Fredrik Sandberg

Introducing research on recognition of prior learning

This is an electronic version of an article published in: Per Andersson, Andreas Fejes and Fredrik Sandberg, Introducing research on recognition of prior learning, 2013, International Journal of Lifelong Education, (32), 4, 405-411. International Journal of Lifelong Education is available online at informaworldTM: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2013.778069 Copyright: Taylor & Francis (Routledge) http://www.routledge.com/

A Habermasian Analysis of a Process of Recognition of Prior Learning for Health Care Assistants.

This article discusses a process of recognition of prior learning for accreditation of prior experiential learning to qualify for course credits used in an adult in-service education program for health care assistants at the upper-secondary level in Sweden. The data are based on interviews and observations drawn from a field study, and Habermas’s theory of communicative action is used for analysis. The main findings suggest that the students do not fully understand the assessment process or how their prior learning was transformed into credits. This reflects the teacher’s strategic actions and the lack of mutual understanding. Examples are sketched about how the process could be developed using the theory of communicative action. From a Habermasian perspective, this process is also criticized as promoting an assimilation of lifeworld-grounded experiences to the system. This form of recognition of prior learning does not seem to satisfy important goals and ideals in adult education and learning.

RPL for accreditation in higher education – As a process of mutual understanding or merely lifeworld colonisation?

This article focuses on a process of recognition of prior learning (RPL) in higher education. It is based on experiences from a project carried out in collaboration between the University of Lund, Linköping University and two trade unions in Sweden. The aim of the project was to find ways of recognising prior learning for accreditation of course credits at university level. In the project and its analysis, Habermas’ theory of communicative action was used as theoretical underpinning. During the project we carried out a thematic analysis based on interviews. The analysis suggested that the participants had a mystified view of higher education that RPL must be considered a learning process and that the participants’ prior learning can be characterised as practical wisdom. These themes guided the development of the project. In a retrospective analysis, language proficiency seemed to play a significant role for the outcome of the process. The conclusion suggests that a more fair and valid assessment of the participant’s prior learning could be accomplished by focusing on RPL as a process of mutual understanding. However, a critical appraisal of the process suggests that RPL for accreditation is problematic and could be seen as a colonisation of the lifeworld.

Adult Education as a Heterotopia of Deviation: A Dwelling for the Abnormal Citizen.

We argue that municipal adult education (MAE) can be seen as a place for displaced and abnormal citizens to gain temporary stability, enabling their shaping into desirable subjects. Drawing on a poststructural discursive analysis, we analyze policy texts and interviews with teachers and students. Our analysis illustrates how two distinct but interrelated student subjectivities are shaped: the rootless, unmotivated, and irresponsible student; and the responsible, motivated, and goal-oriented student. The difference is that the latter of these subjectivities is positioned as desirable. MAE provides a temporary place in time, a heterotopia of deviation, allowing students to escape precarious employment. The heterotopia places the students in a positive utopian dream of the future. A utopia is not a real place, and what is to become of the students after finishing MAE is not determined; the students themselves should shape it. If they fail, in line with a neoliberal governmentality, it is their own fault.

Applying Habermas´theory of communicative action in an analysis of recognition of prior learning

Although education researchers have drawn on the work of a wide diversity of theorists, a number of these have been of particular significance to education. While the likes of Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci, John Dewey and Paulo Freire influenced previous generations of educational theorists, much of the more contemporary theory building has revolved around a quartet of well-known and much-debated thinkers – Michel Foucault, Jurgen Habermas, Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida. However, while the influence of these thinkers has grown considerably over the last number of years, both their original work and its application to education can prove challenging to the educational practitioner. The challenges they pose to educators are exacerbated by a lack of suitable reading material that can appeal to the advanced practitioner market, while also providing a sufficiently in-depth overview of the various theories and their applications in educational research.This edited book expertly rectifies this omission in the educational literature, and delivers a text that is both advanced and accessible, offering the education practitioner/researcher a suitable guide to assist their acquisition and application of social theory. The chapters included in this collection are designed to illustrate the diverse ways in which continental theory of whatever stripe can be applied to educational issues. From school surveillance to curriculum, social theory is used to shed light on ‘practical’ issues facing the sector, helping to widen and deepen discussion around these areas when they are in danger of being over-simplified.This book will be incredibly useful to post-graduate student teachers who wish to develop their capacity to engage with these debates at an advanced level. It will also prove of great interest to anyone involved in education policy and theory

Recognition of prior learning, self-realisation and identity within Axel Honneth´s theory of recognition

This paper argues for the significance of Axel Honneths theory of recognition for understanding recognition of prior learning (RPL). Case studies of the experiences of RPL by paraprofessional workers in health and social care in the UK and Sweden are used to explicate this significance. The results maintain that there are varying conditions of recognition. These conditions are often fluid, negotiable and ambivalent. However, RPL appears to support self-realisation and self-awareness, when it co-occurs with individuals identification with associated practices. Workplace salary, affordances for practice and collegial values may shape the esteem and thus the potential for self-realisation. RPL can thus help facilitate the development of a more positive relationship to individuals engaged in RPL processes, enhancing their learning and development.

The interactive researcher as a virtual participant: A Habermasian interpretation

This article explores the role of the interactive researcher by drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action to develop the concept of virtual participant. An ideal interactive research project is used to explore the issues faced by interactive researchers in three phases – initial, implementation and conclusion. In each phase, an interactive research project is used to demonstrate the issues that are discussed. First, this article argues that the concept of communicative rationality can be helpful in understanding how mutually trusting relationships between practitioners and researchers can be established at the beginning of a project. Second, it argues that the idea of taking a virtual stand on validity claims can be used during a project to engage a performative attitude and achieve mutual understanding with actors in the practice system. Third, this article argues that the concept of the virtual participant can explain how the interactive researcher can engage in performative action without becoming captive to the practice system. The concept of the virtual participant helps to enhance understanding of the complexity of the role of the interactive researcher.

Individualisation in Swedish Adult Education and the Shaping of Neo-liberal Subjectivities

ABSTRACT In this article we have analysed the ways a discourse on individualisation is taking shape within adult education in Sweden, how it operates, and what effects it has in terms of shaping student subjectivity. Drawing on a post-structural theorisation we analyse interviews with teachers and students in municipal adult education and folk high schools (FHS). The analysis illustrates how both institutions contribute to the shaping of individualised subjectivities, although differently. At the end, a general question is raised about what happens with the democratic function of adult education in general when a discourse on individualisation operates in the ways described and, more specifically, asks what is happening to FHS as an educational practice that upholds its self-image as a last bastion of a collective notion of learning and subjectivity and nurturing an educational practice of learning democracy?

Dissonant futures : occupational trajectories, gender and class in contemporary municipal adult education in Sweden

Abstract The aim of this article is to problematize the ways class and gender are played out in adult students’ narratives about their occupational choice and future. Drawing on Beverly Skeggs, we analyse how students think about future occupations, what motivates them towards these and how they are able to form their future in relation to them. Taking on Sweden as a case, our results show that students’ narratives on their future occupations are classed as well as gendered. In their vision of future occupations, working-class students tend to focus on occupations helping and caring for others, while middle-class students tend to focus on work more as a means of fulfilling themselves as individuals. These differences are also gendered. Female students are more likely than their male counterparts to picture their future occupations in relation to having children and a family. This tells us that in the female students’ narratives, there tends to be a strong focus on caring – for their families as well as in future occupations.

Longing to Belong:: Stories of (non)belonging in multi-ethnic Sweden

Abstract The aim of this article is to contribute to an understanding of contemporary processes of negotiations concerning belonging and non-belonging to the Swedish social community. Taking on a theoretical approach on belonging inspired by Yuval-Davis and Jacobsen, the article analyses three individual stories of women who have migrated to Sweden. Out of this analysis, focusing on how these women claim their belonging to a Swedish social community at the same time as they in different ways are denied such belonging by others, we may conclude that although each of the stories told is unique and articulates an individual experience, there are striking similarities in how their claims of belonging, with its related implications for belonging, are not acknowledged by others. In a way, these individual stories tell us something about some of the crucial challenges regarding belonging in contemporary multi-ethnic Sweden, as well as Europe.