Vocational English in policy and practice

The aim of this licentiate thesis is to examine how, and in what ways, vocational English is a part of English language teaching in the Building and Construc��tion Programme in Sweden, and what the influences are for such pedagogy. The main research question is how policy documents relate to the views of teachers and their educational practice regarding vocational English. The study consists of two parts: a textual policy analysis of the three latest upper secondary school reforms in Sweden (Lgy 70, Lpf 94, and Gy 2011), and semi-structured interviews with practicing English teachers in the Building and Construction Programme. The interviews are categorised by using Spradley���s (1979) semantic relationships and taxonomies. Balls��� (Ball, 1993) and Ozga���s (1990; 2000) concept of policy enactment is used in the analysis as well as Bernstein���s (1990; 2000) theoretical framework of classification, framing, and horizontal and vertical discourse. The results show that five of the six teachers in the interviews work with vocational English in some way. The study also shows that there is a distinct gap between policy and practice. Several of the teachers have the notion that they are supposed to work with vocational English and that it must be written down in policy somewhere. The greatest influence on the teaching for these teachers are their students, either indirectly or directly. Further, the study shows that different frame factors such as time poverty hinders the teachers from reading policy texts and cooperating with the vocational teachers in the Building and Construction Programme.

Democratic Citizenship - A Conditioned Apprenticeship : A Call for Destabilisation of Democracy in Education

We live in times when the search for a citizenship education that can transcend national, ethnical and cultural borders is an important part of educational policy. In times of increased pressure by the European Union on its nation states to provide for nation-transcending democracy, this question becomes crucial for national policymaking in Europe. In this text, Swedish education policy will be taken as a case in point in order to shed light on how this question is being handled in this particular national policy setting. It is argued that the policy���s citizen fostering agenda tends to be counterproductive in the sense that it is still situated in national notions of the relationship between democracy and education, which tend to exclude certain individuals and groups of people on an age-related and (ethno) cultural basis. It is further argued that these excluding features can be related to educational ideas about socialisation. The aim of this text is underlined by suggesting a different way of framing democracy and democratic citizenship education: to increase the potential of education as regards the renewal of democracy and democratic citizenship.

Opening discourses of citizenship education : a theorization with Foucault

We argue two major difficulties in current discourses of citizenship education. The first is a relative masking of student discourses of citizenship by positioning students as lacking citizenship and as outside the community that acts. The second is in failing to understand the discursive and material support for citizenship activity. We, thus, argue that it is not a lack of citizenship that education research might address, but identification and exploration of the different forms of citizenship that students already engage in. We offer a fragmentary, poststructuralist theorization oriented to explore the contemporary limits of the necessary', drawing on specific resources from the work of Michel Foucault and others for the constitution of local, partial accounts of citizenship discourses and activities, and exploration of their possibilities and constraints. We argue this as a significant tactic of theorization in support of an opening of discourses of citizenship and in avoiding the discursive difficulties that we have identified. Our theorization, then, is significant in its potential to unsettle discourses that confine contemporary thought regarding citizenship education and support exploration of what might be excessive to that confinement.

Historiel��rares ��mnesf��rst��else : Centrala begrepp i historiel��rares f��rst��else av skol��mnet historia

This thesis focuses on four different aspects of history teachers��� comprehensiveunderstanding of the school subject history. More specifically, the aim is tostudy the comprehension of the subject as perceived by individual historyteachers. Special emphasis is placed on identifying the concepts of the field ofhistory that are central to the teachers��� understanding of the school subject history.The first aspect studied is the teachers��� biographical changes. In a life historyperspective it seems as if the teachers��� subject conception changes from anunproblematic and tentative approach to a more complex and confident understandingof the subject. The second aspect treated is the rationale behind theirgrasp of the purpose and content of the subject. Three major positions areidentified, namely educational (bildung) orientation, critical orientation, andidentity orientation.The third aspect studied is the teachers��� interpretation of a curriculumnew to them. The teachers placed the curriculum in the field of tension betweenan education policy position, emphasizing more precise knowledge, onthe one hand, and a history science position, emphasizing concepts of historicalconsciousness. The fourth aspect studied is five different conceptual tools displayedin the teachers��� remarks on having completed the teaching of a newcourse. These are termed ���history as narrative���, ���history as time-space���, ���historyas explanation���, ���history as perspective taking���, and ���history as skills���At the general level the study shows not only that subject conception is ofimportance to the teachers��� understanding of their obligation as teachers of historybut also how it is formed and constantly transformed by many differentfactors. In this process it is clear that the concepts used by the teachers, althoughvariously defined, can be seen as specific to the school subject historyand essential to the construction of history as a school subject.

Akademisk kvalitet, vad ��r det? : Om utarmningen av den akademiska autonomin

What is academic quality? On the decline of academic autonomy In light of the transformations that universities currently undergo, with Bologna as a keyword, the following questions are put: What ideals lie behind the assessment of academic ���excellence��� and ���quality���? What agents have the ability to define what is good science and education today? These questions are approached through Pierre Bourdieus concept of field. Looking at the development the last decade, traditional academic values, such as the ideal of universal knowledge as (personal and collective) enrichment and the intellectual independence ���of all political authority and economic power���, as stated in the Magna Charta Universitatum, seem to have emerged into the shadow of employability, knowledge control, competitiveness, and economic benefit. In connection with the formation of concepts such as ���the knowledge society��� and ���knowledge based economies��� the university has received a somewhat different and more central role in society. The university has come to take the role more of a knowledge producing enterprise clearly directed towards the surrounding society. There are higher demands on academic knowledge to contribute to economic, regional or national development and competitiveness. When the university is regarded as a knowledge company whose task is to accoun tfor the requests of the students, the labour market, and the business world it undertakes to follow trends and short term social phases rather than to critically examine them, which has been a traditional task for the university. If the academic work is guided by the market economical principle, that the client requests decide what quality is, instead of the experts on the academic field themselves (i.e. the scientists,) it is obviously not scientific ideals that constitute the criteria for what is good science and education.

Citizenship formation for a new millennium in Sweden : a prognosis of our time

The aim of this article is to forecast the present situation of citizenship formation in the field of Swedish education. In highlighting trends and tendencies in the educational assignment to provide for democratic citizenship in the first decade of the 21st century, which can be characterised as lacking collective visions for change, three depictions of citizenship are prevailing: citizenship formation for deliberation, for entrepreneurship and for therapeutic intervention. These depictions are analysed in terms of the direction for action taking and attention that they stress and produce as concerns citizenship in the making. The first one, citizenship formation for deliberation, stresses an inward-looking and inward-feeling citizenship. The second one, citizenship formation for entrepreneurship, stresses an inward-looking and outward-making citizenship, and the third one, citizenship formation for therapeutic intervention, stresses an inward-looking and outward-making citizenship. Taking on this forecast, which actualises democracy as something that is already achieved as a consequence of an assumedly post political situation, we argue that citizenship as well as society itself risks being pictured as apolitical and democratically ���saturated.��� This situation is hazardous, we argue, as it does not open up for change to come into question as desirable or even possible. Put differently, it leaves us with the notion that things have to be as they are, as we are living in the best of worlds.��

Fr��n nationsbyggare till global marknadsnomad : Om medborgarskap i svensk utbildningspolitik under 1990-talet

I den h��r avhandlingen ��r intresset riktat mot svensk utbildningspolitik och medborgarskap. I tider av globalisering, och med ett etablerat svenskt medlemskap i Europeiska unionen, har det nationella policyskapandet kring utbildningens medborgardanande funktion hamnat under ��kat tryck. I studien unders��ks hur detta hanteras i svensk utbildningspolitik under 1990-talet, en tid som utm��rker sig genom betydande f��r��ndringar p�� utbildningsomr��det i Sverige. Fr��gan ��r, mera precist, vilken riktning f��r skolans, enligt lag bef��sta, uppdrag att fostra demokratiska medborgare som utstakas i svensk utbildningspolitik vid denna tid. Genom att f��sta vikt vid m��l, visioner och motiv som formuleras i utbildningspolitiska 1990-talstexter klarl��ggs f��rst��elser av medborgarskap som karakt��riserar svensk utbildningspolitik under denna tid. ��ven en bredare historisk analys g��rs, ur vilken historiska m��ls��ttningar med skolans medborgarfostran som f��reg��r 1990-talets framtr��der. Studiens syfte ��r kritiskt. F��rst��elserna granskas utifr��n vad de innesluter och vad de utesluter, vilka m��jliga konsekvenser de kan t��nkas f�� f��r olika individer och grupper i samh��llet, och om det finns ��ppningar f��r t��nkbara alternativ. Studien visar p�� tv�� historiska skiften vad g��ller medborgarskapets inneh��ll och mening i det inhemska policyskapandet. Det f��rsta skiftet ��ger rum under 1990-talets tidiga del. D�� bryts en etablerad samh��llsbyggande medborgarroll upp, till f��rm��n f��r andra mera marknadsorienterade medborgarroller. Under 1990-talets senare del, d�� marknadsorienteringen f��rst��rks i neoliberal riktning, sker ett andra skifte; en historiskt vedertagen gemenskapstanke ��� nationen ��� bryts upp som grund f��r medborgerlig gemenskap. Denna tanke ers��tts av en annan som ��r globaliseringsinriktad, vilken visar sig ha andra inne- och uteslutande mekanismer f��r olika individer och samh��llsgrupper. Utifr��n dessa forskningsr��n tecknas avslutningsvis n��gra konturer till ett alternativt s��tt att t��nka kring medborgarskap och gemenskap. Detta alternativ tar form i ambitionen att, i h��gre grad ��n vad som blir synligt i svensk utbildningspolitik, resonera kring m��jligheter f��r ett medborgarskap bortom f��rhandstecknade indelningsgrunder f��r ett ���vi���. Spr��k som politisk och samh��llelig f��r��ndringskraft ges en central betydelse i avhandlingen. I analysen av texternas tal om skolans medborgarfostrande roll unders��ks p��g��ende politiska mots��ttningar n��r det g��ller att vinna tal- och tolkningsf��retr��de till skolans fostransm��l. Utg��ngarna av dessa mots��ttningar belyses genom tre omr��den f��r medborgarfostran som urskilts som centrala; ett politiskt, ett kulturellt samt ett ekonomi- och arbetslivsriktat. Genom dessa har r��dande medborgarskapsdiskurser tagit form, ur vilka de utbildningspolitiska f��rst��elserna av medborgarskap gestaltas och diskuteras.