Research nodes

To stimulate interdisciplinarity and new research ideas, the Faculty of Educational Sciences is currently funding five research nodes. The purpose of the research nodes is to give researchers the opportunity to generate larger multidisciplinary collaborations, both within and outside of the faculty.

The nodes function as a seedbed for the development of new research ideas, cross-disciplinary work methods, internationalisation and externally funded projects. Work with the nodes gives faculty researchers the opportunity to be active as research leaders and also provides them with the conditions to increase contact and exchange between researchers, doctoral students and second-cycle level students. 

The research nodes are led by a research leader and include researchers from at least two of the faculty’s departments, and any potential external partners. The five research nodes at the Faculty of Educational Sciences:

• languages, internationalisation, migration and education
• Identity matters: power, knowledge and place
• Revisiting regional sociobiophysical transformation
• Antibiotic resistance and education: Scientific literacy and scaling
• Global Citizenship Education in Historical and Critical Perspectives (GLOC)

Teachers and students today face major policy reforms like increases in evaluation and testing, decreases in financial resources and re-organization at all levels of the education system. At the same time, other circumstances in the world profoundly affect every-day life in schools, for instance migration and globalization. In this state of flux, mapping and investigating the complexities in educational practices and discourses call for research about teaching and learning, invested in venturing across disciplines to more clearly understand how identity and knowledge are interactively and interconnected constructed. The node, “Identity matters: power, knowledge, and place”, centres on how matters of identity and norms of knowledge are interrelated and negotiated in the texts and contexts of education. 

Contemporary educational research suggests that learning can boost socio-biophysical transformations and the need for more radical education for social transformation and social learning-centred transformation is recognised in the socio-ecological sciences (SES). However, although a plea has been made for behavioural and social change since the early work of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in the 1960s, how this occurs via learning processes remains a key under-researched narrative in the SES, especially in more complex areas of SES, e.g. where “wicked problems” arise at the nexus of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Accordingly, the research node Revisiting regional socio-biophysical transformation (Re-Set) studies how key agents of transformation for sustainability address wicked problems on a regional level, separated and in relation to each other. Re-Set focuses on new forms of socio-biophysical transformative human activity to abate regional wicked problems and boost constructive transformation for regional sustainable development. Particularly, the programme addresses schools, tourist SMEs, health agencies and culture institutions as important transformation agents in the process of driving, sustaining, and establishing regional sustainable development.

The research node languages, internationalisation, migration and education involve merging expertise in matters pertaining to languages, internationalisation, migration and education in the two included environments, sociology of education and the Centre for Professional Development and Internationalisation in Schools (FBA), and further within the faculty and university, primarily with linguistic research in the Department of Nordic Languages and research on the organisation of internationalisation in the Department of Business Studies. The nodes also aim to create a forum for the exchange of knowledge in languages, internationalisation, migration and education, where individuals who are active in the education system can meet researchers and teachers at Uppsala University who conduct research in these areas. During 2017, a number of seminars and workshops will be arranged within the framework of the node.

Human rights, international understanding, sustainability and massive flows of information are global challenges in a world where ideas often are in conflict with other goals and priorities in education. By analyzing these challenges from different perspectives and discuss the implementation of global citizenship in education, this node will contribute to an up-to-date understanding of what education may be in theory and practice in a global world. The node Global Citizenship Education in Historical and Critical Perspectives will be composed of researchers with different backgrounds and expertise on issues concerning the environment, minority rights, civil defense, globalization, education policy and democracy. PhD students and master students are welcome to seminars and workshops.

Antibiotic resistance (ABR) is emerging as a significant sustainability challenge and one of the greatest threats to global health and having the potential of contributing to the breaking down of existing social and economic structures. ABR is a complex, multi-sectoral challenge. Apart from the medical and epidemiological components, it has sociological, economic, ecologic and developmental dimensions. As such it could be understood as a wicked issue in the sense that the challenge of ABR will probably never be finally solved due to a high level of complexity but that it rather will need to be re-solved time and time again. In response to the ABR crisis, the World Health Assembly adopted a Global Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance in 2015 (WHO, 2015). Its first of five objectives calls for improved awareness and understanding of antimicrobial resistance through effective communication, education and training. In creating awareness and developing responsible habits, education – formal and informal – is seen as crucial.

Therefore the purpose of this interdisciplinary node “Antibiotic resistance and education: Scientific literacy and scaling” is to

1. Connect the competences on scientific literacy, scaling and education to create a platform for cooperation with researchers and educators on antibiotic resistance.
2.  Initiate this cooperation and make it sustainable over time.
3. Create an arena, in cooperation with UAC, ReAct and Department of women’s and children’s health, for sharing knowledge between researchers, doctoral students, master students and educators on the topic of antibiotic resistance and education. The activities in the node will be done in connection to the work done at Uppsala Antibiotics Center.