Vi pratar mycket om kunskap i samhället idag – ett åtrå­ värt begrepp som blev ett nyckelord i kampen mot den så kallade flumskolan som blev rejält utskälld i slutet av 1970­talet. ”Kunskap” blev därefter den klara ledstjärnan för 1990­talets skolreformer.

I Striden om den goda skolan belyser Magnus Hultén hur den övergripande mediala ramberättelsen som formades på 1980­talet än idag påverkar såväl politiska beslut som medias rapporter om svagheterna i dagens skolor. Skol­ reformerna på 1990­talet var tänkta att skapa Europas och till och med världens bästa skola, men så blev det inte.

Författaren menar att anledningen till att målen inte upp­ nåtts går att finna i en övertro på vad statlig kunskaps­ styrning kan åstadkomma. Han anser att vi idag upprepar 1990­talets misstag på skolans område, drivna av samma – överdrivna – kunskapsvisioner. Med detta som bakgrund lyfter Hultén fram möjligheter och lösningar för att vi ska komma ur den låsta situation som uppstått.

The availability of digital tablets in preschools has increased significantly in recent years. Literature suggests that these tools can enhance students’ literacy and collaborative skills. As society becomes increasingly digitized, preschool curriculum reform also emphasises the subjects of technology and science as priority areas of learning. Teachers’ knowledge and experiences are of utmost importance in carrying out this mandate. Few studies have explored the use of digital tablets to teach preschool technology and science in Sweden, and there is an urgent need to ascertain the role of digital aids as teaching tools. This survey study seeks to determine how digital tablets are used to support preschool children’s learning in general, and with respect to technology education. Preschool educators (n = 327) across Sweden responded to an online survey consisting of 20 closed and 6 open items that probed the use of digital tablets. Survey results revealed a high degree of engagement with digital tablets in preschools, with activities directed toward various subject-related, social and generic skills. Programming, invention, construction and creation, problem-solving, and design emerged saliently as tablet activities in technology subject areas. Opportunities for providing meaningful learning tasks and digital adaptability were seen as pedagogical benefits of using tablets, but increasing expectations to integrate tablet activities with an accompanying lack of digital skills were expressed as limitations. Teachers’ recommendations for future tablet use included defining clearer curriculum guidelines for tablet implementation and adequate training for acquiring digital competence.

The aim of this presentation is to discuss preliminary findings from an ongoing research project on science education in leisure-time center (LTC). The focus is on the communicative practice of science education in LTC: How do teacher, pupils and artefacts interact in creating science practices in LTC? We are also interested in how this practices may change depending on if the pupils have learning disabilities or not and what this may say about differences in learning opportunities in learning science at LTC?

The availability of digital tablets in preschools has increased significantly in recent years. Literature suggests that these tools can enhance students’ literacy skills, as well as improve student collaboration. Society is becoming increasingly digitized and the Swedish preschool curriculum includes technology and science as priority areas of learning. Preschool teachers’ knowledge is of utmost importance in helping carrying out this mandate. Since there have been few studies on the use of digital tablets in preschool technology and science education in a Swedish context, there is an urgent need to explore the role and influence of digital tools as teaching tools, in an effort to exploit the potential pedagogical opportunities offered by digital technology. The current study investigates what features and aspects of digital tablet technology preschool teachers use to teach technology and science in preschools. Preschool educators throughout Sweden responded to an online survey consisting of 20 closed and 6 open items that probed teachers’ use of digital tablets. Results show that programming, invention, construction, creation, entrepreneurship and designing with the support of digital tablets are emerging technology education activities in preschool. This finding is in line with a revised Swedish curriculum to be completed in 2018. Teacher scaffolding in conjunction with different digital tablet applications could help to develop children’s ability and confidence to invent, program, create and design. Future work will consist of conducting interviews with preschool teachers to obtain a deeper understanding of the themes that emerged from the survey.

Denna systematiska översikt ger en bild av vad forskningen sammantaget säger om hur lärare kan leda samtal i helklass för att få elever att delta i gemensamma matematiska resonemang. Det handlar om diskussioner i vilka eleverna använder och analyserar matematiska begrepp och argumenterar matematiskt. Detta är förmågor som kursplanen i matematik anger att undervisningen ska ge eleverna förutsättningar att utveckla, och som forskning lyfter fram att elever i svensk skola behöver förstärka. Översikten rör också frågor om hur lärare kan möta och ta tillvara elevers olikheter i undervisningen, närmare bestämt hur lärare kan få med elever som inte är så benägna att delta i gemensamma resonemang, och hur elevers olika idéer kan bli en del av de matematiska samtalen och berika dem. Översikten utgår från följande frågeställning:

• Vad kännetecknar klassrumsdialoger som engagerar elever i matematiska
• resonemang och som möter och tar tillvara elevers olikheter, och vad kännetecknar
• lärarens ledning av sådana dialoger?

Översikten är en sammanställning av arton forskningsstudier som systematiskt har valts ut av forskare efter omfattande litteratursökningar i internationella forskningsdatabaser. Sökningarna resulterade i 10 528 studier.

Studierna bygger på ingående observationer och analyser av dialoger i helklass mellan lärare och elever. Det är klassrumssituationer som lärare skulle kunna känna igen sig i. Analyserna sätter ord på det som sker och ger förståelse i form av olika begrepp och strukturer. Denna vetenskapligt grundade kunskap kan utgöra stöd för lärare när de planerar och leder klassrumsdialoger i matematikundervisningen.

The aim of this study is to contribute to an understanding of how curricular changeis accomplished in practice, including the positions and conflicts of key stakeholders andparticipants, and their actions in the process. As a case, we study the treatment of energy inSwedish secondary curricula in the period 1962–2011 and, in particular, how the notion ofenergy quality was introduced in the curricula in an energy course at upper secondary school in1983 and in physics at lower secondary school in 1994. In the analysis, we use Roberts’ twocompeting visions of science education, Vision I in which school science subjects largelymirror their corresponding academic disciplines and Vision II that incorporates societal mattersof science. In addition, a newly suggested Vision III represents a critical perspective on scienceeducation. Our analysis shows how Vision II and III aspects of science education have gainedimportance in curricula since the 1980s, but in competition with Vision I considerations.Energy quality played a central role in providing Vision II and III arguments in the curriculardebate on energy teaching. Subsequent educational research has found that Swedish teachersand students struggle with how to relate to energy quality in physics teaching, which weexplain as partly due to the tension between the competing visions.

Generalist primary school teachers often have little or no training in school subjects such as science and technology. Not surprisingly, several studies show that they often experience difficulties when teaching these subjects, in fact some primary teachers even avoid teaching them. The over all aim of this study is to contribute to new theoretical and methodological tools for the study of how teachers develop knowledge for teaching, i.e. pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). And based on this, elaborate on implications for the professional development of primary school teachers. The teachers in the study participated in a design-based research project concerning technology education in Grade 1. We were especially interested in whether the teachers displayed any habits that contributed to the development of their personal PCK. We found three significant patterns in how the teachers, together with the researcher, developed knowledge of how to teach a specific topic in technology. We argue that these patterns tell us something about the teachers’ epistemic habits in relation to the teaching of technology. The existence of these habits could help to explain how teachers with little or no experience of teaching a subject can develop relevant PCK.

In research on the development of a nineteenth-century ‘science for the people’, initiatives by scientists or people well-trained in science has been emphasised, while the writings, roles and initiatives of elementary teachers are normally just mentioned in passing. In this study the development of nineteenth-century elementary science textbooks is analysed. While practitioners and popularisers of science established the genre as such, writing the first textbooks on elementary science and arguing for its place in elementary education, elementary teachers were prime movers in developing the genre both pedagogically and scientifically. In doing this they not only contributed to further strengthening the cultural status of science in late nineteenth-century Sweden but most probably strengthened the elementary teaching profession as a whole, formulating the expertise of the teacher in relation to elementary science.