Anders Buch

• PhD
• Senior Researcher at VIA University College

This chapter introduces the theme and the chapters of the anthology. Inspired by the role the concept of Bildung has come to play in science education the chapter first seeks to provide responses to two fundamental questions, namely (1) what is the purpose of engaging in research on Bildung generally, and (2) what is the purpose of introducing the...

Using the concept of Bildung as a framework, which in late capitalism/postmodernity may be perceived to include critical knowledge, value consciousness, ethics, and social responsibility (including sustainability), this anthology aims to investigate the underlying aspirations, structures, and dynamics of change taking place in engineering education...

Research on engineering education and practice indicates that engineers’ understanding of the “social” is underprioritized and discursively enacted as soft rather than hard technical disciplines. Despite the resounding accomplishments, due to democratic insufficiency engineering projects have often contributed to the cultural impoverishment of our...

In this chapter we discuss Carl Mitcham’s reading of our suggestion to rethink engineering professionalism through the concept of Bildung and his proposal for apocalyptic engineering Bildung.

This chapter synthesizes the anthology’s contributions to explore how the concept of Bildung becomes relevant as a response to evolving challenge perceptions in engineering education and practice. The authors of the various chapters rejuvenate the concept of Bildung in different ways, each shaped by their distinct perceptions of contemporary challe...

This article is based on a conversation between Marko, Anders, Ylva, and Teresa conducted online on 13 January 2025. The conversation revolved around themes and perspectives presented in the anthology Framing Futures in Postdigital Education: Critical Concepts for Data-driven Practices (Buch et al. 2024a) published in the Postdigital Science and Ed...

The first 2025 issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies includes four original research articles written by researchers from Norway, Finland, and Sweden.

Deadline: 1. March 2025. Title max 150 characters and Abstract max 250 words. Submit abstract at https://www.nordicsts.se/call-for-abstracts/ Convenors and chairs  Anders Buch, VIA University College, DK-buch@via.dk  Ylva Lindberg, Jönköping University, SE-ylva.lindberg@ju.se  Teresa Cerratto-Pargman, Stockholm University, SE-tessy@dsv.su.se Dis...

Welcome to the fourth and final issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies for 2024. This edition features four research articles authored by scholars from Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

Med dannelsen af professionshøjskolerne blev der formuleret nye krav om deres vidensproduktion. Professionshøjskolerne skulle selv producere praksisnær og anvendelsesorienteret forskning og udvikling. Viden skulle cirkulere i et kredsløb mellem tre områder: forskning, uddannelse og praksis. Evalueringer og undersøgelser har imidlertid vist, at fors...

The chapter discusses two visions of social reality that understand the social realm as a domain of activity: the practice theory of Theodore R. Schatzki and John Dewey's instrumentalist pragmatism. For these approaches, activity is neither individual behavior nor individual reasoning. They both conceive social reality as a realm that is situated w...

This book unpacks key concepts and methods that are relevant for a critical and reflective framing of futures in postdigital education. The rich and often confusing terminology in the multidisciplinary field of digitalization and education tends to prevent conversations across disciplines and areas about core issues at stake in increasingly data-dr...

How are teachers’ and educators’ situated activities guided, restrained, and eventually determined as they unfold in everyday practice? How do teachers plan and execute their teaching, and how do they, for instance, make decisions about (not) using digital technologies? How can their (professional) course of action be understood? To answer these qu...

This book unpacks key concepts and methods relevant for a critical and reflective framing of futures in postdigital education. The compiled chapters explore concepts and methods that have pertinence for contemporary debates about the emergence of data-driven education and scrutinize implicit or explicit ethical and normative implications. The book...

Understandings of Knowledge in the University College Sector: A Discourse Analysis In 2008, a new policy for knowledge production was introduced at Denmark’s university colleges. These institutions were required to actively engage in collaboration on professional and devel- opment-based knowledge production. Later, in 2013/14, the legislative found...

I got to know Bente Elkjaer back in the 90'ies. We were both preoccupied with exploring issues of learning, knowledge, and professionalism, and we shared the intuition that traditional scholastic and cognitivist approaches were incapable of fathoming what was going on when people got better at what they were doing in their work and everyday activit...

This article conceptually explores different practice theoretical vantage points in empirical studies of professional and organisational learning processes. Through an ethnographic study of a management development program in Denmark, possibilities and limitations of three different practice-theoretical approaches are considered. Firstly, learning...

This article addresses a serious issue that besets learning design: its over-reliance on frameworks that promise particular outcomes for individual learners that accord with pre-defined metrics. This is partly a function of the nature of learning design and development itself which is commonly seen as outcome-oriented activity that should benefit i...

I dette kapitel diskuteres, hvordan overgange som fænomen generelt kan forstås, og der argumenteres for, at der bør udvikles rigere og mere nuancerede måder at stu- dere overgange i uddannelse og arbejdsliv. Det er nødvendigt, hvis der skal skabes bedre overgange. Det er for begrænsende alene at forstå overgange i et individper- spektiv. Overgange...

This chapter utilizes the metaphor of shadow organizing to explore research practices and the enactment of data and knowledge. It points to the enactment of data that happens “betwixt and between” canonical research practices and asks the fundamental question of how to go on enacting research practices in the production of data and new knowledge, a...

This final 2023 issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies comprises five research articles from researchers in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

In this chapter, we seek to outline opportunities for disruptive change in large arrays of activity as a matter of central practices being embedded in and, at the same time, informed by and reflecting on imaginaries that contribute to organ- izing broadly performed practices in new ways. Specifically, we make a case for imaginary practices as key w...

This fall issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies brings four research articles from Sweden and Denmark.

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I am delighted to present the first issue of the 13th volume of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies. In this issue, you will find four research articles from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland.

Conversations between engineers and non-engineers occur all the time. This chapter presents a structured conversation between one engineer and four non-engineers. It begins with the address of the then President of Engineers Ireland, the professional body for engineering in Ireland. The address was eclectic and wide-ranging, and its intended audien...

In this chapter, I argue that engineering is, if any, the relevant discipline to mediate, revitalize, and transform the conversation between the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities (SSH). However, to accomplish this, engineering must be fundamentally recovered, rethought and reconstructed as a practical endeavor that aims to solve pro...

This last 2022 issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies contains four new research articles from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland.

The title of the book suggests that conversations between engineering, social sciences, and the humanities are important because ultimately the outcome of these conversations would have real world consequences in engineering education and practice. We feel assured that the contributions to this book will, in different ways, assist those who may be...

Emerging automated-decision making (ADM) technologies invite scholars to engage with future points in time and contexts that have not yet arisen. This particular state of not knowing yet implies the methodological challenge of examining images of the future and how such images will materialize in practice. In this respect, we ask the following: wha...

Engineering education is under the sway of wide-ranging dynamics and drifts that have bearing on how education is enacted in relation to the research and innovation obligations of universities. Academic, applied, and third mission drifts seem to configure higher education in new ways. The article sets out to critically explore how knowledge product...

The third issue of volume 12 of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies brings four new research articles and a book review.The first article of this issue is authored by Helena Håkansson: Contradictions of Ordered Trust: Trust-based Work and Conflicting Logics in Municipal Care. In this article, Håkansson explores the implementation of a trust-base...

This summer issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies brings four original research articles.

International interdisciplinary research on engineering education and practice (Christensen et al., 2007, 2009, 2019, and 2022 forthcoming) points to the fact, that the engineer’s understanding of the ‘social’ is underprioritized and discursively enacted as soft versus hard technical disciplines. As a result, it has often contributed to a cultural...

Jean Lave og Etienne Wengers sociale læringsteori om legitim perifer deltagelse i praksisfællesskaber har været meget indflydelsesrig i uddannelses- og arbejdslivsforskning. Men nu – 30 år efter at teorien blev introduceret – fremsætter Etienne Wenger-Trayner, sammen med sin hustru Beverly Wenger-Trayner, en ny og mere omfattende social læringsteor...

Practice theoretical investigations of professional and organizational learning: a 'tool-kit' approach. The article outlines an analytical framework that can accommodate the dynamics between organizational practices, work and educational practices, as well as individuals' learning processes in practice, and thus opens up for renewed empirical studi...

Frem for at forstå simulation som repræsentation af virkeligheden, er det muligt at arbejde med simulation som en handlingsorienteret og kreativ læringsform, hvor studerende får mulighed for at bruge deres fantasi og eksperimentere. Dette kapitel problematiserer og diskuterer ’simulation’ med henblik på at skabe klarhed over, hvordan simulationsbeg...

This issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies opens the 12th volume of the journal with five new research articles.

and training (TVET) model that combines school-based education with work-based apprenticeship in authorized enterprises. Lensjø used an ethnographic approach that combined fieldwork and interviews with apprentices, plumbers, and a vocational teacher, and she paid specific attention to how plumbers and apprentices negotiated craft-centered work in w...

This issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies presents six new research articles from the Nordic countries. The first article of the issue is Working Environment Activities in Hospitals: Expansion of Scope and Decentralization of Responsibility by Per-Christian Borgen and Bente Vibecke Lunde. Borgen and Lunde’s study explores how legislative...

This issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies compiles six original research articles from the Nordic countries.The first article brings us to Finland. In The Experience Qualities Approach to Leadership and Employee Well-being, Ilkka Salmi and her co-authors present a study that illustrate how a new research approach enables researchers on l...

Denne artikel spørger til, om teoretiseret arbejdslivsviden er af en anden karakter end praksis, og hvad der nærmere skal forstås ved teori og praksis. Teori og praksis stilles ofte overfor hinanden i et modsætningsforhold. Denne artikel går imidlertid bag om og kritiserer modstillingen med henblik på at forstå samspillet mellem teoretiseret arbejd...

In this first issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies in 2021, we have compiled six articles and one book review. The first article, Leading the Way? State Empoyers’ Engagement with a Disability Employment Policy, by Kaja Larsen Østerud, investigates governmental labor market attempts to integrate persons with disabilities in Norway. Specif...

Er professionshøjskoleforskning konceptuelt anderledes end universitetsforskning?Forskningsprocesser varierer i forhold til forskningsfelters karakter og de problemer, der studeres, men vi argumenterer for, at den type forskning, der bedrives på professionshøjskolerne, ikke er eller bør være essentielt anderledes end den type forskning, der foretag...

In their work, in their leisure time – yes, indeed in all walks of life – people interact with one another, have new experiences, come to know new things, and learn new things about their environment and the world they inhabit. But how? Philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, and many more have theorized th...

Review of Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner (2020). Learning to Make a Difference. Value Creation in Social Learning Spaces, Cambridge University Press

This issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies collects six research articles from the Nordic countries. The first article, Reconceptualizing Job Control in Participatory Interventions – Collective Sensemaking as a Missing Link, authored by Esben Langager Olsen, Christian Dyrlund Wåhlin-Jacobsen, and Johan Simonsen Abildgaard, investigates th...

This issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies brings together four articles. The first article of this issue, Cherry Picking Disablility Rights? Swedish Disability Policy on Employment, Health and Participation, authored by Faten Nouf-Latif and colleagues, examines how Swedish disability policies are developed to meet UN Conventions on the R...

Artiklen undersøger, hvordan professionsforskningen overordnet har udviklet sig de seneste 50 år, og den giver et bud på, hvordan den med fordel kan/bør videreudvikles. Professionsforskningens udviklingshistorie inden for professionssociologien og studiet af ekspertise skitseres sådan som den har fundet sted i den toneangivende internationale forsk...

This article discusses the role of practices and people's participation in practices in conceptual accounts of organizing, learning, and organizational learning. Specifically, the discussion takes its point of departure in Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger's account of learning as legitimate peripheral participation in practices, and Theodore Schatzki's...

This issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies compiles five articles that introduce different themes and concerns in contemporary Nordic working life. Rolle Alho’s article ‘You Need to Know Someone Who Knows Someone’: International Student’s Job Search Experiences explores the job search strategies and obstacles that international students m...

Proponents of the 'practice turn' in the social sciences rarely mention American pragmatism as a source of inspiration or refer to pragmatist philosophy. This strikes us as not only odd, but also a disadvantage since the pragmatist legacy has much to offer practice theory in the study of organizations. In this paper we want to spell out the theoret...

I denne artikel undersøger vi organisatoriske reformforandringer, som de konstrueres i inter-aktionen mellem ledere og lærere i skolesammenhæng. Det empiriske grundlag er casestudier i danske gymnasieskoler. Ved at benytte en etnografisk fremgangsmåde og et paradoksbegreb knyttet til en forståelse af professioner, undersøges mikroprocesserne, der e...

This issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies collects four new articles. In Cultural Obstacles in Transnational Trade Union Cooperation in Europe, Bengt Larsson aims to understand cultural differences that are seen as obstacles to cooperation by trade union representatives. Based on 38 interviews with 46 trade union officials from nine Euro...

Hvad er magt, og hvor findes magt i organisationer? Det er ontologiske og epistemologiske spørgsmål, som enhver teori om organisationer og social organisering må forholde sig til. Nyere praksisteorier er netop teorier til forståelse af social organisering, men de bliver ofte beskyldt for ikke at have en klar forståelse af magt, og at de fokusere på...

This issue offers four new contributions to Nordic working life studies (...)

This issue of Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies consists of four articles and a book review that thematize and discuss issues of working life in the Nordic countries from various angles (...)

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to critique the metaphor of “shadow organizing” in relation to researchers’ allegedly ontological commitment to processual metaphysics. Design/methodology/approach The paper focuses on the association of “shadow organizing” with post-epistemologies that are grounded in process ontology. The investigation examin...

T his issue presents six new articles dealing with central issues in working life research in the Nordic countries. The articles all center around questions related to (the lack of) competencies and skills that are in demand in organizations and in relation to the labor market in general. They illuminate how skills-and skills gaps-are produced in c...

This issue presents six new articles dealing with central issues in working life research in the Nordic countries. The articles all center around questions related to (the lack of) competencies and skills that are in demand in organizations and in relation to the labor market in general. They illuminate how skills – and skills gaps – are pro- duced...

In this issue, we present four articles that illuminate working life in the Nordic coun- tries. These articles span a diverse area of work practices and accentuate different aspects of regulative mechanisms and policies that structure the unfolding of contemporary work in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. The research examines the minute and su...

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This issue of Nordic Working Life Studies is composed of four articles that continue and advance the ambition to get to grips with work life quality. From different angles, and based on different research material from three Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, and Finland), the articles investigate aspects and dimensions of working life that are para...

The long-lived and widely held political imagination surrounding innovation is that of a process by which new developments in science and technology are transformed into new business applications. As a result higher education and professions are eager to impose their expertises onto, and claim authority within, the domain of innovation. In recent d...

Denne rapport undersøger den internationale videnskabelige litteratur om migranters arbejdsmiljø og arbejdsmiljøet hos virksomheder, der arbejder i et andet land. Rapporten undersøger endvidere de metoder, som litteraturen anvender til at forstå og måle disse fænomener, med henblik på at aktører kan målrette indsatsen for at sikre et sundt og sikke...

Professionalism is a cornerstone in modern society. Increasingly, our private and public lives are shaped, regulated, and transformed by decisions made by the professionals who administer the institutions of society, whether in the health care sector, education, law and law enforcement, the transport sector, the financial sector, entertainment, etc...

Empirisk forskning i ingeniørarbejde peger på, at ingeniørarbejde det i vid udstrækning udføresi kollektive arbejdsprocesser. På den baggrund tegner der sig et billede af ingeniørernesarbejds- og samarbejdspraksisser som overvejende kollektive og gruppeorienterede – og ofteteamorganiserede. Men blandt ingeniørerne selv er den dominerende forestilli...

The article investigates the case of a Danish labor market initiative for refugees with a professional engineering background. The ambition is to identify the causes and contextual elements that are active in shaping labor market initiatives directed at groups of refugees. Contemporary theories of practice are used to investigate the structures tha...

Immigration to the Nordic countries has increased significantly in the last 40 years (Pettersen & Østby 2013:76). Although exact data are hard to come by, it is clear that the term integration, albeit vague and often undefined, has become central in public and political debates. A central premise of most of the debates is the claim that newly arriv...

This issue contains nine fascinating articles that reflect on central issues in contemporary working life in the Nordic countries. The articles deal with empirical issues in relation to gender, work life quality, professionalization, unions, organizational intervention, industrial relations, and the authors adopt different theoretical and methodolo...

Scientific research is usually presented as the driver that provides progress and meaning to the academic ecosystem. Higher education on the other hand, is typically imagined as something that naturally follows scientific research. In the academic ecosystem, education often retains a more marginalized position than scientific research and in many o...

Humanistic theory for more than the past 100 years is marked by extensive attention to practice and practices. Two prominent streams of thought sharing this focus are pragmatism and theories of practice. This volume brings together internationally prominent theorists to explore key dimensions of practice and practices on the background of parallels...

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The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously claimed that the only thing that is con- stant is change. Heraclitus made this claim in ancient Greece 2500 years ago, in a society that we—by contemporary measures at least—consider to be a fairly stable society governed by traditions and standards that held sway for centuries. In modern reflexive (Beck, G...

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This chapter discusses two temporal approaches to social order that accentuate the role of novelty, change and temporality in accounts of social organization, activity and human action, namely, the pragmatist approach of George Herbert Mead and the practice theoretical approach of Theodore R. Schatzki. The chapter investigates how they conceive of...

Globalization, rising inequality, polarization, lack of trust, unpredictability, deregulation, destabilization, fragmentation, and flux in working life – and in society in general – seems to be signs of our time. Social scientists have characterized these signs as the postmodern condition, late modernity, liquid modernity, etc., and described how t...

Praksisteori er en lang og bred human- og socialvidenskabelig tradition, der forsøger at forstå mennesker, arbejde og samfund med udgangspunkt i aktivitet og handling. I denne artikel gøres der rede for praksisteoriens grundlæggende antagelser og begreber. Artiklen fokuserer på, hvordan nyere praksisteori – her Theodore Schatzkis teori om socialt l...

This issue contains six articles that reflect on various aspects of working life, as it unfolds in contemporary Nordic contexts. They bring out new empirical material and theoretical reflections that – as small mosaics – can help us better understand what is going on in the Nordic labor markets, in business enterprises and public service organizati...

Educational planning has become an essential ingredient in providing welfare in welfare societies. This article examines and criticizes the prevailing logic of educational planning by teasing out an underlying conception of 'action'. By mobilizing an ethnomethodological critique of this notion of planning the article suggest that a situated perspec...

This article investigates organizational reform changes as they are constructed in the interaction between managers and teachers in a school context. The empirical basis is comprised of case studies carried out in Danish upper secondary schools. An ethnographic approach and a concept of paradox related to an understanding of professionals are used...

This article aims to explore the challenges that occur from a practice perspective when a new approach to engineering design enters an existing ecology of professional practices in a workplace. Using four empirical episodes, the article illustrates a concrete effort to challenge what counts as ‘real engineering’ or what is recognized as part of the...