Volume 2, No. 3, September 2011
Education Inquiry is a new international online, peer-reviewed journal with free access in the field of Educational Sciences and Teacher Education. It is published by the Umeå School of Education, Umeå University, Sweden and is issued four times per year (March, June, September, December). Education Inquiry can be downloaded in full extent as well as selected articles.
Per-Olof Erixon
Editorial
Editorial
Every issue of Education Inquiry publishes peer-reviewed articles in one, two or three different sections. In our Open section, articles are sent in by authors as part of regular journal submissions and published after a blind review process. In our Thematic section, articles may reflectthe theme of a conference or workshop and are published after a blind review process. We also have an Invited section featuring articles by researchers invited by Education Inquiry to shed light on a specifictheme or for a specificpurpose and they are also published after a review process. This issue of Education Inquiry contains both a Thematic section and an Open section, bringing a total of 11 articles.
Thematic section
The Thematic section, entitled “Children’s rights at 21”, contains seven articles and is edited by Professor Solveig Hägglund, Karlstad University, Sweden and Senior lecturer Nina Thelander, Karlstad University, Sweden. In their introductory article “Children’s rights at 21: policy, theory, practice”, the theme is contextualised and the seven contributions are introduced in more detail.
In “Childhood, complexity orientation and children’s rights: Enlarging the space of the possible?” Dr John I’Anson considers some of the performative dilemmas associated with the enactment of children’s rights by adults. In particular, he argues that the mobilisation of children’s rights often tends to involve multiple forms of complexity reduction.
Vicki Coppock draws in “Liberating the mind or governing the soul? Psycho- therapeutic education, children’s rights and the disciplinary state” on theoretical contributions from Michel Foucault, Nikolas Rose and from within the new sociology of childhood to open up for critical analysis and debate contemporary policy and practice initiatives involving the introduction of formal psychotherapeutic education programmes in schools.
In “Children’s right to equitable education: A welfare state’s goal in times of Neo-liberalism” Guadalupe Francia employs Social Representations Theory as a theoretical instrument to analyse the right of children to an equitable education.
Deborah Harcourt and Jonathon Sargeant stress in “The challenges of conducting ethical research with children” the conduct of timely, ethical and reliable research in matters directly affecting children and giving their perspectives a voice.
Carol Robinson aims in “Children’s rights in student voice projects: where does the power lie?” to develop understandings of the factors which facilitate and those which constrain implementation of Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is concerned with children being given the right to express their views freely, and for their views to be given due weight in matters affecting them.
Finally, in "The political construction of“ children’s rights in education – A compara-tive analysis of Sweden and New Zealand” Ann Quennerstedt examines and compares how issues of children’s rights in education are constructed in policy in two nations.
Open section
The Open section contains four articles from several different felds within educational sciences. In “Students’ learning styles compared with their teachers’ learning styles in upper secondary school – a mismatched combination” Lena Boström examines one parameter in the didactic interaction between teachers and students, namely differences and similarities in learning styles.
In “What is discerned in teachers’ expressions about planning? Similarities and differences between teachers from Sweden and Hong Kong”, Mona Holmqvist and Eva Wennås Brante try to findout what teachers say their primary focus is when planning to teach an object of learning. The study is carried out in the two different cultural contexts of Sweden and Hong Kong.
Marit Ulvik and Kari Smith aim in “What characterises a good practicum in teacher education?” to obtain a deeper understanding of how the practicum is understood and whether the various stakeholders in this context share a common view of the practicum.
In “Towards a phenomenological understanding of Web 2.0 and knowledge formation” Håkan Fleischer illuminates the character of Web 2.0 based on a reading of Martin Heidegger in order to provoke new epistemological questions about Web 2.0 and the formation of knowledge.
