Background: Given the disparities in gender representation, efforts are needed to make engineering education more inclusive and attractive to young people. It is important that those entering engineering education are making this decision with sufficient understanding of what it means to be an engineer. This study explored how lower secondary…

In the hairdressing occupation emotional labour has often come to overshadow other vocational skills. The present study, using ethnographic methods, explores how students and teachers in vocational education and training (VET) for hairdressers in Sweden describe and explain the emotional labour being carried out when a hairdresser perform good…

There is a global shortage of music teachers, and this deficit is continually growing. While there is a considerable body of research on the sources of concern, attrition, stress and burnout for practising teachers, studies investigating the perspective of pre-service music teachers instead are comparatively rarer. This gap in the literature is…

The aim of the study is to discursively identify student teachers' perceptions of the teaching profession early in their education and their motives for this career choice. Students wrote a letter sharing thoughts on why they want to become a teacher, how they regard the teaching profession and if someone inspired them in their career choice. The…

In autumn 2016, Malmö University started two "fast track" trajectories for teachers with refugee backgrounds. The participants were offered an education of 26 weeks as an introduction to the Swedish school system, consisting of content courses, professional Swedish and workplace learning. The aim of this small explorative study was to…

This study focuses on female and male students who succeed in engineering programmes in Sweden, and why they have success. Data were collected through a questionnaire sent to all engineering students in Sweden registered for their seventh semester during year 2012 and about 30% of the students in the cohort responded on several questions. The…

Background: This article presents an analysis of how critical thinking is contextualised in everyday teaching in three vocational education and training (VET) programmes: Vehicle and transport, Restaurant and management, and Health and social care. Purpose: The main question addressed is: What knowledge discourses permeate different VET-contexts,…

Background: During the socialization process when becoming a physical education (PE) teacher, the knowledge, perceptions and expectations of what it means to work as a teacher are developed. In this socialization, the initial acculturation phase is shown to be of the most importance, since individual PE teachers' experiences during this phase are…

The aim was to describe the experiences of some university students and the effect on their own learning and professional development by participating in an exchange program. Data were derived from two focus group interviews with students (n = 12) who enrolled in a 12-week international exchange program between: (a) the occupational therapy…

Hiding critical information has resulted in disastrous failures of some major software projects. This paper investigates, using a subset of Keil's test, how graduates (70% of them with work experience) from different cultural backgrounds who are enrolled in a postgraduate course on global software development would handle negative information that…

This paper presents experiences and results from a project task in power electronics for students at Chalmers University of Technology, Goteborg, Sweden, based on a flyback test board. The board is used in the course Power Electronic Devices and Applications. In the project task, the students design snubber circuits, improve the control of the…