Starting with the question of why there is so much religiously motivated resistance against compulsory sex education, this article explores and discusses entanglements of norms about sexuality, gender, and religion in education. Based on predominantly Swedish data, the aim of the paper is to offer perspectives on connections between religiosity…

This chapter focuses on the governing work of Swedish school inspectors with regards to the role and function of knowledge. As professionals, inspectors are situated as relays and brokers of policy standing in contact with both the political arena and practice arenas. School inspectors use and produce knowledge and they rely on, search for,…

This specially themed ""Getting of Wisdom," Learning in Later Life" Edition of the "Australian Journal of Adult Learning" ("AJAL") is not so much concerned with the issue of ageing itself, but more about quality of life regardless of age. It is about taking, but also giving back as best as possible at any…

Based on recent ethnographic research, this article explores young people's opportunities of formal and informal democracy learning and expressions of such learning in the highly market-influenced Swedish upper secondary education. With its ambitious democracy-fostering goals and far-reaching marketisation, Swedish education constitutes an…

A foreign experience can have a transformational impact on individuals and the societies in which they live. During a student exchange in Sweden, I gained a greater understanding of multiculturalism, learned about the values of multilingualism, and realized the importance of global citizenship. Living in a country is far different from visiting a…

This article reports on a collaboration project between South Africa and Sweden, in which we want to investigate whether the emphasis in undergraduate mathematics courses for engineering students should be more conceptual than the current traditional way of teaching. On the basis of a review of the distinction between conceptual and procedural…

The connection between lifelong learning and knowledge economy is the central focus of this article. The two themes play a major role in the political debate both at the European and the local level. The focus is a curriculum theoretical point of view. This means that the justification of assumptions, values, and arguments will be tested, mainly…

In a recent international survey of geographic knowledge reported by Gilbert Grosvenor, Mexican respondents asked to locate 16 places on a map had an accuracy rate of 48.7%, compared to first-ranked Swedish respondents' 73.4%. This article argues that respondents' schooling levels and the cultural relevance of the locations warrant further…

This paper addresses student-teachers' ability to "read nature" in a woodland habitat before and after a 10-week ecology course. "Reading nature" is our definition of the ability to observe, describe and explain basic ecology in the field. Data consists of field-based pre-course and post-course interviews followed up by…

Perspectives concerning "research about research" are summarized, based on symposia sponsored by the University of Goteborg in Sweden. It is noted that studies of science, technology, and society (STS) are prevalent in several countries during the 1970s. Based on visits to STS programs in the United States, it is suggested that there are…

A Swedish Research on Higher Education project to investigate relationships between knowledge and educational certification is described. The first study involves several cohorts of engineering students from technological universities in Paris, Stockholm, Zurich, and Berlin for the period 1880-1960. Attention is directed to students' educational…