Teaching

Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg has a broad experience of university teaching and education administration. As a senior lecturer, she has been teaching on all levels of higher education, from introductory courses and MA-courses to PhD-studies. Presently she is mainly teaching in the Master’s Programme for International and Comparative Education, which is is also coordinating.

Susanne teaches the course “Hypothesis, Action and Design” (together with Max Scheja and Marianne Teräs) for PhD-students. She had the privilege to be a co-advisor for Anette Nord’s Ph.D. study on teaching CPR-training in secondary school (PhD 2017 at Linköping University) and Maria Sparf and her study on Programing in Science Centers (Lic. 2021 at LiU). Here at IPD she is engaged into PhD supervision of Nathalie Dewan (together with Camilla Thunborg and Ali Reza Majlesi) and Adrian Rexgren (together Meeri Hellstén and Gustav Lymer).

Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg was earlier director of studies for the Master’s Programme in Pedagogical Practices, Outdoor Education and Special Needs Education at the University of Linköping where she gathered well-grounded experience with university administration (2009-2017). At Linköping she also worked as a gender lecturer (2008-2017; see Swedish version of my presentation).

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• ‘We have our lessons in Teams’ – Strategies chosen in Swedish schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and consequences for students in upper secondary education

  2022. Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg, Noam Ringer, Ulf Fredriksson. Tertium Comparationis Journal für International und Interkulturell Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft 28 (3), 250-273

  Article

  In Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic, compulsory schools were generally kept open but upper secondary schools closed and turned instead to distance education for a time during the spring term 2020. This article investigates the strategies chosen in Swedish schools, with special focus on the consequences of these decisions for students in upper secondary education. The study, built on interviews with a group of 15- to 19-year-old youths, contributes through a student perspective on learning from home during remote education. The article analyzes the strategy in the Swedish education sector during the pandemic, and describes how a group of upper secondary students perceived the shift to digital and remote teaching during the pandemic with regard to the availability of the digital infrastructure and to studying under the new conditions of distance and remote education. Possible lessons to learn from the pandemic in Sweden could be that students are better technically prepared to work with computers, but less prepared to work independently.

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• Swedish Pupils’ Perspectives on Emergency Remote Teaching during COVID-19 - A Qualitative Study

  2022. Noam Ringer, Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg. International Journal of Educational Research Open 3

  Article

  Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools in many countries were forced to stop face-to-face teaching and switch to emergency remote teaching (ERT). The aim of this study, based on semi-structured interviews with upper secondary-school pupils in Stockholm, was to explore how Swedish pupils perceive their ERT and to understand their preconditions for learning. We found variations among pupils with regard to how they perceived their new morning routine, the increased flexibility in structuring their day, the flexibility to choose their workplace at home, and the decreased control by their teachers. While some perceived the increased flexibility as challenging, others appraised it as a possibility to be more independent. With regard to their classmates, all participants perceived difficulties learning from each other in ERT. Identified difficulties involved comparing one's performance to that of classmates, having deep discussions, encouraging each other, and organizing themselves in a group. The results are discussed in relation to previous studies, and are interpreted through the lenses of the Designs for Learning Theory.

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• Design for learning programming

  2022. Maria Sparf, Håkan Löfgren, Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg. NorDiNa 18 (1), 6-22

  Article

  Programming recently became mandatory in Swedish compulsory schools (age group 7-16); this article contributes to our understanding of novice learners’ different approaches when programming. The study builds on observations and informal conversations during programming lessons at three Swedish science centres. At the time of the study, science centres already had experience of programming education as they offered courses for pupils. This was used as a complement to teaching at compulsory school. We ap-ply a design-for-learning perspective to help us understand how contextual aspects influence what novice pupils do and how they design their learning during programming lessons. During the analysis process, we combine thematic analysis with the Learning Design Sequence (LDS) model. We identify five qualitati-vely different approaches that pupils take to solve programming problems: mathematically, trial and er-ror, step-by-step, routine as well as aesthetic. Each of these approaches allows pupils to use and practice different abilities that are important for programming. We discuss how these abilities can be compared to computational thinking (CT). The study provides an insight how pupils are involved in designing their own learning when using their abilities to solve programming assignments. 

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• Global Demands - Local Practices

  2021. Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg, Elina Lahelma. Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE) 5 (1), 50-68

  Article

  Gender equality is a global aim that has been presented in numerous documents. However, teacher education programs in many countries still lack sustainable strategies for working towards gender equality in education. Working successfully in this area may promote more sustainable practices in schools to reach gender-fair societies. The Nordic countries are known for pro-active gender policies and they provide interesting cases for investigating achievements and struggles in the field. The purpose of this article is, from an international comparative perspective, to explore the rationales and practices when working with issues of gender equality in Finnish and Swedish teacher education and to reflect on related concepts. We describe, analyse and compare local practices, theoretical frameworks and challenges by revisiting gender and teacher education research and equality projects from the 1980s up to today. The comparative methodology chosen facilitates understanding examples from two neighbouring countries, illustrating different ways to develop policies and strategies. Local actors not only follow global claims to work with gender and equality in teacher education but also play an active role and contribute to these discourses. Our study suggests that gender equality cannot be achieved overnight; appropriate strategies need to be negotiated constantly in specific national and institutional contexts at universities and teacher education institutions.

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• Die Entwicklung der sozialwissenschaftlichen Diskussion über Schulabsentismus in Japan

  2019. Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg, Vincent B. Lesch. Japan 2019, 262-298

  Chapter

  The Development of Social Science Discussions on School Absenteeism in Japan: New Trends or an Old Problem?

  The aim of this paper is to summarize the development of the social science discourse on school absenteeism (futôkô) in Japan and to analyze it in the context of the debate on social inequality in society (kakusa shakai). This systematic literature review will answer the question how the issue of school absenteeism in Japan has developed since the postwar period up to the present. School absenteeism has been a subject of much discussion in Japan since the 1960s, and this paper discusses whether recent research on school absenteeism is merely examining this phenomenon from old perspectives or identifying new trends that are also interesting from an international perspective. As a background we clarify central Japanese terms in research on absenteeism in Japan since the post-war period and describe how school refusal has been considered a school and youth problems since the 1980s. The article builds on a methodology that is often referred to as "desk research" and which has undergone a renaissance under the concept of systematic literature studies, where search strategies and the presentation of the results are formalized in order to ensuring the transparency and reliability of the information (Eriksson Barajas, Forsberg & Wengstöm (2013: 24, 83). We focus our research on Japanese and international publications of the last decade. The evaluation of a total of 22 selected articles (including journal articles and book chapters) revealed important topics, such as new potential risk groups and solution strategies. The articles we found show absenteeism and high school drop-out are more frequent for disadvantaged groups in connection to poverty, migration, sexual identity and psychosocial factors. Interestingly, in the literature, connections between futôkô and social withdrawal (hikikomori) have been described as an overlapping but still different phenomena. Another trend that has been highlighted in the literature is the role of various new actors in and around the school system. Although school absenteeism may, in one way, appear as an old problem in Japanese research, the role of new players in the education system and the diversification of the Japanese school landscape, are becoming more apparent in response to persisted high numbers of cases of absenteeism.

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• Gender inclusion 2.0

  2019. Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg. Gender – Diversity – Intersectionality, 175-190

  Chapter

  The purpose of this paper is to discuss possibilities for working systematically with gender inclusion in adult education. The paper describes programme development in a Swedish folk-high-school teacher-education programme. The paper investigates how gender inclusion can be part of adult education and especially teacher training for educators in this field. As an example, the paper investigates a folk-highschoolteacher-education programme at a Swedish university where norm-critical perspectives are being introduced into university teaching. This is a relevant field for the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) and, specifically, the Network on Gender and Adult Learning as it touches on gender in adult educationand on how we can train adult educators in higher education with regards to gender and diversity.

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• School absenteeism among students in Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom:: A comparative study using PISA data

  2023. Ulf Fredriksson (et al.). Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE) 7 (1)

  Article

  School absenteeism is a challenge in many countries. Still, there are few comparisons between countries, which is partly due to a lack of shared definitions of concepts. This article makes use of PISA data to compare self-reported student absenteeism in Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (UK). Three data sets are used, from 2012, 2015, and 2018. The self-reported absenteeism, which is referred to as truancy in the PISA studies, was measured as having skipped a whole school day at least once in the two full weeks before students completed the PISA student questionnaire.

  The results show great variation between the studied countries, from 24.4% in the UK in 2015 to 1.5% in Japan in 2012. The percentage of students who reported having skipped school is much higher in the UK than in the other three countries. The differences between the countries concerning the percentage of students reporting having been absent from school are significant for all years, except between Sweden and Germany in 2015. Germany and the UK have a similar pattern in development, with the highest percentages in 2015, while Sweden and Japan have small (albeit not significant) increases from 2012 to 2018. The UK is the only country where the changes between 2012 and 2015 as well as between 2015 and 2018 were significant.

  It is not possible to see any obvious patterns between the countries that might be linked to differences related to their welfare regimes, education systems, or values. To find such patterns, it may be necessary either to include more countries in a study or to conduct more in-depth studies on each country.

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Show all publications by Susanne Kreitz-Sandberg at Stockholm University