The study explores three challenges: the gap between theoretical education and practical training, the lack of digital didactics in teacher education, and the tension between offering meaningful leisure time and achieving educational goals in SAEC. The study explores how SAEC teacher students can be prepared to design scientifically based hybrid learning activities. Grounded in Design for Learning theory, students participated in theoretical and practical lessons and designed hybrid learning activities at a SAEC center. Data from written reflections and interviews show that students were able to connect theory to practice and expressed a willingness to design similar activities in their future careers, as they viewed these activities as a way to integrate planned learning activities with pupils’ interests. These findings highlight the importance of preparing SAEC teacher students, both theoretically and practically, to design hybrid learning activities.

Studien tar avstamp i tre kända utmaningar: 1) det av lärarstudenter upplevda glappet mellan den teoretiska utbildningen på universitetet och den praktiska utbildning de möter på skolor 2) bristen på digitalt inriktad didaktik i många lärarutbildningar och 3) spänningen mellan fritidshemmets uppdrag att erbjuda meningsfull fritid och samtidigt bedriva undervisning som bidrar till måluppfyllelse. Syftet med studien är att utforska hur fritidshemslärarstudenter kan förberedas för att designa läraktiviteter med digitala verktyg (hybrida läraktiviteter) på vetenskaplig grund, vilket kan minska de ovan nämnda utmaningarna. Studien utgår från teorin Design för Lärande (DfL), där undervisning och lärande ses som multimodal design. I studien deltog fritidshemslärarstudenter i teoretiska och praktiska moment på universitetet samt två dagar på ett fritidshem där de designade hybrida läraktiviteter. Empirin består av studenternas skriftliga reflektioner samt semistrukturerade intervjuer. Genom kvalitativ innehållsanalys identifierades, tolkades och kategoriserades meningsbärande enheter i empirin. Resultaten visar att flera studenter gjorde explicita kopplingar mellan teori och praktik. Vidare uttryckte de en vilja att designa hybrida läraktiviteter i sitt framtida yrke, då dessa ansågs vara ett sätt att kombinera barns meningsfulla fritid med planerade läraktiviteter. Dessa resultat belyser vikten av att förbereda studenter, både teoretiskt och praktiskt, för att designa hybrida läraktiviteter på fritidshemmet.

In this study, we elaborate on whether – and if so, how – students’ creation of analog and digital representations, in combination, may strengthen their meaning making in combinatorics while engaging in problem solving. An intervention was conducted in two Swedish preschool classes (six-year-olds) involving 25 students. The results indicate that creating a digital animation did not primarily enhance  problem solving but rather served as an aid for students to redesign their analog knowledge representations, enabling them to further engage with the mathematical content. A conclusion is that the creation of analog and digital representations, in combination, contributed to students’ explorations of combinatorics and that, when integrated into a learning-design sequence, digital animations enhanced students' understanding of combinatorics. This conclusion should be seen in relation to the small scale of the study, which means that more studies are needed in order to generalize the findings.

A common challenge in teacher education is the perceived or created gap between theoretical education at the university and practical training at schools (Ebbelind & Helliwell, 2024). Additionally, there is a lack of digitally oriented didactics in teacher education (Papavlasopoulou et al., 2023). This is problematic as many children live in hybrid realities where analog and digital experiences are so intertwined that they cannot be separated. At the same time, some children lack these experiences. This study explores how school-age educare (SAEC) teacher students, who have engaged in both theoretical and practical elements at university and practice schools, reason about designing theoretically based learning activities that include digital tools. The specific research questions are:

In what ways do students perceive that the university course activities prepare them to design hybrid learning activities?

What emerges as central in students’ reasoning about designing SAEC teaching activities that include digital tools?

A central premise of this study is that pupils should develop digital competence early on to be able to become active members of a digitized society. To achieve this, teachers need to make scientifically based didactic choices to promote pupils’ learning (Wernholm, 2024). This study focuses on preparing SAEC teacher students to make such choices regarding the use of digital tools in their teaching practice. Internationally, Swedish SAEC is unique due to its close collaboration with compulsory schools and its combination of teaching, recreation, and meaningful leisure time. However, previous research identifies tensions between what SAEC teachers consider good practice and children’s perspectives on meaningful leisure time (Elvstrand et al., 2023).

This study is theoretically grounded in Design for Learning (Selander, 2008), which views teaching and learning as a form of multimodal design. The study’s design and the SAEC teacher students’ design of hybrid learning utilized tools developed within Design for Learning as part of a university course. SAEC teacher students participated in a teaching sequence with theoretical and practical elements at the university and two days at a practice school.

Data consists of 17 teacher students’ written reflections and two interviews; one individual and one group interview. Thematic analysis was performed to identify themes relevant to the study’s purpose and research questions. Preliminary results indicate that several students make explicit connections between theory and practice and express how the course elements help them acquire a theoretical model useful for designing hybrid learning activities in SAEC. Furthermore, the SAEC students express a will to work with hybrid learning activities in their future profession. They explain why and how hybrid learning activities are suitable for SAEC teaching, as they combine planned learning activities with pupils’ interests, making them meaningful. These results highlight the importance of preparing students, both theoretically and practically, for designing hybrid learning activities in SAEC. 

The aim of this study is to critically explore how different discourses surrounding children’s out-of-school use of digital technologies can influence educational practices within school-age educare (SAEC). The study is guided by the following research question: What discourses on children’s out-of-school use of digital technologies emerge from SAEC teachers’ and school leaders’ analyses of children’s drawings, and how might these discourses influence their educational practices? This was accomplished by examining written analyses by SAEC teachers and school leaders of 5933 drawings created by children, depicting their families and leisure activities. Anchored in social constructionist theory and employing a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis, three dominant discourses were identified: the discourse on screen time, the discourse on a digital childhood, and the discourse on children’s play. The findings challenge prevailing narratives on screen time and digital childhood by highlighting the diversity in children’s engagement and access to technology. The study concludes that educators must cultivate a nuanced understanding of how contemporary children interact with digital technologies when outside of school. This entails setting aside adult-centric assumptions and foregrounding children’s voices, particularly their interpretations of what it means to be a playing child in a digital world. 

Syftet med artikeln är att exemplifiera och diskutera hur fritidspedagogiskundervisning kan designas för att präglas av valfrihet och meningsfullhetsamtidigt som undervisningen genomförs med en systematik och lärarstyrning.Artikeln centreras runt en nyfikenhet på vad som händer när fritidspedagogiskundervisning designas för att fokusera på de sociala dimensionersom traditionellt har beskrivits som fritidshemmets kärna. Empirin består avskriftliga reflektioner av sju olika undervisningsaktiviteter där fritidshemslärarehar planerat, genomfört och utvärderat fritidspedagogisk undervisning medintentionen att utveckla elevers mjuka förmågor. För att synliggöra lärarnasundervisningsdesign används det teoretiska perspektivet Design för lärande ianalyserna. Resultaten visar hur systematiserad och genomtänkt fritidspedagogiskundervisning kan genomföras med aktiviteter och metoder som stården fritidspedagogiska traditionen nära och baseras på elevernas vilja att delta(eller inte). Således kan frihet och styrning integreras för att göra undervisningenmeningsfull. Dessutom verkar systematik och utvärdering bidra till attsynliggöra elevers utveckling av mjuka förmågor.

Today’s children have never lived in an analogous world but in a hybrid reality where the physical and the digital are so intertwined that they cannot be separated (Wernholm, 2020). Thus, hybrid learning activities should arguably be central in education today (Wernholm et al, 2025). In this presentation, we focus on such activities. The presented study is part of a larger project aiming to explore what happens and becomes possible in theoretically framed hybrid activities that include young pupils’ creation of digital animations in Chemistry, Mathematics, and Swedish. Theoretically, we draw on the frameworks of social semiotics (Kress et al., 2001) and Designs for Learning (Selander, 2008), where teaching and learning are seen as multimodal designs. This is also the basis of the didactic design of the activities which were planned in collaboration between the teachers and the research team. Data has been generated through video recordings when pupils, in pairs or small groups, participate in activities where both analog and digital resources are used. The analysis is based on the Learning Design Sequence model (LDS) along with multimodal interaction analysis (Kress 2013). Preliminary results indicate that when pupils participate in hybrid learning activities, they position themselves in relation to each other and the digital and analog learning resources in different ways. Furthermore, they draw on their previous experiences and competencies to make meaning. Thus, this project contributes by providing implications for the early years of schooling by showing how hybrid activities can put a variety of children’s competencies into play and support their meaning-making in different subjects.

I artikeln undersöks hur elever positionerar sig och vilka kompetenser de använder i skapandet av digitala animationer i hybrida läraktiviteter. Syftet är att bidra med kunskap om centrala utgångspunkter för design av undervisning som innefattar hybrida läraktiviteter. Data består av videoobservationer av elever som tillsammans skapar digitala animationer i svenska, matematik och kemi. Studien tar utgångspunkt i det teoretiska perspektivet Design för Lärande, där undervisning och lärande betraktas som en form av multimodal design. Multimodal interaktionsanalys används för att analysera elevernas handlingar. Resultatet visar att eleverna använder tre kompetenser i de hybrida läraktiviteterna; digital kompetens, social kompetens och ämneskompetens. Utifrån hur kunniga och delaktiga eleverna är framträder fem olika positioneringar: kapten, guide, utforskare, missnöjd passagerare och passagerare. I artikeln diskuteras hur de olika positioneringarna och kompetenserna förhåller sig till och varandra och samverkar i hybrida läraktiviteter, samt vad lärare kan fokusera på i sin design av undervisning med digitala verktyg. 

In this article, the focus is on how students position themselves and what competencies they use when creating digital animations. The aim is to contribute with knowledge about important aspects for designing teaching that includes hybrid learning activities. The data consists of video observations of pupils' collaborative creation of digital animations in Swedish, Mathematics, and Chemistry. Multimodal interaction analysis was applied to analyze the pupils' actions. The study is theoretically framed by Design for Learning, where both teaching and learning are viewed as a form of multimodal design. The results showed five different positionings: captain, guide, explorer, dissatisfied passenger, and passenger. Three different competencies that pupils used in the hybrid learning activities were identified: digital, social, and subject competence. How the different positions and competencies relate to and interact with each other in hybrid learning activities were discussed, as well as what teachers can focus on in their design for learning. 

Syftet med denna studie är att utforska lärares erfarenheter av att hantera föräldrakontakter i ett digitaliserat samhälle och vilken inverkan detta kan ha på lärares arbetsmiljö. Följande forskningsfråga vägleder studien: Hur beskriver lärarna sin användning av digitala teknologier för att hantera föräldrakontakter och upprätthålla gränser mellan privat- och arbetsliv? Data genererades genom 17 semistrukturerade intervjuer med lärare. Studiens teoretiska utgångspunkt utgörs av Rosas teori om social acceleration. En central utgångspunkt för studien är att en av de viktigaste förändringsfaktorerna för utbildning, och därmed också för utbildningsvetenskaplig forskning, är digitaliseringen och det växande beroendet av digitala teknologier i de flesta dagliga aktiviteter. Digitaliseringen har avsevärt förändrat kommunikationslandskapet, vilket har bidragit till att interaktion och distribution av information och kunskap har blivit mer komplex. Detta är väl i linje med Rosas argument att teknologisk acceleration leder till samhällsförändringar, vilket i sin tur påverkar människors livstempo. Denna acceleration har även påverkat föräldrars kommunikation med lärare, föräldrars engagemang och hur lärare hanterar föräldrakontakter. Preliminära resultat belyser lärarnas nyanserande beskrivningar av hur de hanterar föräldrakontakter. Vidare framkommer att det finns föräldrar som av olika anledningar begränsas i att ta del av viktig information, vilket är problematiskt eftersom det reproducerar och förstärker ojämlika villkor för elever i skolan. Utmaningarna för lärarna verkar vara relaterade till digitala teknologiers inverkan på att upprätthålla gränsen mellan arbete och fritid – för vissa har gränsen blivit suddig, medan andra använder digitala teknologier för att upprätthålla en strikt gräns mellan arbete och fritid.