Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensishttps://hdl.handle.net/2077/45602024-03-19T11:22:13Z2024-03-19T11:22:13ZIndividualising processes in adult education: The case of Swedish for immigrants (SFI)Papadopoulos, Dimitrioshttps://hdl.handle.net/2077/795632024-03-18T07:10:20Z2024-03-14T00:00:00ZIndividualising processes in adult education: The case of Swedish for immigrants (SFI)
Papadopoulos, Dimitrios
Adapting education to individual students is a prominent demand in the context of Swedish for immigrants (SFI).
Teachers, schools, and municipal authorities are expected to establish educational frameworks corresponding to the
needs of rather diverse student groups. However, such initiatives – defined here as individualising processes – are
difficult to implement due to the active engagement in SFI of other societal actors related to labour market and
integration policy. Establishing common grounds to address individual students’ needs is a challenge for all involved
actors, because of their often conflicting agendas. Nevertheless, previous research in the area remains limited and
focuses mostly on interactions between teachers and students, without problematising other actors’ active
involvement.
The present thesis examines how individualising processes emerge and unfold in policy and practice of SFI.
Cultural-historical activity theory is employed to trace individualising processes in interactions and negotiations
between actors responsible for adapting education to individual students’ needs. The thesis comprises three studies,
addressing individualising processes i) in their historical emergence, informed by previous research, ii) within
municipal authorities’ organisational frameworks and measures, and iii) through SFI teachers’ collective efforts to
overcome emerging challenges. Empirical data consist of public policy texts and semi-structured qualitative
interviews with seven municipal officers and 18 SFI teachers from various Swedish municipalities.
The findings suggest that the emergence of individualising processes in the context of SFI is the result of
historically shifting societal challenges reflected in the involved actors’ current practices. In trying to adapt education
to individual students’ needs, municipal authorities are simultaneously engaged in the making of broader objectives,
such as in increasing control over – and efficiency within – adult education, or in sustaining social cohesion. The
findings also show that efforts to adapt education to individual students’ needs elicit tensions, the handling of which
leads SFI teachers to either retain their roles as adult educators or to expand their practices over institutional
boundaries. By synthesising findings from the three studies, the thesis problematises individualising processes
beyond the teacher-student interactions and offers new insights on how efforts to adapt education to individual
students’ needs have the potential to challenge established practices and offer possibilities for the emergence of
creative solutions.
2024-03-14T00:00:00Z”A social engineer or a parasite on society”: The moral responsibility of enabling (un)ethical business conductElliott, Jasmine Christinehttps://hdl.handle.net/2077/795052024-03-18T11:10:25Z2024-02-28T00:00:00Z”A social engineer or a parasite on society”: The moral responsibility of enabling (un)ethical business conduct
Elliott, Jasmine Christine
2024-02-28T00:00:00ZUnicorns in moderation: gender and epistemology on stack overflowOsborne, Tanyahttps://hdl.handle.net/2077/795132024-02-23T21:09:44Z2024-02-23T00:00:00ZUnicorns in moderation: gender and epistemology on stack overflow
Osborne, Tanya
Stack Exchange is a global knowledge sharing platform centred around programming, computer science, and a variety of other topics. It is a ubiquitous resource for coders and programmers. Knowledge sharing platforms, like Stack Exchange, are increasingly part of informal professional learning, and make professional knowledge accessible to people across the world. However, the platform has several persistent issues, like the under-participation of women and gender minorities. Given the ubiquity of the platform, and its positioning in recognising the expertise of programmers, there is an urgent need to understand how and why gendered participation patterns are reproduced in this environment.
Female participation in computer science and engineering has long been a subject of academic research. This thesis extends this line of research to cover female, non-binary, and trans experiences of participating in the online production of programming and coding knowledge. The title of the thesis, Unicorns in Moderation, has multiple meanings: it refers to the ‘unicorn’ success of a technology platform; the unique way in which of Stack Exchange’s approach to moderation combines platform affordances, volunteer moderation, elected moderation, and automation; and the relatively low participation of female and non-binary members.
Using a hybrid approach to digital ethnography, drawing on a mixture of interview, observation, document analysis and data analysis, I explore the gendered issues that are produced and reproduced on Stack Exchange. I find that the language policies on Stack Exchange are central to the reproduction of gendered discrimination and find that this is exacerbated by the gamified approach to content moderation. I also find that it is difficult for users to have measured discussions about gender-based discrimination on the platform due to the lack of recognition for embodied knowledge. From this, there is great potential to understand how online professional learning and knowledge sharing environments might avoid reproducing gender-based discrimination. Future research could extend this by observing how communities on emerging user-coordinated platforms, such as Slack and Discord, manage professional knowledge creation and documentation practices and how these practices are institutionally coordinated.
The thesis has three main contributions. The first a theoretical contribution, by applying contemporary social epistemologies, such as epistemic ignorance, to digital contexts. The second is in the methodological design, which brings together a mixture of digital and conventional methods under the banner of institutional ethnography. The third is an empirical contribution, shedding new light on the discourses of gender on platforms.
This compilation thesis comprises an extended history of Stack Overflow, three empirical papers, and one methodological paper. Paper 1, Writing the Social Web, argues for how digital platforms can be understood as institutional settings. Paper 2, Gaming Expertise Metrics, explores how the platform mechanics on Stack Overflow reinforce existing masculine hierarchies in programming. Paper 3, No Room for Kindness, examines the codification of communication on Stack Overflow, using interviews, policy texts, and social media data to explore the relations that prevent politeness on the platform. Paper 4, Silencing Tactics, discusses how queer issues are discussed in the Stack Exchange community, and how these issues are minimised through the mechanisms of epistemic ignorance
2024-02-23T00:00:00ZMellan osynlighet och avvikelse – nyanlända elever med kort skolbakgrund i grundskolans senare årskurserBrännström, Malinhttps://hdl.handle.net/2077/791042024-01-03T06:44:17Z2023-12-22T00:00:00ZMellan osynlighet och avvikelse – nyanlända elever med kort skolbakgrund i grundskolans senare årskurser
Brännström, Malin
The education of newly arrived students in Swedish schools has garnered increased attention in research, media, and policy discussions in the last couple of decades. This doctoral thesis explores the educational situation for a subgroup of these students, namely newly arrived students in the later grades (6-9) of compulsory school with limited educational experience. The dissertation investigates how newly arrived students with limited educational backgrounds are positioned, and whether and how they are established as a distinct group with particular needs. The four articles included in this dissertation explore whether and how the educational backgrounds of newly arrived students are made significant within educational practices, how students and teachers navigate potential discrepancies between student needs and educational practices and what is thereby made (im)possible in the school’s work with newly arrived students with a limited school background.
The material was produced through ethnographic fieldwork in the later grades (6-9) at three compulsory schools and through the analysis of policy texts. The material was analyzed using analytical tools from theories of normalization (e.g., Foucault, 1987; 1998; Butler, 2004; 2009) and stigma (Goffman, 1990), and critical perspectives on age (Ambjörnsson & Jönsson, 2010) and race (Bonilla-Silva, 2015).
The findings show that the positioning of newly arrived students with limited school background is complex: on the one hand, they are seen as challenging the education system, having both comprehensive and specific needs. On the other hand, these students tended to be obscured within the broader category of newly arrived students, thus primarily positioned as “slow” or “weak” Swedish learners. Students’ educational experiences are thus both acknowledged and made invisible. The findings further indicate a connection between the obscuring of educational background and a silence regarding subject knowledge that permeates parts of the analyzed material. This silence meant that when newly arrived students with limited schooling and their needs were discussed, it was common that other discourses, such as culture, cognitive ability, and inclusion, were articulated and dominated the conversation. In the thesis, it is argued that the utilization of a knowledge discourse can contribute to a demystification of newly arrived students with limited school background.
2023-12-22T00:00:00Z