Through interviews with 52 upper-secondary students from different socioeconomic, educational and migrant/native backgrounds, the article examines students’ own stories of what drives them to perform well in school. Different kinds of ‘illusios’ are reconstructed in terms of Bourdieu's sociology; Revanche, Proficiency, Fear of failing and Entitlement . They relate to different forms of social energy and emotions, such as the desire for rehabilitation of the self or family in the eyes of the other, and the drive for justification. Some is fuelled with social shame of not reaching the same position as parents, or meaning falling out of the system, while others are driven by an urge to be knowledgeable. These illusios work differently in relation to the students’ habitus.

Sweden has been recognised as one of the most generous countries in terms of the governance of migration and asylum. The 2015 “refugee crisis” placed the Swedish migration and asylum system under extreme pressure when more than 163,000 refugees arrived in 2015. Like other EU members, Swedish migration policies have become gradually more restrictive, legitimised by the discourse of securitisation, whereby migration is addressed as a threat. By taking “securitisation” as a conceptual point of departure, the aim of this chapter is to analyse the official statements and non-official motives behind the securitisation turn of Sweden’s post-2015 migration policy and relate them to the vulnerable situation unaccompanied immigrants experienced when they came to Sweden in 2015 as refugees and asylum seekers. However, even if some of the interviewees had experienced racism and other negative attitudes and felt ill at ease waiting for their residency permit, unaccompanied immigrants are not necessarily vulnerable victims without the capacity and will to learn a new language, educate themselves and find a job.

Denna rapport är resultat av ett samverkansprojekt mellan forskare från Mälardalens universitet och samordningsförbudnet RAR Sörmland. Projektet KLARA (https://rarsormland.se/insats/klara/) siktar på att öka utrikesföddas kvinnors integration på arbetsmarknaden och i övriga samhället.

In respect to the increased number of cases of research misconduct in Sweden, especially the Macchiarini case, a new national ethics legislation has been adopted. Following the previous and new legal acts and the Higher Ordinance for studies, Swedish universities have established qualitative measures to make sure that PhD students have knowledge about research ethics when graduating, for instance through offering third-cycle courses in research ethics. In this article, we describe how a Swedish university has been working with such a course to promote good research practice and ethical integrity to the researchers of tomorrow. We are doing this by describing the course structure and content, its outcome in relation to the legislation concerning misconduct in research and ethics within research, as a conscious reflection on research and its consequences. The results indicate that the course is in alignment with other scientists and/or rules and regulations.

This article departs from the educational reform of upper secondary school 2011, and the changing in the curricula for religion studies education. Our theoretical point of departure is inspired by Ivor Goodson’s and Thomas Popkewitz’s understanding of a school subject and its relation to socialisation. In relation to their understanding of a school subject and its socializing role, we see a didactical implication that the subject of religious study education will fall back to transferring knowledge that is easy to teach, control, assess, and grade. We wonder how teachers in religion education studies respond to, and handle existential and pupil related question in the classroom when they, for example, are addressed with questions about life and death, the environmental crisis or global poverty, even if there is no scheduled time for such matters. To answer this question, we have interviewed eleven religion education teachers from different programs in upper secondary school about how they consider the subject, its content and purpose and how this materialises in their teaching. The conclusions we could draw from our interviews are that most of the teachers try to be open and respond to existential and pupil-initiated question, even if there is no scheduled time for this, while others focuses on facts about the Abrahamitic religions

This chapter originates from the educational reform of Swedish upper secondary school in 2011, where the focus for religious studies education changed from being based on different religious perspectives, various existential questions, and pupil-initiated questions to an emphasis based on a scientific-rational content, with an exceptional position for Christianity in relation to other world religions. The aim of the chapter is twofold. The first purpose is to clarify the subject scientific approach and its exceptional position for Christianity in relation to other world religions mean for the socializing dimension in upper secondary education. The second purpose is to illuminate how teachers in religion education studies respond to and handle existential and pupil-related questions that emerge during the lessons. Given both the historical study on the purpose of religious study education and the interview study focusing on a common educational dilemma, the objective perspective, based only on facts, risks losing its relevance for the pupils if the teacher does not nuance the images of different beliefs and their forms of expression and considers a student-oriented perspective. Hence the teacher must keep the balance between what they must do and what they want to do to fulfill their assignment in situ.

I den här artikeln utgår vi från religionsämnets reformering 2011 med syfte att ringa in vad ett mer faktabaserat och rationellt förhållningssätt till andra religioner samt vad företrädet för kristendom kan betyda för ämnets fostrande roll och uppgift på gymnasie­skolan. För att förstå vad ämnets innehåll och syfte innebär som en del i formandet av den önskade samhällsmedlemmen, utgår vi från Popkewitz förståelse av alkemi och analyserar ämnet i ett historiskt och teoretiskt perspektiv. Genom en konceptualisering av ämnet över tid identifieras fyra vågor som format ämnet: en konfessionell våg, en objektiv våg, en osäker våg och en våg som benämns objektiv 2.0. Den första vågen karaktäriseras av ett väl avgränsat kristendomsämne med tydligt syfte och innehåll. Den önskade eleven är ett lydande och underdånigt barn med rötter i den kristna läran. Den andra vågen förstås bäst utifrån sin objektiva orientering. Den önskade eleven är vidsynt och tolerant med en god förståelse för kristendom och andra religioner samt existentiell pluralism. Den tredje vågen visar ett religionskunskapsämne med stor spännvidd och gränslöst innehåll. Den önskade eleven är vidsynt med god förståelse för religiös och existentiell mångfald förankrat i en kristen tradition och västerländsk humanism. Den kristna underströmmen når i och med den fjärde vågens inramning återigen ytan. Inramningen och avgränsningen sker genom ett fokus på faktakunskaper och ett vetenskapligt-rationellt förhållningssätt samt förståelse för religion som ett socialt snarare än ett existentialistiskt fenomen. Vi avslutar artikeln med att diskutera några didaktiska implikationer relaterade till reformen 2011.

Under 2002-03 genomförde Skolverket den hittills största utvärderingen av svensk skola, den s.k. Nationella utvärderingen 2003 (NU-03). Utvärderingen involverade ett stort antal forskare samt ca 200 skolor, 1 900 lärare och 10 000 elever. Närmare tjugotalet rapporter har publicerats med resultatredovisningar för olika ämnen och sammanfattningar av utvärderingen. Hösten 2005 ville Skolverket att NU-03 skulle granskas för att försöka dra lärdomar av arbetet inför eventuella kommande nationella utvärderingar. Uppdraget att utvärdera NU-03 har genomförts av en forskargrupp inom forskningsmiljön MEA – Mälardalens utvärderingsakademi vid Mälardalens högskola. Uppdraget var att belysa styrkor och svagheter med den nationella utvärderingen. Metautvärdering av NU-03 påbörjades i oktober 2005 och avslutades i november 2006. I denna rapport riktas uppmärksamheten mot olika huvudmoment i arbetet med NU-03 för att ge ett omdöme om utvärderingsmodellens styrkor och svagheter. I metautvärderingen sätts också NU-03 i relation till den nationella utvärderingen 1992 (NU-92) för ett jämförande reso-nemang om de båda utvärderingarnas upplägg eller design. Sammanfattningsvis är vår bedömning att styrkan med NU-03 är väl avstämda instrument. Svagheten är att dessa har utformats för en gammal läroplan och situation i skolan. Man kan säga att NU-03 är ett ”välstämt piano” men frågan är om det används till att spela en gammal melodi som inte längre passar dagens repertoar, det vill säga den multikulturella skolan på 2000-talet.

The need for an “experimentum linguae” in didactics. on the clas-sifying, manipulating, integrating and segregating functions of language. This article explores the boundaries of language, and how language serves both to include and to exclude. Following Agamben’s view of language my presentation unfolds in three movements. First, I explore Agamben’s use of infancy in order to grasp the limits of language by illuminating the split between language and discourse. The second part includes voices on participation, which are analysed through the metaphors of “us and them” and “doors and bridges” to illustrate the segregating and integrating functions that language performs. Finally, I return to Agamben’s view of language and his notion of an “experimentum linguae” in order to criticize and challenge didactic perspectives that cling to a discourse which keeps ambivalence at bay, inasmuch as the “experimentum” opens up the very space of ethics.

LET THE DIFFERENCE BE. Taking my point of departure from a school’s neglecting of the harassment of two Roma children (eller Taking my point of departure from the neglecting of the harassment of two Roma children by their school), I ask how it is possible to be placed outside an order that is supposed to support and protect all children regardless of their social, cultural, and ethnic background. The article is divided in three parts. In order to understand how it is possible to expose children to structural violence, I illuminate how it is possible to reduce some people to non-humans, less worthy than others, with the help of Agambens understanding of bio-politics and the making of the non-human. There after I explore the foundations of Agamben’s terra ethica. An ethics that takes us beyond responsibility and dignity not only erases the division between worthy and non worthy beings, it also makes the question of identity to a non-question. With this ethics in mind, I return to the case of the Roma children, and arrive at the conclusion that instead of clinging on to an epistemological conformity that produces an order that actually makes exclusion possible, we ought to let the difference be.

Transnational migration is not a novelty; it has been a constant element of human existence. In recent years, the question of migration has preoccupied public discourse in many countries, especially when it comes to refugees and asylum-seekers. This situation has also influenced the discourse on educational praxis and educational research, and posed the question of how educators should respond to the refugee crisis. When it comes to the educational traditions I explore in this chapter (multicultural education, citizenship education, and cosmopolitan education), and their relation to the question of refugees, they have focused more on migrants and the process of admission, inclusion, and citizenship, rather than on the existential state of the refugee. Even if these traditions have their differences, they share the devotion to citizenship, community, and humanity, and that a proper educational response to the refugee crisis is to be found in the universal declaration of human rights. However, when it comes to the empirical situation worldwide, this focus seems too narrow since it only includes de jure refugees and misses those who remain outside the political community. These refugees do not share the world with the rest of humankind. With the help of the works of Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben on refugees and human rights, I show that the existential dimension of the refugee is fundamental for keeping the educational question on the past and the present, the local and the global, and inhabitants and migrants, alive.

”Delaktighet”, ”påverkan” och ”engagemang” har blivit honnörsord i diskussionen om hur medborgare bör vara med och påverka sina egna och andras situa­tion. Tre stora utredningar gjorda under 2000-talet visar emellertid att den form av social, ekonomisk och etnisk segregering som Sverige er­farit under de senaste 20 åren resulterat i minskad social och poli­tisk delaktighet i heterogena mångkulturella områden.

I denna studie förs ett samtal med ungdomar och vuxna ansvariga in­volve­rade i projekt som syftar till att öka ungdomars samhälleliga del­aktig­het och få dem att verka för lokal­sam­hällets väl. Samtalen berör frågor om delaktighet, inkludering och ex­klu­dering. Den bild som växer fram angående ungdomars känsla av del­aktighet är mer positiv än den som framkommer i de tre statliga ut­red­ningar­na som utgör en referensram för denna studie. Då studien också be­rör de former av exkludering som sker genom inkluderande sträv­and­en är det emellertid möjligt att visa att delaktigheten bland ung­dom­arna är villkorad då vissa medlemmar är mer delaktiga än andra.

This article focuses on how high-achieving Swedish upper secondary students from families with low educational capital manage to transform their cultural capital and habitus to embark on a successful educational career. The analytical framework of the study is based on Bourdieu’s understanding of cultural capital and habitus. The data analyzed are based on interviews with 23 upper secondary students. Their success is based on a combination of a caring home environment and seeing both trustfully teachers, and like-minded peers as resources for their educational success, together with an awareness that good grades equal desirable position on the labour market.

The article outlines two lines of thought in the current debate on education. First, the declining results in schools are seen as an overarching problem for the school system, second, individual performance within schools is disconnected from societal, collective goals. We then discuss different modes of thinking of socialization in relation to general didactics. The teachers’ role in that sense is to socialize the next generation into a given social order. Another mode of thinking regards the young person as discovering society, within society. We argue, inspired by Wolfgang Klafki, for a conception of “general didactics” as a response to the need for an education for society that has solidarity as an overarching aim, rather than to produce new members to society. We end the article with the conclusion that the limits of general didactics are in one way or the other societal, inasmuch public education reflects the need for social (re-)production of knowledge, norms and values.

In this article we examine two different but interconnected problems, which weaken the struggle for and the idea of equal education in the Swedish comprehensive educational system. One of the problems is the increasing segrega-tion of the Swedish comprehensive school. This segregation is characterized socio, cultural and economic difference. In these areas the concentration of children with diverse ethnicity and low income background are high, while in other areas the opposite is true. In this article we focus on the former schools. These schools are characterized as low achieving schools, and schools that are in crisis. The second issue that is intimately connected to the low achieving school that we examine is the disposition and to some extent the composition of the teaching force. We argue that there is a disconnection between the two aspects, and ground the problem in teacher training. We argue that the current teacher education is not constructed to prepare teachers to meet the challeng-es in multiethnic schools located in socio-economic deprived areas. The article ends with a critical discussion of “low performing school” and the role of teacher education in preparing teachers for schools in segregated areas. 

Forskning visar att föräldrars utbildningsnivå är en av de starkaste faktorer som påverkar elevens skolresultat. Detta kapitel handlar om hur en grupp unga elever, som trots knappa sociala och kulturella resurser, klarar av skolan med goda studieresultat. Vi är särskilt intresserade av att se vilka gemensamma egenskaper elever från hem utan utbildningsvana tillskriver de lärare som enligt dem har bidragit till att de lyckas med sina studier, och vad dessa lärare gjorde för att sporra dem till att engagera sig i skolarbetet. Resultatet bygger på 23 intervjuer med gymnasieungdomar från hem utan utbildningsvana, och på teorier om habitus och sociala rum, för att förstå hur dessa unga använder och knyter an till lärare för att klara skolan med höga betyg. Utifrån vårt teoretiska ramverk, och med ett särskilt fokus på hur dessa elever uppfattar sina lärare som viktiga resurser för en framgångsrik studiekarriär, lyckas vi fånga tre egenskaper hos lärare som spelar roll för elevernas skolgång: 1) uppmärksamhet och tydlighet, 2) motivation och bemötande, samt 3) förståelse och omtanke. Även om eleverna uppskattar olika kombinationer av lärarnas egenskaper, är det tydligt att den signifikanta läraren är engagerad och inspirerar eleverna att klara av skolan med höga betyg, samt en person de kan relatera till, både privat och känslomässigt.