The charms and challenges of pedagogy: Confessions of a researcher. In this inaugural professorial lecture, I reflect on my intellectual journey into pedagogy and how my understanding of the field as a scientific discipline has evolved. Although initially trained as a teacher, I was skeptical of pedagogy as an academic subject due to its perceived lack of practical relevance and the conceptual confusion I encountered during teacher education. My interest emerged during doctoral studies, when I began to see knowledge as dynamic and relational, shaped as ideas move across disciplinary boundaries. This led me to view education not only as classroom practice but as a broader societal process involving multiple actors, interests, and mechanisms of social reproduction. I define pedagogy as the study of the conditions of education. Drawing on curriculum theory, policy research, and the sociology of knowledge, I examine how visions, measurement systems, and policy frameworks shape educational practice. Pedagogy, I argue, critically analyzes the assumptions, measurements, and policies through which societies reproduce themselves through education.

This article explores the complex interplay between the visual, numerical and verbal elements of data visualisation and their role in shaping policy concerns. Focusing on the aesthetic and temporal dimensions of statistical graphics and drawing on the notion of diagram in the Deleuzian sense, the article emphasises the performative nature of data visualisation. More specifically, it explores how data visualisation suggests, rather than reveals, particular visions of educational pasts, presents and futures. Based on an analysis of graphs and charts selected from recent UNESCO and OECD reports, the article discusses the practices of the datafication of time and temporalisation and the beautification of data, which together produce ‘beautiful evidence’. This evidence informs education policies and practices and affects the way education can be seen, known and acted upon.

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.

Using reading research as an example, this article aims to provide new conceptual tools for examining the production of scientific knowledge. Drawing on the metaphor of a theatre of truth, it explores how scientific knowledge is staged, dramatised and communicated within the field of reading research. It highlights the performative and public nature of knowledge production and examines the role of human and non-human actors, such as researchers, audiences, methods and visualisations, in shaping what counts as scientific truth. Focusing on the articles published in the Journal of Reading Behavior (later Journal of Literacy Research), the study traces how shifts in paradigms - such as the transition from qualitative to qualitative and interpretative approaches - reconfigure the 'stage' of reading science. The article also introduces the concept of a contract of intelligibility to explore how shared assumptions and conventions govern the production and reception of scientific knowledge. We also consider the techniques of dramatisation that are used to differentiate concepts and demonstrate scientific truth in an accessible and persuasive way. Ultimately, the article underlines the need to critically examine the mechanisms through which educational research constructs and communicates its truths, thereby revealing its broader societal and political implications.

The concept of differentiation holds immense significance in education, touching upon aspects like access, inclusion, justice, and equality. However, it is also a complex and elusive notion, which acquires different meanings across historical and cultural contexts. This article explores the shifting reasoning about differentiation in the Swedish educational context. Inspired by Foucault's account of disciplinary power, it conceptualizes differentiation as a technique for marking and addressing gaps between individuals. Drawing on an analysis of governmental and scholarly reports from 1842 to the late 1960s, the article identifies three shifts in the reasoning on differentiation: 1) from differentiation by socioeconomic class as a given factor to the search for scientific rationales for differentiation based on measurement of intellectual ability, 2) from viewing differences in intelligence as biologically conditioned and stable to viewing them as amenable to training and correction through education, and 3) from a focus on inputs to a focus on outputs. Overall, the article argues that even if the term 'differentiation' itself has been discursively replaced by others, the ideas underlying it—the search for gaps—continue to shape education in Sweden and beyond.

In contemporary ways of thinking about education there is an enhanced focus on individual students’ results and less on students’ collaborative processes for attaining good results. This may appear peculiar, given that the Swedish curriculum for the nine-year compulsory school states that students should be given opportunities to compose texts together with others and give and receive feedback on them. This is also in line with societal desires to motivate students to take responsibility for their lifelong learning. The evolving ethnographic research design, comprising observations, audio-visual recordings and follow-up interviews with students at a Swedish lower secondary school (Years 8 and 9), investigated the informal social strategies that students enacted when doing formal schoolwork and how they reflected on them. Goffman’s (1959/1990) dramaturgical metaphors of the back region, front region and impression management were applied as theoretical points of departure. The findings showed that some students worked hard at their schoolwork in ways that corresponded with societal desires and ideal learning curves. Other students aimed at more effortless achievements and relied heavily on peers and digital devices when taking shortcuts to produce formal assignments. These students’ potential learning curves showed a broken arrow of knowledge development, resulting in assessment dilemmas for teachers and possible mismatches in their grading.

This study is based on an interest in interaction between science and society and how this structures science and society in tandem. In order to capture such interaction, we are analysing statements in scientific publications. The purpose of this study is to analyse relevancing in scientific publications by studying who are addressed by the research contributions and why these are considered to be relevant. Our case is the field of research labelled as International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSA), such as the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), created to analyse relations between educational designs and student performances. We identified a large set of research publications by means of the search engines Web of Science and Scopus. We selected publications that were peer reviewed and based on empirical comparisons between at least two countries. A large majority were only analysing student achievement, and few were researching impacts of educational variations. Relevance statements were mostly addressing policymakers. These findings are indicating strong social structuring of much ILSA research.

Regarding police procedures with alcohol-intoxicated witnesses, Swedish police officers have previously reported inconsistent and subjective decisions when interviewing these potentially vulnerable witnesses. Most officers have also highlighted the need for national policy guidelines aiding in conducting investigative interviews with intoxicated witnesses. The aims of the two studies presented here were to investigate whether (1) police officers' inconsistent interview decisions are attributable to a lack of research-based knowledge; (2) their decision to interview, as well as their perceptions of the witnesses' credibility could be influenced by scientific research; and (3) police officers decision-making and perceptions of witness credibility are biased by pre-existing social norms. In two separate randomized online experiments, police professionals and recruits (Study 1, N = 43; Study 2, N = 214) watched a recorded fictive witness interview to which they were asked to rate the probability of interviewing the witness, the witness' credibility, and to estimate the witness' level of intoxication. Results showed that interview probability and perceived witness credibility were affected by witness intoxication level. While it cannot be stated definitely from the present research, these findings provided indications that police officers and recruits lacked research-based knowledge. Results also showed that interview probability, but not perceptions of credibility, was influenced by a research-based message. In line with research, interview probability for the most intoxicated witness increased after reading the message. Unexpectedly, neither interview probability nor witness credibility was affected by social norms. The current findings added to the legal psychology literature by showing that a breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) as low as .04% was enough for police officers and recruits to consider intoxicated witnesses less credible than sober witnesses. Findings also indicated that, despite the lower credibility assessment, police may have some understanding that these witnesses can be interviewed at low intoxication levels (i.e., around .04%). However, this willingness to interview intoxicated witnesses ceased at a BrAC lower than the levels where research has found intoxicated witnesses as reliable as sober witnesses (i.e., BrAC < .10%). Future directions for research and policy development as well as theoretical and practical implications of the present findings are discussed.

Background: Despite the common occurrence of alcohol-related crimes, the Swedish police authority currently lacks national guidelines for dealing with intoxicated victims/witnesses. Method: A survey was designed to explore the police procedures when encountering intoxicated individuals and to compare the findings with international statistics. To facilitate international comparison, the survey was modeled after previous research and adapted to a Swedish context. A solicitation containing a link to the survey was emailed to all police regions in Sweden. Results: Police officers (N = 133) indicated that it was common to interact with intoxicated witnesses/victims. Some police departments had local guidelines on how to conduct investigative interviews with intoxicated individuals, but it was mostly up to each officer to make a subjective judgement regarding interactions with this witness group. Data evidenced that the high prevalence rate of intoxicated witnesses/victims in Sweden is similar to rates in Australia, the U.S. and U.K. It appears that the Swedish police are unaware of research concerning when and how to conduct investigative interviews with intoxicated witnesses and victims, a potentially vulnerable group. Conclusions: A closer collaboration between police and researchers is encouraged in order to develop guidelines for investigations with intoxicated individuals.

Alcohol-related crimes are very common globally, including in Scandinavia. Despite this, no survey to date has examined the prevalence of alcohol- and drug-intoxicated suspects in Sweden specifically, or which procedures police use when interacting with this suspect group. Given the current lack of (inter)national policy guidelines on how to interrogate intoxicated persons, it is important to examine law enforcement’s contact with this potentially vulnerable group in different contexts. This was the aim of the present study. Data were collected via an online survey sent out to Swedish police investigators and 133 officers responded in total. A large majority (87%) of responses indicated that it was common or very common to encounter intoxicated suspects, but findings also suggest that police departments differ in their procedures for when and how to conduct investigations and interviews involving drunk suspects. Our findings support the need for (inter)national guidelines on how to interview intoxicated suspects and the need for more scientific studies on how alcohol affects suspect’s memory and decision making.

Traditionally, Swedish education has been built on, and enhanced by, notions and priorities of democracy, equity, and inclusion. In fact, Sweden’s education system has often, during the 20th century, been raised as a beacon of inclusion. However, from the 1990s onwards Swedish education is gradually transmogrified into a heavily marketized system with several providers of education, an emphasis on competition, and an escalating segregation, both as regards pupil backgrounds, need for special support, educational attainment, and provision of educational materials and educated teachers. This shows that traditional educational ideals have shifted and been given new meanings. These shifts are based on desires to improve performance and new ideas of control and predictability of educational ends. The historical development of education reforms illustrates how priorities have shifted over time, dependent on how the public and private are conceptualized. In particular, education reforms from the 1990s and onwards have gradually been more attached to connotations on market ideals of competition, efficiency, and individualization, making inclusion a secondary and de-prioritized goal of education, creating new educational dilemmas within daily life in schools. An empirical example of principals’ experience—seen as mediators of educational desires—illustrates these dilemmas and how the marketization of education affects both the political understanding of how education is best organized and the prioritization of previously valued ambitions of coherence and inclusion.

AbstractIn this chapter, Lyotard’s notion serves as an intellectual framing of how a specific reasoning (cf. Hacking, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23(1):1–20, 1992a) develops within the educational sciences that eventually leads to the construction of international large-scale assessments (ILSA) and how this reasoning gains legitimacy within both science and policy embedded in a larger societal frame of meritocracy. To this end, this chapter historicizes some of the historical trajectories facilitating the construction of the first truly comparative assessment based on a positivistic inspired aggregation of numbered data. This first IEA (the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) study was eventually followed by a multitude of different ILSA. In this, special attention is given to five important trajectories necessary for ILSA to occupy their present role in today’s meritocratic system: (1) how the scientific revolution changed and framed epistemological beliefs, (2) how the role of experts and expertism (Popkewitz, Paradigm and ideology in educational research, London and New York, 1984) changed, (3) how the introduction of statistics facilitated new ways of demonstrating the world and ‘reality’, (4) how the long-forgotten work by the French empiricist Marc-Antoine Jullien was used for a longer and legitimate history of a special branch of comparative education and (5) how the governing of matter and minds has changed over time. All these trajectories are important for an understanding of how ILSA became intelligible in a meritocratic context.