Debates continue about the positioning of design within research-driven universities. While the idea of autonomy has had a strong appeal, it is the bridging across established academic cultures that has proved especially effective for legitimizing design research and research education. Revisiting a conception of design as a 'Third Space' and…

The aim of this study is to examine how a particular object for consumption, professional development for teachers and principals, is marketed to schools, and what propositions and understandings are embedded in such offers. Adopting a conceptualization of marketing as a "perpetual questioning machine," the study deploys and develops a…

Political discourse and policy reforms worldwide have highlighted the importance of promoting the knowledge economy by stimulating academics' societal engagement (ASE). Such narratives partly aim at influencing academics' attitudes and behaviors. Earlier work that has investigated such influence has tended to overlook the development in humanities…

This article proposes and discusses a theoretical framework that combines elements from critical policy sociology and discourse theory to study enactments of policy for research-based music teaching in three Swedish policy contexts. Sweden, being the first country to incorporate legal demands for research-based education into its Education Act in…

This article examines the national and European policy contexts that shaped the Swedish internationalisation agenda in higher education since 2000, the policy ideas that were mobilised to promote it, and the national priorities that steered higher education debates. The analysis highlights how domestic and European policy priorities, as well as…

This book examines transnational scapes and flows of higher education: arguing that the educational and political vision of a national, regional and global knowledge society needs to be perspectivized beyond its ethnocentric conditions and meanings. Using eduscapes as its most important concept, this book explores the educational landscapes of…

Our aim in this article is to examine policy discourses that promote positional changes for the preschool class in the Swedish educational system. The preschool class is currently going through a watershed period, which is characterized by uncertainty regarding its position in the education system. In this article, we explore changes in the…

In this article, we address the questions: How is the purpose of higher education constructed within policy texts from the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), England and Sweden? How does this position students in making the transition from Bachelor to Masters? We do this through analysis of two recent policy documents from each of the EHEA,…

The knowledge economy and the changing nature of knowledge production, the increased interaction between public agencies, industry and universities, and the changing labour market for doctoral degree holders are forces that together have led to an increased interest in the organization of doctoral education--particularly the role of collaborative…

New public management and knowledge economy have become watchwords in the governance of higher education. The university's role has rapidly changed toward regional development. The aim of this article is critically to highlight the basic rationale of this reorganization and to examine what this can mean in a Swedish context. This rationale is…

"Delayed participation" in higher education (HE) is an increasingly important feature of modern HE systems in many countries. Despite this, surprisingly little empirical research has been undertaken seeking to better understand levels of delayed adult participation in HE across Europe. The present article responds to this gap by…

This chapter traces how national teacher education policy discourse in Denmark and Sweden is being transformed by opaque, albeit often inclusive, processes in transnational policy forums, such as the Bologna Process, OECD, and EU. This is facilitated by "soft law" surrounding the imagined needs of modern nations, if they are to succeed…

To Govern in the name of the future is considered to be an essential part of policy-making in education. In Sweden, this is particularly evident in the political and public rhetoric used in debates on modern schooling and educational reform. However, this is not merely a national phenomenon; rather, educational governance in the name of the future…

This paper explores the essential understanding and underlying perspectives of career implicit in EU career guidance policy in the twenty-first century, as well as the possible implications of these for the future mission of guidance. Career theories, models and concepts that serve career guidance are shaped on the twentieth-century industrial…

"Knowledge society" and "knowledge economy" are current buzzwords in the visions of the future made by nations, regions and federations on a global scale. A concrete outcome of this is the globalisation and intensification of higher education and research. The visions based on a knowledge component should be treated as…