Professor Colnerud graduated in 1995 with a PhD on the thesis “Ethics and Practice in the Teaching Profession: An empirical study of teachers’ ethical conflicts in elementary schools." She has also studied the ethical professional conflicts of psychologists and the ethical conflicts at specific residential care homes for young people. Furthermore, she is also interested in the moral values embedded in school’s everyday interplay, which often reach the students in the form of unspoken experiences.
Her current research includes a longitudinal study of the ethical conflicts in the teaching profession and a study of the ethical research problems experienced by researchers. Since 2012 she has also led a Swedish Research Council project developing and studying how simulation technology can be used to create training opportunities for teacher students and enable working teachers handle provocative and disruptive behaviour.
Research environment
Professor Colnerud was leading a research team that specialises in classroom research and values education. This encompasses interaction, leadership, social processes and the normative dimensions of schools. Each team members handles his/her own sub-discipline and the team has a broad repertoire of research methods, which means in combination they constitute a multi-disciplinary environment.