Sveriges befolkning ökar och med det följer om- och nybyggnation av skolor med förväntningar på innovativa skolmiljöer som erbjuder god arbetsmiljö för elever och lärare och främjar en modern, elevcentrerad och elevaktiv pedagogik. Detta projekt var baserat i en sådan nybyggd skola som erbjuder flexibilitet i variation av rum och öppna ytor, flyttbara möbler och digital teknologi i sin utformning.

Syftet med projektet har varit att utveckla förståelse för den nybyggda skolans lärmiljö och studera hur skolans flexibla rumsliga och digitala ramar påverkar lärares undervisning och elevers kunskapsutveckling med utgångspunkt i följande frågeställningar:

1. Hur används skolans fysiska och digitala rum i lärares undervisningsdesign?

2. Hur kan elevers kunskapsutveckling stöttas genom rumslig och digital undervisningsdesign?

3. Hur utnyttjas fysiska och digitala rum för att lyckas med det kompensatoriska uppdraget?

Projektets har tillämpat co-design metoder, en kombination av aktionsforskning och design-baserad forskning, där lärare och forskare systematiskt och tillsammans studerat förändring och utveckling av undervisning i skolans lärmiljö över tid. Projektet har fokuserat på lärares didaktiska planering, undervisning och reflektion, möblering och rörelse i och mellan rummen, användning av digitala resurser, anpassning till elever samt ledarskapets roll. I utvecklingen av undervisningsdesign ingick kollegial planering, uppföljning, reflektion och re-design av undervisning i workshopsformat utifrån en tidigare utvecklad meta-tänkande modell för didaktisk design kallad Tanketärningar. Undervisningsdesignen har prövats i småskaliga interventioner och studerats genom observationer av lärares och elevers praktiker. En återkommande enkät har använts för att fånga lärarnas individuella röster. Dessutom genomfördes samtal och intervjuer med lärare och ledare på skolan.

Resultaten visar på att skolans flexibla rumsliga och digitala lärmiljö ställer nya krav på lärare att tänka organisatoriskt runt elevflöden och digitala resurser i undervisningen. Lärares varierande rumsliga inramningar av undervisningen mellan fri rörlighet och statiska arrangemang ger möjligheter till olika relationsbyggande. Skolans goda digitala infrastruktur erbjuder lärarna ett multimodalt planeringsstöd och flexibilitet i feedback och anpassning av innehåll till eleverna. Dock kan den digitala undervisningen även framkalla hårt paketerad och ”klicka-sig-fram” undervisning som minskar lärares handlingsutrymme och elevinflytande. Lärare skolar in elever till en strukturerad flexibilitet för att hantera rumslig och digital variation som uppfattas även ge utrymme att möta eleverna individuellt när andra elever i gruppen arbetar mer självständigt. Samtidigt är inte lärmiljön anpassad för elever som kräver en högre grad av didaktiskt ledarskap.

Samverkansambitioner har utmanats under projektets gång av coronapandemin men också oregelbundenheten i möten utöver workshoppar. Personalomsättning har påverkat relationsbygget mellan lärare och forskare över tid. Verksamhetens kollegiala arbete i lärarlag och ämnesövergripande undervisning utifrån ett fokus på tematiskt arbete har visat sig utmana lärarrollen, främst i de högre årskurserna. Projektets resultat pekar tydligt på vikten av kollegial samsyn och ledarskapets roll i det pedagogiska arbetet. Flexibiliteten behöver tolkas och kräver omfattande kollektiv planering i lärarlag som behöver ges tid och handlingsutrymme.

Projektets resultat har spridits kontinuerligt genom skolans webbsida, vetenskapliga publikationer, presentationer och workshoppar på forskningskonferenser, föredrag i Göteborgs stad som listas i slutet på rapporten. En film har samproducerats om arbetet med tanketärningsmodellen. Under projektets gång producerades sex examensarbeten på lärarutbildningarna och en masteruppsats inom informatik. Masteruppsatsen skrevs om till ett vetenskapligt prisbelönt bidrag.

This study explores the opportunities and challenges of teaching under flexible spatial and digital conditions of the learning environment of a newly build school, analyzing how teaching is organized and what curricular genres can be discerned, what resources and practices are offered to stimulate students meaningmaking and what framing, relations and accessibility can be distinguished by the flexibility of furniture and classroom space. The analyses of a teacher team’s planning and teaching of the thematic work project on Space in years 2-3 (ages 8 to 9) and another teacher team’s thematic work project onCommunication in years 4-7 (ages10 to12) reveal varied teaching strategies between teacher-led and student-centered forms offering students linguistic, visual and audiovisual resources to make meaning of shared content in different school subjects. The young students practice reading comprehension, both of written texts and films, that also serves their knowledge-building about space. The older students display skills relating to different subjects through different technological and digital resources. 

In digital working life, the individual must take increasingly more responsibility for constructing their way forward. It is up to the individual, in general, to seek knowledge and to learn - to learn for work and life (Eteläpelto, Vähäsantanen, Hökkä, & Paloniemi, 2013; Roumbanis Viberg, Forslund Frykedal, & Hashemi Sofkova, 2019). The aim of this study was to investigate professional agency in the context of higher education as manifested in Swedish teacher educators’ perceptions regarding their working life in a digital pre-Covid society, and to seek to obtain insights on salient factors influencing professional agency and identity. Eighteen semi-structured interviews with teacher educators working at four different universities were analyzed using directed content analysis.The theoretical perspective taken is a subject-centered socio-cultural approach to professional agency (Eteläpelto et al., 2013). This is an approach in which the social context (the socio-cultural conditions) and individuals’ agency (professional subjects) are mutually constitutive but analytically separate. Agency is something that is exercised, and in this study professional agency was explored in the work context, in teaching practice and in relation to professional identity. The results of this study not only confirm the complexity of being a professional TE in these times of digitalization, but more importantly demonstrate a paradox in the TEs perceived high agency that both enables and hinders self-development (the individual) as well as the development of the working community, the organization, and the university. The TEs feel they have professional autonomy and space, which in this study gave rise to exercising agency mainly to keep their current teacher identity and manage their practice. The study implies that considerations and understandings of the TE’s autonomy and perceived agency are significant for the professional and work development.

This study takes an exploratory approach to investigating Swedish teacher educators' perceptions regarding their profession in relation to the digitalization of society and education, including higher education. Eighteen semi-structured interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings show that the teache reducators perceive digitalization on a scale that ranges from simply using tools to being part of a technology-initiated revolution of educational institutions and society. From this range of digital developments emanate individual, group, and organizational requirements/demands, needs, and consequences for being, that is, personal experiences of how digitalization affects the work, and acting, that is, doing something in response to the demands of using and teaching with digital technology. The teacher educator is situated primarily in being with the requirements for working professionally and acting as a teacher, which creates tensions and challenges for the individual and the professional self. Teacher educators require support to strengthen their professional identity, to facilitate activities for professional development, and to stimulate reflective practice. A further difficulty is the lack of relevant policies and strategies. This study highlights the complex challenge of teaching and learning simultaneously in a profession that implicates autonomy and responsibility of its practitioners. This creates limitations for the teacher educators to move from being to acting.

Digital competence and digital literacy are concepts that are increasingly used in public discourse. However, how the concepts are used and how they are defined remains unclear. This paper presents a systematic review of research where these concepts are used in higher education research. The aim is to establish an understanding of referencing strategy to digital literacy and digital competence over time, disciplines, countries, methods and level of analysis. Three databases were used in the systematic literature review: Web of Science, Scopus and Education Resources Information Centre. We delimited the search to title, abstract and keywords in the databases. Inclusion criteria were peer-reviewed publications written in English. Initially 107 publications between 1997 and 2017 were found, with 28 addressing digital competence and 79 digital literacy. Our review demonstrates that there is a range of definitions used in higher education research. They vary depending on if the concepts are defined by policy, research or both and whether they focus on technical skills or social practices. This review indicates directions for further research in higher education i) do more research based on critical perspectives to avoid commonsensical use of the concepts, ii) take the development of definitions of these concepts seriously iii) avoid cross-referencing incompatibilities and finally iv) engage in critical investigations regarding the legitimacy of policy over research in the domain of higher education research.

The article reports on a study where teachers in early primary school were presented to tools to approach texts and meaning-­making from a multimodal perspective. The study aims to develop knowledge of enabling and constraining factors for the development of a multimodal assessment practice. To do so, we examine how teachers’ understanding of quality in students’ multimodal texts is manifested in assessments, and how this relates to available tools. The findings are discussed with the help of Bernstein's (1990; 2000) theoretical frame-­work and focus on the conditions for teachers' work and learning. The study demonstrates teachers’ attention to multimodal text quality as ability to follow writing conventions, organize text and communicate content with several interacting resources. Available tools shape and broaden what is noticed. However, to give content to the meta-­language further knowledge on the use of different semiotic resources is needed. The study hereby raises the importance of interdisciplinary perspective on multimodal assessment.

In this paper we examine competing discourses of established and emerging practices in literacy education in relation to technology. Our intention is to highlight contextual and relational aspects, which are largely absent in discussion concerning education when the aim is to find effective, best practice solutions. Grounded on empirical research findings, we strive to expand the current discussion by problematizing the relation between technology and literacy in a subject culture in motion. As classroom practices are made up of many different and often competing discourses this paper attends to the historical development of L1 and discusses tensions at classroom and system levels (Bernstein, 2000; Engeström, 2009). We demonstrate how the conditions and role of technology in the classroom tends to move from a focus on the effective use of technology, which separates the digital from L1-education, towards discourses including social practices and socio-political aspects (Ivanic, 2004). Moreover, the need for a meta-awareness addressing the multiplicity and diversity of communication channels and media will be problematized in regard to teachers’ professional development, changes in curricula and the boundary between the L1-subject and aesthetics.

As digital technology is becoming increasingly more common in the classrooms, students are creating screen-based texts that incorporate various modalities. Previous studies show that even if students’ texts are multimodal, the complexity in multimodal text composition are not the subject to established assessment practices privileging verbal and written language. Assessment practices signal which knowledge is legitimate and influence how teaching is organized. How teachers acknowledge and assess multimodal aspects and how practice development in this matter can be supported thereby becomes important issues to address.

This study was conducted within the project Digital Arenas in Literacy Practices in Early Primary School (DILS) where teachers from three classes in different schools worked together in workshops to develop literacy teaching. The empirical material consists primarily of the participating teachers written assessments of student texts, before and after an intervention where the teachers were introduced to multimodal perspectives and concepts for analyzing and assessing multimodal texts. The text material was further complemented by video-recordings of this workshop and the teachers’ discussions. Exploring how the teachers understanding of students’ multimodal texts is manifested in their assessments, the study highlights the challenges education and teachers face. The results shows how a lack of a meta-language to describe quality and development in multimodal text-composing results in assessments influenced by established assement practices focusing formal language aspects. Access to such meta-language provided more focus on the use, balance and interrelations of modalities for communicative effect. The implications of what knowledge and practices that are made available to teachers are discussed, and further research on how to implement multimodal assessment practices in the pedagogical practice is suggested.

In this article we operationalize the Technological Pedagogical And Content Knowledge (TPACK) model as an analytic lens to trace progression in teaching practice. We explore teacher development by studying didactical designs. Didactical design refers to the design of teaching sequences within a particular subject, and includes a pre-planned sequence of lessons, with a detailed teaching plan of how to implement the task in the classrooms. We report from a three-year school development project which involved 48 teachers and over 1000 students in elementary school. An in-depth analysis of 14 didactical designs in the subject of mathematics respectively 13 didactical designs in mother tongue was conducted. The analysis was based on classroom observations, video recordings, chat logs, online forums, interviews and participation in teachers'daily work. Our position is that our approach can serve as an effective way to categorize, analyzeand evaluate didactical designs