"Vår tidskrift Högre utbildning (HU) har nu funnits i drygt ett decennium. Avsikten var från början att skapa ett svenskspråkigt forum för att kunna publicera resultat från forskning om högre utbildning. Ja, i grunden var syftet vidare än så, för redan från början ville vi också ge utrymme för det vi på den tiden kallade ”goda exempel” från undervisningen och för debatt kring olika frågor för att tidskriften på så sätt skulle kunna bidra med ett brett underlag för utveckling av högre utbildning." Läs hela ledaren av Åsa Lindberg-Sand nedenfor.

Tidskriften Högre utbildning (HU) firade sitt 10-årsjubileum 2021. Redaktionen genomförde i samband med detta en granskning av de bidrag som publicerats under perioden 2011–2021. I denna artikel presenteras resultaten av granskningen och reflektioner över HU:s uppdrag att främja kunskapsutveckling inom högre utbildning i ett svenskt och nordiskt sammanhang. Sedan starten 2011 har HU etablerat sig som en central publiceringskanal för såväl vetenskapliga studier av högre utbildning som för praktiknära utvecklingsprojekt kring undervisning och lärande inom akademisk utbildningssektor. Tidskriften har under sitt första decennium publicerat 142 bidrag av 262 författare från ett brett spektrum av lärosäten och disciplinära bakgrunder, vilket speglar HU:s breda målgrupp och mångvetenskapliga fokus. Analysen visar att majoriteten av bidragen är skrivna på svenska och fokuserar på undervisningsnära frågor inom humaniora, samhällsvetenskap och lärarutbildning. De vanligaste metoderna inkluderar kvalitativa studier och litteraturstudier, medan mixed methods och systematiska översikter är mindre vanliga. Granskningen visar således behovet av fler bidrag från ämnesområden som naturvetenskap, teknik och vård/medicin, trots att det skett en ökning både av antalet publiceringar och av nedladdningar under perioden. HU:s bidragsformer möjliggör att såväl övergripande som praktiknära förhållanden för lärare och studenter kan belysas. För att främja kritiska reflektioner kring frågor inom högre utbildning introducerades 2021 en ny bidragskategori, Fördjupad diskussion, vilket har resulterat i ett antal värdefulla och tankeväckande inlägg. Tidskriften har över tid utvecklat en potential att fungera som en brygga mellan olika forskningsfält och kan därigenom bidra till att synliggöra en mängd sammanhang i det breda och komplexa landskap som forskning om högre utbildning utgör. I det sammanhanget välkomnar vi att andelen engelskspråkiga bidrag har vuxit, även om HU värnar sitt svenska och nordiska perspektiv. ENGLISH ABSTRACT A Decade of Högre utbildning: Scope, development, and future directions The journal Högre utbildning (HU) celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2021. To mark the occasion, the editorial team conducted a review of contributions published between 2011 and 2021. This article presents the results of the review along with reflections on HU’s mission to promote the development of knowledge about higher education within a Swedish and Nordic context. Since its inception in 2011, HU has established itself as a key publishing channel for both academic studies on higher education and practice-oriented development journal has published 142 contributions by 262 authors from a wide range of institutions and disciplinary backgrounds, reflecting HU’s broad target audience and multidisciplinary focus. The analysis reveals that the majority of contributions are written in Swedish and focus on teaching-related issues within the humanities, social sciences, and teacher education. The most commonly employed methods are qualitative studies and literature reviews, while mixed methods and systematic reviews are less frequent. Despite a growing number of publications and downloads, the review identifies a need for more contributions from fields such as natural sciences, technology, and health sciences/medicine. While HU maintains its Swedish and Nordic perspective, it is encouraging to note that the proportion of submissions written in English has increased. To foster critical reflections on issues in higher education, the journal introduced a new category in 2021, In-depth Discussions, which has resulted in several valuable contributions. HU’s flexible submission formats allow for both overarching and practicefocused issues concerning teachers and students to be highlighted. The journal has the potential to act as a bridge between different research fields and to help illuminate various contexts within the broad and complex landscape of higher education research.

The doctorate forms the basis for academic careers and the regeneration of academia, and has increasingly become important for other sectors of society. The latter is reflected in efforts on institutional, national as well as supranational levels to change and adapt the doctoral degree to new expectations. As doctoral education is embedded in research, changes in governance and funding of research further affect the doctorate. The evaluation of the doctoral thesis appears, however, to have remained true to the academic tradition: an examination committee exercising their gatekeeping in a ceremonial setting. This study sets out to explore doctoral examination committees’ evaluation practices. Insights were gained through six focus group interviews with experienced examination committee members at three large research-intensive universities in Sweden. Of particular interest is how the object of evaluation is formed, the nature of the boundary-work conducted, and variations in examination practices related to different and changing conditions for research and doctoral education. Our results show how the object of evaluation emerges through a gradual interpretation of the thesis and defence, becoming more complex and nuanced as the process of evaluation progresses from its initial stages to the final closed discussions of the committee. The finalised object of evaluation, only fully present at the conclusion of the closed meeting and hence transient in nature, encompasses the research contribution, educational achievement, and academic competence of the candidate. Furthermore, the boundary-work conducted in this process often transcends the object of evaluation to include also supervision and the local context for doctoral education and research, and hence contributes to upholding, and potential changing, norms in research fields, educational contexts, and academia at large. This extended boundary-work intensified as problems and inconsistencies were discovered during the evaluation process. The ceremonial staging underscored the gravity of the decision and the extended boundary-work. Despite changing conditions for the doctorate, our findings highlight the importance of the practice of evaluation committees, and the disciplinary communities to which they belong, for upholding and negotiating norms in academia.

"Nu är det höst! Vårterminen avslutades med den nationella högskolepedagogiska konferensen ”NU 2024”, som gick av stapeln vid Umeå universitet. Strax före midsommar samlades drygt 450 konferensdeltagare – lärare, doktorander, studentrepresentanter, akademiska ledare, pedagogiska utvecklare, IKT-pedagoger, bibliotekarier m.fl. – för att diskutera ”Högre utbildning i och för förändring”. Här fanns en bredd av ämnen och bidragsformer, allt från utvecklingsprojekt inom enskilda ämneskontexter till övergripande initiativ." Läs hela ledare til vol 14, nr 2 her.

Vid Örebro universitet anordnades våren 2021 för andra gången konferensen Forskning om högre utbildning. Ett tema för konferensen var utveckling av högskolepedagogisk forskning. Högre utbildning publicerar nu tre texter på detta tema som en fördjupad diskussion. De kan läsas var för sig eller tillsammans. Den första utgörs av Sverre Wides inledningsanförande från konferensen. Efter inbjudan från redaktionen har sedan Max Scheja och Klara Bolander Laksov, som professorer inom området, kommenterat Wides bild av vad högskolepedagogisk forskning är och kan vara, vilket utgör det andra bidraget. Slutligen inbjöd redaktionen även Åsa Lindberg-Sand att reflektera över relationen mellan högskolepedagogisk forskning och forskning om högre utbildning. Detta är hennes bidrag. ENGLISH ABSTRACT Higher education research and development: The boundary work framing a new educational practice at the heart of the university. A comment to Wide and Scheja & Bolander Laksov. In spring 2021, Örebro University arranged the second Swedish conference for Research in Higher Education. One of the themes for the conference was the development of higher education studies as a specific branch of this research. Our journal, Högre utbildning, now publishes three contributions linked to this theme as in-depths essays. These may be read separately or together. The first consists of the introductory keynote from the conference, held by Sverre Wide. The team of editors then invited Max Scheja and Klara Bolander Laksov, as professors in this domain, to share their view of the nature of their branch of studies in higher education, in relation to the view put forward by Wide. Their contribution is the second one. Finally, the editors also invited Åsa Lindberg-Sand to share her reflections on the relationship between research in higher education and the development of studies in higher education.Below her contribution follows.

This case study of large-class teaching at a UK university focuses on the place of large-scale lectures in academics’ approaches to teaching, their use by students in their studies, and their relationship to institutional quality assurance policies. The case is a second-year module comprised of 180 students, and it includes two-hour lectures as the primary mode of teaching. The data is drawn from a range of sources including observations, interviews, focus groups, institutional documentation, and a student survey. Observations revealed largely transmissive lectures with little student interaction. The analytic framework of constructive alignment and outcome-based education is used to examine the promoted educational values and the practice experienced by students. The results are further explored in relation to two texts celebrating 50 years since publication: Donald Bligh’s What’s the Use of Lectures and Benson Snyder’s The Hidden Curriculum , Both highlight the dissonance of espoused approaches to teaching, and the realities of large-class environments. While the institutional literature foregrounds student-centred, ‘active learning’ approaches, the teacher-centred practice observed would have been very familiar to Bligh and Snyder; the principles of constructive alignment were visible only at the policy level. The implicit reward mechanisms of the hidden curriculum ensure that the majority of students succeed and are satisfied with the educational offering. The students who attended the lectures appeared to enjoy them and indicated that the primary benefits are the structure offered by live lectures and the support of the peer networks which develop as a result of attendance.

Constructive Alignment (CA) is neither the panacea, nor the unalloyed evil depicted in the majority of higher education discourses. But rather, the theory is a heuristic and accessible representation of commonly agreed upon aspects of modern curriculum and educational theory, designed explicitly to support learning and teaching. However, when imposed top-down for accountability purposes, or used as a quality assurance tool, the seemingly step-by-step simplicity that gives it an administrative potential can also diminish or even destroy its relevance as an educational tool. For these reasons CA and particularly learning outcomes are often vilified amongst academic staff as a pernicious influence on learning and teaching. It has been argued that the mechanistic use of alignment and learning outcomes for validation and audit purposes can create an illusion of quality control which bears little relation to the reality of teaching practice and student learning.This paper explores the tensions that have been created as constructive alignment has journeyed and expanded from an educational theory into Higher Education teaching policy and practice. The purpose is to reclaim its original perspective as a tool for professional academic teaching.

Detta ar en efterlangtad bok som bidrar till utveckling av forskarhandledares kompetens och ger ett fordjupat perspektiv pa doktoranders larande. Med forankring i aktuell forskning behandlar forfattarna forskarutbildningens organisation, handledarens professionella praktik, doktorandens larande samt utbildningens kvalitetssystem. Kopplingen mellan teori och praktik utgor en rod trad genom boken. Med autentiska fall och exempel fran olika utbildningsmiljoer tydliggors hur handledningen villkoras av bade individuella och kulturella faktorer. Dessutom bjuder boken pa manga reflektionsuppgifter som kan hjalpa tankandet framat, bade enskilt och kollegialt. Boken riktar sig framst till handledare pa forskarutbildningsniva, oavsett amnesomrade och tidigare erfarenhet. Den kan med fordel lasas aven av doktorander som ar intresserade av att forsta sitt larande och vad som forvantas av dem i utbildningen, samt av utbildningsansvariga som vill starka utbildningens kvalitet. (Less)

Doctoral Education on the Move : In symposium: Collegiality and Criticism in the field of Educational Science: On Educational Research Quality, Doctoral Education and Evaluation of Study Programs

For universities all over the world, the strategic importance of doctoral education has increased over the last decades. Both locally and internationally we can observe growing activity in three interrelated areas of doctoral education: policy, knowledge formation and practice. Doctoral education is moving and has become a concern for the field of educational development. In a recent Swedish report on quality and leadership in doctoral education1 we elaborate on the many different ways in which doctoral education is essential for the regeneration, legitimacy and development of the academy and all its practices. We also describe how doctoral education to a large extent is built upon and integrated with other academic practices; primarily research but also undergraduate education and public outreach, and as a consequence is highly dependent on the organisation, infrastructure and quality enhancing processes of these. This reciprocal relationship and interdependence between the academy and doctoral education is under-studied and recent and future changes to doctoral education, at the policy as well as at the practice level, could mean considerable and unpredictable consequence for the academy. In our report we identify an on-going shift in power over Swedish doctoral education – away from the academy and towards the political arenas and funding bodies. This shift has reshaped both content and form of doctoral education. There is a marked risk that such changes could undermine the academy’s capacity to fulfil its mission. In this paper we will discuss conditions and recent developments that is currently shaping doctoral education in Sweden and describe the mechanisms at work. We will end by addressing a few areas of particular concern for educational development 1Elmgren, M., Forsberg, E., Lindberg-Sand, A. & Sonesson, A. (2014). Ledning for kvalitet i forskarutbildningen. Sweden, The Association of Swedish Higher Education, www.suhf.se (Less)

Presentation av SUHFs rapport Ledning for kvalitet i forskarutbildning (Elmgren, Forsberg, Lindberg-Sand & Sonesson, 2014) : Invited speaker.

Texten speglar de två svenska rapporter som hittills mest grundligt satt kvalitetssystemets metod i fokus, för att se vad dessa tillsammans kan säga oss om lämpliga vägar för den fortsatta utvecklingen. Vi inleder med ett avsnitt som vi formulerat tillsammans för att se om och var vi kan mötas i vår uppfattning om det nya systemet. Därefter följer Åsa Kettis granskning av Lindberg-Sands rapport och avslutningsvis redovisar Åsa Lindberg-Sand sin läsning av Lundmark & Sjölunds rapport.