This article explores how the concept of Universal Design for Learning constructs problems relating to education and how it constructs solutions to these problems. This is done through a five-step critical discourse analysis of the founders’ extensive website. Our analysis shows that the problems of concern relate to a discourse of barriers; ‘barriers to learning that millions of people experience every day’. These barriers are not explicitly defined but further exploration reveals that primarily traditional teaching is at fault, being too rigid and not considering students’ differences. In terms of solutions, the website offers a multitude of recommendations on how to meet students’ differences, materialised through both visual and verbal representations, in a discourse of almightiness. The vast network of actors that is mentioned on the website emphasises the far-reaching ambitions for UDL. However, we suggest that the expectations it places on teachers are unreasonable and sub-optimal for students.

Denna artikel belyser hur rektorer förhåller sig till forskning i kölvattnet av new public manage-ment-reformer i den svenska skolan. Den empiriska kontexten utgörs av rektorers beskrivningar av hur de använder forskning och forskarsamverkan för att främja skolans och lärarnas utveckling. Genom intervjuer med 15 rektorer identifierar studien tre idealtyper av rektorer – kollektivister, pragmatiker och nätverkare – som fångar distinkta mönster i deras sätt att närma sig forskning. Med hjälp av begreppet assetisering visar analysen hur dessa idealtyper producerar olika slags värden: (i) pedagogiskt värde – förbättring av skolans och undervisningens kvalitet, (ii) akademiskt värde – definiera relevant och användbar forskning, (iii) socialt värde – knyta till sig kvalificerad personal, (iv) ekonomiskt värde – förbättra skolans rykte och erhålla projektmedel, och (v) politiskt värde – övertyga och tysta lärare. Artikeln drar slutsatsen att det krävs en förändrad styrning av den svenska skolan för att möjliggöra en forskningsanvändning och forskarsamverkan bland rektorer som tjänar läraryrkets intressen.

This article reveals how school principals approach research in the wake of New Public Management reforms in Swedish schools. The empirical context is school principals’ accounts of how they use research and research collaboration to promote school and teacher development. Drawing from interviews with 15 school principals, the study uncovers three ideal types of school principals—collectivists, pragmatists, and networkers—capturing distinct patterns of relating to research. Guided by the concept of assetisation, the analysis demonstrates how these types produce different kinds of value: (i) pedagogical value—improving school and teaching quality; (ii) academic value—defining relevant and useful research; (iii) social value—connecting with qualified future personnel; (iv) economic value—improving the school’s reputation and obtaining grants; and (v) political value—persuading and silencing teachers. The article concludes with a call for a shift in the education governance system to enable research use among school principals that serve the interests of the teaching profession.

As part of marketization and privatization tendencies the last decades have provided several new pedagogical concepts, all of which seem to attract a growing interest. In the Invoice project, funded by The Swedish research council, we applied a follow the money approach (cf. Ball 2012) by collecting and following up 1,000 invoices registered on continuous professional development (CPD) accounts for teachers in three Swedish municipalities. The invoice material revealed a number of popular pedagogical concepts; Universal Design for Learning (UDL), DT (Differentiated Teaching), CP (Clarifying Pedagogy), and LRPE (Learning Readiness Physical Education). The acronymic character can be seen as an alignment to medical programs and as such lending legitimacy and giving an impression of established approaches. 

In our presentation, we pay particular attention to the above mentioned UDL. The concept was launched and promoted by the American organization CAST which presents itself as a ‘a non-profit education research and development organization that created the Universal Design for Learning framework and UDL Guidelines’. According to the organization itself the concept has reached far globally. 

The ambition of policy making is high; there are 130 hits of the word ‘policy’ (referring to books, podcasts, and other material) on the webpage. One illustrative text example is:

In 2006, CAST joined with several organizations to form the National UDL Task Force, an interdisciplinary coalition that advocates support for UDL in federal, state, and local policy. The Task Force has successfully advocated for the inclusion of UDL in the federal Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 and in various policy directives from the US Department of Education.

As far as Sweden is concerned, the concept has been recommended by two powerful, Swedish policy actors; The National Agency for Education and The National Agency for Special Needs Education and Schools, SPSM. The latter advocated the concept in connection to a large national effort on special educational needs.

The presentation explores how the concept of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) constructs (1) problems related to education and (2) how these problems should be addressed. The study is based on critical discourse analysis, a theoretical and methodological approach introduced by Norman Fairclough where a discourse bears reference to a ‘way of signifying experience from a particular perspective’ (1995, p. 135). The ‘critical’ refers to injustices and power which is supposed to be revealed by a close look at linguistic features in certain texts.  

Methodology or Methods/ Research Instruments or Sources Used  

To study the phenomenon of UDL we primarily chose the main webpage of the responsible organization CAST (2020). The main webpage has an extensive number of links, and we considered also these. Thus, the probably most well-known resource in UDL contexts, the UDL guidelines was also included in the text material.

Our analysis of the selected webpage is based on a combination of Fairclough´s analytical steps (Fairclough, 2003, p. 209 – 210) and a modified version by Guo and Shan (2013). This combination has been applied previously by Levinsson and Norlund (2018), Norlund (2020), and Levinsson et al. (2022) and involves the following five steps: 

Focus on a social problem which has a semiotic aspect. Analyze how the problem is portrayed/construed. Identify which discourse/s that are involved.Analyze how the suggested solution is portrayed/construed. Identify which discourse/s that are involved.Map which network of practices within which the problem and solution are located, and how relevant practices are potentially reorganized. Consider whether the network of practices (the social order) ‘needs’ the problem.Identify potential contradictions and gaps in the material. Give space for counter-voices.Reflect critically on the analysis (1-4) Consistent with step 1 in the analytical tool we focused on a social problem that has a semiotic aspect (we found images, fonts, links, punctuation marks etcetera in the material). Together semiotic resources signal something particularly to the reader (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006). For the verbal part of analysis, we affiliated to Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) systemic-functional linguistics (SFL) with its focus on how language functions in context. SFL, which shares several starting points with the approach of Fairclough, is built on the phenomenon of transitivity analysis, from which we collected a set of adequate linguistic concepts. 

* Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings 

Our analysis shows that the problem of concern (step 1) can be found in the ‘barriers to learning that millions of people experience every day’, stated as a problem on the CAST webpage. The barriers are not explicitly defined but further exploration makes this obvious; traditional teaching is too rigid and does not consider students’ differences. Both verbal (‘millions of people’) and semiotic resources contribute to the urgency and scope of the message and to the discourse of rigidness. Concerning solutions (step 2), the reader of the webpage gets a multitude of recommendations on how to meet students’ differences, materialized in both visual and verbal representations. We suggest a discourse of potency here, including universality and eternity. The vast network (step 3) that appears from content on the webpage emphasizes this. Referring to possible counter-voices (step 4), one counter-voice would invoke that UDL shares similarities with the heavily criticized neuromyth of learning styles (Howard-Jones, 2014; Murphy, 2021). Another counter-voice would invoke that the expectancy of teachers to provide individual solutions to all their students regarding all the aspects recommended in the UDL Guidelines should, needless to say, be considered impossible. According to Fairclough (2003), the point in making critical discourse analyses is that they make possible the assumptions that are made by involved actors and by extension how power is exerted in a particular practice. In this case we show how the popular policy phenomenon put teachers at risk of being the object of heavy workload and the performers of unscientific approaches. The final step (step 5) generated no particular methodological concerns. 

References  

Ball, Stephen J. 2012. “Show Me the Money! Neoliberalism at Work in Education.” Forum 54, no. 1: 23–27.

CAST. (2020). About Universal Design for Learning. Retrieved from http://www.cast.org/our-work/about-udl.html.

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis. Longman.

Fairclough, N. (2003). Analyzing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. Routledge.

Guo, S. & Shan, H. (2013). The politics of recognition: critical discourse analysis of recent PLAR policies for immigrant professionals in Canada. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 32(4), 464–480. https://doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2013.778073

Halliday, M. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar (2nd edition). Edward Arnold.

Howard-Jones, P. (2014). Neuroscience and education: myths and messages. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 15, 817-824

Kress G. & van Leeuwen T. (2006). Reading images – the grammar of visual design. Routledge.

Levinsson, M., & Norlund, A. (2018). En samtida diskurs om hjärnans betydelse för undervisning och lärande: Kritisk analys av artiklar i lärarfackliga tidskrifter. Utbildning och Lärande, 12(1), 7–25

Levinsson, M., Norlund, A. & Johansson, J. (2022). En samtida diskurs om betydelsen av fysisk aktivitet för undervisning och lärande: Kritisk analys av artiklar i lärarfackliga tidskrifter. Nordic Studies in Education, 42(3), 249-271. 

 Murphy, M.P. (2021). Belief without evidence? A policy research note on Universal Design for Learning. Policy Futures in Education, 19, 7–12.

Norlund, A. (2020). Suggestopedi som språkdidaktiskt verktyg i vuxenutbildning – en kritisk textanalys. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 25(2–3), 7–25. https://doi.org/10.15626/pfs25.0203.01

 Education on doctoral supervisors has been a part of higher education pedagogy in Swedish universities for the last five decades, introduced in 1969 higher education reform and reviewed in 1998 (Jansson & Román, 2016). The purpose of this study is to identify dominant discourses on the education of doctoral supervision, with a particular focus on the construction of doctoral supervisors’ professional knowledge and practice. The study will be undertaken through a critical and pragmatic discourse analysis of doctoral supervision course plans collected from six universities and two university colleges in Sweden. The eight course plans are selected from two senior universities established more than 100 years ago, two universities established 50-100 years ago, and two universities and two university colleges established less than 50 years ago. Based on Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1993, 2003) and a pragmatic discourse analysis, which draws on Dewey´s transactional perspective (Quennerstedt, 2008) and Foucault´s concepts of power (Foucault, 1980, 1982, 2002), the course plan texts will be analysed and discussed in three interrelated steps: (i) conducting a transitivity analysis (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2014), focusing on participants, processes (material, mental, verbal, relational), and circumstances; (ii) identifying the main discourses constructing reoccurring patterns of professional action in relation to supervision practice; and (iii) discussing implications for supervisors professional knowledge base, as well as for power relationships in supervision practices. Through these steps, we will closely scrutinize the purposes, goals, contents as well as the teaching and learning activities of the course plans. There will also be a focus on common areas that are addressed by the course plans, the differences that could be identified, as well as what are missing in the documents. Based on our critical analysis, we will suggest possibilities for considering vital issues in relation to future courses on supervising doctoral students. 

‘Close-to-practice research’ has received increased attention across the Nordic countries. Following the British Education Research Association (BERA), the notion of ‘close-to-practice research’ is used to refer to educational research that is based on problems in practice, often involves researchers working in partnership with practitioners in schools and addresses issues of relevance to practitioners. This roundtable focuses on how close-to-practice research can contribute to the knowledge base of the teaching profession by bringing together perspectives from didactics, school improvement and educational policy. More specifically, the interest is directed toward what characterizes the knowledge produced through practice-based research that may have significance for teachers' professional knowledge base and practice.

The roundtable conversation builds on a previous analysis of what kinds of knowledge products are generated in didactic close-to-practice research where teachers and researchers work together within the research environment Stockholm Teaching & Learning Studies. As a result of this analysis a typology of knowledge products was proposed including: (i) descriptions of knowing, (ii) teaching design, (iii) didactic examples and (iv) methodological tools. It has been proposed that additional knowledge products may be developed, such as artifacts to be used in teaching (e.g. lesson plans, visual representations). The roundtable will include the following points of discussion: 1) a brief presentation of the typology, 2) challenging and developing the typology of knowledge products proposed by previous research by investigating different cases of close-to-practice research from traditions of action research and practice-developing research within subject-didactics, and 3) discussing how the notion of knowledge products may contribute to advancing the conversation on cumulativity in the field of educational research in general, and in relation to syntheses of close-to-practice research in particular. The participants will be engaged in conversations on the desirability and feasibility of striving towards cumulativity.

Over the past decade, the use of rubrics for formative purposes in science education has attracted at-tention for its potential to positively influence students’ self-regulation and learning. This study explores students’ lived experiences of using rubrics as part of learning about the concept of force in the physics classroom. To address these experiences, 19 compulsory school students were interviewed about their use of a rubric specifically designed for an assignment on force and motion. Three main themes emerged from an analysis of the descriptions of their lived experiences: (i) rubrics provide a sense of control; (ii) rubrics are required for high grades, but create stress; and (iii) rubrics foster strategic learning. The experiences revealed in these themes have the potential to deepen our understanding of the challenges involved in using rubrics to teach physics and have implications for teaching students about force

This article reveals national-authority-endorsed privatisation of teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) in the wake of a shift towards more centralised national interventions in Swedish schools. Drawing on data from the Collaboration for Best School (CBS) initiative, the context of the article is a recent state programme that encourages underperforming schools to collaborate with the Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE) to raise students’ achievement standards and thereby increase equality within and between schools. Guided by meta-governance theory, our analysis revealed that SNAE operates as a meta-governor on behalf of the state to replace university researchers as CPD providers with specific private-sector actors. The results provide evidence of SNAE-enabled substitution processes through three network governance strategies: 1) hidden and authorised substitution, 2) trust building and hybrid participation, and 3) collective reproduction and solutionism. Taken together, these governance strategies reflect national-authority-endorsed privatisation in action, suggesting that SNAE primarily operates as an ideology-driven conduit for private economic interests. The article concludes with a call for new collaborative and autonomous implementation strategies for teachers’ CPD that can further the interests of the teaching profession.