Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Education in change
Education in change is a common platform for eleven research environments. We integrate education, research and collaboration in creative environments to set knowledge in motion. Our vision is to be a meeting place where teachers, researchers, students and collaboration actors create knowledge in order to meet societal challenges in school and education, in Sweden and globally.
Societal challenge: Education in change
It cannot have escaped anyone that the Swedish school is one of the areas that are in focus in the Swedish societal debate. The shortage of teachers, unqualified teachers, the work environment, and the Swedish results in the international PISA surveys are some of the problems that are being debated.
The vision of the knowledge environment Education in change is to strengthen the university’s ability to meet the societal challenge to achieve improved knowledge results in the Swedish school and education system that is presented by the government as a prioritised area in the research bill Knowledge in collaboration – for social challenges and strengthened competitiveness (prop 2016/17:50).
What is a Linnaeus Knowledge Environment?
Meeting societal challenges with knowledge in creative environments that integrate education, research, and collaboration – knowledge environments – is something that permeates Linnaeus University’s vision and work.
Ten of our knowledge environments have been appointed Linnaeus Knowledge Environment. They all work interdisciplinary in order to get a broad take on the societal challenges within each field.
In the societal debate, the question of knowledge results is often treated in a simplified and uniform manner. However, the challenge is both extensive and multi-facetted. Therefore, we take on this challenge in its entirety, comprised of three different aspects:
- As a question of knowledge results (content)
- As a political question (context)
- As a democratic question (structure)
We do this by both gathering existing knowledge and by producing new knowledge that is relevant to research, practice, and decision-makers. The knowledge environment has a broad take on the question of school’s knowledge results and relates this to aspects of content, context, and structure. In this way, Education in change contributes to putting focus on the question of school’s knowledge results as a combined challenge, while also contributing with useful and realistic knowledge based on the prominent research that is characteristic of the environment.
Learn more about our research, courses and programmes, and collaboration below.
Current
Research
The knowledge environment Education in change conducts extensive research within all aspects of the societal challenge. Our research covers, among other things:
- Education reforms
- Teachers’ work, teaching, and learning (didactics)
- Subject didactics
- Practice-related research in collaboration with schools, municipalities, institutions, and authorities
- Inclusion and exclusion processes
- Reading and writing difficulties/dyslexia
- School development and school leadership as well as teachers’ and school leaders’ continuing professional development (national programme for professionals)
Research is conducted in the form of both externally-funded projects and practice-related research in close collaboration with external actors. Examples of the latter are evaluation research and common work with method development. The breadth of our research environments and research groups creates good conditions for handling current topics on an interdisciplinary level.
In addition to research, our research groups are responsible for the quality of content and the research basis of the associated courses and programmes. This applies primarily for the teacher education, but also for other courses and programmes. The research groups also have extensive experience of collaboration with municipalities and authorities.
Research environments
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Center for cultural sociology The center for cultural sociology (CCS) strives to make living conditions of children and youth visible and understandable by relating individual and shared emotions to…
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Centre for Childhood Research in Literature, Language and Learning The Centre for Childhood Research in Literature, Language and Learning (CHILLL) is a research network consisting of scholars in the…
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Educational Linguistics The Educational Linguistics research group brings together researchers in Linguistics and in Language Education, focusing on the theme ‘language (in) education’ (see Hult,…
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Mathematics Education In the Mathematics Education research group we conduct both theoretical and applied research. The group participates in national and international collaboration with researchers…
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Physical education and sport in transition The research group addresses educational issues of physical education and sport.
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Research in Inclusion, Democracy and Equity (RIDE) The research environment RIDE consists of researchers who conduct studies in the fields of special pedagogy and social pedagogy. The research focuses…
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Research on pedagogical professions and practices (PEPP) The environment conducts research on teachers’ work and children’s/pupils’ everyday life and learning at preschool, preschool class, extended…
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Studies in Curriculum, Teaching and Evaluation (SITE) The Linnaeus-SITE research group incorporates longstanding and inter-related strands of inquiry within the field Pedagogy and Educational Science.
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The Digi Group We conduct research on what happens and what becomes possible when digital tools are used in preschool-class and school teaching, as well as on how such use affects preschool-children’s…
Research projects
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Doctoral project: Gifted Children This dissertation project examines the notions of gifted children. The research focus is on early childhood.
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Doctoral project: How do student teachers in initial teacher education negotiate a professional identity? The aim of the thesis is to contribute with knowledge about how teacher students on basic…
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Doctoral project: Multilingual mathematics teacher's professional identity in multilingual mathematics classrooms The aim of this project is to explore the experiences of multilingual mathematics…
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Doctoral project: Multilingual upper secondary students’ writing in Swedish in school In the research project I explore the features of multilingual upper secondary students’ meaning making practices…
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Doctoral project: Student health in Swedish high schools This dissertation project focuses on student health work in Swedish high schools. The perspectives of several actors are represented.
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Project: A new location-independent entrepreneurship in rural areas The overall aim of this project is to, in cooperation with municipalities in rural areas, investigate the conditions for rural…
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Project: Drawing to learn and learning to draw in primary school science In this project, we explore the educational potential of drawing in primary school science teaching. Researchers and teachers…
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Project: Early coordinated initiatives for children who may be vulnerable to, or find themselves involved in, criminality The objective of this study is to discuss and analyze cooperation processes in…
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Project: Exploring the elusive teaching gap – equity and knowledge segregation in teaching processes This project examines the factors that affect knowledge segregation in school beyond the…
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Project: Future students’ perspectives on higher education The aim of this research project is to identify and analyse descriptions by future higher education students’ concerning interests and…
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Project: History and moral encounters (HiME) The aim of the four year project is to increase knowledge about intersections of historical consciousness and moral consciousness for the purpose of…
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Project: LegiLexi The overall aim of the project is to conduct research on the reading development of primary school students. LegiLexi provides a digital assessment tool with individual teaching…
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Project: Making the invisible visible: The role of representations in teaching and learning university physics and chemistry In this project, we are interested in how undergraduate physicists and…
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Project: Pluralism about Evidence in education research (PEER) The primary aim of this project is to convene a series of research workshops that will bring together international scholars in the…
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Project: Recognition, inclusion and religious differences: negotiating religion in the secularized educational system in Sweden The project concerns religious young people’s creation, negotiation and…
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Project: School as a protection factor The aim of this project is to identify and analyse achievements, obstacles, collaboration, and identities in senior high school work with students who use…
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Project: School success for newly arrived students: possibilities, obstacles, identities and collaboration This project will fill knowledge gaps about the situations of newly arrived children and…
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Project: Sexual harassment from patients and care recipients How the students who train as assistant nurses, and mainly will work in home care and elderly care, in their educations are prepared for…
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Project: Technical colleges and health and social care colleges as makers of local vocational education and training curricula The purpose of the project is to explore how the curricula of vocational…
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Project: The Makings of a Mathematics Teacher In this project, we investigate the development of student teachers', mathematics teachers', and mathematics teacher educators’ professional identities…
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Project: The pedagogical potential of wonder The aim of this project is to contribute with knowledge about the role of wonder in different science practices, and the pedagogical potential of including…
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Project: Treatment Research with Adolescents at the Maria clinics The idea of the project is to shed light on outcomes for the young people who started an outpatient contact with a Maria clinic one…
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Project: Understanding Curiculum Reforms Project Members: Daniel Sundberg, Ninni Wahlström Funding Organizations: Vetenskapsrådet Timeframe: 2015 - 2018 Faculty/Department: Faculty of Social…
Concluded research projects
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Doctoral project: Children’s out-of-school learning experiences of participating in digital play My doctoral student project contributes with knowledge about children’s out-of-school teaching and…
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Doctoral project: Response to Intervention – a special didactic model for preventing reading difficulties This thesis investigated how Response to Intervention (RtI) can function as a special didactic…
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Project: Alleviation or obstruction? Teachers, teaching assistants and negotiations on professional domains In this project, we will study the initiatives taken in Swedish schools to relieve the…
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Project: Boys, Bodies, and Physical Education: Problematizing Identity, Schooling, and Power Relations through a Pleasure Lens Using visual ethnography, this book explores the many forms of pleasures…
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Project: Critical research in sport, health and physical education: Are we making a difference? The prime aim of this project, is to examine the influence of critical scholarship and critical theory…
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Project: Crossroads – two longidudinal studies of choices and values in teachers' work trajectories How do teachers retain their commitment and ideals in the profession over time? What crossroads are…
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Project: Educating for Equitable Health Outcomes – the Promise of School Health and Physical Education (EDUHEALTH) The project’s primary goal was to make a meaningful contribution to the European…
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Project: ERECKS - Educational Knowledge and Educational reforms in Europe This project was finished in 2014. Project information Project manager: Daniel Sundberg Project members: Daniel Sundberg,…
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Project: Just assessment in school – pupils' conceptions in Sweden and Germany This project was finished in 2016. Project information Project members: Bettina Vogt Timeframe: 2011-2016…
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Project: Learning Schools - Systematic School Improvement This project was finished in 2014. Project information Project members: Daniel Sundberg, Jan Håkansson, Carl-Henrik Adolfsson, Anna…
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Project: Let the right one out! - teacher training and induction as gatekeepers to the teaching profession Project Members: Per Lindqvist, Per Gerrevall, Ulla-Karin Nordänger, Joakim Krantz, Henrik…
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Project: Local authorities – Independent Policy Players in Education Reforms? This project was finished in 2017. Project information Project members: Ninni Wahlström, Daniel Sundberg Funding…
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Project: Politics of belonging: Promoting children’s inclusion in educational settings across borders This multidisciplinary research project aims to promote children’s inclusion in educational…
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Project: Problem solving as starting point for mathematics in preschool class The aim of this project was to investigate if and how problem solving can be a starting point for the teaching of…
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Project: Programming and mathematics – sensemaking and communication in teaching mathematics The aim of this project is to contribute to increased knowledge and understanding of the way to improve…
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Project: Research and School development This project was finished in 2013. Project information Project members: Daniel Sundberg, Jan Håkansson Funding organizations: Skolverket and…
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Project: Reviews of educational research: epistemological, social and political effects This project was finished in 2017. Project information Project members: Daniel Sundberg (Lnu), Ingemar Bohlin,…
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Project: School staff's experiences of working with school loneliness and involuntary social isolation The aim of this project was to explore and deepen knowledge about school staff's experiences of…
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Project: Successful collaboration Previous collaboration research shows that problems and conflicts sometimes arise as a part of collaboration. This project analysed successful cooperation.
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Project: The Valid Body, Post-doc This project was concluded in 2017. Project manager Katarina Schenker Funding organizations Swedish National Centre for Research in Sports (Centrum för…
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Project: Theory-based evaluation of the national curriculum Lgr 11 This project was finished in 2014. Project information Project members: Daniel Sundberg, Ninni Wahlström Funding organizations: IFAU…
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Project: Trolling in the Deep – Sexism in the chat rooms of e-sport E-sport is an emergent phenomenon with an explosive growth. Its connections to the IT-sector of make it a nexus of both commerce and…
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Project: Using research and experience-based evidence In this project, teachers at two preschools systematically examined their own practice, with a focus on documentation and evaluation, in order to…
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Project: Visibility of teachers' classroom assessments The project aimed to make primary school teachers' assessment processes visible together with students in teaching contexts.
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Project: What do teachers do (to promote students’ learning) – methods in the name of science The aim of this project is to develop more knowledge of the relation between classroom activities,…
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Project: Who has governed the Swedish school? Municipality, school and state during 60 years of Swedish school reforms in a world of change This project was finished in 2017. Project information…
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Seed project: Detecting ’signs of learning’ in six-year-olds’ meaning making about science through digital tools The main objective for this seed project within the Knowledge environment Digital…
Seed projects
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Seed project: Sustainability education in preschool with meals and food as a starting point This seed project, in collaboration with preschool teachers, aims to deepen the understanding and practice…
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Seed project: Ways to deal with racism in teachers education programs In this seed project within Linnaeus Knowledge Environment: Education in Change, we investigate how racism is understood and…
Concluded seed projects
Education
The Board of Teacher Education has a special responsibility for education as one part of the knowledge environment Education in change. However, all faculties have an important role to play in the implementation of the teaching and in supporting and implementing the work with quality development on the teacher education programmes. This work is carried out via programme councils.
Through working methods like, for instance, business-integrated education and independent projects linked to current research topics within the research groups working with educational science, didactics and subject didactics, students develop approaches and acquire tools to promote children’s and pupils’ development and learning. In this way, they are given the conditions to contribute to improved knowledge results for pupils.
Collaboration
The knowledge environment Education in change takes part in a number of collaboration projects with the Swedish National Agency for Education. Some examples are, training initiatives by the agency’s members of staff, work to develop the Swedish school’s curricula and syllabi, continuing professional development modules for active teachers, and development of working methods for meeting pupils with special needs. We are also engaged in extensive collaborations with municipalities and schools in the form of evaluation research, continuing professional development initiatives, and common development work.
An important channel for collaboration are the networks that are linked to the teacher education that gather teacher trainers, researchers, and active teachers. The objectives of these networks are:
- To increase the quality within first-cycle courses and study programmes through continuing professional development of teacher trainers active on the teacher education.
- To spread knowledge about education and research of relevance to the teacher education.
- To contribute to the development of active teachers’ knowledge within their respective subject areas.