This article investigates the question of making choices at Swedish LTCs. The theoretical framework draws on symbolic interactionism and the concept of "inhabited institutions" analysing teachers' meaning-making and interactions between teachers and pupils at the LTCs. Because of changing policies, a tension between new demands and an…

The aim of this article is to acquire knowledge regarding children's influence and the construction of gender during free play situations in preschools in different local contexts. Attention is focused on both children's choices and pedagogical practices in which free play takes place. The research draws on ethnographic studies based on…

Reflecting on the implementation of a pre-study may be decisive for the design of a following main study. This text consists of a reflective process where the researcher's different choices are examined and problematised. The reflections take place within the framework of a pre-study and in relation to the aim of that study. They also take place…

Selection and socialization have been implicated in friendship homophily, but the relative contributions of each are difficult to measure simultaneously because of the nonindependent nature of the data. To address this problem, the authors applied a multiple-groups longitudinal actor-partner interdependence model (D. A. Kashy & D. A. Kenny,…

Being a skillful school leader presumes the competence to judge the ethical consequences of actions. This implies a need for all school agents to discover and analyze what values are at stake and, in turn, reconcile didactic rationality with ethical rationality. This article aims to explore ethical dilemmas in daily school practice, experienced…

The paper presents a theoretical framework addressing three aspects of embodied pedagogical agents: visual static appearance, pedagogical role, and communicative style. The framework is then applied to a user study where 90 school children (aged 12-15) in a dummy multimedia program were presented with either an instructor or a learning companion…

The purpose of this paper is to explain how the Swedish citizen has developed his (or her) judgment concerning quality of life, attributable to real and simulated civilizations. It builds on a previous research report (B. Bierschenk, 1997) about three model societies that have been studied with the assumptions that: (1) competition implies…

Investigated the validity of the Swedish model for selection to higher education, using S. Messick's (1989) four-faceted model of validity and grade-point-average and admissions test data for 314 college students. Results challenges the unidimensional use of the selection instruments. (SLD)

What can we learn from European Union (EU) school projects about future learning approaches? The EU has invested massively in information and communication technologies (ICT) projects promoting innovative use of new technologies in school settings. The aim of the project "School Foresight", with partners in Bulgaria, Estonia, Greece,…

The Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test (SweSAT) has been in use as a selection instrument for higher education since spring 1977. One of the greatest problems with the SweSAT is the gender difference in results. A number of studies have been performed in order to clarify where and why these differences are found. This paper summarizes these studies…

A brief description is presented of the Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test (SweSAT), its content, and its use. The SweSAT has been used for college admission in Sweden since 1977. Some related research activities, including studies of sex differences, dimensionality, and effects of test coaching, are described. (SLD)