Daniel Pettersson

This chapter explores visualizations of Bloom’s Taxonomy as a site where epistemic, visual, and cultural orders of knowledge converge. Drawing on genealogical analysis, it first situates the taxonomy within a longer tradition of classificatory practices and knowledge-making in science and education. It then traces the visual life and movement of Bloom’s Taxonomy in both educational research and the public domain from a textual list to a proliferating set of diagrammatic forms. Particular attention is given to the ways in which scientific reasoning, aesthetic conventions, and pedagogical logics interplay to render the taxonomy intelligible and capable of circulating, persuading, and organizing educational practice.

This chapter examines the historical context and evolution of teaching methods in Swedish teacher education. In doing so, it historicizes the ongoing debates about the quality of teacher education in Sweden and the perceived lack of instruction in teaching methods. Drawing on analysis of guidelines, government reports, recommendations, and curricula spanning from 1842 to the early 21st century, the chapter highlights changes in political reasoning about teaching, learning, and the organization of teacher education. The analysis reveals that teaching has been conceptualized in various ways throughout history. Early approaches viewed teaching as a technique for organizing and monitoring student progress. Later, teaching came to be seen as an art requiring not only good knowledge of the subject matter but also creativity and talent. With the subsequent “scientifiсation” of teacher training and its gradual incorporation into higher education in the late 1960s, the course on teaching methodology came to be perceived as normative, emphasizing reproducible skills and best practices. As a result, by the end of the 20th century, it was replaced by the course in Didaktik, which, instead of providing teacher students with ready-made methods, focuses on critical evaluation of teaching based on relevant research. This does not mean that the question of teaching methods has disappeared from Swedish teacher education programs. However, in the highly differentiated educational system, it is handled differently by different institutions.

This study explores practitioners’ beliefs and experiences of education, socialisation and care and their impact on the introduction of a software application for quality work in early childhood education. Based on field notes, audio recordings and follow-up semi-structured interviews in four Swedish preschools, it explores how teachers’ beliefs and experiences frame and are framed by the introduction of a software application by an EdTech company. The findings show that preschool teachers perceived the software as disruptive to their established beliefs and practices, despite efforts to align it with the preschool curriculum’s goals. It also highlights the challenges that practitioners faced in understanding and implementing the software, the importance of peer discussions and time for reflection. The study’s conclusions emphasise the importance of a thorough introduction, peer support and opportunities for reflection when introducing software in preschool settings. It also stresses the need to align software implementation with practitioners’ beliefs and experiences to facilitate a successful adoption. In addition, the study highlights the role of ongoing professional development in managing technological change in early childhood education.

This volume centres the notion of "chance" in education as a key concept in contemporary education – relating to aspects like accountability, datafication, or international large-scale assessments – and discusses the impact that the historical desire to "tame" this notion has had on present-day educational policy and practice. Encouraging readers to widen their educational imagination, chapters combine secondary research from the fields of cybernetics, systems thinking, and comparative education with issues of control, prediction, and comparison as ways to tame chance in education. Using the theoretical lenses of reasoning, notions, and addendums for legitimacy to foster a critical awareness of rarely discussed educational matters, the book explores how these notions are central to the taming of chance within education. Ultimately, the authors determine the styles of reasoning that are foundational and frame how we think about, and act on, education, and thereby address one of the top priorities in educational policy, politics, and practice today. This timely book, with its unique perspective on the debates around education, will be of interest to students, researchers, and scholars in the fields of education policy and politics, international and comparative education, and theory of education. Those involved with the philosophy of education will also find the book valuable.

This chapter presents an exploration of what the authors refer to as the fabric of education and how this fabric can be thought of in relationship to desires to tame chance in education. The constituting “problem” that the book deals with is presented as a sense of wonder about why we tend to talk and think about education in specific ways. To historicise the fabric of education, the authors introduce reasoning, notions, and addendums for legitimacy as analytical concepts. Using these concepts, this chapter discusses the historical development of different educational languages and how these languages contribute in different ways to make education intelligible.

This chapter explores how the notions of control, prediction, and comparison evolved in science and society. Furthermore, how these notions are connected to educational reasoning and how they gain legitimacy. The main focus is on control, prediction, and comparison, although they only constitute a part of the fabric of education. This chapter provides a variety of examples of scientific and societal desires, hopes, and promises directed towards education that has been answered by control, predictions, and comparisons. It also discusses how the development of cybernetics and systems thinking transmogrified into neoliberal reforms and globalisation movement, which in turn laid the foundations for evidence-based policymaking.