The aim of this article is to present arguments for an integrated empirical research on teaching and learning based on previous research and the phenomenographic research tradition. From 1970 and for some years after, the main focus in phenomenographic research was on students' approaches to and understanding of subject matter. Later, based on…

This special issue includes 5 contributions of contemporary work based in the phenomenography and variation theory research tradition and also actualises theoretical and methodological discussions. This introduction consists of 3 main parts. First is a brief introduction to and framing for the contributions through pointing to some of the main…

This paper addresses ethical issues in educational research with a focus on the interplay between research ethics and both internal and external quality of research. Research ethics is divided into three domains: (1) ethics "within" the research community; (2) ethics concerning relationships with "individuals and groups directly…

The question of what role free schools should perform in the Swedish educational system has been a contested subject between three ideological, theoretical, political and policy tenets. The first, "contribution to pedagogical diversity in a controlled school market" reflects a traditional social democratic view. The second,…

This article deals with the question of how the restructuring of educational systems in Nordic countries affects teachers' working conditions. It is based on results from the project "Restructuring in Education: Reform policy and teacher professionalism in different Nordic contexts" in which the construction of the "New…

Educational arenas are important sites for understanding how diversity and democracy become operationalised since they constitute and at the same time must attend to students' different needs. This article focuses on diversity from two specific angles: how research activities allow for particular ways of understanding human differences and how…

Explicit knowledge is highly valued in the traditional educational system at the expense of implicit equivalents. Why is this? Are we right to so value it? To provide an answer I attempt to characterise the relation between representations and referents of implicit and explicit knowledge. Whereas explicit representations are detached from…

Preparing teachers for a research-based professionalism has been the central mission of teacher education in Finland since the mid-1970s. More recently, as a result of such national policy developments as school-based curriculum development and local decision-making, the conception of teachers' work and professionalism has expanded. Drawing on…

Discusses the relationship between play and creativity and reviews research studies that suggest that play does facilitate creativity and studies that have found relations between affective processes in play and creativity. Outlines directions for future research into play and creativity. (SLD)

Discusses how the conceptual apparatus and modus operandi of games theory provides a research heuristic for understanding the strategic possibilities inherent in typical classroom situations in which the interests of students and teachers are partially concurrent and partly in conflict. Also discusses the preconditions for contracts between…

This article discusses the contacts between Swedish and Polish educational theory and points to the influence of the Swedish educationalist Ellen Key on the thinking of the Polish pediatrician and educationalist Janus Korczak. Different approaches to Korczak's works are identified in international research. (SLD)