People

LARS LINDSTRÖM, born 1943, is a Professor of Education and Arts Education at the Stockholm Institute of Education, Sweden. Being a trained psychologist, he lectured for a few years at the Stockholm School of Social Work. His Ph.D. thesis in Education 1986 was published by Oxford University Press, as Managing Alcoholism. 1976-1990 Lindström lectured in Art Education at the National University College of Arts, Crafts, and Design. 1990 he became Research Associate, 1994 Associate Professor, and 1999 Full Professor of Education, at the Stockholm Institute of Education. 1994-1997 Lindström was Co-ordinator of the Nordic Network of Researchers in Visual Arts Education. 2003-2004 he served in the Swedish Research Council.

Lindström was a Visiting Scholar 1991 at the Harvard Project Zero, invited by Professor Howard Gardner. Inspired by the Arts PROPEL, he used in 1997-98 portfolio assessment to evaluate Swedish students’ creative skills in the Visual Arts, from age 5 to 19. The results were published as a written report, a CD-ROM with videotaped interviews, logbooks, sketches, drafts and final products, etc., and a film made at a school which successfully trained students’ creative skills. Selected parts, such as the summary and the definition of criteria and rubrics, have been translated into half a dozen languages. In 2007, Lindström received an award, in the name of Brian Allison, for the most ‘interesting’ paper published in the International Journal of Art & Design Education in 2006. The paper was called: ‘Creativity: What is it? Can you assess it? Can it be taught?’

Among other publications are: Nordic Visual Arts Research (1998), The Cultural Context (2000), Technology Education in New Perspectives (2005), and Nordic Visual Arts Education in Transition (in press).

I am an assistant professor of Educational Work at Umeå University. After graduating as a teacher in Textile Work (1968), I was employed in the compulsory school system for 20 years. During the same time I spend some years in Japan as a research student as well as I was a part time student at Uppsala University and obtained B.A. in History of Art, Pedagogy, Psychology and Japanese (1976). Since 1988 I have worked as a teacher educator first at Linköping University and currently at Umeå University. In my F.L. report (1996) I was dealing with the question if and how changes in the national curriculum changed the content of the Sloyd subject. My Ph.D. thesis in Education from Linköping University (2001), with the from Swedish translated title Sloyd subject – impression, expression, imprint, I was seeking the answers to how impressions and knowledge from the Sloyd classroom could have made some “imprint” in the future life of the pupils. I was interested to know something about the long lasting effects of Sloyd education.

In the "KOMOLAR-project" I am doing curriculum research related to the sloyd subject and society change and how teachers’ assess creative work. I am especially studying the language and concepts used in the sloyd classroom or in sloyd teacher education. In another research project based in my own department at Umeå University “School subjects under influences from ICT – art, music, sloyd in the digital media society” I study the effects of using digital portfolios in sloyd teaching.

I am also very interested in creating international networks together with colleagues from other countries dealing with similar questions.

The dissertation project is an interaction analytical study of sloyd education for student teachers. The study is organized around video recordings three different courses in textile handicraft from three different teacher education programs in Sweden. Primarily, the focus of interest is to investigate how sloyd education is organized within as part of a vocational education and to scrutinize the interactive work that constitute the educational practice there.

• Teacher in the subjects sloyd and social sience in the compulsory school
• University lecturer at Dep. of Sloyd, Gothenburg University
• Teaching didactics at the sloyd teacher education
• Project leader, together with Marléne Johansson, for the sloyd subject in the national evaluation of the Swedish compulsory school 2003 (NU-03)
• Doctoral student since 2004

• My mainly field of interest is the teacher in the sloyd subject in the swedish compulsory school. How and what do sloyd teachers do, why do they do it and what is it´s consequences?

Marléne Johansson is a Senior Lecturer, Ph.D, at the Department of Mat, Hälsa, Miljö [MHM]; section for Sloyd education, Faculty of Education, the University of Gothenburg, Göteborg university. MJ graduated as teacher of textile handicraft in 1975, complemented this exam with a BA in pedagogics and psychology and further training in textile handicraft, didactics, courses in scientific methods. MJ received her MA in hand crafts and home economics in 1995. After doctorial studies she did a doctoral thesis on Slöjdpraktik i skolan – hand, tanke, kommunikation och andra medierande redskap [Craft and design in school – hand, mind, communication and other mediating tools]. The thesis reports on an empirical study of the practice of craft and design [slöjd] in the Swedish comprehensive school. The dissertation has an English summary of 30 pages. MJ research interests are how knowledge is produced and reproduced in social practices inside as well as outside school. The current research is about communication and learning in sloyd practices (research programme funded by the Swedish Research Council [Vetenskapsrådet].

MJ has participated in the work of the National Agency for Education [Skolverket] with the national evaluation of the compulsory school (NU-92) of the craft and design subject 1991-1994. Mj was responsibility for the national evaluation of the craft and design subject in a new evaluation 2002-2005, NU-03. MJ is actively engaged in the Nordic co-operation and she is a member of and participates actively in NordFo and a member of the Editorial Board of the Techne series.

I work at Stockholm Institute of Education as an assistant professor. I have a MA from Åbo Akademi University (Finland) in 1979 and a PhD from SIE 2003. My research focuses issues on knowledge in school, as it is expressed in assignments given to students to work with, the tools needed for their work, classroom interaction and teachers' assessment. I have a special interest in literacy related to vocational education. In the KOMOLÄR-project I'm responsible for studies in upper secondary school, in programmes where sloyd-related materials (textiles and wood) are used. I am also engaged in another research project funded by the Swedish Research Council, "Chemistry texts as tools for scientific learning: a comparative study of teaching practices in Swedish and Finland-Swedish classrooms". Further I coordinate the national Swedish doctoral programme Educational Assessment, a collaboration of four universities (Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö and Umeå).

Oskar Lindwall is a lecturer at the Department of Edcuation, Gothenburg University. He is also part of the Linneaus Centre for Reserearch on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS). Oskar has a master degree in Cognitive Science and he will defend his thesis in Communication Studies spring 2008. Besides Komolär, he is involved in research projects that are studying the use of simulations in health care education, critique session in architecture education and lab work in science education.

Oskar has been responsible for the master program "Learning, communication and IT" at the IT-university in Gothenburg. He is also one of the course leaders for the graduate course "Analysis of interaction and learning", which aims Ph.D. students who use video recordings in educational research projects.

His reserach interests include: ethnomethodology, the relation between studies of interaction and theories of learning, classroom research in higher education, the learning of embodied skills, professional vision, instructions and following instructions.