This study aimed to explore student teachers' experiences of learning in teacher education, with a focus on how students describe their ways of thinking about their own learning in relation to their future professional role as teachers and how these descriptions relate to emerging cosmopolitan visions for student learning in teacher education.…

Taking the latest reform of Swedish teacher education as a point of departure, the aim of this article is to analyse the way Swedish teacher unions construct a knowledge base for teaching as a strategy of professionalisation. The analysis shows that the unions construct such a knowledge base from opposing points of departure. Their professional…

The article is concerned with issues of national identity in a multicultural society (Sweden) and the role of citizenship education in creating a national identity. After having witnessed the terrorist attack and the traumas from Oslo and Utøya (22 July 2011), and the suicide bombing in Stockholm on 11 December 2010, certain words, such as…

In the almost two decades that have passed since the Swedish parliament declared that Sweden is a multicultural society, debates about immigrants, about multiculturalism and about different ways of being a citizen have raged. So far there has been no stepping away from the declaration. In the rhetorical arena multiculturalism is still a word with…

This article falls within the research area of school development. It also takes into account neo-liberal tendencies, such as they have been approached in educational research. The article takes as its starting point a development project that began when four rural secondary schools turned to their regional university for scientific support. It…

The neo-liberal restructuring of academia justifies research concerning what constitutes academic work, what it means to be an academic researcher and how researchers manoeuvre in academia. The aim of this article is to investigate how this reshaping of higher education affects how research careers are formed and impacts on "becoming…

The European Union would like to improve its efforts to promote entrepreneurship within the Union. More new companies and more entrepreneurs are needed to increase the Union's competitiveness. In order to achieve this goal, the education sectors of the member countries must be reformulated to include entrepreneurship in their education programmes.…

The principles of new public management -- market mechanisms, accountability and standards -- have been applied in the education system. These methods are supposed to increase efficiency, but there is also a risk of negative consequences from the services provided if the measures of performance target a reduced range of goals, ignore relevant…

This interview attempts to articulate what it might mean to speak for "Padagogik" in an era where new trends in education run the risk of marginalizing "Padagogik" as an independent academic discipline. This trend can be found in several European countries and is judged by Herner Saeverot and Gert Biesta to be a development…

The concept of "knowledge brokerage" focuses on promoting the integration of the best available evidence into policy and practice-related decisions. In this study, emphasis is put on the knowledge brokerage role of cities. The study aims at finding similarities and differences in existing educational knowledge brokerage initiatives, at…

As an answer to the welfare state's transformation and increased focus on goal- and result-oriented regulation, Swedish educational policy is in a state of change. The matter of the teaching profession's aspirations with regard to professionalisation has come up once again: reminders that reference the introduction of teacher certification in…

The leisure sector has witnessed a tremendous expansion since 1960. The purpose of this article is to analyse the decisions and goals of Swedish government policy during the period 1962 to 2005. The empirical analysis covers government Propositions and governmental investigations. The fields covered are sports, culture, exercise, tourism and…

The development and expansion of market solutions is one of the most important changes in Swedish education in the last 30 years. The aim of the article is to describe and analyse how students and staff in upper secondary schools perceive the impact of market competition on teachers' work. Three groups of actors in two Swedish regions were…

In November 2010 the authors finished the writing of a manifesto for education. The manifesto was an attempt to respond to a number of issues concerning education, both in the field of educational research and in the wider socio-political environment. This is the text of that manifesto followed by two commentaries in which the authors try to…

From the autumn of 2008 Sweden is billed to introduce fees for non-EEA (European Economic Area) students. Two commissions set up by the Social Democratic government studied the question and the enabling legislation was issued in March 2006. Now, however, the Conservative coalition government shows no interest in giving the universities the…