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The paper outlines an ongoing longitudinal study (2018-2026) in a Swedish municipality, examining the relationship between the physical learning environment and teaching practices within an Innovative Learning Environment (ILE). Emphasizing student-centred learning, it acknowledges the complexity of translating physical design features into effective teaching practices. The study employs the Typology of Teacher Power and Control (TTPC) as a theoretical framework and a convergent mixed-method design to collect various data types, including classroom audio, teacher interviews, and questionnaires. The analysis demonstrates two distinct clusters of student-centred learning practices, differentiated by how symbolic power and control are either retained by the teacher or dislocated to the students. 

Introduction

The subjective experiences of healthcare professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic have been extensively studied; however, little research has focused on the experiences and perspectives of physiotherapists’, especially in the Nordic countries. The aim of this study was to explore the lived experiences and perceptions of physiotherapists regarding the rehabilitation of COVID-19 patients in hospital settings during the COVID-19-pandemic in Finland.

Methods

Hermeneutic phenomenology was employed as a methodology. Ten physiotherapists were recruited using purposive and snowball sampling. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis.

Results

Four themes were identified: (1) pragmatic development of sensitive rehabilitation practices in a new and confusing working environment; (2) becoming a member of a cohesive team; (3) mixed feelings and reactions when facing the brutality of an unknown disease; and (4) being supported by colleagues but lacking support from the healthcare organisation.

Conclusion

The results may benefit healthcare organisations in improving organisational processes for ensuring the wellbeing of physiotherapists during future crises. Concrete actions to support employees could be developed by arranging resources for professional counselling and reflection during and after such crises, and by developing appropriate systems for recognising professional conduct in spite of difficult circumstances.

Purpose: The purpose of this study consisted of an organisational development intervention in a growing small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) where the top management’s objective was to become an attractive workplace for the next generation of employees. The central problem is how to develop a smart working environment (SWE) based on the needs of this target group. The aim is both practical and theoretical.

Design/methodology/approach: The action research (AR) approach was used as a frame for the organisational learning process. The problem identification, targets and activities were developed in an iterative process together with the management team and employees. Starting from the main problem, a methodological plan was outlined for the intervention, including several instruments for collecting both qualitative and quantitative data. AR is an emergent process in which data, researchers and participants are equally contributing in deciding on the next steps to be taken.

Findings: The theoretical findings pertain to the definition of what an SWE is in this specific context and how it evolved during the intervention period. It is identified as expansive learning of the concept, which is illustrated through the iterative phases allowing for the expansion of understanding and implementing new ways of being, doing and relating in the organisation.

Research limitations/implications: The results are based on a limited and contextually specific sample and are thus descriptive in relation to the organisation subjected to study. Further research is needed to see how the findings are transferable to other contexts.

Practical implications: This study highlights how participative approaches and managerial sensitivity to employees’ needs are valuable for defining and implementing an SWE and how this approach can improve organisational dynamics and contribute to organisational learning.

Originality/value: The study gives insight into factors that the new generation of employees finds most important at work. While prior research on SWE mostly focuses on efficiency and effectiveness framed by digitalisation and workspace, the present findings emphasise the importance of working with the socioemotional dimension at work for ensuring employee sustainability.

Teachers in three schools in a community in the northern part of Sweden tested prototype classrooms designed as innovative learning environments. This was an introductory step before merging the schools into one new school building, whose architecture was “new, innovative, modern, and flexible”. Our study spans six years of following this process with regard to how the aimed concept of student-centred learning develops during this time. The results presented here are based on data from the prephase, while the teachers explored the prototype classrooms to learn how these facilities created new preconditions, but also for preparing students for the move. The mixed data consist of both audio recordings of nine teachers during classes and retrospective interviews with the same teachers.

The analysis is based on our theory-driven framework, the Typology of Teacher Power and Control (TTPC) (Bergström & Wiklund-Engblom, 2022), derived from Bernstein’s (2000) theory of power and control. In TTPC, Bernstein’s concept of framing is interpreted as teacher’s use of control in communicative practice, while the concept of classification represents teacher’s power distribution regarding classroom organisation. Each of the two dimensions include several subcategories, which are our evaluative tool to identify variation of emerging teaching practices. 

In the first analysis, three clusters of teacher practice emerged, ranging from teacher-centred teaching to student-centred learning. These clusters were used in an integrated analysis with interview data, thematically analysed, to illuminate how teachers themselves reasoned. These results show differences in beliefs about power and control distribution in the classroom. The cluster of increased student-centredness had dialogical and relational approaches and beliefs, in contrast to the teacher-centred cluster, which discussed their choices in their practice in relation to controlling students and student behaviour in the environment. 

How can a teacher be relationally competent in relation to students in a digital learning environment? The digital context changes the conditions we are used to regarding both verbal and nonverbal communication. Much of the tacit and intuitive knowledge teachers learn through their practice is based on a combination of reading students’ body language, as well as using their own. In a study when teachers moved their teaching online, they noticed how much they needed to adapt their communication because the body-aspect was missing as a tool for both orchestrating and communicating (Wiklund-Engblom, 2018). This study explores teachers’ relational competence, operationalised as three separate competencies: communicative, differentiation, and socio-emotional competence (Aspelin, 2018). The part of the study presented her is based on qualitative data on teachers’ own experience and conceptions about what a teacher can do to facilitate positive relationships in digital learning environments. While collecting data to validate a newly developed questionnaire measuring teachers’ relational competence (quantitatively) based on Aspelin’s (2018) theoretical framework, we also collected qualitative data about teachers’ ideas about their own strategies to facilitate positive relations digitally with students. One open-ended question was included at the end of the questionnaire “Describe how you feel that you as a teacher can support positive relationships in a digital learning environment (e.g. a distance course).” Thus, when respondents had completed the questionnaire composed of 29 variables (Likert-scale measure), they had at the same time been introduced to the concepts of the theoretical framework underpinning the construct of relational competence, but in a general sense. The questionnaire was distributed to Swedish-speaking teachers on all levels in both Sweden and Finland generating 231 replies, of which 123 respondents answered the qualitative question.The results are based on a qualitative and quantitative content analysis comparing replies in relation to background factors of the respondents such as gender, nationality, age, and teaching experience. Furthermore, the results are also based on a reflexive thematic analysis and comparison of a variety of definitions on teachers’ relational competence. The main purpose is to explore how teachers’ digital relational competence can be understood and defined. This pertains both to theoretical development and for application, making it useful for teachers’ own development of this kind of competence.

This is a validation study on the newly developed Teachers’ Relational Competence Scale (TRCS) measuring how teachers see themselves as relationally competent in their role as a teacher. The teacher-student relationship impacts both students and teachers at school. However, there is still a lack of focus on teachers’ relational competence in teacher education. Today, many teachers also must be able to transfer their skills to a digital environment. In this context, relational aspects have been found to be a strong predictor for the more general construct of teachers’ digital competence. Part of the digital relational competence is the ability to create a safe space for students in a digital or hybrid learning environment. This adheres to both being aware of and able to navigate socioemotional aspects, although students are at a distance and behind a screen.

We see the need for an easy-to-use tool for measuring teachers’ relational competence, both in traditional school contexts and in digital or hybrid learning contexts. Such a tool would give us insights into how this concept relates to other issues of importance in schools today, e.g., equity, justice, and democracy, as well as new forms of organising schools into innovative learning environments, highly digitalized, and often demanding team teaching and flexibility of skills by teachers in relating to both colleagues and students.

The TRCS is based on the operationalisation of teachers’ relational competence (TRC) framework, which is a three-dimensional construct. The first, communicative competence, involves both verbal and nonverbal communication. The teacher is the one mainly responsible for maintaining constructive and respectful communication and uses communicative strategies to continually build positive relations with students. The second, differentiation competence, is the teacher’s ability to obtain enough distance while still conferring closeness to the student. Both teacher and student should feel safe in having his/her own space and integrity, and a positive level of attachment and detachment in relation to the other person. The third, socioemotional competence, adheres to the teacher’s ability to recognise, acknowledge, and manage emotions both in him-/herself and in relation to the student. Based on the TRC framework, 14 variables (in Swedish) have been constructed in accordance with the three dimensions: 1) communicative competence, 2) differentiation competence, and 3) socioemotional competence. The TRCS will be distributed to teachers at several educational institutions both in Sweden and Finland during spring of 2023.

Construct validity of TRCS will be tested using both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to see if and how the three dimensions can be confirmed and if these are consistent across educational contexts, as well as both online and offline. The aim is to explore all variance in the data set, as well as to see whether the hypothesized factor structure of the TRC framework is supported by actual data.

This paper reports on a school development project of an innovative learning environment (ILE). Staff and pupils from two traditionally build corridor schools have merged into a new build school, whose architecture is described as new, innovative, modern, and flexible (OECD, 2017). Instead of having one classroom with a standardised size of 60m2, the ILE consists of different rooms both regarding size and furniture. Another change was that teachers had to be prepared to go from the traditional practice of individually teaching a class with approx. 25 students to the practice of team teaching with 2-5 teachers teaching a whole grade with approx. 60-100 students. The narrative of the project focused on the shift from teacher-centred teaching to student-centred learning, which in previous research have been a challenge due to well established teacher-centred methods (Cardellino & Woolner, 2019; Sigurdadottir & Hjartson, 2016; Gislason, 2010). 

The present research project started two years before the teachers moved into the new ILE. During these two years, school leaders prepared teachers for the new practice. Among these preparatory activities, one core activity consisted of prototype ILE classrooms where teachers could practice student-centred learning methods. In our research, the materiality of the new classroom and teachers’ played-out practice are operationalised as two dimensions (Bergström & Wiklund-Engblom, 2022; Bergström, 2019). The first, a vertical dimension, concerns preconditions of the physical learning environment embodied through the arrangement of desks, use of teachers’ and students’ areas, relations between learning resources, and selection of software applications. The second, a horizontal dimension, includes teachers’ communication in practice pertaining to their selection of content, sequence, pace, and speech space (cf. Bernstein, 2000). The combination of the two dimensions creates a theoretical framework for an ecology of teacher practice as an “emergent phenomenon” (Carvalho & Yeoman, 2018, p. 5). This is an illustrative metaphor for the practice that emerge in teacher preparation for teaching in an ILE.

The aim of this study is to examine and unpack emergent and varying practices in the prototype classrooms with regard to the two dimensions. The following research questions were asked: 1) What variations in teachers played-out practice emerge from teachers’ organisation of the classroom space and communication in practice? 2) How can the teachers’ reasoning further explain the variation of these emergent ILE practices?

Theory: One outcome of our prior studies is the development of a new theory-driven analysing tool, the Typology of Teacher Power and Control (TTPC) (e.g., Bergström & Wiklund-Engblom, 2022, Bergström, 2019), constructed from Bernstein’s (2000) theory of power and control. In the vertical dimension of the TTPC-typology, Bernstein’s relative concept of classification is used to analyse how power emerge from the relationship between objects in the classroom. In short, strong classification keeps things apart, which indicates a strong symbolic power relationship. The opposite is true for weak classification. For example, desks in rows keep students apart and indicates a strong classification and teachers’ power. In the horizontal dimension of the TTPC-typology, Bernstein’s relative concept of framing is used to analyse how control emerge from teachers’ communication in practice. Framing is also a relative concept on a scale from strong to weak. Stronger framing indicates that the teacher has more control in the communication, while weaker framing indicates increased student control. Framing is operationalised as the variation of selection, sequence, pacing, evaluation, and teacher-student and student-student communication. Hence, the concepts of framing and classification represent the two dimensions, which construct a two-dimensional matrix illustrating the emerging teaching practices in the prototype classrooms.

Method: We adhere to a convergent mixed methods design where two types of data (classroom observations and retrospective teacher interviews) were integrated through several steps of analysis, data transformation, and integration (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018; Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004; Bazeley and Kemp, 2012). The rationale for the approach is that observational data, representing objective, formative data, shows the reality of the classroom activities, while the teacher interview data, representing subjective, formative data, provides insights into how teachers’ beliefs and attitudes relate to the choices made in their teaching practice (Bergström & Wiklund-Engblom, 2022). Thus, the use of both observational data and interview data aims for an integration analysis in which conclusions are drawn based on a broader explanation of the variations found in the emergent teacher practice.The classroom observations were conducted from three prototype learning environments in School A, B, and C. School A is a grade 6-9 school where teachers (N=4) were observed during five lessons. School B is a grade 1-6 school where teachers (N=3) were observed during five lessons. School C is a grade 1-6 school where teachers (N=2) were observed during four lessons. During the observations, the teachers’ communication was recorded and field notes and photographs were taken. The recorded material ranges between 20 and 60 minutes. The retrospective interviews (N=10) comprise nine individual teacher interviews and one group interview with the two teachers at School C. These semi-structured interviews included two themes: the physical learning space and teachers’ communication in practice. The audio recordings from both the classroom observations and teacher interviews were transcribed verbatim.In the first main step, the transcripts and the fieldnotes from the classroom observations were analysed using the TTPC typology as it specifically targets variations in teacher-centred teaching and student-centred learning, i.e., to what extent teachers maintain or distribute power and control in played-out practice. Furthermore, in addition to exploring how typologies vary, we also explore why this could be based on the interview data. Accordingly, an integrative analysis was conducted with the TTPC clusters and teacher interviews by using crosstab queries in the QSR NVivo software.

Exected outcomes: The findings will be presented in two phases pertaining to the two research questions. Firstly, the results regarding variations in teachers played-out practice, are based on a quantification of the observational data and teacher audio recordings. Thereafter, a quantitative analysis using the TTPC framework identified clusters of teacher practice. The preliminary analysis indicate three clusters: i) teacher power and control, ii) mixed distribution of power and control, and iii) student power and control. These clusters are plotted in the TTPC-matrix as a visual summary where each teachers’ emergent practice can be identified. In these preliminary findings, we can see that only one teacher is found in the first cluster pertaining to teacher power and control. This cluster is defined by a strong distinction between a majority of the seven subcategories of the classroom organisation. Hence, this teacher had refurnished the classroom space back to a traditional classroom setting. Furthermore, the teachers’ communication was based on strong control in all six control categories. Moreover, the preliminary analysis indicates that the majority of the teachers are located in the second cluster pertaining to mixed distribution of power and control. Such practice is defined by a blurred distinction between the categories of classroom organisation, as well as the categories of teacher control in their communication.Secondly, in our aim to answer the second research question, the interview data will be analysed using thematic analysis. We expect to find themes related to the physical learning space of the prototype classrooms and other themes on influencing factors regarding teachers’ communication. We expect to find connections between teacher beliefs and choices made in their played-out practice by using both types of data in an integrative analysis.

Since 2022, all teachers in Sweden must use a norm aware approach. Regardless of whether the education takes place at school or at a workplace, it must develop the students' abilities to critically examine how norms, values and structures can limit the power of women and men in society (Skolverket, 2022). Developing norm-criticality is particularly important for vocational education, since workplace cultures shaped over time are more difficult to change (Hedlin & Åberg, 2013; Hedlin, 2014). Norms become problematic when they exclude certain students and reinforce prejudices or discrimination (Kärnebro, 2020). Teachers often lack awareness of norms (Skolinspektionen, 2018) and may support problematic patterns (Kontio & Evaldsson, 2015). Teachers must counteract norms and patterns that limit their students’ learning, choices, and development (Skolverket, 2022). VET teachers’ norm awareness is in this sense crucial for their students’ Bildung. We see that there is a need for a validated tool for measuring teachers’ norm awareness, both in VET learning contexts and other school contexts. The NORM-survey will also give insights into how this concept relates to issues of importance in schools today, e.g., equity, justice, and democracy, as well as teachers’ relational competence (Aspelin 2018).  

The NORM-survey will be distributed to VET teachers at several educational institutions in Sweden and Finland during 2023. The survey consists of 59 variables in total written in Swedish. It is based on the operationalisation of norm awareness in six themes (Blomberg, 2020), structured in accordance with levels of knowledge: 1) Values and readiness to act, 2) Declarative knowledge of norm awareness, 3) Procedural knowledge about how to act in accordance with norm awareness, 4) Conditional knowledge of norm aware strategies for dealing with situational needs, 5) Collegial awareness and openness, and 6) Collegial support to address norm-based issues. 

The construct validity of survey will be tested using two types of factor analysis: exploratory and confirmatory (Taherdoost, 2016) to see if and how predefined themes can be found and if these are consistent across educational contexts. The first, exploratory factor analysis, will explore all variance in the data set. The second, confirmatory factor analysis, will show whether the hypothesized factor structure of the levels of knowledge is supported by actual data (de Vet, Adèr, Terwee & Pouwer, 2005). Both discriminant and convergent validity will be tested (Taherdoost, 2016).  

This study explores teachers’ practice and aims to understand the complexity of and the differencebetween teacher-centred teaching and student-centred learning in the one-to-one computingclassroom. Generally, prior research has examined moving from teacher-centred teaching tostudent-centred learning. Here, we scrutinise one-to-one computing practices in Grades 1–6 inFinland by analysing how power and control emerge from the way teachers organise the physicalclassroom and communicate in practice. We target variations in practical classroom orchestrationas well as in how teachers reason about their practice. A mixed-method analysis was conducted intwo phases, including 15 classroom observations and subsequent teacher interviews. First, aquantitative analysis displayed three clusters of ways teachers distributed power and control intheir classroom orchestration. Second, the clusters were integrated in a qualitative analysis of theinterviews. The findings show that the variations of teacher practice depended on their beliefs andhigher-order learning goals related student autonomy in the use of material resources. It alsoshowed a variation in the way teachers scaffolded students’ individual work and createdcollaborative learning opportunities. In the one-to-one computing classroom, this emerges fromissues that teachers can control inside school regarding the use and organisation of material resources.However, another factor that made teachers adapt their practice was the integration ofheterogeneous student groups into their classrooms.

Although many studies have investigated teaching in one-to-one computing classrooms, not many have considered the material dimension as equally important to the human dimension. Thus, by using a sociomaterial perspective, we aim to broaden the discussion about emergent teaching practices in Nordic classrooms where students use tablets as personal devices. We therefore provide three vignettes from ethnographic classroom studies in Sweden, Finland and Denmark. These illustrate how tablets were used in specific classrooms. In our qualitative analysis of the vignettes, we draw on the concept of patterns of relations to describe the dynamic entanglements of the emergent teaching and learning practices. These are patterns of 1) interrogation, 2) spacemaking and 3) materialisation. Our findings show that tablets do not enter empty learning spaces but are woven into and participate in forming ways of teaching in one-to-one classrooms. Teachers must therefore learn to engage with and manage complex relationships rather than learn how to use an iPad.