Håkan Löfgren

This qualitative article explores a Swedish teachers’ rebellion group (TRG) on Facebook with the aim of exploring teachers’ stories about violence in school. Facebook groups for teachers, such as the TRG, are common sites where teachers discuss and share professional matters and both public stories and subjective experiences. In this article, we focus on narratives about children who are perceived by the teachers as dangerous in various ways. The concept of the formula story, together with child and teacher agency, helps us to explore the symbolic and emotional aspects at stake when the teachers discuss the dangerous child in the TRG. In the analysis, an ambivalent image of the dangerous child emerges where child and teacher agency intersect with each other and with other human and non-human actors. This image challenges contemporary ideas and ideals about children and childhood as well as the teaching profession. The conclusion broadens our notions of the child and reflects upon the outcomes of applying agency to the context of school violence.

This article focuses on how the concept of “turning points” can be used in narrative research when studying people’s (professional) identities and identity formation. By examining various understandings of turning points, we aim to show how they can be identified and used as analytical tools in different ways when conducting narrative analyses of (professional) identity formation. A case study from a research project on police identity is used to illustrate the application of various perspectives on turning points. The article offers guidance for researchers on choosing a context and focus for analysing turning points, as well as on the theoretical perspectives that come with these choices, and thereby suggests directions for analytical attention. The article shows how different perspectives on turning points have consequences for the understanding of professional identities.

This study examines narratives about the teaching profession and teacher unions that Swedish teachers jointly produce in two teachers’ rebellion groups on Facebook, which is followed by a total of around 20,000 teachers. A sample of 33 posts and 2,445 comments were analysed using a narrative approach. The findings highlight narratives in which teachers wish to return to “the good old days”, struggle with everyday frustrations, call for a strike as an immediate solution, and describe hypothetical futures presenting the opportunity for proactive action and call teacher unions to dialogue rather than wait for them to satisfy the teachers’ demands.

Internal and external factors influence teachers’ daily assessment decisions. The purposes of teachers’ assessments are crucial, as these purposes guide the assessment process. Still, little is known about teachers’ assessment purposes. The aim of this study is to identify and describe the different purposes of assessments that Civics teachers describe. Thirteen Civics teachers in Swedish upper secondary school were interviewed about their assessment practices. A thematic analysis generated four main themes about teachers’ purposes: enacting policy, improving learning, pulling for students and handling administration. There are tensions between different purposes, and teachers need to balance these in their assessment decisions and when validating. Specific Civics subject matter also influences purposes and tensions. This study contributes to the understanding of the influence of internal and external factors on teachers’ assessment practices in Civics, and to the understanding of the complexity of validity with multiple purposes in the school context.

In this article, the assessment practice known as the “grade conference” is analysed using an interactionally oriented narrative approach. The aim is to explore the grade conference and what it entails for students when executed in their fourth year of compulsory school, as part of a trial of an educational reform where students receive grades from year four instead of year six. Two cases illustrate the way that students are positioned and ascribed different paths and prospects in and through stories located within the grade conference. Findings show that students are ascribed individual responsibilities and their positions as students are largely evaluated by individual characteristics in these stories. It is concluded that the grade conference is a practice that may influence the students’ views of their potential in school, as the narratives about their paths and prospects discursively make different routes more or less viable.

This article explores Swedish teachers’ and school leaders’ Facebook rebellion groups as a medium where professional needs and actions can be formulated. Data consist of interviews with administrators representing the rebellion groups. Based on a theoretical perspective of teacher agency we searched for experiences and visions related to contextual aspects expressed in the groups. The results indicate a common experience of lacking resources among the groups. Through a well-balanced agency, they search for support among politicians in their striving to improve working conditions. However, the groups might develop different conditions for participating due to the formation of group-specific conversational climate about what is desirable and possible to post and discuss. Discussions on work-related issues might certainly be affected and the rebellion groups might contribute to preserve the specificity of each level in the school system. A split in the teachers’ rebellion group indicates virtual relationships between professionals are easy to give up in favour of new formations, making the virtual groups vulnerable. The results raise the question about changing cultural aspects and what it means to be a professional teacher/school leader. Will teacher agency in the future be dependent on participation in such social media groups?

I artikeln studeras svenska förskoleklasslärare och lågstadielärares lärares användning av bedömningsinformation som underlag för att göra an-passningar i tidig läsundervisning med fokus på avkodning. Avsikten är att bidra med kunskap till två skilda forskningsfält, framåtsyftande bedömning och avkodningsundervisning. Vi har intervjuat 12 lärare och uppmuntrat dem att berätta om sitt arbete med att utveckla sina elevers avkodningsförmåga inom ramen för ett lokalt utvecklat läsprojekt inriktat på avkodningsträning. Genom narrativa analyser har vi studerat lärarnas berättelser om sitt arbete med bedömning och anpassning. I resultatdelen presenterar vi tre berättelser som illustrerar olika typer av bedömnings- och anpassningshandlingar samt hur dessa motiveras av lärarna. I diskussionen belyser vi tre olika perspektiv som framträder i lärarnas motiveringar och diskuteras betydelsen av att lärare anpassar sin undervisning på skilda sätt utifrån de bedömningar lärarna berättar att de gör samt hur de motiverar sina handlingar. Studiens resultat visar att såväl kognitiva som sociala bedömningsaspekter beaktas av lärarna när de anpassar avkodningsundervisningen. Det framgår också att lärarnas arbete med att bedöma och anpassa avkodningsundervisningen inom ramen för det stöd som läsprojektet utgör ställer höga krav på lärares professionella kompetens och kunskaper.

The aim is to contribute knowledge about the ways in which Swedish pupils with a migrant background speak about school performances and their first experiences of being graded. The results describe pupils and parents as positioned as being lower down in a top-down relationship vis-à-vis school. The separation between home and school is best described as robust. Some pupils want and ask for a better school-home relationship because they think it would harmonise the relationship with their parents and facilitate their school work. The main conclusion is that pupils find themselves in a vulnerable position between schools’/teachers’ demands and parents’ aspirations for them.