Johannes Lunneblad

Learning from Each Other? Multicultural Pedagogy, Parental Education and Governance.

Today there is a strong tendency to involve local citizens in community work, and to mobilize social forces in poor urban districts. We will focus on one specific method used to educate and help immigrant parents raise and foster their children. This method is described as part of a wider ambition to integrate and involve immigrants in Swedish society. The aim is to get parents involved, and to create a dialogue and the necessary requirements for equal conditions. However, although the emphasis is on dialogue and shared experiences, this model is also based on and coloured by governmentality. Through an empirical material consisting of a number of interviews with parents and teachers, we have focused on four thematic subjects: educational policies, homework, values and identities, and the importance of space and belonging. The results indicate that although the Swedish teachers try to create a dialogue and communicate with the parents, they do not succeed particularly well. The results indicate that when communication breaks down, the teachers often use different strategies of governance to implement their values, norms and ideas. In conclusion, it is not merely the clash between different value systems, and the different views on pedagogy and learning that contribute to distortions in the communication between teachers and parents, we also have to look more closely at the material and social conditions that create distance and alienation. Against the backdrop of the perception of whiteness and segregation, many of the communicative failures are understandable and logical.

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.

Performativity as pretence : A study of testing practices in a compulsory school in Sweden

Our aim in this article is to analyse the impact of the standardised test on classroom practices in grade 5 in a compulsory school in western Sweden. In our analysis, the use of the concept of the pedagogical device (Bernstein 1996) provides a framework for understanding how high-stakes, standardised testing regulates classroom discourse and teachers’ and students’ classroom behaviours. The study was conducted during 2006–2007 as part of a larger ethnographic inquiry. The results reveal how the demands of the test impact upon the daily work in the classroom. In the neo-liberal approach to governance, standardised tests have become an important measure of quality. School practices run the risk of being viewed as valuable, only relative to the performance of teachers and students at the individual level. This view shifts the focus from a discussion about a societal responsibility to ensure that all children have equitable access to education, to a debate centred on the individuals responsibility to perform. The analysis reveals that the test was not carried out as intended. However, both teacher and the students respond to the test situation and the results as if it had been and as if the test really mattered.

Performativity Pressures at Urban High Schools in Sweden and the USA.

This article reveals how test-based performativity pressures interfere with the pedagogical approaches preferred by teachers of second-language learners. Our findings derive from ethnographic research conducted in two non-mainstream high schools: one in a US city and other one in a Swedish city. Both schools serve immigrant students who speak English/Swedish as a second language, the majority of whom are from low-income, non-mainstream backgrounds. Unlike many schools that serve low-income immigrants, both are fairly well-resourced schools; teachers at each school foster productive learning environments and pedagogical practices conducive to academic success. Yet these practices are eroded by a mode of regulation that is hyper-fixed on ‘performativity’ as discussed by Stephen J. Ball. Swedish teachers report less pressure than American teachers but teachers at both schools provide clear examples of the instances when performativity pressures intrude upon preferred pedagogical approaches.

Integration of refugee children and their families in the Swedish preschool: strategies, objectives and standards

ABSTRACT This article is from a study about the integration of refugee children (aged one to five) and their families in Sweden. Refugee children and parents who have received a residence permit are entitled to be introduced into the Swedish society. One of the first encounters refugee children and families have with Swedish society is with the preschool. Many refugee families have been forced to leave their homes during difficult conditions. Those working with refugee children and their families may therefore encounter people who have endured trauma for example, while living in or fleeing from areas of violent conflict. The aim of this article is to explore the norms and aims that govern the educators’ strategies in the reception of refugee children and their families. The result reveals that different aims and strategies are used by the educators: (1) Culturally reflexive and flexible strategies aiming to empower; and (2) Fostering strategies aiming to teach the parents to adjust to routines and norms in the Swedish preschool. Ethnographic techniques were used to generate observational data, focusing on the educators’ everyday practices and concerns.

A Strong Commitment: Conforming a School Identity at One Compulsory Faith School in a Disadvantaged Area.

ABSTRACT The focus of the present study is on how educators and students create a ‘sense of belonging’ and school identity. The ethnography was carried out at an independent Christian school with children and students aged six to sixteen years. This study’s aim is to contribute knowledge about how the identity of a school has become an important factor in the context of the marketisation of education. The identity of the school is articulated as a school with a Christian profile. Further, the results show how diversity and multiculturalism were downplayed. The school can thereby be interpreted as a way to avoid categorisation as an immigrant school. The identity as a Christian school symbolically lifts it from its socio-economic position in the urban geography. This identity becomes central to how the school is presented in an economic market of free school choice.

The school as crime scene: Discourses on degrading treatment in Swedish schools:

There is a strong case for stating that during the past decades there has been a shift in perspective when addressing questions of how to handle and preserve social order in Swedish schools. As an institution that has focused on social order and education since the 1990s, the Swedish school system has also become an institution that focuses on social order in terms of law and legal issues. The overall purpose of the article is to explore in which contexts and in what ways degrading treatment is articulated in policy documents that relate to social order in Swedish schools. Methodologically, the authors use a discourse analytical approach. They study how contexts and articulations identified in policy documents relate to discourses of degrading treatment, and thus contribute to an understanding of how degrading treatment as a concept is constituted. Articulated in different contexts and in different ways, the results show that degrading treatment is constituted as a somewhat ambiguous concept – for example, social psychological perspectives are sometimes articulated within a legal discourse. Articulations of degrading treatment in policy documents cannot be comprehended as totally mutually dependent events, but rather as multiple and partly mutually independent events. Accordingly, the authors believe that the significance of degrading treatment is best understood as a conjunction of different articulations, contexts and interests. Additionally, the tendency of schools to treat degrading treatment increasingly as a crime has resulted in changing subject positions. The previous position of ‘the bullied pupil’ is now instead increasingly interpellated and moulded as ‘a victim of crime’.

Youth victimisation, school and family support: schools’ strategies to handle abused children

This article explores and investigates school officials’ narratives about how schools involve and collaborate with families, social services, the police, and other agencies to support students who are suspected of being exposed to domestic violence. School officials’ describe their work as positioned within legal restrictions and official policies, and they express a strong wish to create good relationships with families and other authorities to support vulnerable students. The narratives also indicate that school officials construct different explanations for child abuse according to the familys background. Abuse and neglect of children by Swedish parents are understood and explained in terms of social, psychological, and psychiatric problems, whereas the same behavior in immigrant parent is framed and explained in terms of culture or ethnicity.

Relational trouble and student victimisation at schools – categorisation, caring and institutionalisation

Abstract The focus of the present study is on how a number of Swedish schools define and categorise students who have been exposed to different forms of abusive acts and violence at school. The empirical study was designed to explore six Swedish urban secondary schools. The results indicated a recurrent pattern in school officials’ narratives, which is that officials often express difficulty defining the actual problem or crime. The results also revealled ambivalence when students’ problems were taken over by other professionals. Reporting to the police and the social services was sometimes a relief, it can provide an opportunity for professional advice; at the same time the informants reported a lack of information and control during this process. Consequently, there was also a socio-political struggle involved in defining ‘problematic’ situations and solutions to relational difficulties.

The Absent Victim: Schools’ Assessment of the “Victimization Process”

The present study examines how a number of Swedish schools define and categorize students who have been exposed to different forms of violent or abusive acts in school. The study will shed light on how categorizations and forms of explanation used in the schools by professionals emerge from central institutional and professional discourses. The data are gathered from interviews with key officials and observations from school health team meetings. The results indicate a tendency toward more and detailed legal regulations concerning how schools act and react in relation to violent behavior.