Abstract This article theorizes the functional relationship between the human components (i.e., scholars) and non- human components (i.e., structural configurations) of academic domains. It is organized around the following question: in what ways have scholars formed and been formed by the structural configurations of their academic domain? The article uses as a case study the academic domain of education and technology to examine this question. Its authorship approach is innovative, with a worldwide collection of academics (99 authors) collaborating to address the proposed question based on their reflections on daily social and academic practices. This collaboration followed a three-round process of contributions via email. Analysis of these scholars’ reflective accounts was carried out, and a theoretical proposition was established from this analysis. The proposition is of a mu tual (yet not necessarily balanced) power (and therefore political) relationship between the human and non-human constituents of an academic realm, with the two shaping one another. One implication of this proposition is that these non-human elements exist as political ‘actors’, just like their human counterparts, having ‘agency’ – which they exercise over humans. This turns academic domains into political (functional or dysfunctional) ‘battlefields’ wherein both humans and non-humans engage in political activities and actions that form the identity of the academic domain. For more information about the authorship approach, please see Al Lily AEA (2015) A crowd-authoring project on the scholarship of educational technology .

This article derives from policy ethnographic research on teacher-education change in Sweden concerning the development of a unified profession with a common professional-knowledge base. This was a social democratic government policy for teacher education from the 1950s up until 2007, when the newly elected right wing government turned away from unification and toward re-traditionalisation. Based on a meta-ethnographic analysis of the policy ethnographies the article illustrates resistance toward unification and raises critical questions concerning the intellectual foundations and integrity of reform processes. Attempts are also made to locate the disclosures in relation to international research.

Despite attempts through official policy over the past forty years and up to the end of the first decade of the new millennium to ‘unite’ teacher education and provide a common teacher education programme for all teachers with a common professional scientific knowledge content, as in many other countries teacher education in Sweden today is still currently subjectively structured in accordance with a vertically and horizontally differentiated school system that gives rise to different teacher educational traditions and different ways of perceiving what characterizes the teachers’ mission and professional expertise. Moreover, recent developments are reinstating this distinction even at an objective level of formal policy. The present paper discusses and illustrates these issues based on data from three separate ethnographic studies of teacher education over the past twenty five years by the authors. This research constitutes thus a series of policy ethnographic investigation across three decades of policy making in Swedish 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.

The subject textbook has been studied and described by amongst others Michael Apple (Apple 1991 and John Dewey (Dewey 1966). However, as yet little attention has actually been paid tothis artefact in use and to its role in definingwhose culture is taught and learned and what the mechanisms of this process are. By ethnographically studying the use of textbooks in everyday educational interchanges we contribute insight into these processes based on an investigation of the use, content and effects of subject textbooks in mathematics in the subject studies education in pre-service mathematics education courses. Dewey and then later Apple regarded textbooks as instruments for the moral regulation of (subordinated) individuals (i.e. pupils) in the struggle by powerful groups to build political and cultural accord within various levels of society. This political, economic, ideological or cultural power, they also noted, was exerted by dominant groups over others regardless of the explicit consent of the latter. This has also been suggested by amongst others Judy Trecker (Trecker 1973) and in de Castell et al (eds) (1989). However, as these authors also note, the curriculum of the school and other education institutions – like the university and its teacher education programmes (Beach 1995, 1997, 1999, 2000) - does not represent neutral knowledge, so textbooks are also potential sites of popular resistance toward the interests underlying official knowledge with a potential for developing alternative ideas and ideologies (Stubbs 1996). What comes to count as legitimate knowledge is the result of complex powerrelations, struggles, and compromises among different classed,raced, gendered, and religious groups around the messages, values, implicit ideologies and recognized possibilities in educational texts (Trecker 1973, Apple 1992).

This paper focuses on the inscribed uses and imaginaries of teachers’ digital work, currently formed through school platform infrastructures. Based on Swedish and Australian project cases, where the public education sector has experienced a substantial marketization and deep penetration of commercial platform infrastructures, we explore current imaginaries and driving forces of digital work. Our ethnographical material is teacher and management interviews, platform studies, activity logs and infrastructural policies. Theoretically, we approach digital work as constituted by socio-technical assemblages, made from social practices and technology inscriptions within cross-platform infrastructures (Plantin et al 2018), that prescribe particular forms of digital work, which make the existing and future work of teachers visible, thinkable and actionable in particular ways. From our two cases superficial differences appear but ultimately the same logics are evident; a highly visible discourse of the teacher professional, in charge of the platform work and simply supported or augmented in their professional judgements. One example is how platform providers and policies promote interoperability and automation across platforms (cf. Perotta et al 2021). In reality and in combination with the business logic of educational platforms (Kerssens & van Dijck 2021), the discourse is highly questionable. It positions teachers as rentieers (Komljenovic 2021), expected to manage digital work seamlessly regardless of platform provider or accompanied by a (robot) colleague or application (Selwyn 2021). Concurrently, teachers are expected to act as creators of school data production for providing school results (Foucault 1975) on platforms where data exploitation however is rule and data ownership unregulated. At least three powerful forces elevate the digital work; 1) disruptive situations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic where teachers are to solve the situation, 2) public sector reform, exposing teachers to increased public accountability, and 3) teacher care for students to provide social support and compensating for structural inequalities.

School teachers’ work in the Nordics and elsewhere has become deeply affected by the ongoing school digitalization, through digital platform investments, digitalization reforms, and the pandemic situation. By focusing on how teachers’ work currently is shaped by emerging digital platform infrastructures, and how teachers’ themselves shape their digital work, this study aims to critically explore the implications of new platform ecologies. By drawing on a Swedish case project funded by Forte, we exemplify of how global commercial platform infrastructures have been integrated into and added to a highly marketized school system. While earlier studies critically approached school platform infrastructures mainly as managerial modes of governance, recent research has revealed its wider democratic implications for the public sector, e.g. the creating of technical lock-ins (Kerssens & van Dijck 2021). Based on a sociotechnical understanding of teachers’ digital work, digital platforms are not seen as simply ‘enablers’, but as agentic and carrying certain values alongside prescribed institutional uses that together regulate teacher work. Methodologically, trace and policy ethnography were used. First, we traced the digital work of four upper secondary school teachers (two men, two women) from two schools (one public municipal school, and one private consortia-owned school) via self-reported work activity time logs, followed up by focus group interviews, as well as a “go-along method”, for observing teachers’ online work. Lastly, we ‘moved out’ to trace the school and wider platform infrastructure from a national and international policy infrastructural perspective. Our preliminary results show how teachers operate within an institutional logic of bureaucratic, market and professional concerns (Friedson 2001) in their digital work, resulting in problems like work intensification and work-life imbalances. One related finding is also that different platform ecologies emerge across different private and public school forms. The dependence of global platform infrastructures in schools is currently increasing. This study hopefully can add a needed Nordic and critical dimension to how this affects teachers’ digital work.

This paper examines major Swedish school digitalization curriculum reforms over the past 50 years by analyzing similarities and differences between the late 1960s, mid-1990s, and early 2010s curricular reforms. By drawing on Jasanoff’s (2015) socio-technical imaginary concept, we examine how digitalization reforms are constituted discursively and materially in struggles over curricular knowledge content, preferred citizenship roles, and infrastructural investments and especially by relating curricular reforms to governance transformations. One recurrent strategy of reform is what we call the back to the future argument, where curricula address an ideal citizenship of future societies, politically used to support change. We suggest that in the more than 50 years of school digitalization issues, it has been surrounded by strong and shifting struggles over the curriculum content and governance transformations. This pendulum movement (Englund, 2012) has taken place partly through central, state-led or new monopolized technology governance and infrastructures and partly through decentralized forms of governing (e.g., in municipal contexts and via IT-supported networks).

Digital platform technologies such as learning management systems and social media are nowadays an integrated part of schools and teachers’ everyday work. This suggest that the digital work and daily data-generating digital activities of teachers (and students) not only shift their forms of work, but also make public education connected to the private sector and globally operating technological platform providers in new ways. Commonly, these technology enterprises can provide with what looks as a full infrastructure of low-cost hardware and “free”, openly accessible software to an underfunded public sector education, however, it comes with a price, of teachers’ work time and work tools adapted for business rather than schools, etc. This paper aims to investigate the policies of emerging school platform infrastructure and how they regulate public education and teachers’ work. School platform digitization is a part of a wider societal transformation where the generation and processing of ‘big data’ through digital platform technology have been reflected in debates over internet data privacy, monitoring performance, that also relate to larger policy reforms of marketization and new private-public sector collaborations. With digital platforms integrated into public education, the politics of “platform capitalism” also has been introduced, and where the main market principle is to profit on the data generated by mass user activity and to profile and predict user behavior across different digital platforms. We suggest “school data markets” as a way of conceptualizing these policy phenomena. The overall question is, what work digital platform technologies are suggested to do in schools and how platforms are regulating teachers’ digital work. Discussions we wish to raise is whether global commercial platforms incorporated in public education risk challenging education as a public good by introducing new market logics which also make teachers’ work shaped by commercial reuse and vulnerable exposure. Teachers’ opportunity to exert influence and control over forms of digital platform work and purchase is also raised, including constraints and opportunities of ‘datafication’ where teachers’ and schools’ digital activities is broken down in data pieces for reuse and inspection. This paper will present findings from an ongoing trace and policy ethnographic project funded by Forte in Sweden on teachers’ digital work. Findings from a pilot study where two upper secondary school teachers have been ‘shadowed’ by participants observations at work constitute the main part. The focus has been to explore teachers’ digital work, in particular how digital platform structures regulate and constrain their work and what strategies teachers use to cope with this in their work. In addition, their schools’ local infrastructure, including dominant school platforms, will be mapped and analyzed, followed up by a 'data infrastructure audit’, i.e. policies from regional municipality organizations and their extension to national, Nordic and international levels (e.g. public procurement recommendations and guidelines, legal contracts and agreements). The aim of this pilot study is to further develop our methodological toolbox and understanding in relation to our bigger project and to gain insight on the current digital platform work of school teachers as well as emerging school data issues.

Digital teknik har på olika sätt och med olika argument introducerats i skolan. Det kommer till utryck i skolans läroplan som beskriver vilka kunskapsbehov kring digital teknik som elever och samhället anses behöva. Även den politiska styrningen av skolan har inflytande över vilken digital teknik som kommer in i skolan och hur den används. I detta kapitel gör vi en historisk tillbakablick med utgångspunkt i skolans nuvarande digitalisering. Det innebär att vi med avstamp i pågående förändringar går tillbaka och ser likheter eller skillnader i relation till tidigare digitaliseringssatsningar. De frågor som kapitlet ska behandla är, Vilka är motiven för att föra in digital teknik i skolan och undervisningen, och skiljer sig dagens argument för skolans digitalisering från tidigare argument? Hur relaterar den politiska styrningen till skolans digitalisering? Kapitlet gör nedslag i tre tidsperioder, 2010-talet, 1990-talet och 1960-talet, och relaterar dessa till läroplans- och styrningsfrågor. Kapitlet knyter därmed an till en av utbildningshistoriens mest grundläggande frågor, nämligen frågan om vad som anses vara ett relevant kunskapsinnehåll i skolans undervisning (Wahlström 2016) och vad som i bred bemärkelse utgör skolans läroplan. Denna fråga är nära sammankopplad med de samhälleliga medborgarideal som dominerar och den samhällsroll utbildningen har vid olika tidsperioder, men även vilka som har det politiska inflytandet över att styra skolans inriktning under dessa perioder. De vetenskapliga fält som intresserar sig för dessa frågor är dels läroplansteori, som på engelska benämns curriculum theory och dels fältet kring utbildningssystemens styrning, på engelska, education governance. Läroplansteori hjälper oss förstå såväl vem eller vad som får inflytande över urvalet av innehåll och kunskaper som nämnts, och kan till exempel handla om vilken undervisning eller vilken digital teknik som skolan ska erbjuda. Forskning om styrning handlar om studier av hur utbildningssystemet som en del av den offentliga sektorn, styrs genom politiska inriktningar och sätt att organisera verksamheter (Jessop 1999). I nästa avsnitt utvecklas resonemanget om läroplans- och styrningsfrågor som också utgör utgångspunkt för kapitlet.

What had often been praised by techno-enthusiasts as “disruption” and “innovation” became more of a harsh reality during 2020 with the fast reorganization to online learning due to the pandemic. With a short timeframe, schools were forced to prepare for distance education and teachers had to adapt, creating online teaching activities while at the same time making sure students were well-cared for educationally, socially, emotionally, and technologically. With the fast reorganization to online learning during the pandemic, the global platform market received more influence and further reached into the core of schools’ everyday work (Williamson & Hogan, 2020). In this sense, fast digitalization has not only made the political economy of school digitalization more apparent, but also highlights how digital work is conditioned by time and the socio-technical coordination of people and technologies (Wajcman, 2015). This paper focus on how teachers regulate and are regulated by digital platform work and in particular, how digital work is regulated by time in different ways. Our interest is both the kind of work done by teachers on digital platforms and how platform infrastructures condition and challenge teachers’ work and work time. The purpose is to explore and problematize the temporal governance of digital work, inscribed in the uses and logics of digital platforms, and forms of governing powers where productivity is considered core value. Analytically, instances where there are pronounced tensions in terms of temporal issues, between the demands of digital infrastructures or professional performance, and school teachers’ everyday work priorities and regulated work hours is of particular interest. The study builds on analyses of already identified tensions in relation to school reforms more generally as existing between the regulating principles of market efficiency governance and the teaching profession’s work conditions (Anderson & Cohen, 2015; Ball, 2003; Lundström & Parding, 2011). The political economy that pushes for school digitization was already strong in Europe and many other parts of the world before the pandemic began. Platform infrastructures, commonly provided by global platform businesses like Google and Microsoft and through Learning Management Systems are not exotic anymore, but are instead everyday technologies in workplaces like schools. Even so, platform technology provided by for example Google increasingly has taken the role of an infrastructure, sociotechnically connecting clouds, software, people, data (Plantin et al., 2018). This “platformization” comes with the business logic of platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2017), profiting on the individuals’ data production with the arguments of making public sector workplaces more efficient and streamlined, and of facilitating teachers’ pedagogical and administrative work. Questions around workload and the intensification of teachers’ work have once again risen up the political agenda (c.f. Fitzgerald et al., 2019). However, research on how school teachers’ work and work situations are changing in relation to digitalization still is relatively scarce (Bergviken Rensfeldt, Hillman, Selwyn, 2018; Selwyn, 2020; Selwyn, Nemorin & Johnson, 2017; Shulte, 2019). We draw on a Swedish project case, in collaboration with and extending an Australian project (e.g. Selwyn, Nemorin & Johnson, 2017). Empirical material was collected in and connected to the digital work of teachers in two upper secondary school forms, two school forms that characterize the Swedish marketized education system, namely, one public school and one independent for-profit school. Methodologically, the ethnographical approach used is policy and infrastructure ethnography, combined with trace ethnography of teachers’ online and offline work. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used For conducting the policy ethnography, we firstly examined the policies and infrastructures implicated in teachers’ work, combining analyses of policies and platform technologies (Kitchen & Laurialt, 2014). Policy material from the regional municipality or school consortia organizations of the two schools, including extensions to national and European or international levels, e.g. strategies, guidelines, agreements on work time, digital work and platform infrastructure implementation, maintenance and support, was combined with analyses of the digital platforms and applications used in the school organizations of the participating teachers in the study. Further information from stakeholders like IT management or external platform provider companies on decisions, regulations and functionality on these different levels of platform use or data platform infrastructures, e.g. classifications of work activities in data platform standards was also collected via policy documents and interviews. Starting from the schools in the selection of policies and moving out from them, have resulted in a variety of policies that can be considered influencing digital work. In line with this, rather than regarding policies as archival documents, we aimed at selecting policies that were in use, “at work” and perhaps contested in the school workplaces in different ways. The trace ethnography started with four teachers (one man and one woman from each school) self-reporting their own activity logs on digital work based on three selected work days, followed up by a form of online focus group interview which was based on the logs and questions raised from the researchers and focus of the study. The teachers were then also involved in identifying and documenting their own data production and the traces they leave on different digital platforms via a digital self-tracking application capturing time-based screen activity. Conducting digital trace ethnography raise ethical concerns around private integrity which we have tried to counteract by involving the teacher participants themselves in self-tracking of their digital activities of work and by providing tools (self-reported activity logs included) allowing self-reflection of when and where their digital work takes place. The integrative trace ethnography approach (Geiger & Ribes, 2011) used, hence include both ethnographic and computational social science methods. These methods are themselves characterized by temporal categories, timelines, etc. but invites for making visible different temporalities in the ethnographic material. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings Digital work was analyzed based on tensions between temporalities that could be both static and dynamic but nonetheless were shaping teachers’ work (c.f. Thompson & Cook, 2017). The temporalities were understood as constructs and intertwined with spatialities of school teachers’ digital work. A preliminary finding is that digital work of online learning follows the assigned task and rhythms of schooling, but also extends more widely with the global time of digital platforms and the different temporalities produced in such environments, expanding, fragmentarizing and interrupting work in different ways. In line with Alirezabeigi, Masschelein & Decuypere (2020, p. 203), the digital work activities “not only follow the school time-table and the script of the teacher, but it equally follows the global time”. For example, the analyses included the teacher’s officially-regulated working hours in terms of classroom and workplace time, their self-regulated work time (“förtroendearbetstid”) as well as non-regularized time, all governed by certain ideals of performativity (c.f. Ball, 2003). Similarly, such entities were also translated into platforms datafication classifications of standard school activities (mainly teaching, examining and “other activities”). Hence, digital work temporalities were co-created with the operating tasks prompted by commercial platforms and activities inscribed in the systems, and the overall life cycles of platform infrastructures (updates, procurements, etc). Furthermore, the pandemic situation from March 2020 made certain temporalities around digital work visible, describing a “before-during-after Corona”, with transformed digital work experiences around attending to students and fulfilling new work tasks, implicating work intensification, strategies for work-life balance and coping with presence bleed. In sum, different temporalities and concerns in teachers’ digital work are at work, co-shaped by professional concerns, and the political economy and governance of platform infrastructures, which further add to the aforementioned research which identified tensions of market governance and teachers’ work conditions and professional concerns. References Alhadeff-Jones, M. (2018). Time and the Rhythms of Emancipatory Education Rethinking the temporal complexity of self and society. Routledge. Alirezabeigi, S., Masschelein, J., & Decuypere, M. (2020). Investigating digital doings through breakdowns: a sociomaterial ethnography of a Bring Your Own Device school, Learning, Media and Technology, 45(2), 193-207. Anderson, G., & Cohen, M I. (2015). Redesigning for identities of teachers and leader: A framework for studying new professionalism and educator resistance. Education Policy Archives, 23(85), 1-25. Ball, S. J. (2003) “The Teacher’s Soul and the Terrors of Performativity.” Journal of Education Policy 18(2), 215-228. Bergviken Rensfeldt, A., Hillman, T., & Selwyn, N. (2018). Teachers ‘liking’ their work? Exploring the realities of teacher Facebook groups. British Journal of Education Research, 44(2), 230-250. Decuypere, M. & Vanden Broeck, P. (2020). Time and educational (re-)forms: Inquiring the temporal dimension of education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 52(6), 602-612. Fitzgerald, S., McGrath-Champ, S., Stacey, M., Wilson, R. & Gavin, M. (2019). Intensification of teachers’ work under devolution: A ‘tsunami’ of paperwork. Journal of Industrial Relations, 61(5), 613-636. Geiger, R.S., & Ribes, D. (2011). Trace ethnography: Following coordination through documentary practices. New York: IEEE. Kitchin, R., & Lauriault T.P. (2014). Towards critical data studies: Charting and unpacking data assemblages and their work. The Programmable City Working Paper 2. Lingard, B. & Greg Thompson (2017). Doing time in the sociology of education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(1), 1-12. Lundström, U., & Parding, K. (2011). Teachers’ experiences with school choice: Clashing logics in the Swedish education system. Education Research International, 1-10. Plantin, J.-C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2018). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293-310. Selwyn, N. (2020). The human labour of school data: Exploring the production of digital data in schools. Oxford Review of Education. Selwyn, N., Nemorin, S. & Johnson, N. (2017). High-tech, hard work: An investigation of teachers’ work in the digital age, Learning, Media and Technology, 42(4), 390-405. Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Polity Press. Shulte, B. (2019). Teacher Agency and the Digital: Empowerment or Control? on_education Journal for Research and Debate, 2(5), 1-7. Thompson, G., & Cook, I. (2017). The politics of teaching time in disciplinary and control societies. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 38(1), 26-37. Wajcman, J. (2018). Pressed by time: The acceleration of life in digital capitalism. The University of Chicago Press. Williamson, B., & Hogan, A. (2020). Commercialisation and privatisation in/of education in the context of Covid-19. Education International Report.

Research topic/Aim: As in many other parts around the world, the Nordic countries have undergone a radical marketization and neo-liberal restructuring of the public sector. As a part of these changes, policy-making networks are now a current feature of government, connecting public and private interests, and local and global actors. Similar to the UK, the changes within Nordic countries have become particularly evident in the educational sector and in relation to the digitalisation of schools (cf. Williamson, 2015). In Sweden, this has meant that the so-called edu-business, with IT consultants, technology and infrastructure suppliers, are key players in shaping public IT education policy at the same time as they displaying strong links to global policy networks (Player Koro & Beach 2014). Theoretical frameworks: The contributions within the symposia all consider policy networks as conceptual tools and central part of current education policy formations (Ball, 2016) as they mobilize and connect actors, technologies as well as ideas and discourses. Theoretically, critical and dynamic approaches to how such policy networks are formed have been a starting point, however based on different approaches to aspects of how policy networks take form, e.g. through policy events and fast policy discourses, processes that have ‘real effects’ and therefore are possible to act upon and change. These kinds of policy processes make new centers, or dislocations of policy possible. Methodology/research design: The symposia will provide a critical commentary of policy network formations both from the Nordic and European context and by the use of for example networked ethnography and documentary analyses. – Abstract 1 Selling technology to teachers: education trade shows as a policy network event – Abstract 2 Fast policy networks, digital citizenship and computing in the curriculum – Abstract 3 Methodological considerations when researching IT education policy networks Expected conclusions/Findings: The changing political landscape where private and public sector now ‘work together’ has meant that the boundary between the private and the public sector as parts of the society has been weakened. The consequences for the school, the students and for those working in the school sector – as for the education system as a whole – are many, profound and serious. The aim with this symposium is to address these consequences by: – Providing empirical, conceptual and methodological contributions from scholars investigating the emergence of trans-national spaces of policy-making and their relation to intra national spaces of policy. – Discussing the consequences these occurrences will have for policy formation as an enactment and central arena of educational policy-making. In particular, we are drawing on the case of the digitization of schools and exemplify how this is played out in Nordic education contexts. Relevance for Nordic Educational Research: Marked-based reforms in education and the formation of policy networks have reworked the nature of public education in Norway, Sweden and Denmark as well as in UK. To research, explore, and analyse the consequences of this is both necessary and relevant, not least in relation to issues of democracy and in discussion about the purpose and function of the education system for individuals and society.

With schools and universities closing across Europe, the Covid-19 lockdown left actors in the field of education battling with the unprecedented challenge of finding a meaningful way to keep the wheels of education turning online. The sudden need for digital solutions across the field of education resulted in the emergence of a variety of digital networks and collaborative online platforms. In this joint article from scholars around Europe, we explore the Covid-19 lockdowns of physical education across the European region, and the different processes of emergency digitalization that followed in their wake. Spanning perspectives from Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Nordic countries, the article’s five cases provide a glimpse of how these processes have at the same time accelerated and consolidated the involvement of various commercial and non-commercial actors in public education infrastructures. By gathering documentation, registering dynamics, and making intimations of the crisis as it unfolded, the aim of the joint paper is to provide an opportunity for considering the implications of these accelerations and consolidations for the heterogeneous futures of European education.

With schools and universities closing across Europe, the Covid-19 lockdown left actors in the field of education battling with the unprecedented challenge of finding a meaningful way to keep the wheels of education turning online. The sudden need for digital solutions across the field of education resulted in the emergence of a variety of digital networks and collaborative online platforms. In this joint article from scholars around Europe, we explore the Covid-19 lockdowns of physical education across the European region, and the different processes of emergency digitalization that followed in their wake. Spanning perspectives from Italy, Germany, Belgium, and the Nordic countries, the article’s five cases provide a glimpse of how these processes have at the same time accelerated and consolidated the involvement of various commercial and non-commercial actors in public education infrastructures. By gathering documentation, registering dynamics, and making intimations of the crisis as it unfolded, the aim of the joint paper is to provide an opportunity for considering the implications of these accelerations and consolidations for the heterogeneous futures of European education.

In recent years a flood of interrelated reform-ideas with the main intention to reorient educational systems has been spread across the globe (Ball, 2003). These reform ideas are according to Ball (2003) embedded in three interrelated policy technologies or discoursers; the market, managerialism and performativity (p215), that has become an important part in aligning the educational system organisation with systems that traditionally belongs to the private sector. In this process the educational system and teacher education have become a political battleground geared to ideological transformations of society (Apple, 2001, 2009) which has had many consequences not at least for teaching and learning in education institutions. The Swedish school system and teacher education has, as in many other countries, undergone major political and policy-related changes in the last decades. In Sweden this has meant that knowledge of facts in subjects and knowledge about how to make these facts relevant to learn and reproduce by pupils was given a key position and an increased demand on examinations and tests in these subjects (Bender, 2013; SOU 2008:109, 2008). In this chapter the Swedish Teacher education will be taken as a critical case and the focus will be on the performative discourse in terms of tests and evaluations. The aim with this paper is to make visible how the on-going process of education within teacher education and its performative demands affect student teachers learning strategies and professional development. The intention is to analyse, make visible and try to understand how the examination tasks control what counts as legitimate knowledge for student teachers for their future work as teachers in compulsory school. The following questions will be given special attention: What meanings and understanding are generated through these examinations? How do the students handle examinations tasks? What consequences might this have on student teacher professional knowledge development? The foundation for the paper is a ethnographical meta-analysis of two studies (Eriksson, 2009; Player-Koro, 2012) within teacher education carried out between 2004-2009. The reanalysis involving comparisons across our projects in an attempt to identify and synthesise key elements from these investigations (Beach, Eriksson, & Player-Koro, 2013). These key elements are then used as ‘data’ together with extracts aimed at illustrate arguments and question emerging claims. In the present case it is mainly extracts of and summaries from educational arrangements and educational effects but also extracts of and summaries from official policy that figure in data. Most material is from observations of natural occurring conversations in or close to actual class/lecture-room contexts. The reanalysis was characterised as an interactive process between researchers, the data and theory (Jeffrey & Troman, 2004). In this process Bernstein´s (2003) concept of the pedagogic device has been used. The pedagogical device refers to a concept and set of rules, distributive rules, recontextualizing rules and evaluative rules, describing how the regulation of consciousness takes place through communication in a pedagogical practice. The pedagogic device refers in this sense to the process where knowledge is transformed into pedagogic communication through the embedding of two discourses, the instructional discourse within the regulative discourse that together forms the pedagogic discourse that constitute the rules by or through which pedagogical subjects (in this case student teachers) are created. The whole purpose and meaning of the device is, according to Bernstein, condensed in the continuous evaluation going on in pedagogical practices. This means that examinations structure the form and content and the social interactions within the pedagogical practice. Bernstein´s (2003, p 156) distinction between two fundamental forms of knowledge discourses; vertical and horizontal discourse that reflects a dichotomy between scientific- and common-sense knowledge was also important for the analysis. Method In both studies (Eriksson, 2009; Player-Koro, 2012) it was found that a performative discourse has had major consequences for student teachers strategies and development of their professional knowledge base. The performative practice seemed to move the professional knowledge base toward weak structures (weak grammar, poor insulation, indistinct concepts, local regulation), a knowledge form that is described by Bernstein (2003) as horizontal discourse. In both studies the main data was produced through detailed situated investigations based on long-term study of practices within different kinds of teacher education contexts. Eriksson´s fieldwork lasted for 1,5 year in 2004-2005 and the participants consisted of prospective teachers aimed for teaching of younger children (school year 1-6) and teacher educators. Player-Koro´s fieldwork covered over four years of investigation, 2007-2010. The participants involved were prospective mathematics teachers for older children (school year 4-9) and their teacher educators. Participant observations from different teaching situations together with interviews with students involved in these educational settings formed the main body of data. The fieldwork was grounded within the interaction between students and teachers as well as between students, as for example, in the lecture hall, seminar room, mentoring group meetings and study groups. Expected Outcomes The most significant finding from this reanalysis that will be problematized in the paper is that student teachers learning strategies are heavily shaped by their examination tasks. The problematic thing with this is that these performative priorities seem to prevent student teachers from developing a deeper understanding of both their professional knowledge and their subject knowledge. This means that they, through examinations, are prevented from the access to a vertical discourse that could provide them with mechanisms for generating new knowledge beyond specific and isolated contexts and content (a horizontal discourse). Students was through examinations often steered toward the development of a horizontal knowledge structure which is problematic for them in their future work as teachers because of the fact that a horizontal form of knowledge is less assured and less ‘powerful’ than a vertical knowledge structure. A lack of access to a vertical discourse could amongst other things, lead to a professional teaching staff that can be easily manoeuvred into new boundary areas and also easily marketed. References Apple, Michael W. (2001). Markets, Standards, Teaching, and Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(3), 182-196. doi: 10.1177/0022487101052003002 Apple, Michael W. (2009). Can critical education interrupt the right? Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 30(3), 239 - 251. Ball, Stephen J. (2003). The teacher's soul and the terrors of perfomativity. In S. J. Ball (Ed.), Education Policy and Social Class The selected work of Stephen J. Ball. Abingdon: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. Beach, Dennis, Eriksson, Anita, & Player-Koro, Catarina. (2013). Forthcoming. Bender, German. (2013). TCO granskar: Lärarledd tid och kvalitet i den högre utbildningen. (TCO Review: Teacher-led time and quality in Higher Education). TCO granskar: Avdelningen f�r samh�llspolitik och analys, TCO. Bernstein, Basil (2003). Class, codes ans control. Vol. 4, The structuring of peddagogic discourse. London: Routledge. Eriksson, Anita. (2009). Om teori och praktik i l�rarutbildning : en etnografisk och diskursanalytisk studie [About Theory and Practice in Teacher Education. An Ethnographic and Discourse Analytical Study]. G�teborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Jeffrey, Bob , & Troman, Geoff. (2004). Time for ethnography. Brittish Educational Research Journal, 30(4), 535-548. Player-Koro, Catarina. (2012). Reproducing traditional discourses of teaching and learning mathematics [Elektronisk resurs] : studies of mathematics and ICT in teaching and teacher education. G�teborg: Department of applied IT, University of Gothenburg ; Chalmers university of technology. SOU 2008:109 En hållbar lärarutbildning : betänkande [Sustainable teacher education]. (978-91-38-23102-9). Stockholm: Fritze Retrieved from http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/11/67/37/b4b3b355.pdf

2020-08-30

2020-09-05

The digitalization of the school has been an ongoing process for over 50 years. Often, investments in digital technology have been argued for in relation towards the future, mainly to a future society and working life where new knowledge (linked to the new digital technology) is needed. However, the expectations associated with digital technology have rarely been met and the recurring initiatives have, after evaluations, been followed by a debate on failure, which is not infrequently directed at the school and its staff (Eriksson-Zetterqvist et al., 2006). The concept of disruptive innovation taken from marketing theory has been used by Christo Sims (2017) to describe this phenomenon. There are signs that AI in education (AIED), is the next major digital innovation directed to schools, discursively described as a disruptive innovation with great potential for improving, changing and streamlining education (Sims 2017). This presentation reports from a literature review that aims to explore the discourses that surround AIED and the hopes that are put into education through AIED. The literature review will focus on research from the last decades in the area of AIED, to investigate the hopes and anticipations tied to AI or put it another way what problems AI should solve in relation to schools and education? Methodologically, the literature review will start with a systematic analysis of peer-review articles that will quantify the articles in different categories. The results and the conclusions in the articles will thereafter be analysed with a theoretical framework labelled by Bacchi (2012) as a “What’s the problem represented to be” – analysis. Expected finding could be related to the fact that digitalisation of education has more than many other fields within been influenced by big corporate edu-business (Ideland, Jobér, & Axelsson, 2021; Lundahl, 2016; Player-Koro, Bergviken Rensfeldt & Selwyn, 2018; Rönnberg, 2017; Williamson, 2015) one hypothesis is therefore that financial arguments could be found rather than possibilities for AIED to increase equality, democracy, and diversity (Dixon-Román et al., 2019; Hsratinksy et al., 2019; Selwyn et al., 2020; Williamson, 2018; 2015a,b). Another hypothesis is that citizenship and democracy have become commodities, something to trade within the ed-tech business rather than improving fundamental values as stated in the steering documents. The results from the analyses will be related to the Nordic context and the Nordic steering documents and what they state regarding digitalization in general and AI and algorithms in general. The conclusion focuses on what kind of figurations and narratives that are brought forward in the research in order to identify further research needs but also discuss how this might shape and form the future ed-tech field.

This paper will present substantive findings from an event ethnographic study of one large annual Scandinavian educational technology (ed-tech) trade fair. Educational fairs and events have become important arenas and policy nodes for an increasing global ed-tech market where products and ideas become demonstrated, promoted and sold and where (inter)national networks of public and private policy actors intersect with local school systems, schools and teachers (Ball2012). As these events have become integral parts of policy interpretation and translation, they also transform crucial aspects of education governance. Based on a network governance approach, we identify three significant forms of how this type of event constitute network governing; 1) consensual, hegemonic visions (post-politics), 2) elitist coalitions (hierarchical government), and 3) (unexpected) sector mergers and outcasts based on market competition logic (neoliberalism). This point to the contested nature of current education governance networks, and how simultaneous hierarchical and networking powers operate, integrate and create network and new coalitions.

DN DEBATT 9/10.

Antalet studenter som vill bli lärare sjunker. Alla tycks vara överens om att det beror på dålig kvalitet på lärarutbildningarna. Men då missar man ett grundläggande faktum: det finns färre unga vuxna än för tio år sedan. De studenter vi så förtvivlat söker existerar inte, och nu hotas lärarutbildningarnas kvalitet på riktigt, skriver fyra experter på pedagogik.

This paper calls for the need to better understand how the marketization of public sector in Sweden has changed the way policies are produced and translated in to action. Its aim is to contribute to and enable a debate about consequences of privatisation. It does so taking IT-education policy as a case and takes a point of departure in the most recent efforts made by government and educational leaders to push ICT into educational settings, in the so called one-to-one laptop initiatives. The aim of the paper is to discuss how the use of a methodological design that is a synergistic research design between social network analysis and ethnography, called network ethnography can be used to investigate how educational policy is being ‘done’ in new digital locations which involve new forms of social structuring that emphasize flows and mobility of people, capital and ideas.

In the studies presented here, digitalization of schools and education is viewed as an integral part of educational governance, situated in and related to the larger society. In this context, it can be shown that educational (digital) technology per se does not provide the solution to educational problems, nor does it have the potential to transform education culture and make teaching and learning more effective and innovative. Political decisions, together with the teacher’s educational mission, are more important in the structuring of education. This is also considered in relation to the fact that digitalization is an expanding area of education policy situated within the larger political/economic changes in societies in Western countries that have led to a fundamental reshaping of public education systems toward markets and economic competitiveness. As a consequence, educational policy, at least when it comes to digitalization, is driven by business ideas rather than broader ideas about what we want education to be for the individual and for society as a whole.

In the studies presented here, digitalization of schools and education is viewed as an integral part of educational governance, situated in and related to the larger society. In this context, it can be shown that educational (digital) technology per se does not provide the solution to educational problems, nor does it have the potential to transform education culture and make teaching and learning more effective and innovative. Political decisions, together with the teacher’s educational mission, are more important in the structuring of education. This is also considered in relation to the fact that digitalization is an expanding area of education policy situated within the larger political/economic changes in societies in Western countries that have led to a fundamental reshaping of public education systems toward markets and economic competitiveness. As a consequence, educational policy, at least when it comes to digitalization, is driven by business ideas rather than broader ideas about what we want education to be for the individual and for society as a whole.

This study investigates teachers’ attitudes to and beliefs about using ICT in education and proposes a model of how different variables are related to teachers’ use of ICT in classrooms. The model suggests that positive attitudes related specifically to ICT as a useful tool for teaching and learning and a strong sense of self-efficacy in using computers in education seem to influence the use of ICT the most. It is also suggested that positive attitudes to ICT generally do not seem to contribute very much to teachers’ use of ICT in classrooms. This is a surprising finding. The distinction between the importance of specific and general attitudes to ICT use and the emphasis on self-efficacy contributes to contemporary research. Self-efficacy and attitudes are suggested to be mutually related to ICT use.

This paper aims to show how ethnography is used to explore the pedagogical practice in teacher education, how it is structured, transmitted and acquired. It has two foci, which gives the paper a dual purpose: to identify and describe (even theoretically) a key substantive issue and to reflect on the use of ethnography in this. The empirical material is drawn from an ethnographic study where a group of students were followed 20 weeks during a mathematic course. The material discussed here, represents 20 hours of participants observations from lectures in mathematics, and 8 conversional interviews with students. The paper uses Bernstein’s concepts of code and the modalities of pedagogic transmission and acquisition, and his typology of vertical and horizontal discourse, to show how a strong classified and framed practice block student teachers from developing vertical knowledge structure in mathematics. The mathematic knowledge that students are subjected to takes more the form of a horizontal discourse and that is problematic for their professional development in that a horizontal discourses reduce student access to important forms of knowledge by which they can challenge tradition and consciously change their practice (Bernstein, 2000, 2003).

This article draws from ethnographic data produced inside mathematics teacher education in Sweden. It explores and makes visible the ongoing process of education during workshops in information and communication technology (ICT) laboratory contexts in which student teachers were working with spreadsheet applications on the computer. The main finding is that, contrary to the intentions to renew and revitalise education, ICT in use seemed to operate as a relay in the reproduction of traditional ways of teaching and learning. However, the investigation is not one of the failures of education to make use of ICT but one that tries to distance itself from the traditional enthusiastic rhetoric, with the ambition to contribute to a more realistic discussion. Bernstein's concept of pedagogical discourse has been used. One education setting has been studied in detail.

For 30 years there has been ongoing argument that developments of information and communication technology (ICT) will inevitably change education systems and practices. This innovation of education by using ICT-tools is often described as more or less self-evident with a naïve faith in the promises of new technology to enable teachers to make improvement in the content, the methods and the organisation of teaching and learning, with far-reaching influence on students’ skills and knowledge (Westera 2005; Nivala 2009). One example is ICT literacy defined as an important component in a set of generic skills that all citizens in the neo-liberal market society must possess (Kozma and Voogt 2003; Krumsvik 2009; Robertson 2003; De Castell, Bryson, and Jenson 2002). However, educational practices seem to have failed to live up to these utopian expectations and the process of integration of ICT has often been described as slow. Reasons for this lethargy has by many researchers been identified in various aspects of educational practice ranging from technical factors such as lack of technology and software in schools and the limited personal expertise of teachers in the use of ICT, to other factors, such as for example teachers’ beliefs, and knowledge about how to integrate ICT in teaching (Robertson 2003; UNESCO Launches ICT Standards Effort 2008; De Castell, Bryson, and Jenson 2002; Goktas, Yildirim, and Yildirim 2009; Govender and Govender 2009). The aim with this paper is to discuss how ethnographic methods can be used to make visible what educational technologies might offer for teaching and learning of mathematics. The paper offers critical considerations of the official discourse (described above), stemming from economic interests, exhorting the field of education to adopt and integrate information and communication technology (ICT), in teaching and learning. It calls for an alternative, reflexive and critical approach where questions about technology uses in education are emphasised. But the question is, what educationally, does ICT really offer for education? In the present study a group of student teachers were followed during 20 weeks of a mathematics course as part of a three and a half to four yearlong education. The course was followed in its entirely but the material discussed here represents participants observation together with conversional interviews with students from lab work where student teachers work with computers . One way of understanding the attractiveness of ICT for educational policy makers, is the way new technology is formulated in official discourse, by the society and its selected agents, where digital technology in many way defines society, and the position education has as a driving force of economic competiveness (Ball 2006). The argument for ICT use in education formulated in this discourse is rooted in economistic theorizing rather than in an educational theory (De Castell, Bryson, and Jenson 2002). The present study try to redress this imbalances. It uses Basil Bernstein conceptual framework about the construction of pedagogic discourse as a grammar underlying fields of production, recontextualisation and pedagogical practice. These theoretical concepts could be used to understand the process where dominant groups in society ideologically create unrealistic expectations about the effects of ICT use on teaching and learning. It does this through its concern with the intrinsic feature of pedagogic discourse, with the distinctive form and structure of what actually goes on the process of education (Bernstein 2000).

This article draws from data produced during subject theory lectures and in conversional interviews with students from an ongoing ethnographic study of mathematics teacher education at a Swedish University. Using Bernsteins’ language of description of the pedagogic device the article describes how the aims of teacher education to re-contextualise mathematical education towards greater student subject knowledge is thwarted by a strongly classified and framed practice that obstructs student teachers from developing a vertical knowledge structure in mathematics due to performative priorities. The mathematical knowledge to which students are subjected takes more the form of a horizontal discourse and this is problematic for their knowledge development. A horizontal discourse reduces student access to important forms of knowledge by which they can challenge tradition and consciously change their practice.

Network ethnography was first developed for the study of organizations built around digital media, and is an amalgam of different research methods derived from traditional ethnography and social network analysis. It was then further adapted to study contemporary policy mobility and governance structures, and could be summarized as an adaptation of ethnographic methods to the way contemporary organizations and associations are working due to the globalization and digitalization of society. Network ethnography involves a mapping of the policy field under study using techniques from social network analysis. Data production and analysis of mobilities and interactions within the network are conducted with network ethnography, a method that shares the fundamental principle of ethnography as a tradition. This allows the researcher to analyze network activities and evolutions, how social relations are established and performed, and how policy is being moved—and fixed—through these activities.

This thesis is primarily concerned with the effects of education for future teachers in the context of the Swedish teacher training (Government Bill 1999/2000:135 2000). It belongs to a theoretical tradition in which the education system is viewed as a key factor in cultural production and reproduction in educational practices through symbolic control (Apple 2009; Ball 2006; Bernstein 2000, 2003). Symbolic control defines how forms of social interaction affect what is possible to think, say and do in different situations. The thesis is focused specifically on student mathematics teachers learning to become teachers of mathematics. It has a particular focus on the materials used in this, the meanings given to these materials and the identities produced through the possible embodiment of these meanings. The use of different educational technologies, including in particular ICT, has been of special interest. It aims therefore to understand both how mathematical discourses are produced and reproduced in teacher education and how this colours student teachers’ views on mathematics and their professional identity (Bernstein 2000, 2003; Valero 2007). The main outcomes of my thesis are that through the way that mathematics is taught and learned, mathematics teacher education in practice reproduces traditional ways of teaching and learning. This in that mathematics instruction is built around a ritualized practice based on the ability to solve exercises related to an examined-textbook-based content. ICT use in this context is not transformative. Rather it seems as if teaching and learning with digital technology operate as a relay in the reproduction of traditional forms of education practice. This is contrary to the intentions to renew and revitalise mathematics education and the thesis thus suggests that there is a need to scrutinize the way new technology is formulated in official discourses and appropriated in educational work. Two other things are also noteworthy in the thesis findings. The first is an increased emphasis on formal subject content through recent policy developments. This re-emphasis reaffirms the value of authoritative subject studies content as the central and most important component in the professional knowledge base. On the basis of the finding from the thesis the logic of the reform may be questioned. Also important is the ICT discourse that is constituted in wider society by selected agents. In this discourse digital technology often in many ways defines (post)modern society and the position it and education have as a driving force toward economic competitiveness. An alternative, more reflexive and critical approach where questions about technology uses in education are emphasized is suggested as necessary.

This paper aims to present findings from a survey study directed to all teachers who are registered in the National Agency for Education's register i.e. teachers who have a teacher ID. A number of N=12 885 teachers have answered the survey. The aim with the study was to map and analyze the teachers’ profession in the wake of recent years political reforms that has had teachers in focus. Specifically, the two reforms directed to those teachers defined as specifically skilled teachers, the Career Services for Teachers (CST) reform and the established Government Grant to increase specifically skilled teachers' salaries has been taken as point of departure for the study. These reforms have according to both evaluations and research had significant consequences, not only for those who have been directly affected by the reform by, for example, being appointed “first teachers” and senior lecturers and / or have been awarded through the teacher salary increase, but for the profession as a whole. Finding out what this new professional landscape looks like for the different categories of teachers now active in primary and secondary school has been the primary interest of the study. More specifically, the purpose has been to interpret and analyze how educational policy strategies delimit and position teachers' professional activities and legitimacy, how teachers perceive and manage their work in relation to these conditions and the intra-professional relations between different categories of teachers. 

The questions, in focus for this study are about teachers' working conditions, work tasks, roles, authority and status, aspects that are central to the professional theoretical knowledge formation. Therefore, the study applies a theoretical framework on professions and professional work. Teachers are in line with Brante (2009) viewed upon as public sector professionals, that are expected to use their professional skills and judgment in their work, but that at the same time are governed by the policies, rules, and regulations defined by their organization. External governance is often considered challenging in relation to teachers' professionalism, often described in terms of the tension between profession and organisation (e.g. Evetts, 2006; Freidson, 2001). This study investigates these tensions both between teachers and organization and intra-professional relations, professional identity, knowledge and competence from different categories of teacher’s perspective.  

Brante, T. (2009). Vad är en profession? Teoretiska ansatser och definitioner. In L. Maria (Ed.), Vetenskap för profession 

Evetts, J. (2006, 2006/07/01). Introduction: Trust and Professionalism: Challenges and Occupational Changes. Current Sociology, 54(4),. 

Freidson, E. (2001). Professionalism : the third logic. University of Chicago Press.

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the discussion about the contradictions between the optimistic faith in improving education through the implementation of technology and the actual realities of educational use of technology. This is done through a summary and overview of the results of three different studies in the field of educational technology that started in 2005 and that is still on going. The aim of these studies has been to contribute to development of a critical perspective on educational technology and thereby contribute to knowledge development about education of today.

This study investigates teachers in the Swedish ten-year compulsory school who use ICT (Information and communication technology) in their classroom practice. It poses and gives answers to questions about what is contributing most to explain why they choose to use computers and information technology in their work with students/pupils and uses multiple regression analysis in order to investigate the best pattern of predictive variables. A significant model emerged suggesting that teachers using ICT with students were interested in changing their classroom practice. They also felt self-efficacious in using computers in education and they have positive attitudes toward using ICT in education. The present investigation differs from other studies in that it examines teachers who already are using technology in their classroom practice and it could be seen as a building block in the development of knowledge about how teachers can become more competent and confident in using ICT in their pedagogical work in classroom practice.

This submission is based on research with a multi-sited design that targets and compares learning, interaction and outcomes. In it we discuss the challenges of doing research based evaluation of digitally innovative online learning. Empirically the article takes its point of departure from the main findings from research in four upper secondary schools in a 1:1 project (one laptop per student) and four classrooms that are part of the empirical study. Bernstein’s theoretical concept of the pedagogic discourse is used to make visible how the main incentive for teaching methods is the assessment system that recontextualises traditional discourses about teaching and learning. The conclusion is that fundamental transformations of education is less about technology and more about the changing of the structures and discourses about teaching, learning and education.

This article takes its point of departure from the main findings from research into four upper secondary schools that have implemented digital technology through one-to-one laptop initiatives. Various data sources have been used in order to identify and understand how teaching and learning are organised and the reasons why and how digital technologies are used in educational settings. This is a response to a demand for more knowledge regarding the ways in which desirable changes of education can be realised and the potential role of educational technology this process. The conclusion drawn is that fundamental transformations in education are less concerned with technology and have more to do with changing structures and discourses regarding teaching, learning and education.