Streams of fun and cringe: Talking about Snapchat as mediated affective practice

How do young people interpret and negotiate their sense of being affected in the context of social media use? Our study draws on recent theorizing that views affective practices as discursive, relational and imbued with power. We specifically address practices that users engage in as they pursue forms of digitally mediated emotional involvement when using Snapchat, an image-based social media application. Our data consist of focus group dialogues with Norwegian students aged 16–19, recruited from schools selected for socio-economic and multicultural diversity. Excerpts exemplify how Snapchat use is not only engagingly talked about, but also affects non-digital everyday interactions. The analysis illustrates how young people’s talk about Snapchat deploys various discursive objects that convey promises of happiness and well-being, and affords particular forms of subjectivity. Image-sharing practices, and how they are communicated and felt, are embedded in and reproduce social norms, yet also provide spaces of belonging.acceptedVersio

Redefining public values: Data use and value dilemmas in education

In this article, we explore how values in education are negotiated and partly redefined by teachers, school leaders and local administrators with data use and accountability. Two dilemmas are prominent for the teachers: 1) Testing and data use are perceived as important to meet the needs of the students and to create transparency and initiating innovation in schools, yet they lead to performance pressure on the students and narrow the societal mandate in education, and 2) Although it is important to identify students at the lowest proficiency levels, the established accountability chains acknowledge the progress of these students and the teachers’ efforts only to a limited extent. However, values such as meeting the needs of individual students, transparency and innovation/renewal are partly redefined and narrowed on other institutional levels. The dilemmas represent real normative conflicts in public services that are ultimately unsolvable yet not necessarily at odds with professional values.publishedVersio

Hva er viktige kvaliteter ved god sensur? En kartlegging av bruk av ekstern sensor på lavere grad med fokus på kvalitet, økonomi, vurdering og læring

Kvalitetsreformen medførte en endring i sensurpraksis i Norge. Denne rapporten kartlegger dagens sensurpraksis på lavere grad og diskuterer problemstillinger knyttet til forholdet mellom sensorordning og kvalitet, økonomi, læring og vurdering

Mellom administrasjon og faglig-pedagogisk arbeid - rektorrollen i reformtid i Norge

I denne artikkelen tematiserer vi en velkjent problemstilling som mange rektorer opplever i arbeidet sitt: hvordan finne balansen mellom det administrative og faglig-pedagogiske arbeidet? Vi ser nærmere på utviklingen av balansen mellom rektorers administrative og faglig-pedagogiske arbeid i det som kan beskrives som en intens reformtid i Norge. Ved hjelp av begrepene strukturell og kunnskapsmessig avgrensning av profesjonelt skjønn analyseres denne balansen gjennom eksempler fra tidligere forskning og dokumentstudier av forskningspublikasjoner. Studien viser hvordan administrativt og faglig-pedagogisk arbeid forstås ulikt over de siste 20 år. Vi diskuterer hvordan slike variasjoner over tid handler om kjennetegn ved reformene i samme tidsrom, og hvordan rektorers administrative og faglig-pedagogiske arbeid best kan forstås som et samspill. En implikasjon av studien for skoleledere og for forskere er at forståelser av hva som er henholdsvis administrativt og faglig-pedagogisk arbeid endres med skolelederes oppgaver og ansvar over tid og må ses i relasjon til reformers fokus og innhold

School Leaders’ Autonomy in Public and Private School Contexts: Blurring Policy Requirements

This study responds to calls for more nuanced research on school actors’ autonomy in contexts characterized by multiple governance configurations. It investigates school leaders’ autonomy when enacting policy requirements in public and private school contexts, with Norway as an example. The study draws on qualitative data from eight leaders in diverse school contexts, revealing how the increased standardization of competence and assessment requirements challenges school leaders’ autonomy in private and public schools. Using the idea of gap management (Knapp & Hopmann, 2017), we find that there is little overall difference between state-funded private schools and traditional public schools. However, we did find variation in how standardization challenges school leaders’ autonomy. The variation in school leaders’ autonomy seems to lie within the visions of the schools and school leaders

'Does anyone else have this?' The role of emotion in forum discussions about medical conditions affecting sex characteristics

When people experience rare medical conditions or variations, searching online may be the only way to find others with similar experiences. This study examines what happens when people do just that. The dataset for the research has been generated from online posts by people living with variations of sex characteristics, which some call intersex variations. Our analysis focuses on how emotion appears in online posts, how affect becomes embodied in digital contexts, and how norms are negotiated as people relate to one another about the variations that some of them experience. We offer an analysis grounded in digital affect theory to contribute to health research literature. We suggest how health researchers and healthcare providers might develop more nuanced understandings of the emotional realities of people living with variations of sex characteristics

Kampen om karakteren. Elevers motspill i møte med læreres vurderingspraksis i videregående skole

Det er kjent at ungdoms forhold til voksne, inkludert lærere, i større grad enn i tidligere generasjoner er preget av forhandlinger og fravær av opposisjon. Denne artikkelen undersøker hvordan elever og lærere omtaler muligheter og grenser i forhandlingsrommet som åpner seg når standpunktkarakterer skal settes i siste året i studiespesialisering i videregående skole. Artikkelen bygger på gruppeintervjuer med henholdsvis elever og lærere i Vg3 ved utdanningsprogram for studiespesialisering i åtte videregående skoler i hovedstadregionen. Gjennom lærernes vurderingspraksis gis elevene stadig nye muligheter for å demonstrere økt faglig kompetanse. Dette gir rammene for elevenes bestrebelser for best mulige karakterer. Elevintervjuene tydeliggjør at kampen ungdom kjemper for sine fremtidige muligheter, er individuelt mer enn kollektivt orientert. Man er selv ansvarlig for å gjøre sitt ypperste, og elevene utnytter regelverk og kommunikasjonen med læreren for å få best mulig uttelling i karakter. Begrepet motspill foreslås som mer dekkende enn klassisk skoleopposisjon i beskrivelse og forståelse av elevenes manøvrering

When assessment defines the content—understanding goals in between teachers and policy

© 2020 The Authors. The Curriculum Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association.Education policy development internationally reflect a widespread expansion of learning outcome orientation in policy, curricula and assessment. In this paper, teachers’ perceptions about their work are explored, as goals and assessment play a more prominent role driven by the introduction of a learning outcomes‐oriented system. This is investigated through interviews of Norwegian teachers and extensive policy analysis of Norwegian policy documents. The findings indicate that the teachers are finding ways to negotiate and adjust to the language in the policies investigated in this study. Furthermore, the findings show that the teachers have developed their professional language according to the policies. The teachers referred to their self‐made criteria and goal sheets as central tools in explicating what is to be learned. In many ways, the tools for assessment, thus determine the content of education as well as what is valued in the educational system.publishedVersio

Learning outcomes in professional contexts in higher education

With the policy of developing a, transparent and competitive European higher education sector learning outcomes (LOs) are attributed a foundation stone role in policy and curriculum development. A premise for the implementation of LOs is that they bear fundamentally similar, meaning across national, institutional or professional/disciplinary contexts. In contrast detractors, suggest that LOs cannot communicate precisely across programmes or national boundaries. With this as a backdrop, this investigation analyse how LOs are used to communicate what students are to learn and the extent to which the use of LOs drives standardisation. The analysis is based on a case study of how LOs are formulated in study programme documents in two professional education programmes in Norway and the UK. The findings of the study indicate that LOs can be considered to drive standardisation through the same presentation using bullet points and therefore on the surface being presented in a standardised form. The study also finds that LOs are framed in varied ways in the two countries and within the different study programmes and in a web of interconnected documents, this ‘local’ structural usage of LOs disrupts the ‘foundation stone’ role of the LO as a vehicle for standardisation and weakens the establishment of sameness across institutions and nations