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Employing a mixed postqualitative methods approach, this article examines the concept of reading imaginaries in public library events in three cases where children read with robots, dogs, and drag performers. Using the critical analytical tools of sociotechnical imaginaries and matters of care, we regard our cases as containers for resolving societal problems, and we explore how they contain societal expectations and imaginaries about reading and literacy in postdigital ecologies. The care practices observed in our case studies transcend digital technologies, encompassing broader and politically charged issues and the importance of situating the hype and fear surrounding emerging technologies, such as AI, within a more comprehensive and far-reaching framework. As concerns over privacy, data flows, and security increasingly extend to analog technologies such as books, curriculum content, and the embodiment of educators, mediated public discourse continues to play a significant role in shaping these dynamics. An example of this is how drag reading events become hot-button issues in a politicised and polarised school debate, while dogs and robots do not.

COVID-19 amplified the everyday sexisms that academics experience in higher education, including women’s submission of publications. This chapter shows how a creative and transdisciplinary intervention, #FEAS FAKE JOURNAL, made space for feminist academics whose scholarship was affected by the pandemic to take part in a project that privileged “unfinished business”. A creative methodology was used that moved beyond the traditional research narrative that relies on mastery and certainty. Seventeen feminist academics participated in the project by submitting an abstract to a fake journal about an unfinished work. Several creative components were used to solicit and support personal, political, and creative accounts to the pandemic. These accounts show how feminist academics were affected by lockdowns, how they managed, and in some cases how they connected with each other. Findings show how transdisciplinary feminist creative activism made space for participants to reflect on the effects of the pandemic and to consider what is worth finishing. This paper shares a rare glimpse into the behind the scenes of knowledge making and doing as unfinished business. It shows how transdisciplinary feminist art activism can be enacted with care and solidarity with others.

 General description on research questions, objectives and theoretical framework (up to 600 words) In many European countries, reading proficiency is declining amongst children and adolescents (Mullis et al., 2023; OECD, 2023). Furthermore, almost 20 percent of young children seem to not like reading at all. There is also a wide gap between schools and students in many countries. Children from less fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds and children with migration background are disadvantaged within the educational system. Heterogenous classrooms, with great variation of students’ levels of reading proficiency and stated interest in literature, a growing number of students that lack sufficient reading skills and interest, and classrooms where most students lack both the sufficient skills and interest in reading, raises the demand on teachers to make an even greater effort than before to engage all students in school reading. This calls for further research on how engaging literature teaching can be organized. The present study interviews 15 teachers with a focus on the questions of which kind of didactic strategies or methods teachers use to engage students in school reading as well as the teachers’ views on and experiences of student engagement in school reading. The study’s aim is to contribute knowledge about engaging literature instruction for students that are unexperienced and/or unwilling readers and who seem reluctant to participate in school reading. Sweden serves as an interesting case in the study, with the purpose of highlighting trends in school reading, contributing to the fields of literature didactics as well as L1 research and practice all over Europe. Reading among Swedish adolescents seems to have declined in the past ten years, although the decline have flattened at a low level in recent years. Only 14 percent of Swedish 17–18-year-olds read daily, compared to 23 percent in 2012. There also seems to be a decline in students reporting that they enjoy reading, but at the same time the same students seem to think that they do not read enough (Andersson, 2023; Mullis et al., 2023; OECD, 2023). Sweden has also seen a decline in reading, both fiction and non-fiction, in the compulsory work in school. The proportion of students who read one full page or more during their school day has decreased significantly and students who never read fiction at all in grades 7-9 has increased from 44 percent in 2007 to 81 percent in 2017 (Vinterek et al., 2022). Moreover, an alarming trend is the increased difference in test results between Swedish speaking students and second language students and a widening school segregation that mirrors the societal segregation and socioeconomical gaps in Sweden (Mullis et al., 2023).  To address the current challenges, the Swedish government has launched several efforts to support and effect school reading, such as funding and legislation to guarantee students' right to staffed school libraries (Utbildningsdepartementet, 2023), and a committee, which will propose a Swedish Literature canon to be taught in schools (Kulturdepartementet, 2023). The upcoming new syllabus for Swedish in the upper secondary school also has a stronger emphasis on reading fiction and of the esthetic experience of reading (Skolverket, 2023).  This project draws on the theory of situated leaning and communities of practice developed by Lave and Wenger (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). School reading is regarded as a community of practice in its own right that does not mimic recreational reding. Furthermore, school reading is situated in educational settings thar are unique to some extent. Every school, group of subject teachers at a school and every class can be regarded as a community of practice. In line with this a qualitative focus group interview study with upper secondary teachers is carried out. 

 Litteraturläsningen har i skolans undervisning ofta spelat rollen som igångsättare av diskussioner om brännande frågor i samhällsdebatten, vilket ofta i litteraturdidaktisk forskning diskuterats i termer av litteraturundervisningens demokratiska potential. Dock finns det stort utrymme för såväl empiriska vetenskapliga studier om villkoren för elevers identitetsskapande och agens i mötet med litteratur, som kritiska studier om elevers möjligheter till engagemang i brännande samhälleliga, sociala och politiska frågor. Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka läsintresserade elevers erfarenheter av litteraturläsning som ett perspektiv på hur den kan realiseras i linje med radikal estetik, som i sin tur kan ses som en ingång för elever att resonera, problematisera och reflektera kring för dem pressande frågor. Studiens empiriska material består av en gruppintervju med fyra artonåriga kvinnliga elever som alla valt litteratur som tillval under deras sista år på gymnasiet. Vår analys visar att dessa elever upplever litteraturundervisningen som styrd, begränsad och begränsande. Eleverna följer och rättar sig visserligen efter utbildningens förväntningar och de räknas som framgångsrika elever, men de upplever sällan eller aldrig att de inbjuds till mer övergripande diskussioner om den litteratur de arbetar med eller om valet av litteratur. De uttrycker frustration över att de inte inbjuds till att diskutera (för dem) aktuella samhälleliga frågor kopplat till den litteratur de läser i skolan. Artikeln avslutas i en argumenterande diskussion där vi med utgångspunkt i vårt resultat pekar på möjligheter och hinder för att genomföra radikalestetisk litteraturundervisning.

 Under de senaste decennierna har litteraturdidaktiska forskare lyft fram litteraturundervisningen som en arena för att realisera skolans demokratiuppdrag. Argumenten har dels handlat om att litteraturen sägs rymma en demokratisk potential genom fiktiva världar som inbjuder till igenkänning, empati och förståelse för skilda livsvillkor (Alkestrand, 2016; Persson, 2007). Dels har det framhållits att samtalen om litteratur kan organiseras demokratiskt där eleverna får pröva olika tolkningar av skönlitterära texter (Borttaget, 2005; Borttaget 2024). Föreliggande studie hör till den sistnämnda inriktningen, eftersom den utforskar hur litteraturundervisningens läromedel initierar utrymmen för subjektifiering genom multipel kritikalitet.    Vi utgår i vår analys från begreppet subjektifiering (Biesta, 2011), som avser utbildningssituationer där studerande tillåts fördjupa sig utifrån sina egna intressen och kan upptäcka sig själva och andra som politiska, etiska och, som vi ser det, estetiska subjekt. Vi preciserar begreppet med hjälp av Namn borttaget (2022) två olika iscensättanden av “empowerment”. Empowerment 1 handlar om de på förhand givna sätt på vilket elever förväntas bli stärkta av att läsa och att bli en läsare. Empowerment 2 handlar om hur elever får bli stärkta i sin egen rätt – även om de inte följer en förväntad mall av att vara läsare eller att läsa.   I fyra nya läromedel för litteraturundervisning på gymnasieskolan, analyserar vi om och hur läromedlets textinstruktioner kan förstås initiera Empowerment 1 eller Empowerment 2. Det preliminära resultatet visar att den kritiska läsningen är marginaliserad till förmån för mer instrumentella läsarter och i de fall detta förekommer är det endast som Empowerment 1. 

 Literature has often played the role of instigator, mediator, and mirror for discussions on pressing issues in society. Many researchers in Literary Didactics have emphasized the democratic potential of literature reading in and out of school (Sundström-Sjödin, 2019; Hultin, 2005; Alkenstrand, 2016; Thavenius, 2003). Still, there is a need for more empirically informed scientific knowledge about the conditions for students' identity formation and agency when reading literature, as well as on the students' engagement with critically informed dialogue where concerns of the current state of the world and awareness of power structures in society might be addressed. Our aim with the paper is to investigate, from a female students’ perspective, in what ways literature reading can be realized in literary encounters in line with the principles of radical aesthetics (RA) (Thavenius, 2003) as a way for students to reason, problematize, and reflect on pressing topics. The study’s empirical material consists of a group interview with four eighteen-year-old female students from a Swedish upper secondary school selected because they have chosen Literature as an extra-curricular subject. The results show that that the students experience their literature education as being managed, controlled, and even restrained. These students do comply with educational expectations, and they do well in school. The students experience that they are seldom invited into more overarching discussions about the literature they read in school or about the choices of books; they express frustration over the fact that they are not allowed to discuss burning societal issues in relation to the literature they read at school. Finally, these results are discussed in relation to the complexity involved in literature teaching, for instance institutional factors as curricula demands and teaching traditions, as well as in relation to the possibilities for change that the students’ whishes for engagement and agency hold. 

In this paper, we explore the improvisations made in examination practices in higher education during the pandemic of 2020. Drawing on STS, we start from the theoretical assumption that examinations constitute an obligatory passage point in universities and colleges: a sacred point which students need to pass if they want to gain recognized qualifications. We base our analysis of higher education examinations on cases from six countries around the world: Australia, Belgium, Chile, India, Sweden and the UK. We use the analytical heuristic of choreography to follow the movements, tensions and resistance of the 'emergency examinations' as well as the re-orderings of actors and stages that have inevitably occurred. In our analytical stories we see the interplay between the maintenance of fixed and sacred aspects of examinations and the fluidity of improvisations aimed at meeting threats of spreading Covid-19. These measures have forced the complex network of examinations both to reinforce some conventional actors and to assemble new actors and stages, thus creating radically new choreographies. Although higher education teaching and didactics are being framed as a playground for pedagogical innovation with digital technologies, it is clear from our data that not all educational activities can be so easily replicated.