Dennis Beach

From learning to labour to learning for marginality: school segregation and marginalization in Swedish suburbs

In this article, using data from ethnographic research, we try to present some glimpses of the way education is described as an experience and possibility ‘from below’, by pupils who grow up and study in schools in the most segregated and territorially stigmatized suburbs on the outskirts of our major cities. What we feel they describe is an experience of schooling for surviving the social and economic consequences of curtailed citizenship in a post‐industrial society rather than one of schooling that offers possibilities of integration and full citizenship or social transformation. Our findings have significant policy implications in this respect. Sweden has historically pursued projects aimed at educational inclusion but has recently taken a significant turn toward neo‐liberalism and educational consumerism, since which time various disadvantaged groups have become increasingly concentrated compared with others in under‐achieving schools in an economically threatened public sector. The article discusses some aspects and possible consequences of this development.

Neoliberal Restructuring in Education and Health Professions in Europe Questions of Global Class and Gender

This article is based on a meta-analysis of previous research on restructuring in relation to education and health professions in Europe and more globally. It highlights common developments and signals the significant and important role of specific cycles of public to private transformation in production relations in these professions over the course of the last century and a successive movement of labour from the domestic sphere of the home to private industry as commoditized labour power, as among the most significant common global features. State involvement has been an important intermediary in these processes, by which relationships that were formerly largely untainted by commerce have become relationships involving the direct buying and selling of labour power. The process of the creation of economically productive labour power also seems to be expanding in scope in the professions, with negative consequences for service workers, low-GDP countries and lower-class fractions of recipient-consumers worldwide.

The weakening role of education studies and the re-traditionalisation of Swedish teacher education

Research suggests that certain common policy presuppositions can be identified regarding teacher education programmes in advanced knowledge-based economies, most notablyu2009the relationship between formal education (schooling) and economic production, and the role of teacher education in respect to this relationship. This article draws on the work of Basil Bernstein to engage theoretically and critique the nature of that evolving policy relationship within the context of Sweden. While the article concentrates on developments in one country, however, it is contended that the findings are symptomatic of a wider European or even global trend in which the scientific foundation of teacher education is under threat.

Neoliberal Restructuring in Education and Health Professions in Europe

This article is based on a meta-analysis of previous research on restructuring in relation to education and health professions in Europe and more globally. It highlights common developments and signals the significant and important role of specific cycles of public to private transformation in production relations in these professions over the course of the last century and a successive movement of labour from the domestic sphere of the home to private industry as commoditized labour power, as among the most significant common global features. State involvement has been an important intermediary in these processes, by which relationships that were formerly largely untainted by commerce have become relationships involving the direct buying and selling of labour power. The process of the creation of economically productive labour power also seems to be expanding in scope in the professions, with negative consequences for service workers, low-GDP countries and lower-class fractions of recipient-consumers worldwide.

Ethnographic investigations of issues of race in Scandinavian education research

In this article we aim to present an overview of some of the ways in which issues of race and ethnicity are represented and researched in educational ethnography in Scandinavia. Several things are suggested. Amongst them is that educational ethnographers in Scandinavia rarely use the concept of race. The term (im)migrant(s) is used instead and the relationships in education between Scandinavians and (im)migrants and between educational results and (im)migrant culture and/or languages are often in focus. Integration has also been an issue. History may give an indication as to how this may have become so. Research on immigrants, immigration and integration has been promoted in national policies and these policies highlight language, culture and diversity but for historical and political reasons they often avoid ethnicity and ignore race and colour altogether. Moreover, when ethnicity is used it seems to be used more as an ontological marker than as an epistemological concept. This has repercussions we suggest for understanding the politics of race and ethnicity relations in relation to education.

The relationship between ethical positions and methodological approaches: a Scandinavian perspective

In this article, based on reading ethnographic theses, books and articles and conversations with nine key informants, we have tried to describe how research ethics are approached and written about in educational ethnography in Scandinavia. The article confirms findings from previous research that there are different methodological forms of ethnography there. It adds that although ethical descriptions can of course be described by using formal-philosophical ethical-typographies there is also a relationship between ethical holdings and methodological approaches. The different approaches reflect critical, feminist, interactionist and micro-ethnographic forms. The ethical types have been termed utilitarian, deontological, relational and ecological. The main conclusions are that the research we have analysed has always considered ethical issues and that these considerations often in some sense reflect national ethical guidelines from research authorities and financiers. A drift can also be discerned away from utilitarian ethics to relational and ecological thinking in accordance with methodological and ideological commitments and beliefs.

Predicting the use of praise among pre-service teachers: The influence of implicit theories of intelligence, social comparison and stereotype acceptance

This investigation concerns feedback praise (person and process praise) and how it relates to implicit theories of intelligence (entity and incremental theories) among pre-service teachers. In the first study 176 pre-service teachers participated, while in the second study 151 of such teachers participated. Two new measures, one of feedback praise and the other of social comparison, were found to be reliable and valid. In the first study, process praise was predicted by the variable incremental theories of intelligence and person praise was predicted by the acceptance of stereotypes. However, these results suffered in the reliability analyses and, even if the models are significant, they should be rejected. The results of the second study are more reliable, with regression analyses showing that person praise can be predicted from the two predictor variables of entity theories of intelligence, and social comparison. Some positive effects of teacher education were found in the second part; for example, the preference for person praise was significantly lower in the last semester than in the first.

On Structure and Agency in Ethnographies of Education: Examples from This Special Issue and More Generally

The articles in this collection are about the development, possibility, exercise and possible frustration of human agency within educational exchanges. They are also all based on ethnography, which is now a common approach to educational research. Ethnography is not a seamless, neutral observational practice but is instead variable in relation to theoretical perspectives and methodological application. However, central to all approaches is an emphasis on an active and creative citizen and an assumption that there is a dialectical relationship between human social practices, human consciousness and social structures. The similarities and differences within education ethnography are apparent even in the articles present here and in the ways in which they depict, define and describe agency in this special issue.

Authoritative Knowledge in Initial Teacher Education: Studying the Role of Subject Textbooks through Two Ethnographic Studies of Mathematics Teacher Education.

Two related ethnographic research projects on mathematics teacher education in Sweden are presented in this paper. They represent a response to recent policy developments that reaffirm the value of authoritative subject studies content as the central and most important component in the professional knowledge base of would-be teachers and concomitant increases in the amount of subject studies in teacher education. These policy changes, in Sweden at least, lack scientific research support and the article argues that these policies need to be seriously rethought, as the increased emphasis on subject content may undermine the development of key professional skills.

Privačių veikėjų poveikis mokytojams rengti Švedijoje. Švietimo politikos mobilumo tinklo etnografijos tyrimas

Policy networks constitute a new form of education governance through a mix of jodint working arrangements involving both public and private sector actors. This article explores the work of a specific actor in a Swedish educational policy network, active in the digitalization of schools. We examine how this actor fits within global policy networks and activities that are adding to and profiting from problems of the educational sector and not providing solutions for these difficulties by exploiting the existing mediatized problems in order to motivate the reduced expenditure on state-owned public services and to develop a conceptual foundation for launching private alternatives.