GATE - Governance and Technologies of Education
GATE is a research group in the field of educational sciences established in 2024 that conducts studies at the intersection of educational policy, practice and science.
The research group is interested in issues of educational policy, politics and governance, and the processes, techniques and technologies that influence how formal and informal educational practices are shaped and what subjects are created thereby. We are interested in change and continuity in education and its framework conditions, not least with regard to how cultural, technological and economic changes affect educational policy, research and practice and vice versa.
This includes an interest in philosophical issues such as inclusion/exclusion, health/ill-health, private/public, seeing/knowing, truth/beauty, human/technology from historical, contemporary and comparative perspectives. We seek to develop theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches to study how pedagogical knowledge is developed, disseminated and legitimized in society and the role of different actors - both human and non-human - in such processes.
Our research is grounded in internationally established policy and governance theories and in Scienceand Technology Studies (STS), which encompasses institutional, comparative, historical and spatial analyses of knowledge production at the intersection of science, technology and society in different types of educational arenas. Our research is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach where we weave together insights from pedagogy, didactics, sociology, history, political science, technology studies, art history and other relevant disciplines.
Main areas
GATE is involved in several national and international research projects in five main areas:
- Steering and governance studies
- History of educational thoughts
- Science and technology studies
- General didactics and teaching
- The promotion of the healthy citizen and subject-making
Current research projects
From words to numbers: how reading becomes a social and didactic problem
Funder: Swedish Research Council
This project is about the ways in which reading literature is motivated as something valuable in public discourse and the pedagogical consequences of different ways of motivating different types of reading.
Formation of teacher education
Funder: Swedish Research Council
Teacher education is often in focus in discussions about the possibilities and limitations of schools. Teacher education is associated with both great fears and hopes, both nationally and internationally, and one can often read that in attempts to reform schools, teacher education plays a key role as part of the complex system that governs schools and education. Internationally, there is currently a great deal of research to link teacher education and its content to research and make it more scientific. International discourses point to the importance of understanding the complex relationships that shape teacher education - as a system of different actors and organizations that sometimes interact and sometimes counteract each other. Therefore, it is often argued that teacher education should be understood and analyzed, but also shaped, thus correcting the various anomalies and shortcomings in the world of schooling. To our knowledge, there is little empirical research on such complex systems and the research literature calls for more systematic research. Instead, assumptions are made about how teacher education works and what might be useful to do with this system.
Given this, we believe that research is needed on teacher education in all its complexity, without relying on specific system theoretical assumptions. Instead, we believe that research is needed that recognizes the complexity of teacher education without relying on a discrete, coherent system. We have therefore chosen to consider teacher education as a collection of different actors, organizations, contexts and practices that together shape teacher education. The task for research then becomes to describe and understand how such aggregations shape teacher education. The overall aim is to analyze how teacher education is created and recreated in a web of different actors operating in different contexts and contributing in different ways to shaping the educational pathways and competencies of future teachers.
Shared responsibility for journal
Members of GATE
This page was last updated 2025-09-02