Suchergebnisse

Many children grow up in multilingual communities characterised by linguistic heterogeneity and semiotic and cultural complexity. Translanguaging theory has provided a perspective attuned to communication and education in multilingual settings. However, translanguaging pedagogies have not yet had a broad uptake in early educational settings. The recent interest in embodiment within translanguaging studies and the study of touch combinedly provide a potential perspective for early childhood education. This study examines the role of touch in a multilingual preschool featuring 2-year-olds. The results point to two key functions for touch. One is that touch creates a shared experiential ground where languages can be learned. The other function is that touch allows children to sensorially explore and learn multicultural experiences from the diverse cultural and linguistic systems available. Based on the results, the role of touch in early childhood translanguaging is discussed as a way forward for translanguaging pedagogies for creating both equitable and diverse educational opportunities for children in multicultural and multilingual communities.

This article presents an analysis and discussion of the conceptions of teacher collegiality in times of restructuring, where a shift in the governance of teachers' work from bureaucratic to market principles can be identified. In addition, several actors from different cultural and social worlds want to contribute to education policy and school success, often through collegiality. Through a conceptual research review, a selection of articles on how teacher collegiality is assigned meaning in the context of different institutional logics is analysed. Different kinds of collegiality are presented, all of which have something to contribute to the understanding of teachers' work; however, they imply different things. Such differences need to be clarified in order to improve the exchange of ideas, cooperation, and mutual understanding between actors in different cultural and social worlds. Researchers, actors, and experts in market-driven societies will thereby have a better chance to exchange ideas and actually understand each other.

The aim of consensus is essential to deliberative democracy. However, this aim has also been frequently criticized. In this article, I present two different forms of criticism against consensus in democratic education. The first, articulated by scholars of education for democracy, claims that the aim of consensus fails to account for the conflictual nature of democracy and thereby disallows disagreement and dissensus. The second, formulated by classroom practitioners, argues that it disrupts the pattern of communication in classroom discussions. I nevertheless attempt to defend consensus on both accounts by arguing that it is a multifaceted concept that allows for different types of agreements and disagreements to coexist and therefore will stand in the way neither of pluralism nor of dissensus. It also will not necessarily foster undesirable patterns of communication in classroom discussions.

An expanded focus on discipline and disorder classrooms In Sweden, we have over the last 15 years experienced a heightened concern with discipline, especially among politicians and debaters, who argue that problem with discipline has decreased in Swedish classrooms. Even so, the PISA results focusing on discipline in classrooms between 2000 and 2009 reported in some years (OECD, 2011, 2013) the opposite trend towards more orderly classrooms. According to that report, Sweden is one of the countries with more than 10 percentage points of improvement, based on students' reports of calm classrooms. From that, the report concludes:"By 2009, the quality of student-teacher relations was even better"(OECD, 2011, p. 3). Secondly, Swedish educational researchers have overthe last 10 years (cf. Bartholdsson, 2007; Granath, 2008; Wester, 2008; Samuelsson, 2008; Landahl, 2009; Karlberg, 2011) studied what happens in classrooms and how teachers' think about and handle disturbances and discipline. Thirdly, Sweden during 2010 passed a new Educational Act (Utbildningsdepartementet, 2010:800) with expanded disciplinary sanctions for teachers to use. With the passing of that act teachers and schools gained the possibility of suspending a student for three weeks, as well as moving a student to another school as a response to the disorder, troublesome behaviour or disrespect they have had to tolerate in the classroom. In light of the above mentioned, the aim of this study is to describe and understand the ways in which teachers have experienced students' troublesome behaviour during lessons.