Ulrika Bergmark

• Professor
• Professor (Associate) at Luleå University of Technology

The Swedish preschool has undergone some radical education policy changes during recent years, all of which have affected teachers’ work. The focus of this article is on the changes relating to the demand for research-based education and how the concept of teaching has been introduced in preschool. The aim of this article was to study preschool-tea...

Intresset för praktiknära skolforskning är idag stort. Aktionsforskning är en populär form för samarbete mellan forskare och lärare där handledning är centralt. Syftet med denna studie är att problematisera handledning och handledarroller i aktionsforskningsprojekt. Som teoretisk grund ligger den amerikanska utbildningsfilosofen Nel Noddings omsorg...

This paper analyzes teachers’ motivations and expectations when engaging in action research and relates these to the process outcomes and to the broader evidence movement in education. The theoretical framework builds on research on motivations for teaching and engaging in action research. The empirical data consisted of 50 written teacher reflecti...

A prominent phenomenon in education in Europe and internationally is the demand for research-based education, which is also the case in Sweden, the context of this study. Therefore, greater academic demands have been placed on teachers, which can present a distinctive challenge for teachers who were educated when teacher education prioritised pract...

In 2010, Sweden was the first country in the world to introduce a legal requirement that education should be research-based, placing huge demands on schools. The study’s aim is to explore how, through sensemaking, teachers and principals enact this policy in schools. In total, 272 teachers and 23 principals from pre-schools, leisure-time centers, c...

In this article, we study the academisation of the teaching profession in Sweden, which follows contemporary trends in other Nordic and European countries. The specific aim was to analyse 14 reports written by researching teachers enrolled in a master’s programme to investigate how they perceive, interpret and value academic and professional knowle...

Action research approaches have evolved out of a criticism of previous research traditions, where teachers have been seen as research objects, at risk of being marginalized. Such approaches have also arisen out of the view that teaching, learning, and educational research are interrelated. In action research, teachers are seen as professionals, rai...

The aim of this paper is to describe and discuss Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as a research method to facilitate student voice in school research. The paper sets out a model for conducting AI in schools. The research questions identified are: What are the researcher’s reflections when using Appreciative Inquiry in school research? What challenges and...

The aim of this article is to explore student participation in teaching and learning, focusing on third-year students’ experiences in a Swedish teacher education programme. Student participation is here defined as students being active and engaged in the classroom; students impacting on curriculum design; and students’ feeling of belonging to a com...

The aim of this article is to reconsider and explore the ontoepistemology of student engagement in higher education as part of a democratic education, going beyond neo-liberal groundings. This is urgent as the concept of student engagement seems to be taken for granted and used uncritically in higher education. In addition, higher education is affe...

The aim of the study is to discursively identify student teachers’ perceptions of the teaching profession early in their education and their motives for this career choice. Students wrote a letter sharing thoughts on why they want to become a teacher, how they regard the teaching profession and if someone inspired them in their career choice. The e...

The aim of this paper was to explore opportunities to promote schoolchildren’s health literacy based on their own experiences and ideas. Research suggests the necessity for health literacy to be included into the school curriculum, and to view health promotion as part of lifelong learning. There is also a need to involve schoolchildren in developin...

This paper focuses on school situations students experienced as meaningful and how these experiences can guide educational improvement. Participants included 15 students in grade 3 from a Swedish school. In this qualitative study, the data consisted of drawings, multimodal productions, interviews, and field notes. The analysis resulted in four them...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore Swedish children’s positive experiences of health and well-being, and their thoughts on how health literacy can be promoted. Design/methodology/approach Totally, 121 schoolchildren between the ages of 10 and 14 from three schools in two municipalities in the northern part of Sweden shared their lived...

I artikeln diskuteras studentdelaktighet och inflytande i högre utbildning genom samskapande av undervisningens innehåll och genomförande, för att öka studenters engagemang. Ett samskapande av undervisning bygger på en teoretisk grund som framhåller demokratiska värden och en mångdimensionell syn på lärande, vilket också är den teoretiska utgångspu...

With relatively few comparative studies of civics curricula in diverse democratic contexts and world regions, this article considers how civic values are negotiated in national curricular policy texts. To explore the purposes of education and the construction of citizens in curricular documents, we layer two theoretical frameworks together – Biesta...

This paper discusses a case study in teacher education in Sweden, focusing on creating spaces for student engagement through co-creating curriculum. It highlights democratic values and a multidimensional learning view as underpinning such endeavors. The main findings are that co-creating curriculum is an ambiguous process entailing unpredictable, t...

Purpose: Many of the predominant leadership models acknowledge the need to support teachers’ work, but these models rarely specify how to support teachers’ implementation process. This article studies the relationship between leadership support and teachers’ sensemaking processes. It brings together three divergent bodies of literature on education...

In 2010, Principal Kirk introduced Small Group Meeting (SGM) at Hillcrest Elementary. SGMs are multiage student groupings who meet with school faculty once a month to work on community building, service-learning projects, and advising. Many teachers liked the SGMs, some felt they needed more time to prepare, and others felt it was a waste of time....

This paper aimed to explore how preschool teachers' experience their strengthened teaching mission, specifically when working with scientific exploration. The study was based on the philosophy of the life-world, a branch of the phenomenological movement. Life-world philosophy focuses on the concrete reality humans inhabit and is responsive to its i...

Inom ramen för denna artikel diskuterar vi såväl den psykosociala som den fysiska miljön i skolan. Vidare argumenterar vi för att skolans miljö är av betydelse för elevernas möjligheter att lära sig, likväl som för deras upplevelser av lärandesituationerna. Särskilt intressant blir då att lyssna till eleverna. Syftet med denna artikel är därför att...

The aim of this paper is to explore students' positive experiences of their learning through the use of visual narratives, observation, and field notes in two secondary school classes in Sweden. Four themes were found: (1) knowing the needs of mind and body, (2) embracing each other in mutual support, (3) learning in a facilitating environment, and...

The aim of this study was to describe, reflect upon, and create a deeper understanding of aspects relevant for promoting a positive school environment from a student perspective. The data was analyzed by using an inductive phenomenological method and based on written responses from 200 Swedish students from grades 5–9. The results indicated that th...

This article focuses on student participation in the research process as a contribution to school improvement. The specific aim of this article was to explore students’ participation in different phases of a research process and discuss how their participation can contribute to school improvement. Based on a life-world phenomenological ontology, we...

In Sweden the compulsory school curriculum prescribes that education should promote learning in different subjects while simultaneously assisting students to develop into citizens of good character. To achieve these goals students need to cultivate such character strengths as respect and responsibility, so that they can create positive relationship...

The paper introduces a new approach to reflecting and acting called participatory and appreciative action and reflection (PAAR). It explores its potential to enable individuals and groups to move forward, to improve their working practices and lives in particular communities and contexts. The paper situates PAAR in the historical context of partici...

In meetings between people in school our values are shown through, for example, our actions, our speech and body language. These meetings can be regarded as ethical situations, which can arouse strong emotional reactions that ordinary, everyday situations usually do not do. The aim of this paper is to illuminate, interpret and discuss students’ liv...

This reflective account discusses the 'creative renderings' that surfaced as a consequence of a work-shop about ethical issues in education, with school staff in a municipality in northern Sweden. The paper is part of a longer, ongoing conversation in that community about building and sustaining an ethical place and space called 'school'. The focus...

Every day there are a vast number of people within educational systems around the world. The school can be regarded as a meeting place for both adults and children with different backgrounds and expectations. A meeting between humans means for example that we are talking and acting together. Consciously or unconsciously one of the factors that gove...

Abstrakt Att bli uppskattad som lärare - vilken roll spelar det i den pedagogiska vardagen? Hur kan en lärares erfarenheter om uppskattning förstås ur ett teoretiskt perspektiv? Syftet med artikeln är att synliggöra, skapa förståelse för och diskutera uppskattningens roll i pedagogisk praktik i allmänhet och i synnerhet lärares pedagogiska vardag....