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Crafts education in Swedish compulsory school has changed. If clothing, rational sewing methods and consumer perspective was part of curriculum for textile craft education in the 1960s, today’s Crafts education is multimaterial, process- and sustainability oriented and not explicitly tied to particular techniques. Societal changes in the 1980’s also changed the home sewing tradition of clothes opening for global trade and new patterns for consumption. Of course, teacher education (TE) in Crafts has reacted and undergone changes related to clothing, but are we fully aware of how and in what direction? This presentation gives an introduction into curriculum development for Crafts in compulsory school related to clothing and a brief overview of clothing (amount, orientation, content, context) at the four institutions that provide Crafts TE in Sweden. Presentation includes concrete examples from themes and student assignments showing development, direction and visions for clothing and sewing in Crafts TE at Umeå university.

In the project Crafting revisited we explore the encounter between previously acquired craft knowledge in embroidery and digital technology bringing new craft tools. Revisiting means returning to our own craftmanship using the textile medium and its mode of expression to articulate, document and communicate results. This presentation focuses on the initial project work and the mapping of previous craft skills and knowledge. Material includes reflections from noted discussions and photo documentation of previous embroideries. The methodological approach is to ask questions to the embroideries which they can answer. Defining what analog knowledge in embroidery consists of is needed to approach digital modes of production in education. New Materalism, as digital embroidery, challenges traditional forms and understandings of handicrafts, how knowledge is transferred and how new generations learn. The study’s results contribute to the development of pedagogical strategies in Crafts teacher education in the Arctic region.

 ”Somewhat more than mere genitalia” – Teaching at the crossroads of craft education and the knowledge area of sexuality, consent and relationships. This article explores teaching at the intersection of the knowledge area of sexuality, consent, and relationships, and the subject of crafts in lower secondary school. More specifically, it develops an understanding of subject-integrated teaching through embodied, material, and aesthetic processes in a cross-curricular context. The study is based on a craft teacher’s experiences from a teaching sequence in grade 9, where students designed and carved symbols related to sexuality, consent, and relationships in wood. The results highlight the impact of subject-integrated teaching and underscore student participation as pivotal, both in sexuality education and crafts. Another insight was the teacher’s ease in integrating the topic into craft education, where the craft’s focus on the process was contributory. The theme opened up the crafts classroom for existential exploration, fostered discussions, and created a more nurturing classroom environment.

 Bland elever finns föreställningar om slöjdämnet som roligt och fritt. Samtidigt är slöjd ett skolämne där kreativ problemlösning utgör en central beståndsdel för att hantera utmaningar som uppstår i arbetet med att framställa slöjdföremål. Problem i arbetet innebär att elever måste pröva olika lösningar, göra om och ibland tänka om. Med detta följer känslomässiga utmaningar som får konsekvenser för hur arbetet fortlöper. Sådana utmaningar ges explicit inte samma utrymme i slöjdundervisningen som praktisk problemlösning men är tillika något både elever och lärare måste förhålla sig till och hantera. Presentationen utgår från ett antologikapitel som bygger på tidigare insamlade videoobservationer, deltagande observationer i slöjdundervisning samt intervjuer med elever i årskurs åtta. Materialet har genomgått en partiell fördjupande analys med stöd i Deweys transaktionella handlingsteori, Senneths definitioner av externt och internt motstånd i hantverksarbete och Pyes begrepp för den risk som finns närvarande i slöjdämnets öppna arbetsprocesser. Utifrån emotionella praktiker som framträder i materialet ges exempel på hur elever i samspel med omgivningen intar olika emotionella förhållningssätt med betydelse för slöjdarbetet. Resultatet bidrar till fördjupad insikt i elevers interna motstånd som av materialet ser ut att mer sällan verbaliseras eller öppet kommuniceras i undervisningen. Avslutningsvis diskuteras elevers interna motstånd i relation till lärares tysta yrkeskunskap alternativt om en tydligare konkretisering av internt motstånd i undervisningen kan stärka bildningsaspekter av slöjdämnet.

A societal challenge today is the urgency to develop and adapt to more sustainable approaches to the amount of material artefacts we surround ourselves with. Clothes are no exception; they are products of a global market system, draining the understanding of what clothes can be. There is, however, an alternative quiet sustainability (Smith & Jehlicka, 2013) rooted in alternative and personal contexts, but of which we lack explicit knowledge (Fletcher, 2015). Based on a suede jacket, worn by five persons, from the 1950s and onwards, the study explores unspoken strategies and social and relational aspects that takes place in between the jacket and its wearer.

Methodologically, the study draws on memory work (Haug, 2008) and clothing’s tactility, sensuality and ‘memory-bearing’ capacity (Goett, 2016) to map experiences of wearing the jacket and how clothing is knotted into social structures and social relations.

Individual written memories, based on a physical encounter with the jacket, were translated into third person perspective and thereafter analysed collectively to recall and reassess the memories and to find similarities and connections in the stories.

The result shows how the jacket mediates experiences of an intense, context related balancing act between alignment–uniqueness, uncertainty–courage, and attachment–release, but also ethical reflections on the wearers themselves and their responsibility for others during certain periods of their life. The memory work gave insights in the commonality in the garment’s interconnectedness in the social construction of selves.

The responsibility to educate for sustainable development has over time been strengthened within the Nordic countries' education systems. In addition to providing in-depth knowledge of what quiet durability can be, the study contributes to conceivable methods to use in exploring quiet sustainability in teacher education in Crafts. Professional swedish craft teachers for example, find sustainable development, and perhaps especially social sustainability, difficult to teach about (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2015), so method development in the area is needed in both teaching in higher education and in research.

References:

Fletcher, K. (2015). Other fashion systems. I K. Fletcher & M. Tham (Eds.), Routledge handbook of sustainability and fashion. (pp. 15–24). Routledge.

Goett, S. (2016). Materials, memories and metaphors: the textile self recollected. I J. Jefferies, D. Wood

Conroy & H. Clarc (Eds.), The handbook of textile culture (pp. 121–136). Bloomsbury.

Haug, F. (2008). Memory work. Australian Feminist Studies, 23(58), 537 –541.

Smith, J., & Jehlicka, P. (2013). Quiet sustainability: fertile lessons from Europe’s productive gardeners. Journal of Rural Studies, 32, 148–157.

Swedish National Agency for Education. (2015). Slöjd i grundskolan: En nationell ämnesutvärdering i årskurs 6 och 9. Skolverket.

Increased international attention paid to research-based education has resulted in various national initiatives to exploit research in education. However, this poses challenges for school professionals. Based on an ethnographic single case study in a Swedish educational setting, this article investigates how national policy on research-based education is realized at local school level from the perspective of principals. Theoretically, the study applies a policy enactment understanding, arguing that policy is put into action in original ways in various local settings. Through thematic analysis four interrelated main strategies deployed by the principals were identified: strategies facilitating durable structures, developing learning cultures, developing teachers’ competencies, and strengthening leadership. The strategies demonstrate the complexities in policy enactment as it involves multiple embedded local processes and settings. Additionally, the study contributes to an understanding of how different interrelated national policies and initiatives intersect when enacted at school level.

Academisation and digitalization are ongoing societal processes with influence in the educational field. Over time these processes contribute to change and creates new conditions for teaching and perceptions of subject content. Change often occurs gradually and consequences for individual school subjects differ. The school subject Crafts (sw. slöjd) represents an action-based form of knowledge, where materiality and making in and with materials and physical tools are central. With digitalization follows increased demands for the use of digital tools within both primary school and teacher education. Academisation of education has meant stronger demands for scientificization and education on a scientific basis, which has strengthened the text-based knowledge in Crafts. This study is part of an ongoing four-year project, The ecology of aesthetics, and examines what characterizes academisation and digitalization in Craft and how these processes create new conditions for the subject. The study’s research questions concern how craft teachers perceive and describe academisation and digitalization in relation to teaching, and what consequences follows for the subject content. Theoretically, the study is based on an educational ecology perspective where Crafts is considered as a living ecology in interaction with surrounding parts in a comprehensive educational system. Change is understood as a process where parts of the system interact and affect the whole. The data consist of qualitative interviews with eight professional craft teachers in Swedish primary school with varying graduation year from teacher education, the earliest in 1984 and the latest in 2001. The interviews have undergone thematic analysis in several steps with coding and thematizing. Results show a somewhat ambivalent attitude among craft teachers towards academization and digitalization, which is perceived to expand and add new opportunities but also to steal time from craft work in materials. Consequently, a reduced degree of difficulty in craftsmanship in assignments is described by teachers educated in the 1980s and 1990s, while later educated teachers educated rather describe a reverse development. How teachers argue for students’ work in materials varies between a theoretical or a more craft-based understanding related to when they were graduated. Digital tools for documentation are widely used by all teachers and are perceived to free up time, while the use of digital tools in the material parts of the craft process is less present in teaching and assignments, depending on the extra time and resources that teachers perceive this to require. According to the analysis, academisation and digitalization seems to be intertwined in a way that to some extent counteracts effects but at same time reinforces each other. Academisation and digitalization are global processes and thus current for the entire Nordic craft field, even if national steering and the conception of educational Crafts varies between the Nordic countries. The question of the conditions for action-based knowledge in today's educational ecology needs to be raised based on how several intersecting policies, in sometimes unpredictable ways, offers differing challenges and opportunities in different subject contexts.

The prerequisites for formal training in Swedish educational Crafts have changed over time under the influence of two long-lasting societal processes: academisation and digitalisation. In different, yet interconnected ways, these processes of change are challenging the materiality, the making and the action-based knowledge that characterise educational Crafts. The paper presents how primary school teachers’ view the influence of academisation and digitalisation in their work and explores the consequences that change processes hold for the teaching practice in Crafts. The study is based on qualitative interviews with Craft teachers whose graduation year was between 1983 and 2021. Theoret-ically, Craft is considered to be a living ecology in an educational system. In the analysis, academic drift on various levels is combined with media-ecology concepts to clarify the diffusion of academisation and digitalisation in both time and space. The findings show academic drift leading to increased text-based knowledge production on several levels, yet also an unexpected weakening of action-based knowledge in Crafts. Balancing student and staff drift is further shown to result in the avoidance of written text in favour of digital visual, oral and bodily mediations in the production of knowledge. The study’s overall results question an ongoing ‘reverse’ academic drift and what is at stake in the Crafts ecology’s efforts to achieve balance.