To increase teachers´ professional status and attract skilful teachers´ development of career pathways has been stressed by Swedish policy (Gov. bill. 2012/2013, 136) and the OECD (2005) as well. In 2013 a new teacher position, career teacher (förstelärare), was introduced in Sweden suggested to be crucial to overcome schools´ declining result in international tests. In 2017 the career reform was expected to include 17 000 teacher services in compulsory school (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2016). Sloyd teachers as career teachers exists in schools, to what extent is unknown. Statistics on subject affiliation are missing but it´s known that teachers in f. e. mathematics or mother tongue to a greater extent have received career teacher positions at schools (ibid). The career reform also seems to challenge the horizontal organisation in schools and traditional forms of pedagogical leadership (Alvunger, 2015). The overall aim is to map relationship between policy and practice by exploring career teachers in Sloyd´s perspectives om career reform in relation to their assignments and development of teaching practice. Research questions are as follows:1 How is meaning and professional identity constructed by teachers in Sloyd in relation to their assignments as career teachers?2 What contradictions and dilemmas related to career teachers´ assignments and development work becomes visible?An activity theoretical understanding and the concept “shared objects” (Engeström, 2009) is used to get grips with meaning constructed in activities as well as contradictions and dilemmas arising when policy and practice meet in ongoing activities. Local context and discourses are central in how meaning is negotiated and what professional identity becomes possible (Sachs, 2001). Englund & Solbrekkes (2015) identified tensions (accountability versus professional responsibility) in teacher professionalism is used to deepen the understanding of career teachers positions and strivings. The study is empirically founded in qualitative interviews with seven first teachers in Sloyd in primary to secondary school. Meaning condensation is used for analysis and Hardings (1990) strong reflexivity is planned to be used to get professionals, career teachers´, reflections on preliminary results. Expected results could be related to the somewhat marginalized position in schools of “tacit” knowledge carried by handling/action, which characterizes knowledge and teaching in Sloyd. Career teachers are dependent on school leaders and their understanding of Sloyd when it comes to room to maneuver and direction of teachers´ assignments. Some school leaders prefer development work strongly connected to certain “lifts” initiated by Swedish National Agency for Education (f. e. Läslyftet), not always in line with career teachers´ strivings and could narrow the space for their own meaning making. The study is relevant to widen the understanding of how global tendencies and policy is made in local Sloyd practice, which is sparsely investigated. Study also puts light on what organisational structures that could be necessary to scaffold career teachers future work.

The aim of the thesis is to investigate and analyse students’ expressions of pleasure and displeasure and how these are manifested in actions in the teaching of textile sloyd in lower secondary education. The study’s focus is on students’ expressions of pleasure and displeasure in social action in the working processes of textile sloyd and on how these expressions can be related to learning. The empirical material consists of observations, video and audio recordings, individual interviews and focus group interviews, where video and audio recordings were used as stimulated recall. In all, 32 lessons in textile sloyd and 49 students aged 14-15 years were observed at four different schools. Theoretically, the thesis is based on Mead’s practical intersubjectivity and on Dewey’s theory of experience-based learning and dependence on emotions and actions. Pleasure and displeasure constitute valuating partial aspects of emotions. Based on a socio-cultural perspective, emotions are regarded as practices which arise from different predispositions’ dependence on the social context. The study’s analytical approach is hermeneutical. Critical incidents regarding students’ expressions of pleasure and displeasure in social action found in observations and video and audio recordings were analysed in terms of Mead’s concept of gestures. The events were combined with what the students describe as critical incidents of pleasure and displeasure in the interviews and focus group talks. The material was then thematised. Several situations were then subjected to deeper analysis based on sociality and a change in perspective and related to different concepts of learning. The result of the thesis shows a tripartite semantic structure where students’ pleasure and displeasure in textile sloyd are mainly based on textile sloyd’s specific educational community, students’ relationship to the sloyd object and their experience of the working process. Social interaction, humour and mutual acknowledgement proved to be of importance for the function of pleasure and displeasure in the students’ working processes. The students’ experience of pleasure and displeasure depended on their control of the work, the characteristics of different craft techniques and their awareness of time. Pleasure and displeasure in textile sloyd found an expression in four overarching emotional practices with decisive importance for the students’ opportunities for learning: the repudiating, insecure, accepting and incorporating emotional practice. The study also provides an insight into how different cultural factors enable a certain scope for pleasure and displeasure. In this connection, social changes in relation to objects are discussed, as are changes in sociality and emotionality. Based on the pair of concepts of authenticity and ephemerality and closeness and intensity, cultural changes are visualised that are conceivably important for the students’ experiences of pleasure and displeasure in textile sloyd.