The formation of a young postgraduate subject in educational science

112 dissertations within Educational work

Abstract

In 2000, the postgraduate subject Educational work was established, as part of a larger initiative to strengthen educational science research in Sweden. Its goal is to develop a research base for teacher education and to increase the relevance of research for school development. Through an analysis of the first 112 dissertations in Educational work, this article contributes with knowledge of what has become of the new postgraduate subject. This is done partly through a quantitative categorization and partly through a qualitative analysis of the dissertations. The quantitative categorization includes what years the 112 dissertations were presented, which higher educational institutions have the research subject Educational work, whether they are monographs or summary dissertations, the gender of the authors and if the language in which they were written is English or  Swedish. Furthermore, a compilation has been made of which school forms have been studied and which persons have participated in the study in various ways and been given a voice in the dissertations. The qualitative analysis examines what different knowledge interests permeate the dissertations. By knowledge interest we mean a dissertation's content focus in terms of its aim and research questions and which theoretical traditions it is part of. In order to determine the dissertation's knowledge interests, the content focus and theoretical traditions of the studies have been identified using two analytical tools: Rönnerman and Langelotz's (2015) categorization tools for identifying the content focus and an analytical tool developed by Nilholm (2017) to determine which theoretical traditions the dissertations are part of: the naturalistic, the hermeneutic or and the critical discipline. For the determination of the theoretical traditions, the choice of method has also been included in addition to the choice of theory. The categorization of content focus is based on the idea that aims and research questions say something about the focus of the research. The dissertations have been divided into three thematic focus categories: The Pedagogical practice, the Teaching practice and Other practices.

The results show that dissertations presented in Educational work primarily seek knowledge about the Pedagogical practice and its actors. Focus is on how teachers, and in some cases also students, in primary and secondary school, describe school activities, how school subjects are developed and how ethical relationships are expressed in school settings. To a lesser extent, knowledge about what actually happens between the actors in school activities, i.e. the Teaching practice, is sought. Furthermore, there is a great deal of theoretical pluralism in Educational work, and the majority of the dissertations are to be found within the interpretive tradition. A minority of the dissertations are within a functionalist tradition. Research done in collaboration with school actors has been one of the goals of Educational work, and can be found in the majority of dissertations, but in different degrees. Only a few of the studies can be described as interactive research, i.e. where researchers collaborate directly with educators in, for example, action research projects.