The focus of this study is to examine how schoolteachers talks about the relation between the level of expectations and the identity construction of school students.  Teachers expectations is a recurring concept in the school world and in the Swedish school law. It is highly recommended in the teaching processes that teachers should have high expectations on their students. Individuals understands and interpret the concept of expectations in different ways according to their own values, standards and norms. The aim in this study is to clarify what discourse is common or used among teachers.

Two discourses where identified in the analysis of teachers construction of expectations in relations to students in ground school and also of their social background.

Since 2009 results from the Pisa test shows that Swedish schools are progressing a big gap between the students that achieves and those who doesn`t. It also shows that the students who is preforming the worst results are those whom lives and goes to school in a socioeconomic disadvantaged area. Through this study it can be visible how  the grade of a teachers expectations forms by the way a child build his or her own identity towards the world.

The data is collected through semi-structured interviews with four teachers. The analyses are based on a discursive psychological analysis.

This study shows that teachers speaks and understands different of expectations but a discourse of goals and achivements is clear and a part of a political school discourse.  It also appears that, depending on the students background, the teacher can change the grade of the expectation and refers to pupils from a socio economic disadvantage areas as poorly impaired students.

This study presents a critical discourse-inspired analysis of written rules in Swedish primary schools, with the purpose to identify an image of an ”ideal student”. Swedish schools form local rules and regulations, where each pricipal is responsible for content and form. Therefore, an attempt is here made to find and discuss varations in the rules from different schools. The empirical findings are analysed with help of a theoretical framework based on Michel Foucault’s power theory, Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis and Zygmynt Bauman’s views of ethics, morality and identity.

The findings portray an ideal student who is kind, friendly and helpful to others. Some additional described ”good” behaviors, such as appropiate language and honesty, are here suggested to have cultural and traditional connotations. Variations in descriptions of preferred traits and practices are found in rules from different schools. With inspiration from Foucault and Bauman it is here argued that this can challenge the formation of school norms and student’s values.  

Based on these findings and reflections, I suggest that school rules should represent essential educational and practical requirements and be communicated and formatted with clear purpose and possibilities for understanding and implementation.

On July 1, 2010, the Swedish Armed Forces made the biggest organizational change in over 100 years when the mandatory military service (conscription) was deactivated and replaced with an all-volunteer force. With this, a whole new profession was introduced in Sweden, the employed soldier. It has now been a decade since the soldiers and their squad leaders were introduced as a professional category and since 2016 the group leader is also officially a part of the Armed Forces leadership hierarchy together with the officers. The purpose of the study has been to study how the squad leaders, in terms of their new professional role, view leadership and how they experience the leadership of their closest officers and how it affects their leadership and job satisfaction.

The study was conducted with an interview method with six squad leaders that work in the same military unit in the Armed Forces. Their experiences and views on leadership have been compared with the leadership model of Gerry Larsson (2006) (which is the same as the officers are educated in) and the theory of destructive leadership by Maria Fors-Brandebo, Sofia Nilsson and Gerry Larsson (2018).

The results of this study show that the squad leader, for the most part, have the same view of leadership and desire the same qualities and competencies as in Larsson's leadership model but with the exception that they rated the trait humbleness highly in good leadership. Humbleness is a new trait not found in any of the theories. The study also shows that the squad leaders have to adapt their own leadership both consciously and unconsciously to their officer’s leadership in order to keep the job satisfaction and motivation high for their soldiers. The study also shows that squad leader’s trust in the officer and their work motivation is highly influenced by the officer’s leadership.

This study sheds light on dance as democracy among people 65+. The article presents a study that is part of the project Age on Stage, in which elderly people were offered to express themselves through dance as an aesthetic form of expression. Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir are applied as philosophical lenses. Elderly people’s participation and involvement in dance activities are investigated and discussed. The specific aim is to describe and analyse contemporary dance as a form of democracy among people 65+. The following questions were formulated: What constitutes dance as communication within a group of elderly people? How do the participants internalise and use dance as an artistic form of expression in relation to the possibilities and limitations a workshop provides? A phenomenological analysis based on field notes and video recordings have generated the following themes: a functional body with impetus to move, to embody dance as a form of expression, to use Dance as a Form of Artistic Expression in Aesthetic Communication, and Reflections on life, body and dance. The results reveal existential and aesthetic dimensions of dance activities for elderly people that have not been emphasized to any greater extent in earlier studies.

The research presented in this paper explores how preschool teachers in Sweden negotiate tensions stemming from perceived cultural dilemmas among themselves, the children they work with, and the children´s parents or guardians. The aim in characterising this process of negotiation is to expand knowledge about how to adapt pedagogically to the increasing diversity of the preschool sector in Sweden. The study is based on focus group interviews with preschool teachers who work in schools where nearly 70% of the children are newly arrived immigrants or have parents or guardians who were born in a country other than Sweden. The interview data were subjected to a thematic analysis. Three themes emerged: Circumventing conflicts by keeping preschool peaceful; Culture as a barrier and opportunity for dealing with dilemmas; and engaging with conflicts as a means of developing the preschool profession. The themes are discussed in relation to Gert Biesta’s concepts of the rational community and the community of those who have nothing in common. 

STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) education is currently gaining ground in many parts of the world, particularly in higher stages of the educational system. Foreseeing a development of STEAM policy and research also in the early years, this colloquium seeks to bring questions of gendering processes to the table. The authors aspire to prevent the development of a gender-blind STEAM discourse for early childhood education. Instead, they encourage practitioners and researchers to make use of STEAM education to recognise and transcend gendered norms connected to children’s being and learning in the arts, STEM and STEAM.

The aim of this study is to describe and compare the personal journeys of minors and adults immigrants into the Swedish society as well as their way into their first jobs. A qualitative approach was used in this study along with six semi-structed interviews, three of the interviewees immigrated to Sweden as minors and the other three as adults. The study’s theoretical framework covers Diaz (1993) seven dimensions of the integration process, which symbolizes a basic and mediated integration. Previous research were used in conjunction with the study's theoretical frame of reference in the section of analysis. The results indicate that the integration among individuals who came to Sweden as minors was easier, for example when it came to getting to their first jobs. However, the introduction of a new culture and society has been a challenge for all the interviewees, each individual learned to deal with it indifferent ways.

This study is about El Sistema, a choir- and orchestra school, that focuses on social development and uses music as a tool to achieve their aims. They primarily work where it is needed the most. Their vision is to get all children, independent of social status, opportunity to take part in instrumental- and choir lessons. The purpose of this study is to shed light on how the El Sistema teachers enable musical learning to take place among the participants. Socio-cultural perspectives on learning, situated learning, the different layers of music from the theory of Frede V. Nielsen, and the intrinsic value of musical experience are used as theoretical starting points. The method in this study was qualitative, semi-structured interviews. This study was conducted with four qualitative interviews. The result shows that musical issues are, to some extent, neglected in El Sistema´s work, that different educators within El Sistema are differently aware of the musical aspect, and how the musical quality is to be achieved in the work, despite the fact that El Sistema has highly appointed musical goals. The result also shows that musical learning is promoted by teaching children in small groups, several times a week.

The HR industry is a fast-growing and rapidly developing field setting high demands on HR-professionals to keep abreast of change. The purpose of this thesis is therefore to explore the possibilities HR-professionals in governmental organisations have in order to develop their HR-competencies. In order to do this the thesis has sought out to explore what motivates competency development and how it is put into practice by interviewing four HR-professionals. The analysis has been conducted with the help of the theory of Situated learning. The result of the thesis is that HR-professionals develop their HR-competencies both through formal and informal learning although they prefer to use informal learning through their communities of practice. The tasks conducted by HR-professionals as well as their formal education differ to a vast extent which acts as a motivation for competency development. Another factor which motivates HR-professionals’ competency development is that the HR field is rapidly changing which sets high demands on them, both through their organisations and through the individuals themselves, to continuously learn in their profession.

Taking its point of departure in the connotations to war and violence inherent in what is here called the ‘language of crisis’ (Jantzen), the purpose of this article is to explore what it might mean to reassess the language of educational change and policy reform in the imagery of natality and birth (Arendt). If the task in a ‘crisis’ is to fight against the crisis, effectively and forcefully, the argument of the paper is that the root metaphors of natality and birth puts into play an imagery that makes possible a relational language for educational change and reform. If the language we use has performative consequences, the question explored is what a ‘language of natality’ can make possible as a language of struggle for education.

Taking its point of departure in the idea that language is never neutral but always coded in the masculine or the feminine (Irigaray), the main purpose of the paper is to explore the gendered coding of Religious Education teaching and how this coding interplays in shaping relationships and knowledge in the classroom. As recent research shows, debates about religion are becoming increasingly aggressive in many Western democracies and Religious Education is not unaffected by this. Drawing on Luce Irigaray’s notion of sexual difference the paper argues that RE tends to have a masculine coding in its overemphasis on beliefs, creeds and concepts. This not only positions both girls and boys as feminine in relation to (masculine) religion, it also fails to offer the more nuanced understanding of religious life so well needed today. The paper is divided into three sections. The first outlines briefly, theoretically and methodologically, the larger study of which this paper is part. The second offers an exposition of Irigaray’s thinking on sexual difference, and the third relates her philosophy to three empirical examples. The paper ends with a summary of the main points of the argument and the implications of language matters for Religious Education teaching.

Inspired by Adriana Cavarero’s recent work on maternal inclinations as a postural term, the overall purpose of this article is to seek out a geometry of the educational relation that is alien to the masculine myth of the ‘economic man’. Drawing on Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons’s critique of the marketization of education, reading their giving ‘shape and form’ to the scholastic school through the geometry of Cavarero’s ‘maternal inclinations’, the article shows how images and metaphors associated with the posture of rectitude infuse the scholastic model of the school. At the same time, we argue, it testifies to a geometry of an inclined subject and, in doing so, it offers an opening for recovering the significance of the feminine and maternal to educational theory. Affirming this opening, the paper makes a shift of emphasis from scholastic techniques to educational postures.

Making liberal democratic values meaningful to study in schools is a more complex issue than being a question of turning values into explicit educational goals (Schleicher) or of curing a motivational deficit (Critchley). Since values seem to play an important role in the practices and commitments of people's everyday lives, values are calling for a continual refinement of our words in relation to the world (Laverty). The purpose of this article is to offer contours of an educational language about values that acknowledges this refinement and the pedagogical work that teachers might do-by way of language-in order to sustain the living-on of what is valued and valuable to us as individuals and as societies. To this end, the article is divided into two parts. The first part takes the temperature of the current political and educational debates, offering thereby a sociopolitical background to the need of a renewed language about values. Drawing on ordinary language philosophy (Moi, Murdoch and Forsberg) and the idea that there is an intimate relationship between how we look at the world (attention) and the words we use in describing it (language). The second part of the article places the emergence of values in a particular time in history before suggesting a more existential vocabulary about values for the purpose of teaching values in schools.

This paper rethinks the fostering task of the teacher in a time when it, paradoxically, has tended to become marginalized and privatized despite its public urgency. Following post-holocaust thinkers such as Hannah Arendt and Zygmunt Bauman, the position explored here is radical in the sense that it takes ‘the crisis of traditions’ and the erosion of a common moral ground or value basis seriously, and it is conservative in the sense that it insists on responding educationally to the call from the past by returning to (a) the moral character of our existence and (b) our own embeddedness in the incompleteness of living traditions. The argument is that there is a difference between educating for common values—which entails a belief in pre-existing commonalities—and making values common in and through education. The latter, we argue, entails an aspiration for continuously creating new commonalities and for cultivating the ability to act and judge as a thinking moral agent in specific, lived and worldly cases. In this sense, the fostering task of the teacher is to create commonality of what is not (yet) common, turning the liberal democratic values of the past into contested objects of study.

In a time of cultural pluralism and legitimation crisis (Habermas), there is an increasing uncertainty among teachers in Sweden about with what right they are fostering other people's children. What does it mean to teach 'common values' to the coming generation? How do teachers find legitimacy and authority for this endeavour, not as family members or as politicians, but as teachers? To respond to this uncertainty, the paper takes the public/private distinction as a starting-point for rethinking the place of the school. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and of Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, it argues that the school is an in-between place-a place that transforms values into 'common goods' and turns fostering into a teaching matter. The overall purpose of the paper is to sketch out the consequences of this 'in-betweenness' for what it means to find one's voice as a teacher in fostering the coming generation.

Normkritiska perspektiv är ett begrepp som de senaste tio åren fått fäste och utvecklats i den svenska utbildningskontexten. Denna text söker sammanföra detta perspektiv med det interkulturella för att diskutera hur de kan bidra till varandra. Normkritiska perspektiv är ett förhållnings- och analyssätt som medverkar till att kritiskt granska och ifrågasätta monokulturella föreställningar i en skolverksamhet och hos pedagoger medan interkulturalitet beskriver hur pedagogiska relationer och praktik kan fungera för att erfaras inkluderande. Ett normkritiskt perspektiv kan bidra till att möta delar av den kritik som förts fram avseende ett bristande maktperspektiv i interkulturaliteten då det visar på maktens positioner i ett kontextuellt sammanhang av interkulturell förståelse. Samtidigt kan det interkulturella perspektivet bidra till den normkritiska analysen då det beskriver ett eftersträvansvärt pedagogiskt klimat. Ett klimat som präglas av interkulturell interaktion som skapar en diversifierad snarare än begränsande normalitet.

Normkritisk pedagogik är ett begrepp som utvecklats i Sverige under 2000-talet. Begreppet har sina rötter i kritisk pedagogik, queerteori och intersektionella perspektiv och uppstod från början i en pedagogisk kontext som en reaktion mot det som beskrevs som en toleranspedagogisk inriktning på inkluderings- och värdegrundsarbetet i förskola och skola. Syftet är att utforska och ifrågasätta hur de normer och maktrelationer som skapar skillnad genom perspektiv och praktiker präglar lärandeinstitutioner och de som verkar inom dem.

Begreppet har fått stor spridning och utvecklats på olika sätt vilket har både positiva och problematiska aspekter. Normkritikens utbredning har bidragit till ett uppmärksammande och utvecklande av arbetet med mänskliga rättigheter på många olika samhällsarenor. Samtidigt har inlemmandet i en offentlig diskussion bidragit till en mainstreaming av begreppet vilket tömt det på viktigt kritiskt innehåll. Normkritik har även ibland kommit att uppfattas som en ny norm, en uppmaning att ’tänka rätt’ men utan att i grunden förändra.

I denna antologi diskuterar lärare, utbildare och forskare verksamma inom området hur begreppet har utvecklats teoretiskt och hur det används i pedagogisk praktik. Vilka erfarenheter har gjorts av de som försökt använda normkritiska perspektiv i undervisning och förändringsarbete genom åren? Texterna sätter åter fokus på normkritisk pedagogik. Antologins röster diskuterar detta på det perspektivskapande, problematiserande och hela tiden allt annat än perfekta och fullständiga sätt som det innebär att hela tiden försöka bli en normkritisk pedagog.

The article discusses the emergence and criticism of norm-critical pedagogy in Sweden and thedevelopment of the concept in relation to the societal contexts in which it has evolved, contextswhich has had significance for how norm-critical pedagogy has come to be interpreted and used.The article is partly built on arguments put forward in the anthology Norm critical pedagogy –perspectives, challenges and opportunities (Björkman & Bromseth, 2019) and on a study of texts fromthe Swedish National Agency for Education that includes norm-critical pedagogy (Hill, forthcoming).The ambition is to contribute to the Nordic discussion regarding the practice and developmentof norm-critical pedagogy.

The invisible struggle for the purpose of leisure time pedagogy 

- a study of discourses about leisure time pedagogy

The aim of the study is to examine and highlight the discursive struggle about the main purpose of leisure time pedagogy in school in a democratic society. Thereby my aim is to deepen the discussion about what leisure time pedagogy is and should be. The examination of different purposes is based on Gert J.J. Biestas different educational concepts qualification, socialization and subjectification. The study is based on a webb survey answered by 71 leisure time pedagogues, and interviews answered by 6 leisure time pedagogues. Findings from the webb survey suggests that most of the respondents believe their administration think the most important duty of leisure time pedagogy is different from their own. Most of the respondents indicated socialisation or subjectification of students as their most important duty, while most of them think their administration designate the students qualification as most important. The interviews where recorded, transcribed, and later analysed in line with Ernesto Laclau ́s and Chantal Mouffe ́s discourse theory. From the interviews I was able to map out 3 different discourses about the main purpose of leisure time pedagogy according to leisure time pedagogues: the socially oriented discourse, the knowledge oriented discourse and the identity oriented discourse. I was also able to map out one discourse based on leisure time pedagogues views on how they think their administrations anticipation on leisure time pedagogy differ from their own beliefs. In conclusion most leisure time pedagogues believes their main purpose is to help students develop social skills and personal identity, while they believe their endeavor to do so, is interfered either by their administrations designated purpose with leisure time pedagogy or their anticipation on leisure time pedagogues to help teachers and to support pupils development of subject knowledge, rather than to plan and elaborate with leisure time pedagogy. The study suggests that the different discourses, while not properly articulated, may lead to misunderstandings and a false feeling of agreement when there is none. This is why there seems to be a need to really discuss and clarify different comprehensions of the meaning of the main concepts of leisure time pedagogy in order to articulate the discursive struggle.

Vi lever i en tid av ökande globalisering och intensifierade kontakter över gränserna. Idag är världen sammanflätad på ett helt annat sätt än någonsin tidigare.

Här presenteras en undersökning om hur ungdomar i Sverige, Polen och Tjeckien ser på andra kulturer och folkgrupper än den egna, om deras konstruktioner av identitet, utvecklandet av kosmopolitiskt lärande och om hur deras vänner, familjer och skolor påverkar deras inställningar. Många ungdomar i Polen och Tjeckien tar upp hur de fasor som deras familjer upplevt under andra världskriget fått dem att inse hur viktigt det är att upprätthålla freden medan de svenska ungdomarnas syn påverkats av den långa perioden av fred.

Den här boken är ett resultat av ett forskningsprojekt vars syfte varit att undersöka vilken betydelse nya identitetskonstruktioner och kosmopolitiska, interkulturella lärandeprocesser har för fredliga kontra fientliga etniska relationer i det mångkulturella, globaliserade samhället.

The purpose with this study was to examine the interpersonal phenomenon in a pedagogical relation, with focus of a specific person-object-relation. The person in this study goes under the notional name Simon, and his experiences and perceptions of a previous drug abuse has been the empirical material of the study. Five interviews regarding Simons history of a previous drug abuse was made in November 2018. The interviews has been analyzed and interpreted with a relational pedagogical perspective using Martin Bubers dialogue philosophy, and inspired by existential hermeneutic as a method for analysis.

The analysis concludes that presence of being regarding the interpersonal phenomenon during Simons situation is one way to understand the phenomenon in his pedagogical relation. The study also indicate a lack of presence of being in Simons relation to the human other and how it can be one of many reasons to his previous drug abuse.

The study aims to give a further understanding about how an individual shared his life in a relation to an object during many years, and hopefully contribute to how pedagogical relations further to come, can be understood in a different way.

NAPLAN (The National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) is an annual Australia-wide testing regime in years 3, 5 7 and 9. It is one of a number of national and international testing schemes currently in operation. This issue of the journal is also being published in the context of an emerging National Curriculum in Australia. At such times, and at all times, it seems, we tend to focus on what we want our students to know and be able to do at the end of a certain period or learning experience. These are fine quest(ion)s. A more fundamental question, one that risks being lost in the mix of this, however, is, 'what kind of people would we like our students to be at the end of and as a result of their learning-time with us, their teachers?'

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.

Debate is arguably a central aspect of philosophy. There are a number of topics, however, on which the weighing of argument and counter-argument does not reach a final conclusion, but only a temporary settlement before the issue raises itself again. Understanding the historical development of such debates in philosophy of education is crucial to an appreciation of contemporary discussions in the field of education more broadly. They are debates that seem to have been always there and that continue to challenge new developments. Each chapter in Section 3, Revisiting Enduring Educational Debates, situates the debate related to a particular topic, considers its relevance, and highlights how it continues to influence educational theory and practice today.

Parental involvement is the foundation of every child‟s progress in school. Those whose parents are fully involved in their education tend to do better academically than those whose parents are not. This qualitative study explores the parent‟s perception of their involvement in education of their children. The method employed was a semi-structured interview and the participants were 12 Nigerian parents who had children within the age range of 6-13 in three schools in Stockholm, Sweden. The findings from this study indicate that parents acknowledge the importance of parental involvement in education while at the same time acknowledging the challenges experienced in participating fully in the education of their children.  

Purpose:The aim of this study is to examine how an organizational change within a Police department can be understood. By interviewing different employees within the organization, the study focus on understandings about the work of the change management. In the context of educational research, and with help of theories of change,this study explores how the individual can manage change by creating meaning of it. Questions:How do the employees explain the purpose of the new organizational structure and the allocation of resources? How do the employees describe what is changing?Method:The essay wasa qualitative study of hermeneutical approach and an abductive analytically practise. The empirical data-collection was done by four semi-structured interviews. The respondents had different roles within the organization. Results and Conclusion:The analysis of the empirical material showed that different perspectives occur. It is also shown how attitudes regarding the change can be different. The analysis finally shows how employees during a change process can be influenced in their meaning of sensemaking. In conclusion, the resultshows that different perspectives within the organization have different perceptions about the organizational change and the ongoing change management. Signficant similarities that emerged was how the change management takes time and that more resources within the particular organization is wanted.

We interviewed 20 adolescents who were coercively placed in residential or psychiatric care. The aim was to explore their views on the way staff relate and perform their duties, favorable characteristics in staff, consequences of different treatment from staff and their safety experiences. Thematic analysis identified the following themes: Situational triggers of frustration; Care-based; rule-based; or passive-avoidant interaction styles toward adolescents and their responses; Adolescents' reflections about staff's interaction styles; and the Consequences on the unit atmosphere depending on different interaction styles toward the adolescents. Adolescents preferred staff who showed them respect and a clear wish to make life easier.

Abstract

Title: Media and Information Literacy (MIL) in kindergarten: A phenomenological study of preschool teachers' perceptions, competencies and preconditions for the introduction of media information literacy (MIL) in preschool.

Author: Paramaporn Erdtman

Instructor: Janne Kontio

Autumn Term 2016

Various studies have shown that there has been a great increase in the use of digital media for children of all ages, especially children of preschool age. A need for skills and knowledge in how we as educators should be able to help children manage digital media and information has become essential. In 2011, UNESCO presented the concept of media information literacy or MIL, which is a collective concept of media literacy and information literacy in a network society. According to state media council, MIL is a tool to enhance understanding and critical abilities and to manage the problems that will arise in everyday media. Such skills are essential in order for children to be able to exercise both their rights and their responsibilities in a democratic society. The purpose of this study is to examine the different conditions that exist amongst pre-school teachers which will help in introducing media - information literacy in the preschool context. The study is based on a quantitative method, i.e. survey and qualitative interviews. The study is aimed toward preschool teachers who have worked with digital tools in preschool. The result shows that there are positive opportunities for working with MIL in preschool. Preschool teachers have some understanding of the concepts of media and information literacy are about. Preschool teachers consider themselves to have the most of the important skills in order to bring MIL into the preschool. The result also indicates that children need more opportunities to create and communicate in intercultural dialogues and critical discussions with the help of digital media. Early childhood educators approach to children's use of digital media and information is a prerequisite to MIL's implementation in preschool. Early childhood educators are in favor of working with MIL's main points which they have already implemented in the preschool.

This study is a qualitative study that will examine the social workers experiences of children and young people in grades 7–9 with long-term school absence. With the help of von Wright's relational perspective, Antonovsky's salutogenic theory and SOC, the results have been analyzed. Previous research has focused on the problems from a school perspective and considered that, among other things, inadequate school environment and teacher support were the causes of school absenteeism. But also learning problems and that students saw the school as irrelevant to their future.

The study was conducted through four different qualitative interviews on persons active in the social services children's and youth unit. Using a hermeneutic method, the interviews have been interpreted to create an understanding of the interviewees' experiences. The result is presented in three main sections where, among other reasons, the reasons showed that diagnoses and lacking support from parents were the pervasive pattern everyone experienced. All interviewed hold similar perspectives on the reasons why children do not to go to school. These are different from previous research reported. Social workers' perspectives on how to meet and treat children in their work differ between each other emotionally, but also the commitment and relational thought to the child.

Gunilla Lindqvist argued that in playworlds teachers “step(ping) out of their ‘teacher roles’” and “dare(d) to try new attitudes and ways of acting” (1995, pp. 210-211).  This paper presents cases of adult playworld participants’, ie. teachers and researchers’, ways of being in five playworlds in a variety of institutional settings in four nations: We believe that the quality of children’s experiences in these playworls depends on the quality of the experiences of the teachers, and also of the researchers participating in the projects.  Teacher and researcher descriptions of their own and other participating adults’ ways of being in these playworlds was collected from completed and ongoing playworld studies, and from interviews conducted specifically for this study.  Data was, thus, derived from various research projects, each at their own research sites.  Different methods of analysis were used at each research site, although some forms of participatory observation, focused on the theme, narrative and process of artwork production, were common across all sites.  Also allowing for the necessary coordination, while taking difference as a starting point for understanding human development, the playworlds examined in this paper were created in Sweden, Finland, Japan and the United States but were all inspired by the work of Pentti Hakkarainen; and all developed, over the past 17 years, within the International Playworld Network (IPWNW), which originated at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego.  Analysis took place using an intentionally diverse collection of theories, which reflect the diversity of perspectives that makes the IPWNW productive: Gadamer’s theories of play to describe the playworlds “playing” the teachers and researchers as play “plays” the child; Hadley’s theories of adult participation in play to understand experiences of adults playing “inside the flow” of playworlds; Miyazaki’s theory, drawing on the work of Bakhtin, of the triadic relationship between an imaginative world, children and adults; Rainio’s theorizing of dialectics of agency in adult-child interaction in playworlds; and recent developments of Participant Design Experiments.

This paper discusses the playworlds of the Playworld of Creative Research (PWCR) research group. Play- worlds are created from a relatively new form of play that can be described as a combination of adult forms of creative imagination (art, science, etc.), which require extensive real life experience, and children’s forms of creative imagination (play), which require the embodiment of ideas and emotions in the material world. In playworlds, adults and children (or teenagers or seniors) enter into a common fantasy that is designed to support the development of both adults and children (or teenagers or seniors). The PWCR understands play- worlds and the study of playworlds as ways of being. In this paper we present unique, individual playworlds that we truly love from the perspective of researchers, artists, teachers, children, administrators, and imagi- nary characters, who participate in playworlds. We use a master fiction writer’s words on the love of literature to frame our discussion of playworlds, focusing on truth, time, human magic, infinite possibilities, fun, and the enriching and intensifying (and so, creating) of the real in playworlds in Japan, Finland, Sweden and the US.

This chapter takes Jorgensen’s thoughts regarding how music education can contribute to a better world, developed in Transforming Music Education, as a starting-point. Based on her statements, I elaborate upon possibilities for equal music education. The picture of transformed music education, as I interpret Jorgensen’s work, is based on a dialectic approach, including mutual curiosity and respect. Through my research where I have interviewed female electric guitar playing upper secondary music students, shows though, that transformation of music education has to continue. For example, the analysis of their expressed experiences shows that they are diminished, quieted, encouraged to care, and seen as the other musical sex. Therefore, the chapter communicates a philosophical exploration of how an aesthetic-political understanding of democracy, based on Arendt, Merleau-Ponty and Ranciere, could be used to go beyond gender, and imply in what ways music education could offer equal dialectical spaces of musical wonder. My hope is that voices of philosophical scholars, within the field of music education, will continue open-ended collegial discussions based in friction and friendship in Jorgensen’s spirit in deliberative scenes. That could be one contributor towards a professional discussion towards equal music education. The aesthetico-political voice could be one that aims to encourage both music teachers and students to be and become themselves, in music educational settings, where all individuals are heard and listened to, in intersubjective musical activities.