While Swedish schools and teacher education under global influence adapt course content and teaching to what is measurable in international knowledge tests, other processes are proceeding, partly in the opposite direction. This project intends to address two of these opposite processes: the academicization and the digitization of school and teacher education, and in particular their impact on the school subjects Art and Sloyd.

The academisation of teacher education has created a broader research connection and a stronger scientific basis for school, supported by the Swedish School Act (Erixon Arreman 2008; SFS 2010: 800). This has led to a strengthening of text-based knowledge in both Art and Sloyd, subjects previously primarily based on action and experience-based knowledge (Borg 2007; Lindgren 2008; Carlgren 2015), in which the ability to process, investigate and form material develops over time. Also, and unlike most other school subjects, Art and Sloyd are not connected to an academic discipline. Therefore, the scientific basis for them is not clearly defined, and therefore more vulnerable to external pressure.

When more and more of the content of school subjects in the academisation process is mediated by written text, or when screen and keyboard replace paper and pen, school subjects like Art and Sloyd change more than school subjects already strongly mediated by text. From an educational ecological perspective (Bateson 1972; Goodlad 1997), the situation can be described as disrupting the ecological balance in the subjects.

Theoretically, the project is based on an ecological perspective on education (Bateson 1972; Goodlad 1997). We consider the Aesthetic subjects Art and Sloyd as living ecologies in interaction with surrounding parts of an extensive education system. The ecology, or ecosystem, consists of institutions with special functions, rules, activities, goals, and people with different roles. An ecological way of understanding change considers the procedural process and the fact that parts of the system always interact and affect the system as a whole in ways that may not initially be obvious. Overall, the concept of boundary crossing (Akkerman & Bakker 2011) is used to analyze how transfers of epistemologies and knowledge, under the influence of academia and digitalisation, occur across boundaries in educational ecology and the consequences it has (cf. Svenkerud et al, 2018). Furthermore, the project is based on media ecology as a way of understanding the impact of digital technologies in educational contexts (Erixon 2015). New technology not only add something, but change the entire environments (Postman 1970); reshapes thinking and perception as well as what roles and actions are possible. At the same time, new and old technologies interact like different species in the ecosystem and compete for space. Changes in the ecosystem, evolution, occur not as one might think gradually, but in more unexpected, punctuated equilibrium, which violently displace the balance, in analogy with Kuhn's paradigm shift (Eldredge & Gould 1972; Erixon 2015).

In summary, the purpose of the project is to study how academicization and digitization of education create new conditions for the school subjects Art and Sloyd, in compulsory school and teacher education. The aim is broken down in the following research questions:

1. What characterizes the processes of change in academia and digitization in the subjects Art and Sloyd?

2. What consequences will the academicization and digitalisation have for the subject content in Art and Sloyd?

3. What possible teacher positions are created by the academicization and digitization of Art and Sloyd?

4. What space is there for aesthetic and practical forms of knowledge in today's educational ecology?

Neither quantitative nor qualitative data per se is sufficient to capture the complexity of the problem area. Therefore, several methods will be used, in a mixed methods sequential explanatory design (Ivankova, Creswell & Stick 2006). The study is based on three sub-studies: In the first sub study (1), a document study, the background of the academicization and digitization of the Swedish education system (from compulsory school to teacher education) is mapped and analyzed, with a focus on significance for the subject’s Art and Sloyd. The method is critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Fairclough 2010) and the material consists of policy documents and debate articles from teachers' union journals and daily press. The second sub study (2) a survey study, aims to map the Art and Sloyd teachers' perceptions of what characterizes the change processes academicization and digitization of the respective school subject, as well as the consequences the change processes have for the subject content in Art and Sloyd. Quantitative data is then collected and analyzed to identify relationships and provide a general understanding of the research problem. The results are then used to design a qualitative case study, which can explain, develop and deepen the quantitative results. A case study involves an exploration of a system or one (or more) case over time, through a detailed, deep data collection using multiple sources of information, rich in context (Merriam 1998). The third sub-study (3) is an in-depth multidisciplinary study based on interviews (rhetoric) and observations (practice). Semi-structured interviews are conducted with 15 teachers from each school subject. The intention is to gather in-depth descriptions of the impact of academia and digitalisation on teaching and content in each subject.

Our research issues are for instance derived from our own experiences as University teachers and lessons learned from two previously funded projects by the Swedish Research Council. The first concerned digitalization, School subject paradigm and teaching practice in screen culture (2010-2013), studying how school the subjects Art, Music and Swedish L1 change when digital media have a great influence (Erixon 2015). The second project concerned academicization, the Struggle for the Text (2012–2016), and was about the requirement for academisation and academic writing in relation to other and more practical parts of teacher education (Erixon & Josephson 2017). Also, in previous studies, participants in the research group have been concerned with digitalisation, showing that teachers in Art and Sloyd respectively to varying extent make use of digital tools in their teaching, and that resistance to digital tools is a common attitude among many of the teachers (Jeansson 2017; Wikberg 2017) as well as the students (Westerlund 2015). Ongoing pilot studies show that Sloyd teacher educators perceive digital tools and materials as a completely new area to acquire. Also, when it comes to academisation and a school on scientific basis, the spoken and written language tend to take oven and teachers who wish to develop other mediations are discouraged by structures (Westerlund 2019). It is clear that development is taking place in different places and appears to be divisive, which shows the relevance of taking a comprehensive approach to the change processes that affect the school subjects' Art and Sloyd in different, and sometimes contradictory, ways. The project provides general knowledge about how teacher education’s transformations and changes in policy documents change the conditions for knowledge development in different subjects in different ways.

Akkerman, Sanne F., & Bakker, Arthur. (2011). Boundary Crossing and Boundary Objects. Review of Educational Research, 81(2), 132–169. Bateson, Gregory. (2000/1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Björck, Catrine (2014). ”Klicka där!” En studie om bildundervisning med datorer. Stockholm: Stockholms universitet. Borg, Kajsa (2007). Akademisering. En väg till ökad professionalism i läraryrket? Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige, 12(3), 211–225. Carlgren, Ingrid (2015). Kunskapskulturer och undervisningspraktiker. Göteborg: Daidalos. Cuban. Eldredge, Niles J. & Gould, Stephen J. (1972). Punctuated equilibria: An alternative to phyletic gradualism. I: Thomas J. M. Schopf. (red.). Models in paleobiology (s. 82–115). San Francisco: Freeman Cooper. Erixon Arreman, Inger (2008). The Process of Finding a Shape: stabilising new research structures in Swedish teacher education, 2000-2007. European Educational Research Journal, 7(2), 157–175. Erixon, Per-Olof (2015). Punctuated equilibrium – Digital Technology in Schools ́ Teaching of the Mother Tongue. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 60(3), 337–358. Erixon, Per-Olof & Josephson, Olle (red.) (2017). Kampen om texten. Examensarbetet i lärarutbildningen. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Fairclough, Norman (2010). Critical Discourse Analysis. Harlow: Longman. Goodlad, John I. (1997). In Praise of Education. New York: Teachers College Press. Gouseti, Ivankova, Nalaliya, Creswell, John W. & Stick, Sheldon L. (2006). Using Mixed-Methods Sequential Explanatory Design: From Theory to Practice. Field Methods, 18(1), 3–20. Jeansson, Åsa (2017). Vad, hur och varför i slöjdämnet. Textillärares uppfattningar om innehåll och undervisning i relation till kursplanen. Umeå: Umeå universitet. Lindgren, Bengt (2008). Forskningsfältet bilddidaktik. Rapport från Institutionen för pedagogik och didaktik, Göteborgs universitet. Merriam, Sharan B. (1998). Qualitative research and case study applications in education: Revised and expanded from case study research in education. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass. Neave, Guy (1979). Academic drift: Some views from Europe. Studies in Higher Education, 4(2), 143–159. SFS 2010:800. Swedish School Acto [Skollag] 1 kap. 5 §. Svenkerud, Sigryn., Ballangrud, Brit., Madsen, Janne. & Strande, Anne Lise. (2018). Ecology and Boundaries: Methaphors in Sustainable Education. Paper presentation at symposium, ECER 2018: Inclusion and Exclusion, Resources for Educational Research?, Bolzano Westerlund, Stina (2015). Lust och olust – elevers erfarenheter i textilslöjd. Umeå: Umeå universitet. Westerlund, Stina (2019). Career Teachers in Sloyd – Assignment, Contradictions and Dilemmas. Wikberg, Stina (2017). Visual Art Education in Primary School: Between Pottering, Paraphrases and Digital Media. Paper presented at E17 – Nordic Research Conference on Aesthetic subjects, Umeå 31 okt – 2 nov 2017.