Education and Media : Activities and Governance in a Municipality's Development Efforts
PhD project
Over time, the state has undertaken various reforms to govern the development of education. The issue of using new media may be seen as such an example. A change in the use of media in education imposes great challenges on both municipalities and teachers.
This thesis aims to visualise and discuss governance in the contradictions that arise in practical activities aimed at integrating new media in school teaching, based on three actors’ perspectives, namely the dilemmas of the teacher, the media pedagogue and the media developer. The study is based on systemic thinking about governance and I employ both activity theory and the concept of governmentality to visualise and discuss the governance. The study is conducted in the form of a case study. The case consists of a municipality where, based on the curriculum’s mission, teachers have tried to find ways to integrate new media into their teaching. My own connection to the case consists of having been a driving and governing force in the work as a teacher, media pedagogue and media developer. The case was chosen because the municipality’s work on the national level and via the media has been held up as a good example.
Project overview
Project period:
2010-01-04 –
2014-11-21
Participating departments and units at Umeå University
The empirical part consists of both my own life narrative and studies of different documents, texts, images, films and sound recordings that show how governmentalities are formed and take shape on the micro, macro and meso levels. I use a methodological prism, a combination of different analytical perspectives, discourse, activity, narratives and governmentality.
The results reveal that the driving actors are innovatively handling the systemic contradictions that arise in the work of carrying out the curriculum's mission. The governance of the activities is based on a trust rationality. The more the use of new media is spread in the municipality's schools, the more contradictory it becomes for the middle level's actors. The trust rationality has been superseded by a distrust rationality, creating a growing gap between the administration and the activities.
