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Introduction: This study examines the significance of playing-up (participating in training and playing with older age groups) and mixed-gender play (training and playing with opposite gender) for Swedish female football players to reach the highest international level.

Methods: Drawing on questionnaire data from senior female football players who play in the first league in Sweden or abroad as a professional, we examined their experiences of playing-up and mixed-gender play during their child and youth years, and its significance for being selected for the senior national teams, i.e., Swedish U23 and women's national team.

Results and discussion: Findings revealed that about half of the players between age 9–12 and over 80% between age 13–15 reported experiences of training or playing with older players, showing that playing-up is a common experience among players who reach women's elite level. Regarding mixed-gender experiences, less than 25% of the participants reported that they trained or played with boys between age 9–12 and between 13 and 15 years. The findings showed further that 41% of the players had been selected for the senior national teams. Logistic regression analysis showed that experiences of playing-up or mixed-gender play between age 9–12 or 13–15 did not increase the likelihood of being selected for the senior national teams. This is one of few studies to date investigating the impact of playing-up and mixed-gender play on females' pathways to senior national team levels in football. Understanding how playing-up and mixed-gender play relates to athlete development and for attaining expertise in young adulthood can guide coaches and organizations in structuring training environments that foster sustainable development.

This study explores how digitalization in school changes common work activities of special educators. Drawing on nine in-depth interviews with Swedish special educators framed by local digitalization policy incentives, the results of this study indicate that school digitalization has brought expanded work responsibilities for special educators and that these responsibilities require not only traditional special educational expertise but also advanced and critical knowledge about digital technology. With a cultural-historical activity theoretical approach, the study reveals contradictions and relations that provide insights into the complex interplay between special educators, technology, other actors in the activity, and learning objectives. The study contributes knowledge about the extensiveness and complexity of special educators’ work in increasingly digitalized schools. Based on the findings, it is recommended that the identified changes in work tasks and responsibilities need to be recognized, supported, and trained for if the potential of technology is to be realized more widely in general and special education. To ensure thoughtful and strategic digital integration in special education, the study results can guide initiatives to strengthen the complex knowledge that combines traditional special education knowledge with knowledge about technology’s abilities and inabilities to reduce learning barriers for student diversities.

This is a thesis about the occupational role of Swedish special educators, with a particular interest in what itentails in digitalized schools. Previous research has shown that the occupational role of special educators iscomplex and erratic. To fulfill their role, special educators engage in several work activities, varying betweenand within countries and contexts. In Sweden, the role typically involves teaching, supervising colleagues,screening and documenting, and school developmental work, although the extent to which each of thesetasks is included varies. Furthermore, over the past 50+ years, Sweden, and thus the Swedish school system,has become one of the most technologically well-equipped countries and school systems in Europe – adevelopment that has been argued to challenge and change the way teaching and learning are, or could be,organized.Against this backdrop, the research presented in this thesis aims to examine if, and then how, schooldigitalization also challenges and changes the occupational role of special educators. Based on researcharticles, quantitative and qualitative questionnaire data, interviews, and by applying Cultural-HistoricalActivity Theory as analytical framework, the following research questions are addressed: (1) What aspects ofspecial educators’ work with digital technology are made visible or invisible in existing research, and whatimplications can this have? and (2) Is school digitalization experienced to have changed the work of Swedishspecial educators, and if so, how?Regarding RQ 1, findings show that while some aspects of special educators’ work are well-documented –particularly their instructional use of technology in teaching – others remain largely invisible. This partialvisibility risks perpetuating their absence in training initiatives, development projects, and policy work.Regarding RQ 2, findings show that the special educators experience their work as changed due to schooldigitalization, described as an expansion and redefinition of work activities. Expansion, in this case, does notrefer to a numerical increase in work tasks but rather to the expanded content and scope of existing tasks asdigital technologies become integrated in the pedagogical, physical, and psychosocial dimensions of theschool environment. These changes have implications for the occupational role and the knowledge requiredto work as a special educator in digitalized schools.

Two educational trends that have had major impacts on school policies of the last few decades are inclusive education and digitalisation. To that end, the purpose of this study is to examine how inclusive education and the digitalisation of education are related, understood, and represented in one case of Swedish special education practice. Using activity theory as a theoretical framework, the results of this study suggest that the meaning of inclusive education has shifted, and that digitalisation has entailed both congruencies and contradictions in special education activities aiming for inclusive education. Although digitalisation was described as providing alternatives for inclusive school practices, new expectations and work assignments sometimes exceeded the special educators' professional knowledge.

Research aim and relevance to Nordic educational research: This study examines two of the mayor paradigms that in the last decade has gained impact on educational policies in Europe: inclusive education and the digitalisation of education. Although the amount of research about each paradigm is vast, there is less known about the relation between the two.

The Nordic schools are among the most technology dense schools in Europe (IMD, 2021). In Sweden, several governmental initiatives to implement digital technology in education have been launched since the late 1960’s (e.g, Gu & Lindberg, 2021) and new curricula and policies accentuates the importance of ensuring every child’s ability to participate in and contribute to the digitalised society. Concerns about ‘every child’ is also the foundation of the so called Nordic model of education (e.g. Lundahl, 2016).

To that end, this study adds knowledge to the sparsely researched area of the special education practice in digitalised school systems guided by the RQ:

• How can inclusive education and the digitalisation of education be understood in relation to the special education practice? 

Theoretical framework: To analyse how structural and educational changes transform object-oriented special education activities for SENCOs and SETs, this article uses the theoretical framework CHAT (Engeström, 1987, 2015). The analytical focus of this study is to analyse how the SENCOs and SETs describe the object of inclusive education in a digitalised special education practice by using the concepts of contradictions and congruencies. 

Methods: The study was conducted in a mid-sized municipality in Sweden and combines data from seven interviews and 36 surveys with special education practitioners. The motive for the mixed method was to gain both deep and broad knowledge about the studied phenomena (Johnson et al., 2007) – the special education practice in digitalised school systems. 

Expected results: The yet tentative results are expected to show how inclusive education and digitalisation relate to, interact with, and oppose to each other and what consequences this may have for the special education practice. 

As society has gotten increasingly digitalized, schools have made extensive efforts to accommodate to that development. With the digitalization of school, the special education practice and the roles of special education needs coordinators (SENCOs) and special education teachers (SETs) change. However, there is a lack of research examining this transformation, a gap which this exploratory study opens up for new understandings of. This mixed method study explores the special education practice in a municipality in Sweden, one of the most digitalized countries in the world. The findings show that SENCOs and SETs have highly positive beliefs about digital tools in special education, but at the same time their frequency of use varies greatly. Also, the study identifies special educational activities engaging with digital technology, describing a work practice with complex expectations of the special education professionals also in the area of digital teaching and learning. Furthermore, the competencies considered as necessary for handling the expectations are discussed.