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Eva EliassonSenior lecturer

Research projects

Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Att undervisa för utveckling av yrkeskunnande i vård och omsorg

    2019. Eva Eliasson. Nordic Journal of Vocational Education and Training 9 (1), 66-88

    Article

    Teaching for development of vocational knowledge in health care

    The aim of this study was to examine didactic principles in health care teachers' description of their teaching practices, and how these principles were intertwined with vocational knowledge. In addition, characteristics of a health-care didactical approach were explored. Theoretical framework was based on Vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective and Lave and Wenger’s situated learning. 17 health-care teachers, working with adolescents or adults, were interviewed. The findings showed that vocational knowledge and didactic principles were often intimately intertwined. Didactic principles were dialogicity, work-links, variation, relational environment and language development. The healthcare didactical approach highlighted the development of students, both as health-care givers and as persons, through interactions with teachers and peers, and the teachers acted as boundary-crossing role models. The health-care didactical approach also involved the students’ language development. Issues that need to be reflected on are if the emphasis on feminine-coded vocational knowledge is too strong in relation to the programme objectives, and if reading and writing as teaching forms are too marginalised.

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  • Health and social care teachers' descriptions of challenges in their teaching at upper secondary school

    2017. Eva Eliasson, Helena Rehn. Nordic Journal of Vocational Education and Training 7 (1), 42-63

    Article

    Since vocational teachers not only mediate theoretical and practical knowledge, but also ideals concerning the professionals’ personalities and actions, the aim of this study is to analyse if and how these ideals influence the highlighted challenges of teaching. The study is drawing on a social constructionist perspective; the method used involves 17 qualitative interviews. The challenges mentioned were as follows: lack of motivation, language and cultural factors, low status of the occupation and plagiarism. Underlying ideals rooted in the health care sector were that students should become a carer because of an inner desire. Moral and ethical values were other ideals that underpinned themes such as dealing with plagiarism and the problems experienced with non-native Swedes. An underlying fact is also the low traditional status of the nursing assistants, a challenge the teachers try to handle without effective tools. In the order to understand the challenges and handle them, the teachers construct categories of differences. This is visible when the categorisation of students is made based on motivation and ethnicity. The findings highlight the importance of courses

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  • Caring disposition and subordination. Swedish health and social care teachers' conceptions of important vocational knowledge

    2015. Helena Rehn, Eva Eliasson. Journal of Vocational Education and Training 67 (4), 558-577

    Article

    Based on the increasing demands for vocational training in upper secondary school to adapt to workplace conditions, the aim of this article is to explore vocational teachers’ conceptions regarding vocational knowledge. Drawing on a social constructionist perspective, this study analysed data from 17 interviews. The study showed how power dynamics, such as gender and class, affect the teachers’ conceptions. The most important expertise, according to the teachers, was related to a feminine caring disposition in which empathy and communication were identified as core abilities. However, these abilities needed to be balanced in order to avoid becoming too emotional. There was a strong link to class, for example, the hierarchical structure was revealed when the teachers spoke of a nursing assistant having to know when to call a nurse rather than a doctor or an ambulance. The findings raise questions concerning what it means for the construction of vocational habitus when a superordinate group trains a subordinate group.

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  • Adaptation och resistance

    2013. Eva Eliasson. Nordic Studies in Education 32 (1), 14-30

    Article

    The aim of this article is to illuminate and discuss the relationship between state governance and local Swedish knowledge culture from 1958 to 1999. The main questions are: How do conceptions of knowledge and learning in a local teacher education culture relate to state governance, and how can adaptation and resistance be understood? The overall perspective is one of curriculum theory and the methods used are archival studies and interviews. The concepts of strategy and ideology are used and found helpful for understanding adaptation and resistance in the knowledge culture under study. Adaptation occurred when local ideological standpoints were in harmony with state governance and there were no strategic losses for the culture as a whole.

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  • Metod, personlighet och forskning

    2009. Eva Eliasson (et al.).

    Thesis (Doc)

    This dissertation focuses on continuity and change in a local knowledge culture, the nursing teacher education in Stockholm, during the years between 1958 and 1999, with a strong emphasis on conceptions of knowledge and learning. Concepts of analysis come from Basil Bernstein, Ludwik Fleck, Reinhart Koselleck and gender theory. The study is based on archived documents and interviews with nursing teacher educators.

    The results show continuity as well as change of the knowledge culture. The first period, 1958-1974, shows continuity in relation to the space of experience. Methodical knowledge is important. The second time period, 1975-1978, is characterized by great changes, starting with a distinct break when prior conceptions and values are discarded. The focus on important, external knowledge of the earlier period is replaced by the conception that the human being and her inner abilities and characteristics are the most important resources for the profession. Conceptions and values are not completely abandoned during the last time period, 1979-1999. Values connected to personality development remain, but new values appear as a consequence of state governance towards research basis.

    The spirit of time, new co-workers, changed state governance, the ideological characteristics of values as well as a female dominance within the education allow an understanding of the great change in conceptions and values in the middle of the 1970’s.  A stable staff of nursing teacher educators, the specific ideological and gender coded features of the values and a traditional distinctiveness and separation from other teacher education programs allow an understanding of the stability of the personality development element.

    The male gender coding of the content during the first period could be understood by the influence of physicians on the education, state governance towards education technology and harmony with the space of experience. During the whole of the studied time period, there are female coded conceptions regarding the work of the nursing teacher educators; collectivity, emphasis on practical action and control of - closeness to the student group.

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  • ‘Back to work’—factors facilitating migrants’ re-entry into their previous vocations

    2022. Eva Eliasson, Marianne Teräs, Ali Osman. Journal of Education and Work 35 (8), 828-842

    Article

    This article focuses on ‘successful migrants’, who have succeeded in gaining employment in Sweden in their previous vocational area. The aim is to describe factors on various levels – individual, organisational and national – that have facilitated migrants’ way back to work as well as their inclusion at workplaces. Twenty migrants and five employers/mentors were interviewed. The overarching theme of facilitating factors concerns language proficiency, individual factors, enabling frameworks, and supporting persons and networks. The migrants’ own ambitions and motivations, and the support they got in interpersonal encounters were especially emphasised as important. In the migrants’ narratives, a central theme in relation to the theoretical perspective was how to deal with threats to their social and professional identity in the new country. For them, maintaining a positive self-image was key to the strength needed to fight for a return to working life. People in the environment were important in this struggle – for positioning them as competent persons and for offering support.

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