This article builds on a classroom study and interviews with facilitators and students on a travelling Folk High School course on global justice and development, an education that raises awareness about colonial history and contemporality. The study explores how the concept of being 'in and against' presents itself in the narratives of the…

This article focuses on the "who" of anti-racism education by examining who the teachers are that are doing anti-racist work and what experiences influenced them to counter racism in their education practices. Taking a pragmatic approach, I use data on racism and anti-racism in schools from interviews with 27 upper secondary school…

This paper explores the teaching practice of norms and equality in an upper secondary school in Sweden focusing on affective dimensions. The teaching and the affective qualities engendered were explored empirically and theoretically with a specific focus on engagements. Inspired by feminist posthumanism, a relational ontology was used to embrace…

This paper explores a teaching practice that considers equality in social studies in a Swedish upper secondary school. The questions explored were: What become produced within the teaching practice? and How to encounter these issues without reproducing them? To explore these questions I put to work a theoretical framework of feminist post-humanism…

To understand the evolution and current status of qualitative research in School Psychology, we reviewed 4,346 articles published across seven school psychology journals between 2006 and 2021. The bibliometric analysis indicates that publication of qualitative research has increased over the years, but remains small (3%) when seen against the…

This work discusses how the complex relationship between welfare policies of equity and market efficiencies/deficiencies of education policies is handled in local practices. It offers contributions from the five Nordic countries - Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland - and pays special attention to questions about access and diversity in…

In this paper, we describe and reflect on the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) methodology used to explore how secondary school health and physical education (HPE) teachers address social justice in their teaching practice. The paper is informed by data generated as part of an ongoing three-year international research project involving eight…

Building on theories of historical justice, reconciliation and transformative change, this article investigates how 293 secondary school students make sense of the difficult past, present and future of the Romani in a national history test. Using qualitative and quantitative text analysis, this study seeks to explore whom students foreground as…

Background: A focus on equity, democracy and social justice in HPE is pertinent in an era where there are growing concerns about the impact of neoliberal globalisation and precariousness of society (Kirk 2020). Although there is advocacy for teaching approaches in HPE that address issues of social justice, there is limited empirical research of…

This article examines the tactical (counter) politics of inclusive and 'norm-critical' approaches in Swedish sex education, focusing on the enactment of this critical agenda in sex education practices and how teachers interpret and negotiate the possibilities and pitfalls of this kind of work. The analysis draws on participant observation in sex…

Under a recent national curriculum reform in Sweden within a highly decentralised, competitive, and marketised education system, access to post-16 education is restricted. In this study, we map and analyse the early onset of new preparatory programmes. We draw on interviews with local politicians and school staff in six different municipalities,…

This article focuses on the Swedish context of upper and post-upper secondary education provided in two sectors, universities and the Swedish Folk High School. The article is centred on the analysis of the support services offered by fifty-five university and Swedish Folk High School institutional websites to individuals and groups designated as…

This article analyses what students attending four Swedish upper secondary school programmes with different social class profiles tried and wanted to influence in relation to mathematics teachers' pedagogic practice and responses during the year 2008/2009. The theoretical framework is based on Bernstein's theories regarding power and control. The…

The upper secondary school is in Sweden practically mandatory even though attendance is voluntary and today almost all students in Sweden continue their studies at upper secondary school. But not all of them leave this school with a complete certificate of schooling as a result of experiencing a range of difficulties which may be due to cognitive,…

Previous research on how students' acceptance of emotionally charged theories relates to their understanding is based on the measurement of acceptance and understanding as two separate variables. As an alternative, the present study takes a qualitative approach with the aim of exploring what 24 upper-secondary school students accept when they come…