The 43rd annual conference A Future for All – Teaching for a Sustainable Society focused on critical questions concerning changes in society.  The conference theme emphasized teacher education and education as the solution to broad societal problems. The urgent need to understand the past for building tomorrow with new approaches in education puts important questions in focus regarding human wellbeing, social inclusion, environmental protection and globalization. These perspectives and approaches in research and practice in teaching and teacher education calls for a rethinking of what the educational sciences now consist of and how they are characterised. The central focus of the conference was the relevance of those rethinking perspectives. 

This chapter discusses sustainability of Sweden’s most recent World Heritage (WH) site, the Decorated Farmhouses of Hälsingland. A general overview presents what WH is, why it is special and why it should be preserved for future generations. The views of WH farm owners on managing a WH site and how they feel about the task have been assessed. WH must be preserved for future generations and it is necessary for the farms to interact sustainably with their local communities. Most WH farms are privately owned and have been within the same family for centuries. Will this continue in the future or are there problems with succession?

This chapter addresses the issue of becoming a teacher, with the induction phase as a critical transition from initial teacher education to the lifelong professional learning of teachers, and mentoring as a tool of support. It presents newly qualified teachers’ views on initial teacher education and discusses the need for fostering the connection between teacher training and the induction year. New teachers’ views on teacher induction and mentoring are based on research findings in Finland and other Nordic countries. Another important question addresses how initial teacher education can facilitate the metamorphosis of a student teacher into an autonomous teacher. The new teachers’ experiences of mentoring have been highly positive, and they wished to see it made a standard practice. The mentoring meetings have served them as a useful interaction that supported them in their work and enabled them to learn from each other and from an experienced mentor. The mentees considered mentoring a highly important tool for inducting new teachers and fostering their professional growth. The results suggest that all new teachers should have access to either team-based or individual mentoring over the course of one or two school years.

In the next few years a conciderable number of new teachers of different categories will be recruited to higher education institutions. This will also coincide with larger and more heterogeneous student groups and an increase in national and global competition. At the same time, the economic prerequisites and demands for students’ employability after university are becoming much more stringent. A good professional induction increases teachers’ opportunities of succeeding in their professional development.

In the book the authors problematise the higher institutions’ mandate as the prerequisite for higher education teachers’ work. They highlight the various aspects of teaching in the higher educational institution: lectures, seminars, supervision, examinations, online education and values. The book also addresses the higher education teacher’s development and career possibilities and discusses the documentation of qualifications. This is the English version of Att arbeta i högskolan that was revised in 2010. Teaching and Learning in Higher Education – Challenges and Possibilities is suitable for new and more experienced teachers in a higher education context.

Under de närmaste åren rekryteras ett betydande antal nya lärare av olika kategorier till högskolor och universitet. Det sker i en tid då studentgrupperna blir större och mer heterogena, då nationell och global konkurrens ökar. Samtidigt skärps de ekonomiska förutsättningarna och kraven på studenternas anställningsbarhet efter genomförd utbildning. En bra yrkesintroduktion ökar lärarnas möjligheter att lyckas väl i sin professionella yrkesutveckling. I boken problematiserar författarna såväl högskolornas uppdrag som förutsättningarna för högskolelärares arbete. De lyfter fram undervisningen i högskolan: föreläsningar, seminarier, handledning, examination, nätbaserad utbildning och värderingar. Boken behandlar även högskolelärares utvecklings- och karriärmöjligheter inklusive en diskussion om dokumentation av meriter. Den nya upplagan har omarbetats grundligt i ljuset av de förändringar som ägt rum på organisations- och styrningsnivå. Kapitlet om nätbaserad utbildning är helt omskrivet och ett kapitel om examination har tillkommit. Att arbeta i högskolan – utmaningar och möjligheter är lämplig för både nya och mer erfarna lärare inom högskolan.

Research concerning the supervisor role in separate educational programmes has been undertaken, but cross-professional studies are few. The aim of this study was to explore the lived experience of supervising mentors in Sweden during the practice-based, off-campus sections of the education in teaching, nursing, and social care. The study used a participatory phenomenological approach in which four researchers and nineteen supervising mentors worked together in the research process which was accomplished in four different phases. The data collecting method used was interview. The results constituted a main essence entitled "Struggle of power and control of professional quality enhancement" built upon four themes: "Constitutes a motivating force", "Feelings of responsibility", "Feelings of frustration" and "Wishes for alteration". Conclusions from the study are that communication, information and contact between the professionals in the fields and university teachers need to be strengthen to keep up supervising mentors' motivating force and to give them support.