The research field of pedagogic practices is held together by its core, rather than its diverse outlying interests. This core consists of research dealing with actual practice in organizations associated with education, aiming to understand and problematize conditions for education and teaching at, for instance, preschools, school-age educare centres, and schools, as well as within teacher training. As a research field, pedagogic practices is quite young, and addresses questions of how, why and with what content education is conducted.
The research in pedagogical work in Norrköping is broadly discourse oriented and anchored in constructivist theory. Common to most researchers is an interest in empirically grounded analysis of educational processes. Therefore, the research foregrounds interaction between people (children, students, pedagogues, parents) and between people and things (new technology, film, premises, etc.). This can be related to the structural and political conditions of education as well as other framing factors, as the conditions for how education can be understood and accomplished are regarded as products of an interaction between various actors and institutions.
Our colleagues represent different academic disciplines, which creates a diverse research environment when it comes to both theoretical and methodological perspectives. The research has an interdisciplinary approach, with problem-oriented and thematically designed projects. This allows for a critical examination of pedagogical activities, as well as knowledge in the area of educational science.
The research projects at the Section for Pedagogic Practices address the educational sector’s various institutions – primarily preschool, school-age educare, and school, but also higher education, vocational education, and more. Currently, the field of research is represented through five different fields of knowledge enriching each other and creating exciting new research questions.
