as “a social framework that transcends both members of the dyad” which can enhance relationships by allowing a third party to mediate.  The project is a research collaboration between academics and school staff. Data collection methods include surveys for parents and teachers, reflective protocols for teachers, interviews with school leader and FSW as well as parent and teacher group interviews. This approach allows each stage’s results to inform the next, creating a progressive contextual framework for content analysis. Expected outcomes include; A strong statement from school personnel and parents about the value of school-based FSWs in promoting student success; Results that can be adopted by other schools, encouraging leadership to invest in family-school partnerships through FSWs; A meaningful contribution to international research on school-based parenting support, highlighting the role of family support workers in enhancing family life and child learning and development.

In Sweden, school personnel are given a strong curricular mandate to “cooperate with the pupils’ parents to develop school content and work together”. Despite the envisioned democratic and performative advantages of this mission, there is no approved universal practice for successful cooperation between school and home. Research also points to various factors hindering cooperative efforts and “schools struggle to promote an effective dialogue between teachers and parents around the educational support needs of the student” (Gerdes et al., 2022). Communicative and cooperative engagement is particularly difficult for many parents with immigrant backgrounds who are made vulnerable by majority cultural norms and resources. 

This presentation reports on a project that aims to understand and develop two schools’ strategic initiatives to strengthen their cooperation with parents and thereby improve conditions for pupils’ development and learning. One school’s model centres around the educational contribution of a family support worker (FSW) while the other school has developed a network of trust-building NET-meetings with a parent-set agenda as well as ambassadors who give parents a voice. 

Theoretical framework: Georg Simmel (1950) defines trust as “a hypothesis certain enough to serve as a basis for practical conduct” (p. 318). The notion of hypothesis clarifies that without comprehensive knowledge about a person we cannot rationally justify our actions in relation to the person. He describes trust as personal confidence or faith in another person that resolves the problem of partial knowledge by bridging the gap between available and unavailable knowledge. Simmel (1950) also teaches us that confidence given to others in a group is a morally potent force almost compelling recipients to live up to the trust invested in them.  

Methodology/Research design: The project’s research design is practice-based with a commitment to depart from problems that schools are facing and develop practice to manage them. To capture the voices of both parents and teachers and explore respondent-relevant issues, a sequence of questionnaires, teacher written reflections, group and individual interviews build on each other successively to form a progressive and integrated research design. 

Expected findings: Both school’s cooperative models provide neutral ground, “outside-yet-inside” environments enabling parents to engage with school personnel, make parents visible in the school community and create conditions for parents to support their children with their schooling. Hope and trust among parents in the school as an institution is seen as mediated by the confidence of school personnel in parents as parents of the school’s pupils and as individuals, by open-ended dialogic engagement with parents and by parent networks.  

Relevance to Nordic educational research: This presentation will help clarify Swedish conceptualizations of the educational turn to parents and promote greater understanding of its relevance internationally. Second, while the perspectives of parents are frequently absent in this research field, this study is committed to profiling the voices of parents on family – school issues. Third, while trust is rarely researched as a phenomenon in the field, this study aims to investigate the nature of trust and how it can be developed between schools and parents. 

Blended Intensive Programmes (BIPs) are demanding in multiple ways: they stem from close collaboration among an international group of academics, unite diverse student groups to tackle specialised tasks while building international teams, and rely on support from internationalisation officers to succeed. The complexity of these programmes motivated us to share our experiences, successes, and challenges, presenting four perspectives: academic, student, strategic, and expert support. Join us to share your own insights!

Arguments concerning declining reading and writing skills among school children are currently a focal point in Swedish educational policy change. These students are considered to be in need of support for their learning and with support measures being governed by national documents. Access to teaching content is then a key aspect to improve learning progress. Furthermore, a lack of access to high-quality Teaching and Learning Materials (TLM) - such as textbooks, digital resources and other educational media - has been identified as a key reason to the students’ dropping capabilities in recent reports and government investigations. This has resulted in a policy debate, and have resulted in an ongoing policy change, where the meaning and intended practice of TLMs is undergoing rather drastic transformations in the educational landscape.The decisions following from the governmental investigations and propositions on TLM is in its final stages and will likely be ratified during the summer of 2024. Consequently, this will lead to new preconditions for teachers work and children’s learning, since TLM is at the heart of teaching and learning in the classrooms. To provide access to high- quality TLMs is an obligation to fulfill by both headmasters, teachers and school agencies in Sweden. Knowledge on how this responsibility works out, and will work out is however uncertain, as research about TLM in Sweden is commonly focused on content and design, rather than on a user-oriented perspective (Graeske 2021).Responding to this, the aim of the study at hand is firstly to explore how quality and access is constituted in current TLM policy development, and secondly how this relates to how quality and access is constituted in schools governing documents on inclusive education. The study thus investigates how thoughts and ideas about TLMs are articulated in documents concerning the policy change and how these articulations relate to governing documents on inclusive education in Sweden, two important governing areas which both are supposed to enhance quality in and access to teaching materials.

Drawing on the Anthropological Theory of Didactics (ATD), we understand the knowledge production within policy change as taking place within an ecology (Chevallard, 2006). We thereby pay attention to the logos part of the praxeology on TLMs, which means a focus on scholarly knowledge and the knowledge to be taught (Bosch & Gascón, 2006). The two parts of the ecology we focus on are the area of teaching materials and the area of inclusive education. Our stance on policy research is in line with what Diem et.al. (2019) describe as Critical Policy Analysis (CPA). We thus aim to analyze multiple levels including the constitution and change of the TLM policy as well as the distribution of power it results in (cf. Ball 1994). The analyzed materials consist of TLM policy documents, such as government investigations, referrals, referral responses and curricula, and school governing documents on inclusive education.

In sum, the current study displays the development of educational policy of TLM, and how that relates to inclusive education in Sweden. The results give insight into dominant knowledge constructs on TLMs and for whom they are intended. Preliminary findings reveal that there is a strong incentive to strengthening access to TLM. We conclude that there is ambivalence between parts in the ecology as there is agreement regarding the need to secure access, at the same time as structural and excluding aspects are prevalent. Implications are that inclusion risks being challenged, Intercultural aspects foreseen, and School segregation possibly enhanced.

For universities to seriously take into account diversity, there is no simple answer. However, the connection between policies and their implementation is key. Higher education, as a political idea and its institutions, must be understood as part of both the local society and as part of a global society. Hence a need for relative and temporary distinctions and contextualization to find a path forward when diversity is discussed at higher education institutions. Questions such as: what meanings does diversity have here; what is the goal with our activities when working with diversity; why do we engage; how do we do it; how does these distinctions relate to the larger society; and which valuations do they bring? should be important in such work. In this contribution, I will discuss these things and take examples from previous experiences of teaching about diversity and education, and from leading a project about teacher education and internationalization. From my teaching experience, these kinds of questions are always engaging but often difficult for students to cope with. On the other hand, internationalization policy often contains clear parts where diversity is highlighted, but when it comes to actual implementation, policy often fall short.

This study investigates how an Immigrant identification affects musicians’possibilities to perform in Sweden. This is investigated through a discoursetheoretical analysis of interviews with seven musicians. The analysis showsseveral intersections where an Immigrant identification has affected theinformants’ lives and careers, hence contributed to shaping their workingconditions. For example, the Immigrant identification can be related tothe informants’ possibilities of being granted access to the stage. Severalinformants have experienced discrimination because of their appearancesand as a result taken preemptive measures to fit envisioned expectationsby changing name or by avoiding performing at certain music venues. TheImmigrant identity is also shown to be closely connected with music genresand ideas about authenticity, which limits the availability of musical pathways.This occurs, for example, when an artist considers which genre to engage inbecause of how the genre relates to an Immigrant identity. The study showsthat when musicians’ careers coincide with an Immigrant identification,participative conditions often prove immutable and hegemonic. There arehowever expressions of change and resistance toward prevailing participativeconditions among the informants, but they do not perceive these conditions tobe given enough attention in society or by the music industry.

In Sweden, teaching and learning materials were nationally regulated and reviewed during the 20th century. As for today, the teaching and learning materials available in schools relies on by the school’s budget, the producers marketing skills and the teacher’s competence. Hence, the access to and quality of teaching materials varies from school to school. This is worrying as it likely leads to a more unequal education (Graeske, 2021). To study the consequences of this situation the Swedish government instigated an investigation, which final report currently is under review by stock-takers (SOU 2021:70). At the same time, there is increased school stress in children and young people, reduced goal fulfillment and a failing equivalence (Högberg, et al., 2020; Nygren, 2021). This can be related to segregation tendencies and is a societal challenge that needs to be dealt with in every school and by the education sector. Lack of equality affects and is affected by teachers' opportunities to support students' learning (Skolverket, 2012, 2017), and teaching materials are central in this respect. 

We claim that it is of great importance to critically review the foundations on which policies are created to show how they can condition the opportunities for all students learning. In relation to students in need of support for their learning, digital teaching and learning materials often work as adaptions of teaching and as personal aids, at the same time, these students specific learning needs and inclusion is in the core of the proposal. There is a lack of availability to adapted materials, and there is ambivalence regarding digital materials and adapted or alternative materials (Bagger, Ålander & Karlsson, accepted abstract). Hence, the teaching materials investigation's proposal (SOU 2020:70) has a potential to influence how and if students are offered an equivalent education, or not, especially for students in need of support for their learning. Furthermore, we derive from an understanding that learning materials sometimes function as an institutional barrier for inclusive education, unless critical perspectives are taken into consideration when selecting education material (Leask, 2015). Following from this, the purpose of the following proposal is to display and explore (dis)connections between the schools governing documents on students in need of support for their learning, and how these students and their learning is depicted in the proposal and the responding bodies answers. 

This presentation is connected to the Swedish part of an EU-project on digital inclusive teaching materials DigiLLM. Also, it resembles a part study in the project Teaching materials and their quality – as aspects of inclusion. This has also been presented at NERA but then out from research question 1 in the project, which concerns “…how the policy proposal (and the responding bodies) condition aspects of inclusion and to consider how the issue of quality and access relates to all students' learning” (Bagger, Ålander & Karlsson, accepted abstract). In the study at hand, we have instead put our focus on the projects research question 2; “How does this (the policy documents conditioning of inclusion and teaching materials) relate to the school's mission to support all students' learning and the school's support efforts?” This mean that we have correlated governing documents on students in need of support and the newly implemented curricula LGR22 – to the proposal and especially regarding digital aspects of teaching and learning materials. In prolongation, the project contributes to systematizing knowledge about how the availability and quality of learning materials is conditioned, how it conditions the learning opportunities through institutional barriers and how the availability and quality in teaching and learning materials for all students can be secured.

Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe materials analysed are the investigations proposal on teaching and learning materials (SOU 2021:70), but also governing documents that concern all children’s rights to learn and be given support for their learning in school:  The new curricula LGR22, the School act (SFS 2010:800), The Act on the Rights of the Child (SFS, 2018: 1197) and the National Agency for Educations advice on providing support for learning. Segments of texts that could concern students in need of support for their learning and teaching/learning materials at the same time, was initially selected. In determining this, we derive from a broad understanding of the concept of the learner in need of support. Hence all passages that mentions support for the learning in some way, was considered to apply. Also, by teaching/learning materials we also derive from a broad understanding. Hence, it could mean all kinds of medias and materials for learning that was mentioned. We did so by posing some basic questions to the texts: 1) who is the student in need of support? 2) what is the material mentioned? and 3) what obstacles and opportunities for learning is depicted? We analyzed these statements via a qualitative and thematic content analysis (see for example Creswell, 2007).  After selecting segments of texts that corresponded to these three questions, we searched after connections between the three sampled selections. We then systematically explored the intersection between teaching/learning materials and students in need of support for their learning. Themes found were adaptions of materials, students’ accessibility and teachers and principals knowledge and responsibility as being core. The intersection of students in need of support and teaching materials was not found in the already existing governing documents of the school, except on a very general level. One or the other was rather mentioned.Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings

Statements on teaching materials for students in need of support in the governing documents is scarce. The School Act (SFS 2010:800) mentions school libraries being granted for all students and access to relevant books and tools for learning. In the children’s rights act (SFS 2018:1197) it is specifically stated that children are to be granted access to education and children’s books is to be promoted. In governing documents on special support (Skolverket, 2022) special teaching materials or tools is labeled as extra adaptions. The curricula (LGR22) stated that it is the principal’s responsibility that students: “get access and the ability to use high quality learning materials and other tools for learning in an up-to-date education, including school libraries and digital tools”, this includes children in need of support for their learning. Considering the absence of more concrete statements of the intersection of students in need of support for their learning and teaching materials, development of this area is highly needed. Moreover, we claim that the schools governing documents need to explain what is meant by adaptions, access, and high quality – beyond general and overarching statements. These are hard to claim as a right, use as guidance or to search for proof of. The investigation (SOU 2021:70) highlights access and availability of teaching materials for students with disabilities. Furthermore, key is then teachers and principals’ responsibilities, knowledge, and skills in arranging with this, including digital resources. We finally conclude that the investigation communicates an intention to support all students learning and to promote inclusiveness of materials. This does not by far mean that students access to teaching/learning materials with high quality is secured. The proposal made is of potentially big importance for all student’s equal access to high quality and equal materials, but not in sync with the current governing documents.