Collaboration between universities and schools has been emphasised by both governments and within educational development research in the Nordic countries. However, educational research has tended to focus on the practitioners' perspectives and experiences, i.e., researchers and teachers. Our intention is to contribute to the field with research…

This article studies issues of coloniality in so-called capacity-building projects between universities in Africa and Scandinavia. Even fifty years after independence, the African higher education landscape is a product of the colonial powers and subsequent uneven power relations, as argued by a number of researchers. The uneven geography and…

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are emerging as a promising approach for educational change by closing the gap between educational research and practice. However, these partnerships face several challenges, such as addressing cultural differences as well as relationship-building in a historically unbalanced relationship between researchers…

Re-organization of practicum within Initial Teacher Education in Sweden has initiated changes of support for student teachers. This article discusses learning during practice, where student teachers are placed with peer students, and what this method of learning indicates how student teachers should learn the profession of teaching. This article…

In this study, particular focus is on micro-ethnographic studies of children's peer play-in-action and how children create shared peer cultures through their collaborative performances in situated game activities. It will be shown how children create micro dramas in play that serve as cultural frameworks to i) dramatize and transform experiences…

The aim of the present study was to use the narratives of beginning teachers to investigate the emotionally challenging situations they face, with a focus on how their perspectives and definitions of such situations guided their actions and made coping possible. A short term longitudinal qualitative interview study was adopted. Twenty participants…

Today anthropologists seem to be increasingly studying phenomena in their own societies. Many have a focus on policies in organizations and an interest in explicating cultural phenomena constituted by power and governance. Consequently, a recent interest has emerged in Michel Foucault's philosophy, especially as an inspiration for ethnographic…

Leadership is considered to be significant for creating a developing and learning school organisation. In Sweden, distributed leadership and teacher teams are an "institutionalised practice"; despite this, sustainable school improvement is difficult to achieve. This article presents findings from a case study of three schools that…

Various kinds of mentoring processes to enhance teachers' collective learning and professional development have become popular. Collective learning and collective practice development within professions may be approached as an integral part of 'professional learning communities'. Research emphasises that learning communities cannot be commanded…

Against the background of Swedish preschool's historical and traditional functions in Swedish society, this article focuses on some of the choice points and their implications for professional and organisational development in preschool. By combining feminist pragmatism and feminist action research, some analytical points are made regarding the…

In a previous ethnographic study (Sebrant, 2000) a social constructionist view of how social identity is produced among professional groups in Swedish healthcare was developed. Looking at the workplace as an important environment for identity construction suggested that these processes were conditions for learning. The purpose of this paper is to…