Professor in Educational Work. Leader of the research group RECEUM (Research in Early Childhood Education, Umeå University).
Professor in Educational Work. Leader of the research group RECEUM (Research in Early Childhood Education, Umeå University).
My research interests lie mainly in areas related to democracy, citizenship, gender and identity in relation to education. My thesis (2011) focused on the teaching and learning of democracy in lower secondary school in Sweden. Since then, I have continued working with issues such as democracy, participation and influence in various ways, as well as delving into spatial and material perspectives on teaching and learning. Within the framework of the projects The Swedish schoolyard's cultural history and The schoolyard as a pedagogical and social space, children's democracy and citizenship learning as well as identity-creating processes in the school's outdoor environment were analyzed, and in the project Sports movement as a democratic educational environment children's influence and democracy learning in sports clubs. In a later project, children's and young people's (indoor) learning environments have been in focus.
Youth in transitions – a qualitative longitudinal study on education and career trajectories among young people in rural Sweden is an ongoing project. It explores how young people from rural environments navigate their way in education and the labour market over time. It draws on a series of biographical interviews with 74 individuals who originate from three Swedish rural environments, covering a period of 10 years. The aim is to address the urgent problem of youths’ extended and uncertain transitions from school to work/higher education in contexts where transitions tend to be particularly uncertain and problematic – in rural places where the local labour market is limited, and where there are few, if any, secondary and/or higher education institutions. The project problematizes young rural people as both being subject to and co-actors in an accelerating uneven economic development between geographical regions in Sweden. They may reinforce, in both the short and longer term, the on-going polarization between rural and urban areas, or, alternatively, they may contribute to reversing or resisting this major trend through their agency.
In the project we collaborate with researchers from Norway, Finland and Denmark who have similar longitudinal projects following young people in rural areas. Together, we have contact with young people raised in ten rural regions, geographically spread across the Nordic region. The regions differ in terms of population, geographic location and the character of the local labor market, but h are categorized as "rural" in each country. The collaboration gives us the opportunity to compare longitudinal data between the countries. We look at the youths' transitions between education and work, at social relations and issues of well-being, and at migration patterns with focus on common patterns and differences. An underlying thesis is that national education/labour market/ and rural policies are important for young people's transitions and migration patterns, including their lived experiences of the transitions, and this is why comparisons between the Nordic countries are important.