Distance teacher education – some experiences from Dalarna University, SwedenPaper presented at the 33rd Annual ATEE Conference Brussels, Belgium, 23rd – 27th August 2008

Distance teaching is now-a-days used in different shapes. However, it is something different from traditional campus organised education as it systematically uses Information Communication Technology (ICT) as a key element. When the distance teacher education started in Sweden many teacher educators doubted the wisdom of this. They expressed that the educational process to become a teacher would be deteriorated. For instance, they feared for high drop out rates and difficulties to examine in a proper way. The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education has recently edited a report that showed that this form of teacher education was well adapted to the labour market, but the possibilities for the teacher students to shape their education were relatively limited. However, we still know quite little about the effects of this way to educate teacher students. This paper explores the possibility of using distance teacher education.In a case study 20 students, who were the first to finish a complete a distance teacher education at Högskolan Dalarna, were asked in a questionnaire how they had apprehended their education. We also interviewed four of these students, as well as five teacher educators.One of our findings were that the distance teacher education reached new target groups, who not had been able to participate in university studies if it not had been offered in this form. Especially, this was valid for the middle-aged women, living a long distance away from a university, with social responsibilities for children or old parents. Other findings were that these students in general were target oriented and ambitious, wrote more than the campus students and developed that kind of skill better. Marratech, an ICT system for small groups, e-mail and chat were used for the communication. Marratech was considered to permit free and spontaneous communication, both of the teacher educators and the students. Initially the teacher educators were sceptical to distance teacher education, but afterwards they were surprised of how well it had worked. They declared that they had better and nearer contact with their students and more control over the students´ performance, but some parts of the teacher education were better suitable for campus education, for example, power of creating characters. Distance teacher education was considered time consuming and demanded much activity from the teacher educators as the students wanted rapid responses. This study indicates that distance teacher education works well for mature individuals with high motivation. However, it demands more time from the teacher educators, but it gives in general good results. Still, there are pedagogical challenges to overcome. Maybe we should reflect on a mix of distance teacher education and campus based teacher education, instead of separated ways of accomplishing teacher education?

Satanism och identitet : En hermeneutisk analys av satanistiska texter

Syftet med denna studie är att göra en analys av två olika satanistiska rörelsers texter och deras syn på identitet och identitetsskapande. De rörelser som valdes till denna studie är The Church of Satan och The Greater Church of Lucifer. För att genomföra analysen valdes två böcker ut som representerar respektive rörelsers grundläggande filosofi, dessa var The Satanic Bible (1969, 2005) samt Wisdom of Eosphoros (2015). Analysens teori grundade sig på begrepp som är plockade från queerteorin, för att belysa synen på vad som är normalt och onormalt samt synen på sexualitet och genus. Utöver detta analyserades även rörelsernas syner på kärlek och relationer, innan rörelsernas budskap jämfördes för att se om det finns några korrelationer mellan de två. För att genomföra analysen valdes en kategoriseringsmetod som inspirerats av idé- och ideologianalys. Resultatet visade att båda rörelserna var kritiska till givna samhälleliga sanningar, och ställde sig kritiska till tanken om att det skall finnas några universella normer och moralregler. De båda förespråkade även den fria sexualiteten, där läggning och preferenser ses som irrelevanta. Hos satanismen gick det att återfinna normativa uttalanden kring genus, kön och könsroller, medan luciferianismen inte lägger någon vikt vid dessa kategorier. Dock lägger de båda rörelserna sitt huvudsakliga fokus på den enskilde individens autonomitet och självbestämmande, där man uppmanas att bryta mot alla konventioner som inte leder till den egna lyckan.