Stockholm university
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Robert OhlssonSenior lecturer

Research projects

Understanding the brain: Representations of neuroscience in Swedish mass media

The project analyses how massmedia distribute scientific knowledge of the brain to the general public. By taking texts published in Swedish daily newspapers during one year (2019) as a point of departure it aims to further the understanding of how neuroscientific knowledge, and the value of such knowledge, is presented in massmedia.

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Publications

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

  • Meningsbegreppet i pedagogiken

    2021. Robert Ohlsson. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige 26 (2-3), 85-110

    Article

    Mening och meningsskapande lyfts ofta fram som något centralt i definierandet av pedagogikens kunskapsområde. Artikeln presenterar en översikt över hur mening behandlas inom olika teoretiska perspektiv med relevans för den vetenskapliga pedagogiken. För att synliggöra likheter och skillnader i de innebörder som meningsbegreppet har inom olika teoretiska perspektiv görs en distinktion mellan tre olika meningsdomäner: (1) språkliga tecken, yttranden och text; (2) livsvärldserfarenheter; och (3) handlingar och temporalitet. En andra distinktion görs mellan hur mening inom respektive domän beskrivs som antingen realiserad/aktualiserad eller immanent. De olika meningsformerna presenteras med utgångspunkt i semiotisk, fenomenologisk, hermeneutisk, pragmatistisk och narrativ teoribildning, varefter gemensamma inslag i dessa diskuteras i termer av: mening på olika nivåer; samkonstitution, mediering, samt meningens situerade och perspektivberoende karaktär. Avslutningsvis argumenteras för att menings-begreppet har en central roll för pedagogikens kunskapsobjekt men också för reflektion över pedagogisk forskning då denna kan betraktas som ett tolkningsprojekt.

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  • Seminariet som undervisningsform

    2019. Robert Ohlsson.

    Report

    Seminarier utgör ett vanligt inslag i undervisningen på universitet och högskola och tillskrivs ofta en viktig funktion för studenters lärande. För att bidra till lärares egen reflektion över hur seminariet används i undervisningen genomfördes ett projekt där ett reflektionsmaterial skapades med utgångspunkt i litteratur och intervjuer med lärare om deras erfarenheter av seminarieledning. Föreliggande rapport behandlar överväganden i planering och genomförande av undervisningsseminarier gällande: seminariers målsättningar, syften och former, upplevda utmaningar i användandet av seminariet som undervisningsform, samt rollen som seminarieledare.

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  • Student-teacher conferencing in Swedish upper secondary school

    2018. Robert Ohlsson. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 18, 113-123

    Article

    Student-teacher conferences are mandatory in Swedish upper secondary school. Steering documents prescribe that these conversations should be characterised by equality between the interlocutors and “dialogue” is presented as an ideal for these interactions. This is a challenging task since this institutional discourse actualises the formal roles of student and teacher, and the interlocutors' relationship is inherently asymmetrical. This paper presents findings from an empirical study of audiotaped student-teacher conferences. By drawing on the concepts of perspectivisation and dominance the findings highlight ways that perspectives are related to each other in the conferences. The results show that the teachers' interactional role in the conversations was characterised by interactional dominance, while forms that had been filled out in preparation were used as tools that mediated student-teacher interaction and dominated the conferences semantically. Results pertaining to dominance and perspectivisation are further presented in terms of: perspective elicitation in the conversations; validation of the student perspective; playing down of asymmetry; and the ways that verticality between perspectives is established. It is concluded that when using guidelines involving self-assessment in a routine way as an agenda, the conferences acquires an educational and formative character rather than the open exploratory character prescribed in policy documents.

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  • Public discourse on mental health and psychiatry

    2017. Robert Ohlsson. Health

    Article

    Mass media plays a central role in shaping public discourse on health and illness. In order to examine media representations of mental health and expert knowledge in this field, two major Swedish daily newspapers from the year 2009 were qualitatively analysed. Drawing on the theory of social representations, the analysis focused on how issues concerning mental health and different perspectives are represented. The results show how the concept of mental illness is used in different and often taken-for-granted ways and how the distinction between normal and pathological is a central underlying question. Laypersons’ perspectives are supplemented by views of professionals in the newspapers, where signs of confidence and dependence on expert knowledge are juxtaposed with critique and expressions of distrust. The newspaper discourse thus has salient argumentative features and the way that conflicts are made explicit and issues concerning authoritative knowledge are addressed indicates ambivalence towards the authoritative role of expert knowledge concerning mental health. In this way, the newspapers provide a complex epistemic context for everyday sense-making that can be assumed to have implications for relations between laypersons and professionals in the field of mental health.

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  • Diagnosis as a Resource in the Social Representation of Mental Illness

    2016. Robert Ohlsson. Papers on Social Representations 25 (1), 12.1-12.24

    Article

    The theory of social representations has been applied in empirical research that examines shared understandings of mental illness in different communities. Another line of inquiry, drawing on a number of theoretical perspectives, has dealt with the functions of diagnosis in everyday sense-making regarding mental problems. This paper suggest how the theoretical model of social representation can be extended in order to account for representation as interactive sense-making in which diagnostic concepts serve as a mediating resource. An empirical study of discourse in self-help groups with people sharing experiences of mental health problems is used to explore the role of diagnosis in establishing shared understandings and identity. It is argued that when diagnoses are anchored in lay knowledge, they acquire new meaning potentials and serve new functions for representation that have ontological, epistemological, and moral dimensions.

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