Emma Arneback

Moral imagination in education : a Deweyan proposal for teachers responding to hate speech

This article is about moments when teachers experience hate speech in education and need to act. Based on John Dewey’s work on moral philosophy and examples from teaching practice, I would like to contribute to the discussion about moral education by emphasizing the following: (1) the importance of experience, (2) the problem with prescribed morals and (3) the need for moral imagination in education. My Deweyan proposal for teachers responding to hate speech in education is to use moral imagination in education and take contextual elements into consideration when deciding how to act. Doing this would facilitate work related to doing morals and help to prevent prescribing morals as something that has already been done and that teachers (and students) have to adjust to in schools without being part of the process.

Locations of racism in education: a speech act analysis of a policy chain

Abstract This article explores how racism is located in an educational policy chain and identifies how its interpretation changes throughout the chain. A basic assumption is that the policy formation process can be seen as a chain in which international, national and local policies are ‘links’ – separate entities yet joined. With Sweden as the national example, the article analyses how racism in education is framed at different policy levels and which anti-racist actions are proposed. The article thereby clarifies who or what is, at different policy levels, perceived to be the location of racism. A first finding concerns terminology: throughout the policy chain the problem of racism is discussed in terms of ‘discrimination’. At European, national and local level, discrimination is mostly associated with ‘ethnicity’, thereby removing from policy a possibly stronger language for combating racism. A second finding is that the location of racism in education moves gradually through the chain from an institutional to an individual location of racism, with an increasing focus on the significance of the student rather than the importance of societal structures. The importance of circumstances for policy formation is a third main finding in the article.

Bemötanden av främlingsfientlighet i gymnasieskolan

[Responses to xenophobia in schools] To investigate how the commission to counter xenophobia in Swedish schools has changed during the last 20 years, Emma Arneback in this article analyses laws, policy documents and equal treatment plans for upper secondary schools. She examines which impact different responses have had on the limits to freedom of speech at school and how who or what is seen as xenophobic has changed. The result shows that the commission has changed from being a decentralized ethical responsibility (1994–2006) to a centralized juridical responsibility (2006–). The shift affects the limits of freedom of speech in schools and leads to different interpretations of to which degree it is possible to talk of that which is difficult and can hurt. Arneback’s analysis of the equal treatment plans also shows that the schools to a high extent focus on countering xenophobic individuals, while the issue of combating the structures that enable individuals to act oppressive is left without action. Publication history: Published original. (Published 16 September 2013) Citation: Arneback, Emma (2013) ”Bemotanden av framlingsfientlighet i gymnasieskolan”, in Det vita faltet II. Samtida forskning om hogerextremism , special issue of Arkiv. Tidskrift for samhallsanalys , issue 2, pp. 139–165. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.2.5

Doing interdisciplinarity in teacher education. Resources for learning through writing in two educational programmes

ABSTRACT With a focus on resources for learning through writing, this paper compares the interdisciplinary framings of two teacher education programmes. What are the implications of these framings and resources for students’ possibilities when they write independent projects/bachelor theses? The paper presents a case study with data (interviews, texts, observations) from two different teacher education programmes. The conceptual framework stems from the Academic Literacies approach. The analysis shows that one of the programmes shapes interdisciplinarity by a “block approach” that allows students to work independently, while the other is shaped as a “bridging approach” with tight collaboration between students and tutors. The two educational programmes apply the same national regulating documents in different ways, thus creating different possibilities for students to learn and write as “independent” or “collaborative” students, respectively. The results contribute to a discussion of higher education structure and the role of writing within it.

Student teachers’ experiences of academic writing in teacher education– on moving between different disciplines

ABSTRACT This study focuses on a selection of student teachers’experiences of academic writing in different disciplines in teacher education. By studying two different learning and writing environments at a Swedish university – teacher education for preschool teachers and for secondary school teachers – we distinguish different forms of writing ideals resulting from disciplinary shifts during the first two years of teacher education. In the preschool group, all the student teachers express the idea that writing ideals change during their education, as if they move between different worlds of writing. The student teachers specializing in secondary school education express the view that, overall, the writing ideal remains the same, and have a sense of staying in the same neighbourhood. These different experiences most likely create different barriers and possibilities in their formation as writers and future teachers. The results also indicate that, in their writing during the first two years, the participating students’ focus is on becoming students and adapting to different disciplines in higher education.

Achieving a professional identity through writing

ABSTRACT In what way might writing of different kinds contribute to the development of a professional identity? By analytically distinguishing three discourses of communication, everyday, professional and academic, applied to three preschool student teachers’ conceptions of writing during their education and in their initial phase at work as preschool teachers, we attempt to understand the role of writing in their development of professional identities. What we have found is that the professional discourse which all three have achieved is something each of them creates and develops in very different forms. Their independent final projects show that all three have a mastery of academic discourse, but only in exceptional cases do they make use of that discourse in contexts other than this specific piece of work and to some extent earlier papers written as part of their teacher education. However, judging from our interviews and their responses to our questions, it seems as if they have acquired modes of expression quite close to an academic discourse, but have primarily developed and use different variants of a professional discourse. This professional discourse also seems to be an important element in their development of a professional identity.