Het rendement van een stage in de huisartspraktijk vergeleken met een stage in een academisch ziekenhuis

This article analyses how ‘eco-certified children’ are constructed as desirable subjects in teaching materials addressing education for sustainable development. We are interested in how discourses structure this cherished practice and how this practice has become ‘natural’ and obvious for us. A discourse analysis is carried out by looking at the material through the lens of Foucault’s notion of pastoral power. The analysis departs from teaching material addressing issues on sustainable development: (1) textbooks for primary and secondary school; (2) games targeted at preschool and school children; and (3) children’s books about sustainable development. The results show that the discourse of education for sustainable development is characterized by scientific and mathematical objectiv- ity and faith in technological development. It emphasizes the right of the individ- ual and the obligation to make free, however ‘correct’, choices. In the teaching materials, the eco-certified child therefore emerges as knowing, conscious, rational, sacrificing and active. This child is constructed through knitting together personal guilt with global threats, detailed individual activities with rescuing the flock and the planet. In a concluding discussion, we discuss how ESD is framed in a neoliberal ideology. With the help of ESD, an economic discourse becomes dressed in an almost poetic language

ETN:KRY

”Jag hoppas att jag får ha hälsan”, är ett uttryck som idag känns passé. Hälsa är inte längre något man ”har”, eller ens ”får”. Idag är hälsa något man ”gör”. Det är individens ansvar att ”göra” sin hälsa genom att äta rätt, motionera väl, hålla sig uppdaterad om vetenskapliga rön och nya behandlingsmetoder och inte minst – tro på sig själv. Hälsa är – åtminstone i den offentliga diskursen – beroende av individen själv. Denne tycks ha möjlighet att påverka sitt liv, men bär också ansvar och kanske till och med skuld för om det går fel. ETN:KRY är en tidskrift som tar upp hälsa och sjukdom utifrån ett etnologiskt perspektiv

What’s special about the ethical challenges of studying disorders with altered brain activity?

Where there is no viable alternative, studies of neuronal activity are conducted on animals. The use of animals, particularly for invasive studies of the brain, raises a number of ethical issues. Practical or normative ethics are enforced by legislation, in relation to the dominant welfare guidelines developed in the UK and elsewhere. Guidelines have typically been devised to cover all areas of biomedical research using animals in general, and thus lack any specific focus on neuroscience studies at the level of the ethics, although details of the specific welfare recommendations are different for invasive studies of the brain. Ethically there is no necessary distinction between neuroscience and other biomedical research in that the brain is a final common path for suffering, irrespective of whether this involves any direct experience of pain. One exception arises in the case of in vitro studies, which are normally considered as an acceptable replacement for in vivo studies. However, to the extent sentience is possible, maintaining central nervous system tissue outside the body naturally raises ethical questions. Perhaps the most intractable challenge to the ethical use of animals in order to model neuronal disorder is presented by the logical impasse in the argument that the animal is similar enough to justify the validity of the experimental model, but sufficiently different in sentience and capacity for suffering, for the necessary experimental procedures to be permissible

När barnen ska rädda världen

I läromedel och styrdokument är idealet att vara miljömedveten. Framtiden blir en fråga om individuella val, ett synsätt som förstärker orättvisor och skymmer problemens orsaker

Global responsibility or eco-certified nationalism? About impossibilities of non-colonial ESD.

Swedish curriculum describes a strong intention to foster globally responsible citizens; it is expressed in general curriculum as well as in subject syllabi. Swedish education has the duty to not only qualify Swedish children for PISA tests and work life, but also to help them “form a personal position with respect to overarching and global environmental issues”. Knowledge about and a personal approach to other peoples’ living conditions all over the world are also emphasized – not at least in relation to Educations for Sustainable Development (ESD). My question here is, however, if this global responsibility is possible to teach beyond a colonial gaze? ESD is a practice that has grown from international efforts. In the UN decade for sustainable development, education is pointed out as an arena for change into a more sustainable society. This is of course an important project, with the best of intentions. Still, it is necessary to raise questions in what ways this is a “common” project for a “common world”, and in what ways it is a colonialization through western norms. From a study of Swedish teaching material for ESD, I will address how the global project of sustainable development transforms through a discourse of “Swedish exceptionalism”. Through this discourse, “Swedishness” is fabricated as knowing, altruistic, conscious and good. In a double gesture of inclusion and exclusion, the rest of the world appears in need of help, development, or – in some cases – higher moral standards. The including ESD project could thus be understood as a colonial, differentiating and excluding practice. One must ask if and how it is possible at all to escape this nationalistic perspective in a time of globalisation

Sick Children. How massmedial and personal experiences are woven together

In the end of the 1990ths came alarming reports that the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) could cause autism. The discovery about the connection was told in mass media all over the world and in Europe the vaccination frequency decreased with several percent. In some areas less than 90% of the children were vaccinated, a limit that calls “herd immunity”. In interviews with parents, who either have hesitated to vaccinate or have not vaccinated, have several causes for their view been uplifted. One important reason is that you want to keep nature going. Another reason is the meeting with sick children. These meetings might have been through mass media or in real life, and they have had consequences for personal choices. This article discuss why these children have been so important and how medial and real children become integrated in people’s handling of risks – for example the choice between the risk of your child getting measles and the risk of the vaccine’s side-effects. At another level the article discusses how medial and personal experiences are woven together and together shape a foundation for people’s opinions and decisions. Mass media work as a filter for what stories about biotechnology that are told. The filter is built on our cultural norms and values. And as a filter it has influence on people’s thoughts since it tells certain stories, but not others. But the media stories are put together with the private life situation and the personal outlook of life. Consumption of media’s stories about biotechnology is at the same time a kind of production of private stories about biotechnology. Experiences from media and life merge and create new stories

Vad vi inte pratar om när vi pratar om kunskapssyn

Debatten om skolans kunskapssyn tycks outtömlig. Men vad är det som hamnar i skymundan när vi diskuterar denna fråga. Malin Ideland frågar sig om det inte är dags att prata om något annatArticle, Magazin

The googlified teacher. How digital business actors govern practices of teaching

Swedish school is embedded in a number of globalization processes, such as international assessments and benchmarking reports, etc. Beside these obvious policy actors, another kind of more hidden governance of school is taking place through actors offering digital educational platforms that organize practices of schooling all over the world, such as Google, Apple and Microsoft. Through digital products, business actors shape what school is; how students learn and how teachers teach. This paper aims to analyze how transnational business actors take place in Swedish schools through digital products and discuss what this means for the professional teacher role. The theories used frame how governance of education is distributed in multilayered networks involving state as well as business companies, NGOs and researchers. The borders between the public and the private sector have blurred and temporary relationships have sometimes replaced administrative structures. It could be claimed that business influence for long has been a part of schooling, through the selling of educational tools. However, this involvement has increased and today it includes teacher training and outsourcing of central parts of schooling. Not at least is this done through the re-organization of education into digital platforms, which effects we only have seen the beginning of. Building on a body of literature on the changed governance of education the paper discusses the consequences of globalization and marketization of education with focus on the role of the teacher in relation to digital platforms. The study builds on interviews with app. 15 edu-preneurs – persons working in business companies – and on analyses of an online course regarding Google’s product G-suite for education. The data are analyzed from the following questions: • How is the teacher’s role in the digital classroom described? • What differs this teaching role from an imagined Other (the traditional teacher)? • How is it motivated in relation to digitalization of teaching and learning? This analysis is then discussed in relation to both business coming with market actors and a historical perspective on how technology is thought of as a game-changer in educational practices. Preliminary analyses of the data point to a role of the teacher as a coach in an increasingly individualized teaching environment. The teacher is not supposed to be the authority, instead s/he should guide and assess students through the platforms, in a way adapted to the individual’s interests and knowledge. A second finding is that there is a strong wish from Google to emphasize 21st century skills such as innovation and creativity through the digital platforms, which correspond with the company culture, but also a strong focus on the individual, rather than the collective. A critical question to discuss is what this individualization means for how we think about education. The paper is relevant for NERA since the use of digital tools such as e.g. Google classroom has been everyday life in many Nordic classrooms, and that digitalization of education mostly have been studied in relation to how to improve teaching and learning, not as a global policy actor