Idag ska elever i den svenska grund- och gymnasieskolan utveckla dels sitt kritiska tänkande ur olika perspektiv, dels sina förmågor att värdera källor kritiskt. Vad kan man då som lärare göra för att stötta en sådan utveckling?

Författarna diskuterar ett antal olika perspektiv på hur man som lärare kan tänka kring och arbeta med källkritik tillsammans med eleverna.

Boken inleds med en teoretisk bakgrund till, och en principiell diskussion kring, kritiskt tänkande. Här tas bland annat psykologiska och filosofiska perspektiv på källkritik upp. Därefter följer konkreta undervisningsexempel och tips på hur man kan arbeta med källkritik i både grund- och gymnasieskolan.

The likes of John Dewey in the early 1900s and Edward Glaser in the 1940s highlighted the problem of a literate but uncritical populace, and the failure of education in relation to this (Abrami et al., 2015). As such, the very notion of uncritical thought was deemed as something of a democratic liability. Today a phenomenon has emerged that creates new challenges in this same vein: Uncritical and biased uses of research in layman debates about any and all controversial issues in society. In a mapping of the so-called climate skeptical blogosphere, Sharman (2014) showed that a few particularly influential websites acted as translators of primary research, and by reinterpreting it highly selectively have had a substantial impact on the public’s misconceptions on a global scale. Undoubtedly, academic critical thinking and research literacy – here defined as ability to assess research and uses of research critically – has a vital role to play here. In an accelerating information society (Rosa, 2013), the need for such academic critical thinking is arguably more urgent than ever – as is more knowledge about the “if, how or why not” students in higher education really reach these ideals.

In this article, we are to present empirical results from an ongoing research project on academic critical thinking and the undergraduate thesis in the humanities and social sciences, funded by the Swedish Research Council 2017–2020. The larg- er project builds on qualitative interviews with students as well as statistical modelling, but this particular part of the projectconsists of a close reading of 60 Bachelor theses. These student theses were identified as being of the highest quality in a larger sample of randomly selected theses (n = 809). The aim is to identify and analyze possible textual expressions of academic critical thinking in general and in relation to students’ reading of previous research in particular. The methodological rationale behind this approach is to use an authentic material that at face value could be expected to exhibit these qualities most clearly. This, in turn, makes it possible to scrutinize both the potential and possible limitations of these long-standing text traditions.

Theoretically, our work can be placed in the field of criticality, or critical thinking in action, in a specific context (Davies, 2015). We specifically focus on students’ suspended judgement re- garding what to believe and do. In doing so, we wish to add to the general critical thinking literature by challenging some of the most prevalent definitions therein, where the concept has come to be so all-encompassing that it risks being analytically meaningless. The use of a mid-range sample size of authentic student work will also contribute significantly to the critical thinking literature, which tends to rely on either small case studies or psychometric inventories and similar. Furthermore, our discussion about the possibilities and limitations of the textual traditions in student thesis work will be related to the emerging field of multimodal assessment (e.g. Jewitt, 2014; O’Halloran, et al, 2017 ) and the teaching-research nexus lit- erature (e.g. Jenkins, 2003; Kinkead, 2003).

In this article it is argued that students can gain a better understanding of both inter- and intra-disciplinary boundaries by inquiring into a single salient point where two disciplines may only partially intersect. Building on Marton's variation theory and Vygotsky's notion of articulation, a teaching model is presented and exemplified by disciplinary intersections regarding narration and narrativity in Literature and History. This is done specifically by investigating the theoretical implications of Shoshana Felman's notion of key narratives using William Faulkner's novel Absalom, Absalom!. The key narrative concept is adapted for the specific purpose of analyzing the practice of narratives in the disciplines Literature and History, respectively. It is suggested that Faulkner's novel seen as such a narrative explores pertinent questions concerning disciplinary boundaries for graduate and post-graduate students with a developed disciplinary identity in either of these disciplines.

In this article, results from an international survey on the experiences of educational developers' experiences of teachers' attitudes, emotions, and normative values in higher education are presented. Teacher-student relationships have a substantial impact on student learning and the general learning climate, but have still received relatively little attention in higher education research. In particular, an area that needs better understanding is negative attitudes regarding teaching and students. For this article, 110 veteran researchers/lecturers in eight countries currently working in educational development were asked to share their experiences of such attitudes, emotions, and normative values among staff. The results clearly suggest that educational developers need strategies to address such challenges.

Formativ bedömning i allmänhet och feedback i synnerhet har sin givna plats i rådande utbildningsvetenskapliga paradigm. Genom stora översikter, meta-studier och synteser ses feedback på och för lärande som ett empiriskt synnerligen väl grundat fenomen. Den typen av närmast konsensusliknande försanthållanden riskerar att undslippa kritisk granskning över tid. I den här studien görs en uppföljande närläsning av ett särskilt inflytelserikt segment inom feedbackforskningen. Resultatet visar att den underliggande primärforskningen i det fallet inte alls bygger på forskning om elevers och studenters lärande, tvärtemot hur denna forskning har refererats och använts vidare i efterföljande meta-analyser av till exempel Hattie (2009) och Hattie och Timperley (2007). Konsekvenser därav för forskning och evidensbaserad praktik diskuteras.

In this article preliminary results from an ongoing study of 88 undergraduate theses in history from five Swedish universities are presented. By matching thesis quality with individual student grades from upper secondary school two inter-related issues are discussed: how student prior knowledge relates to thesis quality in differrent groups, and how this can be understood in relation to a suggested phenomenon of direct influence on thesis quality independent of student learning.