Challenging traditional classroom practices : Swedish teachers’ interplay with Finnish curriculum materials

In the current paper, we present an analysis of a case study in which we have followed Swedish primary teachers who voluntarily began using translated Finnish curriculum materials, i.e. a textbook and teacher guide, in order to reform their mathematics teaching. The multifaceted data, consisting of questionnaires, interviews, protocols from collegial meetings and classroom observations, were gathered during the period 2010-2014. The analysis of the interplay within this cross-cultural setting reveals the special characteristics and the challenges existing in practice. Both the experienced and inexperienced teachers offloaded a great deal of their agency to the materials in order to become familiar with the ideas they mediated. Yet, the lack of a clear rationale behind the organization of the materials, as well as the suggested activities connected to taken-for-granted features of the Finnish teaching tradition, made fruitful interaction problematic. The changes teachers made in their classroom practice were tightly connected to the support offered in the materials, without which the teachers abandoned their new classroom patterns. Based on the results of this study, we suggest a number of general aspects that we regard as important to consider when implementing curriculum materials developed within another cultural-educational context.Peer reviewe

Reviewing Hegemonic Masculinities and Men in Sweden and South Africa

The concept of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ continues to be used widely in gendered studies of men and masculinities, though this does not signify consensus on its meaning and conceptual value. In this article we introduce some different ways in which the concept has been used theoretically, and compare two different political and conceptual locations in which it has been employed, namely South Africa and Sweden. This arises from a collaborative project between teams of researchers based in these two countries. The goal of this project is to review critically and reflexively the use of the concept and associated concepts in the gendered, largely feminist and profeminist, national literatures in the two countries. While both countries have strong feminist traditions, they are distinguished by marked differences in history, geopolitical location and socio-economic structure. This in turn raises more general questions around the relation of the traveling of theory and concepts, and national and transnational context