This article investigates linguistic practices related to students' social and academic lives -- something that has been overlooked in the research literature on international schooling and elite boarding schools. Pierre Bourdieu reminds us that language has a social dimension linked to relations of symbolic power. Boarding schools serve as…

This article is based on a meta-ethnography of research about schools, school experiences and learning following the recent (post-market) introduction of personalisation policies in Swedish schools. It pays particular attention to issues of equity. Tensions between personalisation, privatisation and equity are discussed and it is noted that…

Since the mid-twentieth century, higher education has been subject to spectacular growth. While the expansion of higher education is undoubtedly a general trend, its actual characteristics in terms of its specific conditions and driving forces vary by context. In this article, our aim is to develop such a socio-political historical narrative of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of Swedish school leaders' relational and management work orientation, in terms of both techno and socio structure dimensions. The background is the neoliberal policy regime, underpinned by OECD and PISA, and an increased focus on school leaders' management work.…

Previous research on how students' acceptance of emotionally charged theories relates to their understanding is based on the measurement of acceptance and understanding as two separate variables. As an alternative, the present study takes a qualitative approach with the aim of exploring what 24 upper-secondary school students accept when they come…

The aim of the study was to analyse enrolment patterns, and study efficiency and completion among students in programmes with professional qualifications, using microdata from Statistics Sweden. The programmes were Architecture, Medicine, Nursing, Law, Social work, Psychology, andEngineering (year 2001-2002, n = 15,918). Using the concepts from…

This paper reports on a study of how students' reasoning about socioscientific issues is framed by three dynamics: societal structures, agency and how trust and security issues are handled. Examples from gene technology were used as the forum for interviews with 13 Swedish high-school students (year 11, age 17-18). A grid based on modalities from…

This paper elaborates on a number of key criticisms of Mezirow's transformative learning theory as well as providing arguments that validate it. Our paper exemplifies how Mezirow's theory can help adult educators and prospective school teachers understand that social structures and belief systems can influence student learning, that learners make…

Based on the consideration that learning about different action alternatives and strategies are essential parts of ESD, this quantitative study focuses Eco-School teachers' and instructors' views on including different sustainability-promoting actions in teaching practices. Direct actions, and actions that take place in the private sphere were…

The authors used a mixed methods approach to examine if the reputation of a housing area has bearing on residential wellbeing and social trust in three pairs of socioeconomically contrasting neighborhoods in a Swedish urban municipality. Multilevel logistic regression analyses were performed to examine associations between area reputation and…

Examines the Swedish school as an institution created by society for certain purposes and with certain functions. The authors offer a model which describes the school as a social organization that steers the educational process. (AM)

This article describes the role of the Swedish Educational System (SES). It focuses on the interplay between the political decisions building the SES from the 1930s to 1970s and the socioeconomic development, especially the changes in the labor market. (CT)

This article focuses on the perception of the surface and deep dimensions of a society and its relation to competence. Participants were 117 students from various educational programs in a Swedish gymnasium who were exposed to videotaped projections of model societies on 2 occasions. They responded to 15 statements marking the degree of certainty…

This article presents a competence-oriented experiment on the comprehension of ideas in modern literature. Comprehension is defined as being indicative of competence as opposed to qualification. Participants were 117 students from various educational programs in a Swedish gymnasium course on modern literature and society. Students were exposed to…

As expressed in this essay, the basic aim of pedagogical research on teaching methods should be to describe existing practices and to work out theories which will allow researchers to explain the causal relationships leading to extant teaching practices, which in their own turn reinforce the existing educational pattern. Research in the area of…