School-based bullying is a major global social problem affecting societies around the world. It is argued that Virtual Reality (VR) offers benefits and possibilities in social work education. Within this context, a study was carried out with the aim of analysing students’ experiences with a school-based bullying scenario through Head-Mounted Display Virtual Reality (HMD VR), and exploring the pedagogical potential of this technology to support the enhancement of cultural empathy in international social work education. Using cultural competence and social constructivist perspectives focused on empathy theory, this article addresses the following research questions: How do the research participants describe experiencing the bullying scene with HMD VR? How do the research participants account for their HMD VR experiences in connection with empathy? How can the pedagogical use of HMD VR enhance international social work students’ cultural empathic skills? Data for the study were gathered through four Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with 38 volunteer research participants based on their postexposure to a scenario on school-based bullying through HMD VR. ATLAS.ti v.23 software (Atlas.ti, Berlin, Germany) was used to undertake a deductive thematic analysis. The findings reveal that HMD VR plays an important role in enhancing different dimensions of empathy, which is an essential element in transformative learning in social work education. The overall implications of using HMD VR in international social work education for enhancing cultural empathy are discussed. The article concludes that HMD VR has a promising role; however, several ethical, practical, and pedagogical aspects need to be considered for this technology tool to provide the sought-after pedagogical value in social work education.

BACKGROUND: Patient safety is a major part of nursing care and following patients' medication orders is considered one of the greatest responsibilities of individual nurses and nursing Failure to make safe drug calculations poses serious risks to patient safety. It is therefore important to strengthen nursing students' numeracy skills and conceptual abilities during their education. Research suggests that digital technologies play an increasingly important role in promoting nursing students' knowledge and medication dosage calculation (MDC) skills. The present review aims to identify and critically evaluate research investigating how the use of digital technologies informs the development of nursing students' MDC skills.

METHODS: A systematic literature review was performed within Scopus (Elsevier), Academic Search Elite (Ebsco), Cinahl (Ebsco), ERIC (Ebsco), Web of Science and PubMed. Research papers on MDC using digital technologies were considered for inclusion. Starting from 2843 sources, eighteen research articles met the inclusion criteria.

RESULTS: The results show that use of digital technologies can reduce nursing students' medication errors. Interestingly, web-based courses were the most commonly used digital technologies aimed at developing nursing students' MDC skills. However, such courses had limited impacts the development of these skills.

CONCLUSION: The present review concludes by mapping the current knowledge gaps and making suggestions for further research.

I kapitlet presenterer vi utfordringer og muligheter med å bruke Virtual Reality (VR) og Agumented Reality (AR) i skolesammenheng. Vi presenterer og gjør rede for hva Virtual Reality (VR) og Agumented Reality (AR) er for noe samtidig som at vi diskuterer disse innovasjonene i lys av begrepet pedagogisk merverdi opp mot læring og undervisning. Vi viser til utprøvende arbeid med bruk av VR og AR med lærere og lærerstudenter ved en digital læringslab som er koblet til lærerutdanning og læringsprofesjon. På denne måten behandler vi; teknologiene som sådan, om de kan brukes til å skape pedagogisk merverdi, og hvilke forutsetninger lærere trenger for å utvikle en profesjonell digital kompetanse som gjør at de kan skape slik merverdi.

Even though in general Swedish pupils have a high level of digital competence (Internetstiftelsen, 2019), a national initiative for a rapid and systematic digitalization of the educational system has been introduced in Sweden. In this context, teacher education is regarded as being of strategic importance for preparing student teachers to teach in a highly digitalized society (Sveriges Kommuner och Landsting, 2019). Here, innovative initiative is important for helping student teachers to develop professional digital competence (Lund, Furberg, Bakken & Engelien, 2014). One example of an innovative initiative is the development of Digital Learning Labs (DLL) that are closely connected to teacher education and offer student teachers and experienced teachers opportunities to explore digital technologies. At the University of Gävle (Sweden), the Digital Learning Lab (2020) offers a number of state of the art technologies, such as robots for programming, media-production and technologies for virtual and augmented realities (VR and AR). In research-based explorative studies, teachers and student teachers elaborate on technologies such as VR and AR (Fransson, Holmberg, & Westelius, 2020). This way, their views becomes involved in principled innovation processes to enact the technology in the best way possible for teaching and learning. 

This chapter presents and problematizes a theoretical design framework for understanding and supporting teachers’ pedagogical reasoning in online contexts. The framework synthesizes existing educational theories to illustrate how digital technologies can be used to create interactional and aligned educational designs and is therefore referred to as the IAED framework. The IAED framework can be used in teacher education and development programs, and by teachers, researchers, educational designers and others. In the chapter empirical examples and analysis are provided to illustrate and discuss how the IAED framework can be used to: (a) support teachers’ pedagogical reasoning and educational design practices, (b) evaluate existing educational designs and design practices, and (c) study educational designs and design practices, as well as (changes in) teachers’ pedagogical reasoning.

The initial paper has a conceptual approach and problematizes innovation in teacher education. While the term “innovation” often has positive connotations, it can also be regarded as a ‘buzzword’ that is associated with change and market logic or be overused to hype specific issues (Mozorov, 2014). When comes to teacher education, “innovation” has been associated with a number of issues, of which technology is the most common. The notion of innovation may seem out of place in a teacher educational context, especially if it is associated with market logic and technical-rational positions, where innovation is conceptualized and construed as something new, unique and often based on cutting edge technology. In this context, Ellis, Souto-Manning and Turvey (2019) suggest that “technology-based claims of innovation in teacher education [...] must be viewed critically” (p. 8) and that “many ‘innovations’ merely reproduce unequal and unjust situations, educationally and more socially” (p. 3). 

Here, the notion of “principled innovation” (Sirotnik, 1999; Mishra, 2020) offers a framework for connecting innovation to norms, values and ideas about the public good. Principled innovations have been suggested as: “the ability to imagine new concepts, catalyse ideas, and form new solutions, guided by principles that create positive change for humanity” (Arizona State University Mary Lou Fulton Teacher College, 2019). 

However, this framework also generates questions like: Who decides what a positive change for humanity is? Who would benefit the most? To what extent is it possible to foresee the innovation’s further development? The latter question could be exemplified with a technological innovation such as Facebook, which was first acknowledged as a socially connecting platform but was later also associated with hate, social profiling and political manipulation (González, 2017). 

Principled innovations could emphasize moral and political dimensions and thereby reinforce inequality and injustice. They might also miss disruptive innovations as emerging technologies that challenge the existing ones. Here, the notion of disruptive innovation offers a conceptual frame for understanding how innovations can emerge in teacher education (Bower & Christensen, 1995; Ortlieb, Susca, Votypka & Cheek, 2018).

In this conceptual paper we aim to contribute to the discussion about how the concept of innovation can be construed, understood and positioned and how it can be used in a teacher education context. Although the notion of innovation is used to understand developments that extend beyond the production of new technological devices, we here direct attention to the implementation of new technologies for use in the education sector and innovations driven by applying technology in new ways. Drawing on different understandings of the concept of innovation, the notions of innovation, principled innovation and disruptive innovation are problematized in relation to technological innovations in teacher education and as a frame of reference for the symposium. 

The call for digitalisation in compulsory and upper secondary schools implies the need for teachers to pursue professional development. Here, teachers’ self-understanding may influence how they use, relate to and learn about digital technologies. 

The purpose of this article is to explore how a teacher’s self-understanding influences his professional development activities and, in turn, is influenced by his learning. In focus for this case study is one upper secondary school teacher’s endeavour to enact digital technologies and find suitable strategies for professional learning. This teacher and a researcher formed a reflective research partnership to explore how, and whether, the teacher’s self-understanding and professional learning strategies influenced each other. Reflective conversations, reflective writings and theoretical inputs facilitated the analysis.

The findings show, for example, how his task perception changed over time from an emphasis on teaching to a greater emphasis on improvement, supporting colleagues in their learning and contributing to the professionalisation of the teaching community. This in turn influenced him adopting a self-directed informal learning strategy. 

In Sweden, adequate digital competence has been put in the spotlight due to the Swedish 2017 national strategy for the digitalisation of the K-12 school system. Based on both policy and practice, the aim is to explore teachers’ enacted digital competence in three upper secondary schools in Sweden and thereby provide an empirical account of what the notion ‘adequate’ means in practice. The data consists of interviews with teachers and classroom observations. At an aggregated analytical level, the results are presented as four  narrative sub-case descriptions. It is concluded that teachers’ adequate digital competence is flexible in meaning, determined by local contextual conditions and enacted in activities and decisions that are based on the teachers’ own value frameworks. The understanding of ‘adequate’ in this study does not appear to be clarified in the formulations used in the national strategy.

Vid Högskolan i Gävle bedrivs forskning av relevans för att förstå utbildning, undervisning och lärande i näringsliv och offentlig sektor, med huvudsakligt fokus på det formella utbildningsystemet i dess helhet – från förskola, skola och fritidshem till högre utbildningen vid universitet och högskolor.

De flesta av forskarna inom området tillhör organisatoriskt Avdelningen för Utbildningsvetenskap vid Akademin för Utbildning och ekonomi (AUE), men bidragen med de centrala ämnesdidaktiska dimensionerna inom området görs i huvudsak av forskare som tillhör Avdelningen för humaniora (AUE) och av några som tillhör akademierna ATM och AHA. Det finns sålunda en närhet mellan de kompletterande kompetenserna inom organisationen.

Vid HiG finns ett antal forskningsgrupper (miljöer) som samlar de utbildningsvetenskapligt orienterade forskarna kring olika tematiska frågor. Exempel på forskningsgrupper är Early Childhood Education (ECE), IT i lärande, Studies of Relationships In Educational Settings (STORIES), SEP (Studies in Educational Policies), ROLE (Research on Learning Environments) samt forskning inom matematikens- och naturvetenskapens didaktik, religionsdidaktik.

This presentation outlines the background, development and present state of the actual concerning support for newly qualified teachers (NQT) and the teacher induction system in Sweden.

The emergence of a nationwide induction system to support NQTs was strengthened by the decision of the 1992 Congress of the National Union of Teachers in Sweden (Lärarnas Riksförbund) to work for teacher registration in Sweden. Teacher induction and mentoring were also regarded as associated issues. This was followed in 1995 by a national agreement between the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and the two teachers’ unions. One component in this agreement was that it gave new teach­ers the right to be supported by a mentor and to participate in an induction programme. This can be regarded as the first milestone for NQT mentoring in Sweden.

Support for NQTs was high on the educational agenda in 2006 when an Official Investigation was launched, which in 2008 proposed a national mandatory induction system, with mentoring, a probationary year and the registration of teachers as central components (SOU, 2008:52). This was implemented in 2010-2011. However, the teacher registration issue led to several challenges that later occasioned changes in the legislation. Further, in the middle of 2014 principals’ evaluations of NQTs were scrapped and teacher registration was instead provided on graduation from teacher education. This meant that mentoring became less prioritized, even though there was still an obvious need for it. The presentation ends by concluding that since 2014 the issue of mentoring has largely been submerged by other ‘more important’ issues, even though the legislation for it is still in place.