Findings from the neurosciences and their implications are subjects that are discussed and debated outside the specialised research context and by people that are not themselves part of the neuroscientific community. The article presents an empirical study of the ways that neuroscientific knowledge is represented in mass media. A sample consisting of all texts published in a major daily Swedish newspaper during one year that addressed the brain and neuroscience (n=202) was subjected to a qualitative analysis to elucidate how the brain and the relationship between brain and mental phenomena were represented. The results show that both objectifying and subjectifying representations of the brain are prevalent in the data. The representations of the relationship between brain and mind involves localisation of mental phenomena to structures and processes of the brain, explicit and implicit reductionist interpretations of neuroscientific findings as well as an element of identification where the brain is represented as something that defines the person. The results also highlight the role of metaphor and metonymy in these representations. In the discussion, the understanding of brain as an object susceptible to external influence and the notion of a double subjectivity are related to views on moral responsibilities.

De vetenskapliga framstegen har varit stora när det gäller att förstå den mänskliga hjärnan och relevansen av den ”neurovetenskapliga” kunskapsutveckling framhålls ibland vara av stor betydelse inom olika delar av samhället; inte bara inom hälso- och sjukvården, utan också andra samhällssektorer, liksom på ett mer fundamentalt plan för vår förståelse av oss själva. Vad vetenskapen visar och implikationer av olika forskningsresultat är frågor som diskuteras utanför de specialiserade forskningssammanhangen vilket innebär att de behandlas av personer som står utanför den neurovetenskapliga praktiken. Att en form av översättning från ett specialiserat vetenskapligt sammanhang krävs för att dessa frågor ska kunna hanteras blir särskilt tydligt då forskningsresultat ska tillgängliggöras för en bredare allmänhet. En sådan process kan beskrivas i termer av popularisering – dvs. att idéer, kunskaper och perspektiv omformuleras på ett sätt som gör att en bredare publik kan tillgodogöra sig dem. Detta utgör en form av meningsskapande som syftar till att göra resultaten från en vetenskaplig praktik möjlig att införliva i den ”vardagskunskap” som finns tillgänglig i samhället. 

Presentationen tar sin utgångspunkt i en empirisk studie av hur neurovetenskaplig kunskap populariseras i massmedia genom en kvalitativ analys av texter från svensk dagspress under ett års tid. Resultaten ger en bild av framträdande idéer om hjärnan som förekommer i massmedia samt hur kroppsliga fenomen relateras till psykiska i dessa texter. Resultaten lyfter fram objektifierande och subjektifierande representationer och diskuterar betydelsen av metaforik och metonymi i de texter där neurovetenskaplig forskning görs tillgängliga för allmänheten. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Mass media plays a central role in the continually changing public discourse on health and illness. In order to examine how shared knowledge is produced and transformed in mass media the ways mental health related issues were represented in the two major Swedish daily newspapers in 2009 were subjected to a qualitative analysis. Drawing on the theory of social representations the analysis focuses on how different perspectives are applied in the articles and how issues concerning mental health are represented. The results show that this discourse can be characterized as a dialogue with salient argumentative features: the perspectives of lay persons are supplemented by views of medical experts and others in what constitutes a field of contestation (Crossley 2006) where a number of conflicts are made explicit and central issues concerning both the nature of mental health/illness and authoritative knowledge are addressed. Representations of mental health and illness are characterised in terms of a tension between 'othering' and 'normalizing' representations. A tension between confidence/dependence and contestation/distrust is likewise found to characterise representations of expert knowledge. The results indicate an ambivalence regarding the authoritative role of expert knowledge concerning mental health as critique and expressions of distrust are juxtaposed with signs of confidence and dependence on professionals. The implications of the study applies to the relations between lay persons and 'psy-professionals' (Rose 1999) and the expectations that are placed on expert knowledge in a wide range of societal issues and in peoples’ everyday life.