Argumentation is a key skill in most school subjects and academic disciplines, including mathematics and science. It is possible that similarities and differences between how argumentation is expressed in different subjects can contribute to, or disrupt, students' transferrable argumentation skills. The purpose of this study is therefore to…

Research has revealed that teachers find teaching and assessing socioscientific argumentation (SSA) to be challenging. In this study, ten pre-service science teachers (PSTs) tested a new Practical Assessment of Socioscientific Argumentation Model (PASM) that was developed to enhance skills in assessing SSA. The models' design is based on the…

Although elected representatives play an imperative role for the functioning of a formal democracy, educational research has so far not given much attention to the education and training offered to this group of people. A democratic dilemma may arise in the design and organisation of this education that relate to local governance and policy…

This paper contributes to method development in educational leadership research. The focus is on a visual method and the inclusion of visual material in data collection and analysis. Core concepts in this paper are educational leadership, power and authority. The method was used in face-to-face interviews in a research project that studied the…

This article explores how arguments are made in student essays through the use of writing and visual resources. The data set comprises 54 essays with a passing grade from students in their final year of upper secondary school in Sweden. The data is analysed using a multimodal approach to knowledge representation on arguments in essays, involving…

Previous research has identified political ideology as central in the landmark Academies Act (2010). This article further analyses how politics of evidence played its part in the policy process by focusing on long-term structural changes and preferences among policymakers. The article draws on policymaker interviews after the reform, a mapping of…

The doctoral defence is the oral examination of the doctoral thesis. While it is a major milestone for doctoral candidates, this event is often shrouded in mystery. In this article, I explore the doctoral defence from an international perspective. I have studied the format of the defence based on written testimonies as well as the literature on…

In this article, we explore the processes of transfer and translation of education policy in a study focusing on the relationship between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Sweden. The purpose of the study is to investigate how selective borrowing occurs both in terms of references to different types of knowledge…

A study of pre-service primary school teachers' content knowledge regarding real numbers related to infinity, i.e., division by zero and denseness of the real number line, was conducted at a Swedish university. Data were collected twice during the respondents' teacher education using questionnaires and interviews on both occasions. The data were…

In this study, we investigate how professionals in early childhood education (ECE) reason about multilingualism. Empirical data are analyzed in terms of 'traditions of argumentation' which proposes that we cannot argue for something without, explicitly or implicitly, arguing against something else. The analyses use transcribed data from two focus…

The purpose of this study is to discuss notions of femininity and masculinity in situations of argumentation among Swedish upper-secondary students who are studying Natural Science. The empirical material is drawn from an ethnographic inspired study, where I followed a group of students in all of their science teaching throughout a semester. This…

In the current debate, there is no consensus on the relationship between knowledge and values in students' reasoning and argumentation in socio-scientific and sustainability issues, i.e. if these should be addressed as separate entities or rather treated as a whole. In this study, we address this question empirically, with students engaging in two…

The aim is to analyse how policy decisions about assessment practices influence what it means to be a student in a performative system. We examine an occasion where a previously mandatory national test became optional, and how students took the opportunity to try to change the school's decision about this. The study is based on student group…

The present study compared socio-educational policies and argumentation in Sweden and Finland during Covid-19 pandemic in March-May 2020. Countries were selected, first, due to similar tuition-free basic education, which performed high in global surveys. Second, no pandemic socio-educational research existed from Nordic countries. National…

The aim is to investigate how encounters with peers affect an individual's meaning making in argumentation about socio-scientific issues, and how the individual's meaning making influences the argumentation at the collective level. The analysis is conducted using the analytical method "transactional argumentation analysis" (TAA) which…