The study presented in this paper aims to map and illuminate theoretical, methodological, and thematic areas that mark the existing scholarship related to the digital presence of higher education, mainly through universities own websites. 118 articles were identified for further in-depth analysis based on an overarching first-level analysis of over 700 articles through systematic searches in early 2023. Data-sessions across three primary analysis phases enabled understanding the benefits and conundrums of using ai (Rayyan) in (n)ethnographic analysis work where the data constitutes of existing scholarship. Our analytical-methodological points of departure for carrying out this study build on a Second Wave of Southern Perspectives (SWaSP) framing that brings together (i) sociocultural, dialogical perspectives on learning and communication and (ii) decolonial, alternative framings on communication and identity. Results of the digital communication by educational institutions through their websites highlights a paucity of engagement with or a lack of explication regarding theoretical framings in the existing scholarship and an alignment with a “market turn”. Other findings highlight that the existing scholarship needs to connect more clearly with global-centric perspectives, not least to attend to contemporary challenges.

In teacher education mentoring pre-service teachers is a critical factor. With background in research around mentoring pre-service teachers in connection to a training school project, this study aims to contribute knowledge about and identify mentors' experiences of mentorship in the setting of a training school. Through focus group interviews and semi-structured interviews, foregone by a survey aiming at identifying general views of mentoring, helping to create interview guides, data has been collected for 11 months. Through an interpretative phenomenological analysis, the results show two key themes emerging from mentoring in a training school where the first is strengthening the role as a mentor through three distinct experiences: collegiate learning, structure, and competence development. The second theme, challenging in the role as a mentor, involves four distincttdslevelions of experiences: assessment, planning (linked to the mentoring situation), workload and diversity. The conclusions show that the general experience is positive, but that there are some factors concerning stress and workload; a reworked structure that need to be put into consideration.

The study presented in this paper maps schools through their digital presence, in terms of the “what” of education that is made relevant, “how” this information is presented (i.e., communicated) and “who” their webpages target. This mapping considers the “languaging landscape” of the webpages. The study aims to illuminate how educational matters are communicated digitally engaging with local government and independent contemporary schools’ digital presence. The findings are based upon the analysis of 11 compulsory and upper-secondary schools’ websites from one of Sweden’s ten largest cities. This region was strategically selected to create a diverse dataset based upon the extensive digitalization of schools since the turn of the century based upon the explicit 2017 national digitalization initiatives. Our analytical-methodological points of departure build on a Second Wave of Southern Perspectives (SWaSP) framing that brings together (i) sociocultural, dialogical perspectives on learning and communication and (ii) decolonial, southern framings on communication and identity. Our preliminary findings indicate that there is a discrepancy between local government and independent compulsory schools in how they position themselves in comparison to the upper-secondary local government, regional, and independent schools. The latter’s digital presence is similar across the formal domains of institutional presentations and their online social media presence. Marginal differentiation has been noted between local governmental and independent schools’ strategies for recruiting pupils. This, we argue, relates to the specific Swedish educational organization and management ethos wherein public resources are allocated to all schools based on the volume of pupils they successfully recruit.

This pilot study’s aim is to understand how teaching and learning, in the nation-state of Sweden, is organized and carried out in 2022, with focus on the use ofdigital technologies in the classroom. The pilot has been conducted through an ethnographical and phenomenological approach. Participant observation, alongwith natural conversations and individual interviews constitutes the data in this study. Four teachers and seven different classes (175 students) have beenincluded in this study and a total of 20 hours have been spent in the classroom, observing, and talking to both teachers and students. Six hours of semistructured interviews have been conducted with the four different teachers divided into eight different interviews. The conclusions state that technology exists inthe classroom and is utilized by both teachers and students if the infrastructure is in place. Albeit as to what purpose digital tools are used, is not always well-defined. Moreover, there are obstacles to cope with regarding infrastructure, time, and resources. The organization of teaching and learning does not seem tohave changed albeit the tools might have. 

Although work placement mentoring has been examined extensively in research, there are no studies drawing on critical discourse analysis combined with discourse theory, aiming to examine the discursive construction of quality aspects. Seven mentor pairs in Swedish teacher training schools were interviewed individually during student work placement. Focus group interviews were conducted with eleven student teachers. The results reveal a consensus on a general level. The significant discrepancies are intertwined to different subject positions among student teachers and mentors, thus linked to different role expectations. A likely explanation can be found in the differences between professional and academic knowledge traditions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has elicited a shift from campus classrooms to distance education in higher education worldwide, shaping not only students’ experiences, but also those of teachers, especially those who never have taught online. In addition, the pandemic created a meta-context that has positioned distance education as something different from previous efforts. This study aimed to investigate higher education teachers’ experiences during the transition from classroom to online teaching by using a collective auto-ethnography method based on 13 personal stories from Swedish faculty. For the abductive approach in the analysis, a framework that combines lifelong learning theory with the context collapse concept has been applied. The disjuncture that the pandemic has elicited created a situation in which teachers had to make sense of the fact that their previous experiences did not completely fit the new situation. Context collapse, a term used to describe encounters with many audiences in social media, has been introduced to highlight the clash between professional and private contexts in online educational platforms. Based on lifelong learning theories, we suggest that context collapse should be examined in terms of how it can help improve higher education, as it holds the potential to include the entire person – body and mind – in education.

The transition from analogue campus-based learning to digital distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic affected our society in many ways. This study set out to explore the experiences of 30 pre-service teachers when transitioning to digital distance learning. The pre-service teachers (PSTs) participated in a series of focus-group interviews that were subsequently analysed using qualitative content analysis. The results indicate that the transition to digital distance learning worked well and that the technology that was used performed satisfactorily. However, the PSTs experienced both opportunities and obstacles with respect to distance learning. The opportunities associated with digital distance learning were reported to be instantiated by teacher-led ‘flipped classroom’ teaching sessions and the additional freedom that was enjoyed by the PSTs (in both space and time). An obstacle associated with digital learning was the feeling that important aspects of interpersonal interaction disappeared. The PSTs remained sedentary and isolated at home, and the learning experience became somewhat dysfunctional when the teaching was not clearly structured and teacher-lead. The study concludes that it is not possible to replace IRL (‘in real life’) teaching entirely with digital distance learning. However, the results suggest that a hybrid form of teaching or elements of digital teaching can work well as a complement to future campus-based courses.

Delstudien ingick som en del av att utvärdera och beforska övningsskoleprojektet. Studien finansierades av Jönköping University och studien är publicerad i en vetenskaplig tidskrift på engelska. Forskarteamet bestod av Johan Bäcklund, Rebecka Florin Sädbom, Lena Manderstedt och Helena Anderström. Att delge utfallet av studien på svenska är viktigt då många handledare på kommunala skolor berörs. Inom lärarutbildningen är VFU och därmed handledning av VFU-studenter en av de centrala delarna av utbildningen. Handledarrollen blir därmed viktig och central för att utveckla denna del av lärarutbildningen och utgör en brygga mellan teori och praktik.

Studiens syfte var att identifiera handledares erfarenheter av handledarskapet inom en övningsskola genom en interpretativ fenomenologisk analys (IPA). Fokus ligger således på handledares erfarenheter genom den övergripande forskningsfrågan Vilka möjligheter och utmaningar beskrivs av handledare om handledarskapet inom ramen för en övningsskola?

Metod/genomförande

Empirin har samlats in genom fokusgruppsintervjuer och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Dessförinnan har enkäter genomförts för att inför intervjuerna identifiera generella utgångspunkter för vad handledning är och innebär för handledare i en övningsskola. Enkäterna har inte ingått i studiens empiri men tjänat som syfte att utforma intervjuguider för de två olika intervjuformerna som använts i studien. Metoden syftar till att kategorisera samt analysera, genom IPA, vad som uttrycks av handledarna utifrån den kontext de talar, i detta fall att vara handledare i en övningsskola. Metoden är induktiv och bygger på att utifrån handledarens perspektiv, genom dennes tankar och känslor, tolka den kontext där denne befinner sig. I den fenomenologiska andan är metoden, som syftar till att nå handledares erfarenheter av övningsskolan, kopplade till världen de lever och verkar i. Det empiriska materialet har analyserats både på en manifest och latent nivå.

Resultat

Två större övergripande teman kan urskiljas: Möjligheter att handleda i en övningsskola samt Utmaningar att handleda i en övningsskola. Under möjligheter visar sig sedan tre underteman: kollegialt lärande, struktur samt kompetensutveckling. Under temat utmaningar visar sig fyra underteman av upplevelser: bedömning, planering (kopplat till handledarrollen), arbetsbelastning samt mångfald.

Slutsatserna i studien visar att handledarna överlag är positiva till upplevelsen av att vara handledare i en övningsskola där de får möjligheter till kompetensutveckling, kollegialt lärande och utbytet med studenterna. Handledarna upplever att de utvecklat en samverkan mellan handledarkollegor och bedömningspraktiken. I övningsskolan upplever man även att man handleder mer än i tidigare handledningsformer. Man kan också, om man tittar övergripande på projektets mål se att projektet lyckas med de uppsatta målen: koncentration, kompetens samt samarbete/samverkan med högskolan. Utmaningarna visar emellertid att projektet även har synliggjort flera aspekter av utvecklingspotential. Handledarna upplever en ökad stress samt en ökad arbetsbörda på grund av att man möter fler studenter och därmed handleder mer (och fler). En annan dimension rör handledarskapets interpersonnella karaktär i att möta studenterna där de befinner sig.

Dessa ingångar ger upphov till vidare tankar, möjliga diskussionsfrågor:

• Vad innebär kvalitet i handledarskapet – att vara en god/skicklig/utmärkt/bra handledare?

• Hur påverkas eleverna av att ständigt möta nya lärarstudenter?

• På vilket/vilka sätt kan handledarrollen utvecklas och utmanas?

• Hur tillgodoses mångfaldsperspektivet – vem blir övningsskola och vem blir inte?

I mars 2020 övergick all undervisning på de flesta universitet i Sverige från analog till digital undervisning. Vi genomförde i slutet av vårterminen 2020 en intervjustudie, med ett urval på 30 studenter, angående deras upplevelser av denna förändrade undervisning med syftet att beskriva deras erfarenheter och uppfattningar av övergången från analog till digital undervisning under Covid-19 pandemin. Metoden som användes var fokusgruppssamtal via verktyget Zoom där mellan 3–5 studenter deltog i varje fokusgrupp. Samtalen spelades in och transkriberades.

Studien utgick från följande frågeställningar

1. Hur upplevde studenterna övergången mellan analog och digital undervisning?
2. Vilka för- och nackdelar beskrivs med övergången till digital undervisning?
3. Hur upplever studenterna att förutsättningarna för deras lärande i de olika kurserna har påverkats vid övergången från analog till digital undervisning?
4. Hur beskrivs examinationerna ha fungerat i digital form?

Under en tematisk analys av empirin, framkom att övergången från analog till digital undervisning upplevdes fungera ganska bra för de flesta studenter. Vidare visar resultatet att tekniksupport, struktur, tydlighet i instruktioner samt lärarledd undervisning är förutsättningar för att den digitala undervisningen skall kunna fungera. Dessutom visar resultatet att vissa aspekter i den mellanmänskliga interaktionen, som upplevs viktig för lärandet, går förlorad vid digital undervisning. Resultatet ger upphov till reflektion kring vad vi, som undervisar i högre utbildning, kan lära oss av studenternas upplevelser av övergången från det analoga till det digitala.