The Swedish municipal adult education curriculum emphasizes that there should be flexibility in education and accommodation to meet the adults’ diverse needs. However, it appears unclear what the concept of flexibility means in practice especially in the context of adult distance education. This study explores how the distance teacher role is constructed, how flexibility is enacted, and its implications for didactic practice. Drawing on focus groups with 46 teachers and principals and a mapping of seven municipal adult education activities, the findings reveal a paradox of conditional flexibility: while teachers are expected to be highly adaptable, organizational and economic constraints, standardized structures, and policy-driven efficiency goals limit real flexibility. Teachers navigate tensions between pedagogical ideals, administrative demands, and students’ expectations of autonomy, often at the cost of didactic quality. Assessment requirements further restrict flexibility, reinforcing rigid practices in a system that markets itself as flexible. The study argues for strategic organizational support and a redefinition of flexibility that prioritizes pedagogical and didactic dimensions.

In an ongoing research project, we examine reading promotion work in Sweden, where reading is framed as being in crisis, and where different actors offer solutions for this. This article centres on three prominent and influential reading promoters in Sweden. The purpose is to highlight some of the passions, values, and contradictions that characterize discourses on reading and reading promotion. The theoretical and methodological framework draws on concepts from Science and Technology Studies. We investigate the following research questions: What values are attributed to reading? What passions, threats, and contradictions emerge within the networks that these reading promoters participate in? Our findings show that the informants are driven by strong passions and values that are both deeply personal and oriented toward society. They identify the absence of reading role models, along with digitization and social media, as significant threats. The reading-promotion networks that the informants initiate and/or participate in differ significantly in terms of magnitude and complexity. They consist of both human and non-human actors, and foster a shared belief in the fundamental importance of reading, while also exposing discursive cracks and contradictions.

This study investigates Swedish pre-service teachers’ experiences during their practicum which is essential for their future careers. In response to recent policy changes emphasizing stronger collaboration between universities and practicum schools, and a push for higher education quality, this research addresses a gap in understanding how research-based teaching models are perceived during practicum experiences abroad. Specifically, this study explores teacher students’ experiences of high-quality mathematics instruction based on the Context for Learning (CL) teaching model. The research question guiding this study is: What aspects of CL are emphasized in primary teacher students’ perspectives on mathematics teaching following a practicum period abroad? Over three years, 12 teacher students participated in a mixed-methods study, completing part of their third practicum in schools implementing the CL model in the United States. Data were collected through classroom observations, surveys and a focus group interview. Findings reveal a strong alignment of CL principles and the teacher students’ learning experiences during their practicum. Additionally, the study underscores a perceived link between university coursework and practical teaching, suggesting that such integration can positively influence their long-term professional development.

This special issue, Teacher Education Practicum in Policy and Practice, explores key aspects of student teachers' work placements within teacher education.Positioned between universities and schools, the teacher education practicum serves as a meeting point for different educational practices and as a space where the roles of university staff and school staff are shaped and negotiated.Its core aim is to help

This article explores preschool teachers’ experiences of conducting analysis of their own and each other’s spontaneously arising teaching situations. Grounded in an ecological perspective on teachers’ agency, the study addresses two central questions: (1) What prerequisites appear to be essential for enabling preschool teachers to conduct analysis of teaching in spontaneous situations? (2) What insights do preschool teachers gain through such analyses, and how do these contribute to developing their teaching? The study draws on a one-year Swedish research and development project involving three researchers and 50 preschool teachers. Data were collected through notes documented by both researchers and preschool teachers. Key prerequisites identified include access to continuing professional development, opportunities for collaborative reflection work, and dedicated time for analysis. The use of an analysis tool aligned with teachers’ perceptions of core preschool values and practices also proved beneficial. Through their analysis, teachers gained awareness of their own interactions with the children and the children’s interests. However, connecting spontaneous situations to specific curriculum goals emerged as more of a challenging aspect of the process.

The purpose of this article is to build knowledge of what can characterize the “didaktik-where” question in theory-informed preschool teaching arrangements trialed in an ULF[1] network. The material from the teaching arrangements includes a total of approximately 320 documents containing approximately 64,400 words concerning co-planning and co-evaluation and approximately 10 hours of video of the teaching in 19 departments/preschools. Abductive analysis has been performed. The results unfold in multivocal pivoting spaces that include: 1) shifts between as-if places and as-is places; 2) spaces and places of attention; 3) movement between real, digital, imaginary, historical, and mobile places – i.e., STREAM places where children and preschool teachers come into being in rooms and places including both the material and the more-than-human; and 4) the pivoting spaces of the interludes where the children are involved in trying out and reflecting on location alternatives. Interludes take place between main activities with a focus on transitions. Pivoting spaces allow room to take turns and for various alternative choices. Multivocal pivoting spaces are tried out in the pursuit of democracy in a wiser world. [1] ULF stands for Education [Utbildning], Learning [Lärande] and Research [Forskning] https://www.ulfavtal.se/

This article focuses on the participant ideals that emerged in the Swedish folkhögskola (‘adult education folk high school’) during the COVID-19 pandemic, when most of these schools’ activities transitioned to distance learning following the restrictions imposed by the Public Health Agency of Sweden. The study is based on empirical material from two different studies conducted during this period. One study employed an ethnographic method, while the other included surveys and focus group interviews with teachers. The aim is to examine the student participant ideals that emerge in adult education folk high school teachers’ accounts of their work during the pandemic, guided by the following research question: What participant ideals emerge in folk high school teachers’ accounts of their work during the COVID-19 pandemic and around which values do these take shape? Drawing on concepts from Pierre Bourdieu, the study analyses the representations and ideals that appear in teachers’ statements about course participants in relation to the pandemic. The results show that values such as fragility and ability to interact were largely recognized as symbolic participant capital by teachers during the pandemic, whereas independence was both recognized and misrecognized. The study contributes both to research on adult education folk high schools during the pandemic and to research on student participant ideals in these schools.

Sammanfattning endast på engelska.

This study aims to investigate manifestations of professional agency in teacher educators’ (TEds) perceptions during the period of higher education transitioning to emergency remote work. This analysis applies the subject-centered sociocultural (SCSC) approach to professional agency. In this approach, agency is understood as exercised and the social context (the sociocultural conditions) as well as the individual’s agency (professional subjects) are mutually constitutive but analytically separate. Fourteen semi-structured interviews with Swedish teacher educators working at five different universities were analyzed using directed content analysis. The analysis shows that in an acute transition, the TEds exercised agency when trying to frame a blurred context, a connected space, and a screen identity. This is an agency exercised for many purposes, from retaining professional pride to transforming the teaching practice, involved coping with the “good enough” discourse, shaping the professional appearance, but foremost for the individual’s well-being and doing this in a social context containing e.g., expectations of availability and feelings of being in control. The results of the study can contribute to our understanding of university educators’ and teacher educators’ professional agency amid transitions to new, remote forms of hybrid work arrangements.

The purpose of the study is to contribute with knowledge about what mothers describe doing to support their children in grade 1. The research questions are as follows: What do the mothers do to support their children’s education on a general level? What do the mothers do to specifically support their children’s reading and writing development? Eleven parents (all mothers) participated. Interviews were analysed thematically, whereby six themes addressing their support were identified: 1) Talk with children about school; 2) Handle school-related problems; 3) Have a positive attitude towards school; 4) Guide children’s reading and writing; 5) Coach specific training; and 6) Collaborate with school staff about children’s reading homework. The bioecological model for human development constitutes a theoretical frame and an understanding of what influences children’s development, for example, parents’ support to children’s reading and writing development. It provided useful concepts (e.g., microsystem, proximal processes, mesosystem, and chronosystem) for a discussion of the themes. The study is relevant for prospective and professional teachers in early grades, special needs teachers, other school staff, principals, policymakers, and parents. This is a revised version of the article where the repetition of a paragraph has been removed.