This book shows the continuing importance of art education. Art education attracts students who see multiple meanings and justifications for the worth of that education. Their engagement in art education is not limited to the uncertain prospects for jobs or routes into employment in the arts. Fürst and Nylander approach art education through a rich array of empirical examples derived from Swedish folk high school programs in music, visual arts, and creative writing. Based on an analytical framework of pragmatic sociology, the book allows the reader to understand the competences and critical capacities held by students and teachers. The book challenges the dominant public perception of art education and broadens our understanding of what it is good for. The Value of Art Education is essential reading for those defending the status of this vital sector of education, offering a deeper understanding of why people engage, what they gain, and the social importance of the arts.

The question of what the research of lifelong education is all about needs to be revisited from time to time. Not only is this line of research approached from a multitude of academic disciplines - such as sociology, psychology or philosophy - the very concepts that are used to denote the field also undergo important changes over time, e.g. from lifelong education to lifelong learning. In this contribution, we will explore this rather elusive research territory using a large-scale text analysis of a specific scientific journal, International Journal of Lifelong Education, based on meta-data (abstracts, keywords and titles) from 1,185 articles published between 1982 to 2021. Based on topic modelling techniques, we identify the main themes that have been prevalent within the journal, and how the journals content has changed character over time. We end the paper with a more critical examination of what kind of political and scientific currents might help explain what has led research practices to be more descriptive, micro-oriented and work-related over time.

In this chapter, we explore what kinds of research themes on lifelong learning have been salient in a selection of peer-review journals written in the English language throughout the last half-century. We draw on large-scale text mining techniques to identify 15 latent topics that have been the most prevalent within academic journals and trace how the semantic composition has changed in character over time. Based on this topic model analysis of metadata from 4561 articles, we show how the research field of lifelong learning hinge on broad distinctions between education and work, quantitative and qualitative research paradigms, as well as encompassing more fine-grained research clusters within this broader frame. We conclude by arguing that research on lifelong learning has undergone substantial changes since the 1980s, especially with regard to adult education that has lost its former role as the center of gravity with increased attention being directed toward learning within higher education as well as in relation to workplaces.

It is well established that participation in formal adult education varies by individual background characteristics. However, less attention has been paid to examining inequality in participation as a consequence of policy changes, such as educational expansion. This paper examines the process of tremendous expansion in Swedish Higher Vocational Education (HVE), a vocationally oriented postsecondary educational segment driven by labor market needs. Using a demographic approach with a sociological lens on educational participation, we analyze administrative data from registers, uncovering who has been served by this expanding adult educational form. Our results indicate that expansion of HVE has led to growth in participation for policy-prioritized groups, although the rate of growth in enrollment between groups varies and corresponds to population changes. We also locate the extent of cumulative advantages in participation and discuss these results in relation to social (in)equality in formalized HVE.

Program analysis has been developing into a prolific research tradition illustrating the utility of adult education providers and program descriptions as heuristic objects for addressing larger questions of social scientific and humanistic inquiry. In this research tradition, attention has been directed to the way programs and educational offers of adult education providers reflect the changing labour market, educational systems and cultural zeitgeist. In this article, we interrogate the opportunities to deploy large-scale text analysis on the content of the national catalogues of Swedish folk high schools (1954–2007) to further enlarge the analytical depth and precision of how program analysis can address changing educational offerings. Based on an analysis of a comprehensive digital repository we identify the latent thematic structures of educational offers in Swedish folk high schools over time and discuss how these changing course descriptions reflect broader structural changes in its educational system as well as regarding the purpose of adult education.

Purpose With the advancement of novel forms of text mining techniques, new possibilities have opened up to conduct large-scale content analysis of educational research from an international and comparative perspective. Since educational research tends to convey great variation based on country-specific circumstances it constitutes a good testbed for context-rich depictions of the knowledge formation within a given research field. Design/methodology/approach In this article, the authors compare the educational research that has been produced by scholars in Singapore and Sweden. The article begins by providing a rich overview of what has characterised the formation and institutionalization of educational research in public policy. After this background they map the knowledge formation of education by means of a comparative bibliometric approach using words from abstracts, titles and keywords published in 9017 peer-reviewed articles between 2000 and 2020. First, the authors describe the dominant topics in each country using topic modelling techniques. Secondly, the authors identify the most distinguishing discourses when comparing the two countries. Findings The findings illustrate two ideal-types for conducting educational research: Singapore being more centralised, practically-oriented, quantitative and uncritical, whereas Sweden is decentralised, pluralistic, qualitative and critical in orientation. After having mapped out the prevailing topics among researchers working in these locations, the authors connect these findings to larger debates on rivalling knowledge traditions in educational scholarship, the role of the state and the degree of autonomy within higher education. Originality/value Through large scale text mining techniques, researchers have begun to explore the semantic composition of various research fields such as higher education research, research on lifelong learning, or social science studies. However, the bibliometric method has also been criticised for creating "mega-national comparisons" that suffer from a lack of understanding of the national ramifications of various research pursuits. The authors study addresses these shortcomings and provides a rich depiction of educational research in Singapore and Sweden. It zooms in on the relationship between each countrys institutional histories, research priorities and semantic output.

Privatisation of public education is becoming more and more common across the world. As much current research presupposes causal links between the degree of privatisation and issues of competition and student?s free choice, we see a need for research on other ways of organising the presence of private providers in public education. In this article, we study how two Swedish municipalities use public procurement to contract private providers and organise adult education. Interestingly, we find that competition is more heavily at play in the municipality that outsources half of its adult education, than in the municipality that outsources all adult education. We view these findings as vital for understanding how education is being outsourced to private providers and for furthering the discussion on the consequences of the ongoing privatisation of education.

In this article, we examine conceptualisations of luck evoked by a select group of elite students studying in Oxbridge, when accounting for their academic success. The emphasis on luck in their narratives is categorised into three themes. The students linked their luckiness to deservedness, used luck as a way to express humbleness, and attributed their success to factors of chance. These themes are analysed against the backdrop of strong institutional support they receive as part of attending elite schools and being scholarship recipients. By being attentive to how luck is evoked in these narratives, we show that luck does not have an essential meaning and can produce different representations of legitimacy. The paper proposes the integration between critical and pragmatic sociological perspectives in order to advance our understandings of how elite groups qualify for the positions they obtain, how they define themselves and make sense of their educational merits.

It has often been claimed that English has emerged as the lingua franca of teaching and research at universi- ties across the globe. This entry provides an overview of language use within higher education internationally, with a particular view to highlighting conditions within the human sciences—that is, the social sciences and the humanities. The entry centres on English as the medium of research, understood primarily as publishing, and English medium instruction (EMI). It begins by providing a brief historical overview.

The aim of this chapter is to introduce a methodological approach that can be used in order to analyze how the adult education research field is shaped through research practices, measurement standards and indexation. More specifically, we focus on three formative dimensions that we argue play a significant role in constructing “the rules of the game” in contemporary academia: (i) indexation, (ii) publications and (iii) citations. Our account is nowhere close to exhaustive but outlines how bibliographic data and bibliometric methodology can be used. Hence, to build our argument we draw on the research traditions of bibliometrics which, in the last few decades, has become linked to a highly controversial subject. Namely, how the reward system of the modern university should function. What will be the basis of ‘quality’ assessments of universities? How will merit be fought about and money distributed across different universities and disciplines?

How is art education valued in society? In Swedish public discourse the value of educational trajectories is often equated with their usefulness for employability. With competitive winner-takes-all labour markets for artists, art education is largely perceived as a worthless credential and form of education. But what kinds of worth does art education have among students themselves? This article draws on the approach of pragmatic sociology and individual and group interviews with 62 Swedish folk high school participants within the arts, to understand the meanings participants assign to post-compulsory education within the aesthetic realm. The students accounts belong to three broad themes, where art education is described as: (a) being a stepping stone to becoming an artist, (b) allowing them to have unique experiences while being in a particular state of creativity or (c) offering them a chance to regain health and general well-being after a difficult period. These results are discussed in relation to the relative institutional autonomy the folk high school possesses in the Swedish education system, as well as the possibilities of challenging the hegemonic ideas of learning for earning that largely reject non-instrumental regimes of self-discovery and artistic creativity.

Vem är det som går på folkhögskola och varför väljer deltagare att börja studera i just denna utbildningsform? Dessa frågor står i fokus för detta kapitel. I kapitlets första del beskrivs folkhögskolornas rekrytering med hänsyn tagen till hur olika sociala och demografiska faktorer präglat deltagarmönstren de senaste decennierna. Genomgången visar att sociala strukturer hjälper till att forma folkhögskolans utbildningslandskap, vilket varierar kraftigt efter kurstyp och inriktning med avseende på vilka sociala grupper de primärt vänder sig till. Med avstamp i denna statistiska kartläggning undersöks sedan varför vuxna väljer att studera inom folkhögskolan. Här analyseras vilka motiv folkhögskoledeltagarna själva uppger som betydelsefulla, med fokus på hur deltagarnas berättelser orienterar sig i tiden. Sammantaget visar vi i kapitlet hur folkhögskolan å ena sidan kan ses som heterogen – med ett stort och diversifierat utbud av kurser likväl som deltagare, och å andra sidan hur den framstår som homogen – genom att dess nischade kursutbud tenderar att vara inriktat mot specifika deltagargrupper.

What the field of adult education research is and how it can be described has been a debated issue over the decades. Several scholars argue that the field today is heterogeneous, borrowing theories and methods from a range of disciplines. In this chapter, we take such statements as a starting point for empirical analysis. In what ways could it be argued that the field is pluralistic rather than monolithic; heterogeneous rather than homogenous? Drawing on bibliographic data of the top cited articles in three main adult education journals between 2005 and 2012, we illustrate how the citation patterns have tendencies of homogeneity when it comes to the geographical country of authorship, since the USA, UK, Australia and Canada dominate, as well as the research methods adopted, since qualitative approaches have near total dominance. Furthermore, there is a tendency to adopt similar theoretical approaches, since sociocultural perspectives, critical pedagogy and post-structuralism represent more than half of the articles in our sample. At the same time, the results of our analysis indicate signs of scholarly pluralism, for instance, in terms of authorship, since both early career researchers and established researchers are represented among the top cited publications. We conclude the chapter by arguing that empirical analysis of publication and citation patterns is important to further the development of reflexivity within the field, not least for early career researchers, who might benefit from knowledge about what has been recognized among peers as worth citing in recent times.

In this article we report on findings from a large-scale bibliographic study conducted based on the citation practices within the field of research on adult learning. Our data consist of 151,261 citation links between more than 33,000 different authors whose papers were published in five leading international journals in the field of adult learning during the time period 2006–2014. By analysing the composition of the dominating citation clusters we are able to construct a telescopic view of the research field based on an accumulation of bibliographic citations. The results consist of two parts. First we go through the dominating players active in the field, their position and mutual relationship. Secondly, we derive two main structural oppositions inherent in the citation networks, one connected to the research object (studying education or work) and the second to the level of analysis (cognition or policy). We find that the most dominating tradition within adult learning the last few decades – socio- cultural perspectives on learning – occupies a very central position in the space of citations, balancing between these opposing poles. We hope that this analysis will help foster reflexivity concerning our own research practices, and will reveal the relations of dominance currently prevailing within the field of adult learning.

Denna databas samlar folkhögskolornas nationella kataloger mellan åren 1952-2019. Materialet är inskannat vilket möjliggör undersökningar om hur skolorna förändrats över tid, vilka ämnen de tillhandahållit och hur de beskrivit sin verksamhet. Innehållet i databasen härstammar från de fysiska katalogexemplar som bevarats i de nationella arkiven (Kungliga Biblioteket, Riksarkivet). Genom att OCR-tolka och digitalisera katalogernas innehåll och presentera det i ett digitalt gränssnitt möjliggörs undersökningar av hur folkhögskolorna förändrats historiskt. Man kan också söka efter enskilda folkhögskolors kursutbud eller förekomster av ord och ämnen i folkhögskolornas förflutna. 

Databasen vänder sig till alla folkbildningsforskare, folkhögskollärare, folkbildare, rektorer och alumni som vill lära sig mer om skolformen. Arbetet med databasen har möjliggjorts genom anslag från Stockholms Arbetareinstitut och bygger på en idé som tillkom i dialog med Henrik Fürst. Arbetet med databasen skedde via ett samarbete med Linköpings universitetsbiblioteks digitaliseringsexpert Anders Fåk. 

If the framing and composition of research fields are never fully fixed or saturated (Abbott 1995; Gieryn 1983), this is a particularly salient feature of the research field that deals with the education and learning of adults. Not only is the research question of adult education and learning approached from a multitude of academic disciplines – such as sociology, psychology and education – the very concepts that are used to denote this field have also undergone important changes. Such conceptual changes are visible, for instance, in the recent development whereby the model of adult education and Bildung came to be partly replaced by the notion of lifelong learning. In Europe, lifelong learning gained prominence in the policy area with the year of Lifelong Learning in 1996 and then the Memorandum on Lifelong Learning, published by the European Commission (2001), which positions lifelong learning as a central policy concept in the realisation of the Commission’s strategies. As a policy preoccupation, lifelong learning supersedes concepts of adult education (Lindeman 1926) and lifelong education (Faure 1972). The shift from focusing on education to speaking about learning is important to address in research, because it marks out a new way of conceptualising the education and learning of adults in terms of the why, the how, the what, the when and the where questions. These policy changes can also be identified within research and, particularly, in how the research field on the education and learning of adults is defined and delimited (see Chaps.  2 and  3). Thus, while it is clear that the research field of adult education and learning undergoes changes over time and is quite diverse in terms of the current choice of theories, research objects, methodologies and so on, little is known empirically about its current “state of affairs” and how it can be mapped out and characterised scientifically.

An “economy of publications and citations” has emerged in academia, where databases as Web of Science and Scopus provide tools for “quality” measurements. The assumption is that such measurements are unbiased in terms of geography, language, gender etc. This is investigated by scrutinizing the “invisible colleges”, i.e. networks of citations in adult learning/education journals, indexed by Scopus. A bibliometric analysis is made of 151,261 direct citation links in 5 journals published between 2006–2014. The outcome shows a pattern of biases: a US/UK, anglophone, male domination. It also shows how the investigated field consists of many loosely connected invisible colleges. This might make the field weak in terms of academic power.

Research funding, promotions, and career trajectories are currently increasingly dependent on the emerging economy of publications and citations across the globe. Such an economy encourages scholars to publish in international journals that are indexed in databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. These developments place an increased emphasis on the question of who is allowed to publish in the journals listed there and whose research counts as valuable. Based on bibliographic data this chapter firstly focus on the politics of indexation, i.e. what is being indexed in the main database Web of Science in terms of country of origin of journals and in terms of publication language. Secondly, we focus on the politics of scholars gatekeeping, i.e. what is the institutional affiliation of the editors and editorial board members in some key adult education journals, and thirdly, who is publishing in these adult education journals and who is being picked up and cited. Our results show, e.g., how four Anglophone countries dominate the field in relation to both published articles and the share of most cited articles and where the publication pattern of these authors are national and regional rather than international. Anglophone countries also dominate in terms of indexation, as well as scholars gatekeeping.

We began this book by launching a series of questions on what the adult education and learning research field looks like, how it has emerged historically and how it is transformed through contemporary policy and research practice. The chapters have, in different ways, contributed to answering these questions by case studies, as well as by looking at the transnational power relations across countries. In the debate on comparative adult education research finalising this book, Field, Künzel and Schemmann posed the rather provocative question of whether the chapter of international comparative adult education has now come to a close (see Chap.  10). We would argue that such research is still alive and possible to carry out, but that the conditions under which research is conducted also need to be taken into serious consideration. In the various contributions to this book, several chapters show how a comparative perspective on the field of research can contribute to our understanding of how knowledge about adult education and learning is produced. They also demonstrate how this knowledge is stratified across regional and national borders, as well as between individual scholars positioned in relation to one another.

In recent years, researchers throughout the world have come under increased pressure to publish in English, direct their scholarly work to internationally acclaimed journals indexed in the dominating databases (i.e. Scopus and Web of Science) and render their work citable among peers in other countries. In this chapter, we summarize some recent bibliometric studies that have mapped out what kind of research that have been published and cited in three leading journals related to adult––lifelong education and learning––and which researchers that has been given recognition. We argue that the strong political waves of managerial reform have made academic career trajectories and promotions more dependent upon publications and citations, thus necessitating a discussion about the most effective publication strategies for submission. At the same time, we acknowledge the multiple professional demands of adult educational scholars and highlight the ways different definitions of scholarly impact might stand in conflict with one another.

In this article we report on findings from a large-scale bibliographic study conducted based on the citation practices within the field of research on adult learning. Our data consist of 151,261 citation links between more than 33,000 different authors whose papers were published in five leading international journals in the field of adult learning during the time period 2006–2014. By analysing the composition of the dominating citation clusters we are able to construct a telescopic view of the research field based on an accumulation of bibliographic citations. The results consist of two parts. First we go through the dominating players active in the field, their position and mutual relationship. Secondly, we derive two main structural oppositions inherent in the citation networks, one connected to the research object (studying education or work) and the second to the level of analysis (cognition or policy). We find that the most dominating tradition within adult learning the last few decades – sociocultural perspectives on learning - occupies a very central position in the space of citations, balancing between these opposing poles. We hope that this analysis will help foster reflexivity concerning our own research practices, and will reveal the relations of dominance currently prevailing within the field of adult learning.

I detta bidrag har vi tagit hjälp av officiell statistik för att ge en översiktlig bild av hur folkhögskolans kursutbud förändrats de senaste två decennierna (1997 – 2016). Fokus i texten är institutionella skillnader i folkhögskolornas kursutbud, främst mellan allmän och särskild kurs, samt förekomst av olika deltagargrupper (kön, ålder, födelseland). Med hjälp av heltäckande deltagarstatistik visar vi att det skett ett skifte i dominansförhållandet mellan allmän och särskild kurs under perioden 1997 –  2016, där särskild kurs nu utgör en större verksamhetsgren än allmän kurs. Ämnesmässigt dominerar särskilda inriktningar mot musik, bildkonst och annan estetisk verksamhet. Mer marginell är verksamhet inriktad mot politik, ekonomi, demokrati och annan samhällsvetenskap. Skillnaderna mellan kurstyperna allmän och särskild kurs går igen vid en demografisk analys av vilka  deltagargrupper som antas där yngre deltagare och deltagare födda utrikes har kommit att bli allt vanligare på allmän kurs. Det särskilda kursutbudet går däremot mot en större åldersblandning samtidigt som kvinnliga deltagare är i klar majoritet och andelen födda utrikes inte ökar fullt lika drastiskt. Skillnader finns också i antalet individer boendes på internat där skolinternaten främst verkar utnyttjas av riksrekryterande kurser inriktade på kulturella verksamheter (musik, bild, hantverk, scenisk konst). Vi visar också att folkhögskolornas utbildningslandskap i viss mån blivit alltmer urbant, då skolor belägna i större städer står för en allt större del av den totala mängden utbildning.

Some of the most prominent educational institutions within art and culture in Sweden are the folk high schools. Of the 154 folk high schools across the country, most offer aesthetic programs at the post-compulsory educational level, specializing in music, fine art, handicrafts, performing arts or creative writing. The number of students engaged in aesthetic programs has almost doubled over the last twenty years, from approximately 4 000 individuals in autumn 1997, to more than 7 000 autumn 2016. Despite the increasing popularity, nation-wide reach and great variety of courses, there are few systematic studies and evaluations of the role of these programs within the ”cultural ecosystem” in Sweden.

In this evaluation report, we outline the ways in which the courses at the folk high schools relate to the overall educational system and labour market, how they are active in cultivating artistic abilities and talent and provide employment possibilities for hundreds of teachers who themselves also may act as cultural workers. Through qualitative and quantitative research methods, we study the social composition and vocational orientation of the aesthetic teachers as well as the educational trajectories of the participants and their transitions from education to work.

The first part of the report provides an in-depth account of the participants’ backgrounds, school choices as well as the recruitment and selection processes of the schools. We find that the participants originate from families with relatively high educational merits. This pattern is particularly salient for the participants who specialize in music, creative writing, and the performing arts. The inherited educational resources tend to be more concentrated among the participants’ mothers rather than their fathers, a development that has been accentuated over the last two decades.

The participants report three main reasons for their choice of studying at folk high schools. They cite making a break from their previous lives (orienta-tion to the past), being in a specific situation or particular place (orientation to the present), or as a means of getting somewhere else (orientation towards the future).

During the period 2005–2010, over 30 percent of the participants came to these programs after completing an upper secondary school program specialized in aesthetics. Approximately 30 percent of these cohorts had studied social sciences or natural sciences and 20 percent had studied more vocationally oriented programs at upper secondary school. One surprising finding was that as many as 27 percent of the folk high school participants, within this time period, had studied courses and programs at university level before embarking on folk high school studies, primarily in the fields of the arts and humanities. The institutional links between folk high schools and enrolment in higher education was generally very strong. For example, after graduating from a folk high school aesthetic program, 60 percent of the participants enrolled in higher education within a twelve-year period, primarily to study the arts and humanities, but also social sciences, education and various teachertraining programs.

The second part of the report examines the experiences of the participants of studying at the schools and the experiences of the teachers of these programs. By means of a large-scale questionnaire, we analysed the social and demographic characteristics of the teachers in the aesthetic profile courses. Among the teachers who responded to the questionnaire, we found that an overwhelming majority grew up in Sweden (94 percent), or other European countries (5 percent), while teachers with backgrounds from non-European countries were extremely few (< 1 percent). From an urban-rural perspective, the survey results showed that half of the teachers grew up in smaller villages and towns, a quarter in rural areas, and a quarter from what they classified as larger towns or cities. The teacher collective, that was engaged in the aesthetic subjects, frequently had extensive educational merits, primarily within their respective subject areas within the arts, but also from various educational courses and didactics. Part-time work as adult education teachers enabled many of them to combine being teachers with doing their own artistic projects. This double vocational positioning, as artist and teacher, is investigated and explored further in the report. The dual vocational position and commitment is perceived by the teachers as a means to maintaining their aesthetic competence and the stylistic skills and forms of expression required to teach at this level.

The final part of the report focuses on the participants’ anticipated and actual trajectories after their time at the folk high schools. The anticipated educational routes are primarily portrayed through interviews about participants’ plans for the future. The actual trajectories are outlined through descriptive statistics on the former participants’ subsequent educational enrolments and establishment in the labour market. Given the extent to which they continue within higher education (59 percent of participants), it is not surprising that the time it takes for them to secure employment and to become fully established in the labour market is extensive. However, if their establishment status in the labour market is measured 5 to 10 years following the completion of their folk high school studies in the arts and humanities, their position in the labour market is similar to comparable groups in the population at large. Based on the main source of income ten years after examination, very few participants receive unemployment benefits or are living on social welfare.

In summary, the report shows that the folk high school could be perceived as an important art college at the post-compulsory educational level. It is argued that these folk high schools are a crucial resource for accomplishing the goals outlined in Sweden’s national cultural policy. A large proportion of the teachers in these aesthetic profiles are themselves working as artists. As such, the folk high schools also help sustain a labour market for Swedish cultural workers. When enrolled at these folk high schools, the participants learn to both create and appreciate cultural work, enabling them to understand, value and contribute to artistic and cultural life. Accordingly, we propose that policies on adult education and culture ought to relate to each other in a clearer way, since these two policy areas are shown to overlap. Based on current policy goals, we suggest ways in which to shape a more inclusive recruitment structure to the aesthetic courses.

In this piece, we argue that an economy of publication and citations has emerged that not only changes the notion of what is deemed quality in educational research but also changes the incentives of us as researchers. With pressure on publishing in ’international’ journals, education researchers are increasingly pushed to publish their research in the article format, and for many, in their second or third language (English). Additionally, we are to direct the research to an audience who might not at all be interested or knowledgeable about the context under scrutiny. With such pressure to publish in English-language journals, the question of who is allowed to publish and who is cited is of paramount significance. Based on our own empirical research on the adult educational research field as well as other bibliometric research, we propose that there is an ‘Anglophone’ bias in educational research. We end with a discussion on the implications of the current trend to publish in indexed English-language journals and suggest that ‘Anglophone’ as well as non-Anglophone scholars need to start citing other scholars than those from the dominating ‘Anglophone’ countries in order to further enhance knowledge and debate within education. The ultimate irony of the develop- ments described in this piece is that the researchers from non-Anglophone countries actively engage in a publication game that underscores their own subordination. 

The aim of this study is to explore the contemporary role of the folk high schools as an educational pathway for Swedish MPs. Statistics from the folk high school register at Statistics Sweden is analyzed. In summary, there is still quite many former folk high school participants in the Swedish parliament (27 percent 2014). The MPs’ folk high school-participation consists mainly of short courses. There are differences in terms of level of participation between parties, and over time the folk high schools have increasingly come to be used by members of the parties on the left side of the political spectrum. The folkhigh schools are to a significant extent used as a meeting place during the political career, not only as an educational pathway to power as emphasized in earlier research.

Akademiska samfund har ofta liknats vid klansamhällen. I varje samhälle sägs det finnas hövdingar, tronföljare och särskilda entréritualer som avkrävs nybörjarna för att uppnå medlemskap. Medlemmarna i gemenskapen håller sen noga koll på varandras förehavanden, sina inbördes relationer och de symboliska värden som de både tillerkänner varandra och fightas om. Istället för pengar tävlar man om mer svårbegripliga saker, men i förlängningen handlar det om kollegiala former av anseende, ryktbarhet och erkänsla....

Detta paper presenterar kvantitativa resultat från en kartläggning av folkhögskolans deltagargrupper över tid 1997-2013 vad gäller deltagare som kategoriserats i olika funktionshinderområden, och från en enkät till landets folkhögskolor kring hur de arbetar med och ser på lärmiljön i relation till olika funktionsnedsättningar hos deltagarna.

What the field of adult education research is and how it can be described has been a debated issue over the decades. Several scholars argue that the field today is heterogeneous, borrowing theories and methods from a range of disciplines. In this article, we take such statements as a starting point for empirical analysis. In what ways could it be argued that the field is pluralistic rather than monolithic; heterogeneous rather than homogenous? Drawing on bibliographic data of the top cited articles in three main adult education journals between 2005 and 2012, we illustrate how the citation patterns have tendencies of homogeneity when it comes to the geographical country of authorship, since the USA, UK, Australia and Canada dominate, as well as the research methods adopted, since qualitative approaches have near total dominance. Furthermore, there is a tendency to adopt similar theoretical approaches, since sociocultural perspectives, critical pedagogy and post-structuralism represent more than half of the articles in our sample. At the same time, the results of our analysis indicate signs of scholarly pluralism, for instance, in terms of authorship, since both early career researchers and established researchers are represented among the top cited publications. We conclude the article by arguing that empirical analysis of publication and citation patterns is important to further the development of reflexivity within the field, not least for early career researchers, who might benefit from knowledge about what has been recognized among peers as worth citing in recent times.

I denna utbildningssociologiska studie placeras folkhögskolorna in i det svenska utbildningslandskapet och presenteras som intermediära utbildningsinstitutioner vilka står i relation till studieprogram på gymnasieskolorna samt efterföljande studiealternativ på högskolorna. Först presenteras en kartläggning av volymtillströmningen till folkhögskolorna under den senaste femtonårsperioden, där vi visar att antalet deltagare på allmänna linjer har minskat, medan antalet deltagare på de särskilda linjerna inriktade på musik- och annan estetisk verksamhet har haft betydande volymökningar. Därefter används registerdata från SCB över folkhögskolekohorter mellan åren 2000 och 2002, för att analysera vilka sociala grupper det är som studerat på vilken typ av folkhögskoleutbildning. Resultaten visar att folkhögskolorna används av olika sociala grupper beroende på om man fokuserar på musiklinjer, estetlinjer och allmänna linjer. Ytterligare skillnader i rekryteringen framträder om man jämför olika profiler inom musikområdet. Ett särskilt fokus för analysen är rekryteringen till Skurups och Fridhems jazzlinjer, vilket vi tar som exempel på hur somliga folkhögskoleprogram utvecklats till elitlinjer.

I Sverige finns det sedan en lång tid tillbaka flera utbildningsinstitutioner utanför det formella skolväsendet vilka erbjuder utbildningsmöjligheter för ungdomar och vuxna. En central plats i detta utbildningslandskap har Sveriges 150 folkhögskolor. Den här rapporten handlar om folkhögskolornas arbete med deltagare med funktions--‐ nedsättningar eller, mer precist, om de lärmiljöer i vilka folkhögskolornas pedagogiska arbete sker och hur dessa är utformade och anpassade för deltagare med funktions--‐ nedsättningar. Frågor om skolors lärmiljöer kan anses vara särskilt relevanta för deltagare med funktionsnedsättningar. En vanlig distinktion inom detta forskningsfält gör gällande att en funktionsnedsättning blir ett funktionshinder först i mötet med en hindrande omgivning.

I rapporten visar vi att folkhögskolorna har fått en alltmer framträdande specialpedagogisk funktion i det svenska utbildningssystemet. Exempelvis har andelen deltagare med funktionsnedsättningar på de allmänna kurserna gått från att utgöra var femte deltagare 1997, till var tredje 2013. Ökningen i andel deltagare som kategoriseras som funktionsnedsatta är således väldigt kraftig på senare år. Bland dessa personer är grupperna med neuropsykiatriska diagnoser (särskilt ADHD), med svår psykisk ohälsa och med grava läs- och skrivsvårigheter de största till antalet. Men även deltagare med medicinska, fysiska och kliniska funktionsnedsättningar visar sig särskilt benägna att söka sig till, och använda sig av, folkhögskolornas utbildningsalternativ. Denna ökning av andelen deltagare med funktionsnedsättning verkar också återspegla sig i hur lärarna på folkhögskolorna upplever sitt arbete och sina kompetensbehov. En nyligen genomförd enkätstudie visar att utveckling av kompetensen för att upptäcka och stödja deltagare i behov av särskilt stöd är det som folkhögskollärarna efterfrågar i störst utsträckning – ett kompetensbehov som torde ha uppstått ur de nya villkor som förändringar av deltagargrupperna innebär.

Dessa utvecklingstendenser är samtidigt svåra att frikoppla från andra samhällsförändringar, såsom det stora antal elever som lämnar gymnasieskolan med ofullständiga betyg varje år eller ett ökat bruk av neuropsykiatriska diagnoser. Mot bakgrund av den livfulla debatt som på senare tid har förts om den svenska gymnasieskolans kris och de många elever som slås ut från denna skolform, är det förvånande att vi inte vet mer om de utbildningsinstitutioner som ”tar vid” och hur de arbetar med grupper som står relativt långt ifrån arbetsmarknaden.

Mot bakgrund av dessa förändringar menar vi att det är särskilt motiverat att ta ett samlat grepp om frågan hur folkhögskolorna arbetar och anpassar sina verksamheter till deltagare med funktionsnedsättningar. I denna kartläggning tar vi hjälp av officiell statistik för att visa hur antalet och andelen deltagare med funktionsnedsättningar förändrats i skolformen över tid, men frågar även folkhögskolornas representanter hur de anser att folkhögskolornas lärmiljöer är tillgängliggjorda och anpassade för deltagare med olika funktionsnedsättningar. Innan vi ger oss i kast med dessa frågeställningar ska vi säga någonting om vårt övergripande syfte och bakgrunden till rapporten.

Rapporten är strukturerad enligt följande: först introduceras folkhögskolorna som skolform genom att deras politiska syften, finansiering samt kursverksamhet beskrivs. Därefter kommer ett avsnitt som redogör för studiens metod och design. Resultatavsnittet inleds med övergripande kartbilder över antalet deltagare på folkhögskolorna indelade efter breda funktionshinderområden. Därefter följer en analys över de motiv och påverkansfaktorer som folkhögskolornas lärare och verksamhetsledare tillerkänner betydelse i enkätsvaren. Sedan kommer en mer detaljerad analys över skolmiljöernas utformning med avseende på (i) multiprofessionalitet, (ii) pedagogiska strategier samt (iii) tekniskt och fysiskt stöd. Till sist diskuterar vi vad folkhögskoleföreträdarna själva framhåller som framgångsfaktorer respektive utvecklingsområden i skolornas arbete med att anpassa och tillgängliggöra deras lärmiljöer för deltagare med funktionsnedsättningar. På basis av dessa svar resonerar vi om det arbete som görs inom ramen för folkhögskolorna redan idag och om vad som eventuellt kan behöva förbättras.

A common dream among the youth is to become a successful musician. By surveying young aspiring jazz musicians trying to enter a prestigious audition, this paper examines assets and attitudes involved in the formation of a music field. In the study we build on Bourdieusian sociological theory and method in order to map out a space of jazz applicants and characterize the group(s) seeking to enter. Our findings, based on a specific multiple correspondence analysis performed on 211 applicants, suggest that the space of jazz applicants is structured by three important factors: (i) the total volume of music capital, (ii) commitment to the (professional) field of practice and (iii) the familiarity acquired through previous music socialization and training. Using clustering techniques, we further distinguish four distinct groups among the applicants - the Insiders, Outsiders, Inheritors and Underdogs - and reveal the success rate of the groups. We find that the acquisition and enactment of a specific music capital is of particular importance for elite music admissions, while at the same time the sizeable number of musically affluent candidates turns the audition into an event underscored with considerable uncertainty.

This paper explores the process of transnational institutional matching between elite institutions in Singapore and Great Britain, and the role of state-sponsored scholarships in enabling this process as political and administrative elites are selected and groomed. Using data gathered from in-depth interviews conducted with Singaporean undergraduates study- ing at Oxbridge and a dataset of the institutional origins of 580 Singap- orean government scholars, the analysis illustrates how students are being matched from two Singaporean junior colleges to Oxbridge and back to the higher strata of the Singaporean Public Service. We show that the educational trajectories of these government scholars need to be addressed in relation to the informational capital acquired in specific elite schools as well as the governing roles these individuals are meant to obtain within the state upon graduation.

This thesis examines the music careers to and from folk high school training programs through four empirical articles. Building on relational sociological theory and methods, predominantly the work of Pierre Bourdieu, the thesis first provides a cartographic analysis of the cultural hierarchies of folk high school music training within the Swedish educational landscape. The investigations show how music has grown to become the biggest thematic orientation among the specialized programs of the folk high schools. They also reveal how these programs can be positioned at an intermediary stage, while being differentiated between mass- and elite- schooling. Next, the thesis outlines detailed analyses of the recruitment base of the dominating music programs in jazz and the study careers of their participants. By means of relational statistical methods, we investigate the inclusion into and exclusion from elite educational programs in jazz, and uncover the force and composition of a specific form of music capital. Analysis from an in-depth ethnographic account of the gatekeeping procedures of jazz auditions allows for the discussion of several tensions between evaluation and value, rulefollowing and rule-transgression, as well as charismatic and institutional means of valuation.

Research funding, promotions, and career trajectories are currently increasingly dependent on the emerging economy of publications and citations across the globe. Such an economy encourages scholars to publish in international journals that are indexed in databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. These developments place an increased emphasis on the question of who is allowed to publish in the journals listed there and whose research counts as valuable. Based on bibliographic data from articles submitted to three main journals in the field of adult education research between 2005 and 2012, we scrutinize the extent to which the emerging economy of publications and citations is dependent on national and regional boundaries. Our results show how four Anglophone countries dominate the field in relation to both published articles and the share of most cited articles and where the publication pattern of these authors are national and regional rather than international.

As part of the reception to the article ‘Mastering the jazz standard: Sayings and Doings of Artistic Valuation’, American Journal of Cultural Sociology invited two scholars to comment and critically scrutinize this work. Before venturing into a response to some of the many issues raised in their highly spirited remarks, I would like to thank Antoine Hennion and Lisa McCormick for engaging in this discussion and taking time to reflect and comment on my article.

This paper is an attempt to characterize the field of research on the education and learning of adults. Characterizing a research field includes the (re)construction of scientific borders, processes that is based on inclusion and exclusions including research themes, objects methodologies and theories. Our intention here is to “objectify” this field of research through a content analysis of three key research journals active within the field, Adult Education Quarterly (AEQ), International Journal of Lifelong Education (IJLE), and Studies in Continuing Education (SICE). By gathering aggregated statistics based on publications between the years 2005-2012 focusing on aspects such as authorship in terms of geography and gender, distribution of citations, the most popular research objects, methodologies and theories, we hope to characterize some of the reoccurring themes and approaches, as well as encourage debate and discussions about what research on the education and learning might be about. In the paper, we treat the different approaches and contributions as productive forces in order for a field to come into existence, be legitimised, and acknowledged as a field in which one would like to engage in (cf. Foucault, 1980, Bourdieu, 1988). Ultimately, different characterizations and descriptions of the field need to be made available in order to open up possibilities for the field to become something different than what it is.

This article examines music auditions in jazz education and the artistic valuation of music performances by gatekeepers working in two prestigious schools. Using the inherent insecurities of the entry-test situation as a site of ethnographic fieldwork, the article explores the whole chain of valuation needed in order to produce a hierarchical ordinal ranking of the candidates. By drawing attention to the distinction between what is being said and what is being done by the gatekeepers, a structural ambiguity is identified in the selection game: on the one hand, it is dependent on romantic notions of artistic uniqueness (originality, personality, authenticity) and on the other, it relies on the requirements of jurisdiction and equal assessment (numerical grading, standardized repertoire). The artistic doxa of jazz is constituted in opposition to two negative characters, either by framing the candidates as epigones – echoing the standard repertoire too closely – or framing them as heretics, considered as traitors to the local interpretation of the standard.