The journal Högre utbildning (HU) celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2021. To mark the occasion, the editorial team conducted a review of contributions published between 2011 and 2021. This article presents the results of the review along with reflections on HU’s mission to promote the development of knowledge about higher education within a Swedish and Nordic context. Since its inception in 2011, HU has established itself as a key publishing channel for both academic studies on higher education and practice-oriented development projects focused on teaching and learning in higher education. During its first decade, the journal has published 142 contributions by 262 authors from a wide range of institutions and disciplinary backgrounds, reflecting HU’s broad target audience and multidisciplinary focus. The analysis reveals that the majority of contributions are written in Swedish and focus on teaching-related issues within the humanities, social sciences, and teacher education. The most commonly employed methods are qualitative studies and literature reviews, while mixed methods and systematic reviews are less frequent. Despite a growing number of publications and downloads, the review identifies a need for more contributions from fields such as natural sciences, technology, and health sciences/medicine. While HU maintains its Swedish and Nordic perspective, it is encouraging to note that the proportion of submissions written in English has increased. To foster critical reflections on issues in higher education, the journal introduced a new category in 2021, In-depth Discussions, which has resulted in several valuable contributions. HU’s flexible submission formats allow for both overarching and practice-focused issues concerning teachers and students to be highlighted. The journal has the potential to act as a bridge between different research fields and to help illuminate various contexts within the broad and complex landscape of higher education research.

Högskoleläraren befinner sig i ett spänningsfält som rymmer många perspektiv. För läraren står oftast pedagogiken i centrum. Samtidigt är läraren examinator och därmed en myndighetsutövare med skyldighet att examinera på ett rättssäkert sätt. Hur ska bedömningen gå till? Hur kan den utformas för att ge bästa grunden för lärande? Hur görs examinationen rättssäker? Detta är några centrala frågor som avhandlas i denna rapport.

Fokus i rapporten är högskolepedagogisk utveckling och arbete med kvalitet. Just kvalitetsarbete har blivit alltmer betonat inom den högre utbildningen, men trots det saknas kunskaper om vad kvalitet i högskoleutbildning innebär i praxis. Det finns inte tillnärmelsevis lika mycket skrivet om högskolepedagogisk utveckling som det finns texter om kontrollerande ansatser.

Boken vill bidra med ny kunskap om kvalitetsarbete med examination och rättssäkerhet i fokus, och dessutom tillföra ny kunskap om praxisorientrat kvalitetsarbete i sig. Komplexiteten i sådan verksamhet beskrivs genom ett högskoleövergripande projekt baserat på workshoppar och på vad detta projekt har gett för resultat. Arbetet, som har involverat ett par hundra högskolelärare, har gett insikter om hur examinationens praktik ter sig för högskolans olika aktörer och om hur denna praktik kan utvecklas. Dessutom ger boken perspektiv på hur internt kvalitetsarbete kan fungera – eller inte fungera.

This book explores narrative imagination and emotion as resources for learning critical meta-reflection. The author examines the learning trajectories of several students as they engage in learning to think critically through a new approach to creative writing, and details how learning through writing is linked to new discoursal identities which are trialled in the writing process. In doing so, she analyses the processes of expansion and change that result from the negotiations involved in learning through writing. This volume offers a completely new approach to creative writing, including useful practical advice as well as a solid theoretical base. It is sure to appeal to students of creative writing and discourse analysis as well as applied linguistics and language as identity.

I högskolesammanhang finns en tendens att betrakta fantasi och känsla som hinder för kritiskt tänkande. I denna studie, som har en högskoledidaktisk utgångspunkt, prövas tvärt om att se subjektivitet som resurs. Studien prövar lärande genom skrivande. Den prövar också hur man kan analysera den skrivna texten för att se vilka läranderesultat som följt avskrivandet. Närmare bestämt är det kreativt skrivande som metod för att öva kritiskt tänkande som undersöks. På en högskolekurs i kreativt skrivande får studenter i uppgift att skriva berättelser utifrån ett moraliskt dilemma. Berättelserna blir underlag för diskussioner och analyser under seminarier. Till sist sammanfattar studenterna sina tankar och iakttagelser i samband med övningen i en reflektionstext. Dessa texter utgör huvudmaterialet för studiens textanalytiska ansats.För att undersöka lärandet genom skrivande har aktivitetsteori, en organisationsteori på sociokulturell grund, använts som en textanalytisk modell. Analysresultaten visar att kritiskt tänkande blir olika i de närmare femtio texterna som undersökts, men att det följer vissa mönster som är beroende av vad skribenterna vill med sitt skrivande och vilka de blir när de skriver, alltså vilka skribentidentiteter som intresserar dem.

This study’s research problem has its starting point in teaching and learning in higher education. The focus is onlearning through writing, particularlythe use of creative writing for critical thinking purposes. Learning is viewed asbeinglinked to identity and to new possibilities for selfhood as writers, thus opening up new ways of thinking from the expansion and changethat result from the identification processes involved in learning. In a writing context, identity is defined as discoursal identity, and it originates and develops in an interplay between the writer and the writing environment, where the writer may reflect upon their own learning and that of others through their writing. The activities of writing and learning by writing are thus viewed as deeply embedded in the social context in which they are situated. My main hypothesis is that creative writing can enhance critical thinking, and the study at handaims totestthishypothesis by means of a writing assignment that I have developed. There are two more specific aims of the study. One is empirical, that of testingthe link between critical thinking and creative writing, to examinedifferent types of reflective writing and the discoursal identities that result from the writingassignment. Another aim is theoretical. I look for an understanding of how texts constitute sites where learning and identity are negotiated by writers in their writing environment. For thisI have constructed a model for analyzing context in text, applying categories fromactivity theory (Engeström 1987) onto various types of textual analyses, mainly thematic and discourse analysis. In this study, the model has been empirically tested in a case study. The results confirm the hypothesis that creative writing can be used to traincritical thinking, but the learning outcomesvaryamongst the writers and areclosely linked to thediscoursal identities they wish to ascribe to themselves. The empirical test of the model shows that it can be used to map texts as “sites of struggle” (Ivanič1998:331f.) revealing where conflicts lie between the learnerand the learning environment.