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This essay focuses on what impact developmental dyslexia has on assessment and grading in the second language teaching of English in the Swedish educational system. The data presented in this essay are based on six semi-structured interviews with English language teachers of lower and upper secondary schools from the south-eastern parts of Sweden. The interviews were conducted in Swedish, and the collected data have been translated into English. The inquiries of the interviews focused on the teachers' awareness of dyslexia and its impact on learning and teaching, as well as how they worked with and their considerations made when assessing and grading dyslexic pupils. The interviews specifically enquired what particular challenges arose in the assessment and grading process, what provided aid, and what could be done to provide further relief during this process. The results show that the assessment and grading of dyslexic pupils is similar to the general practice. The teachers do, however, accommodate the dyslexic pupils' needs in the teaching and carefully consider their difficulties when assessing and grading. The teachers use, for example, spelling programs and such technical aids to help them, to some extent, disregard dyslexic difficulties while assessing. However, results show how the teachers are not able to transfer their awareness of dyslexia and its implications into the assessment and grading situation, suggesting that the teachers' own ability to assess dyslexic pupils is somewhat inadequate.

The freshmen programming courses at the University of Economics in Prague offer a unique approach to learning the art of programming and software engineering. The introductory courses follow the Architecture First methodology that gives students the opportunity to learn programming from the top down, without being constrained by the specifics and syntax of any one programming language. It teaches the thought processes needed to build programs, allowing the student to absorb the big ideas of computer programming. The average number of freshmen at the faculty of Informatics and Statistics is around seven hundred students. The task of correcting programming assignment and preparing appropriate feedback would be a mammoth undertaking for teaching staff in most university settings worldwide that offer similar computing degrees. It is therefore quite often the case that the faculty provisions some sort of automated testing technology that can handle the volume and provide both the teaching staff and the students with the tools needed to manage the assignments. These automated tools or systems have been, and continue to be, the subject of many research topics across the world and continue to evolve as new technologies and teaching methods evolve. This study first introduces the theoretical background of automated assessment and grading tools and systems and then provides an analysis of the fields current state. Taking that as input to the next phase, the study uses that information to then design and implement a custom-built system that would enable the automated testing of the structure and other aspects of student assignments. The main goal for the resulting system is to provide an intuitive and convenient way of declaring what needs to be tested for a given assignment and then providing the mechanism to run those tests automatically. The resulting system, DynoGrader, dynamically validates student assignments at runtime using Java runtime annotation processing mechanisms and Java Reflection API.

The point of departure for this study is Michael Lipsky’s description and problematization of street-level bureaucrats’ discretion. Street-level bureaucrats, such as teachers, have a possibility to influence the implementation of policy at the point of delivery to citizens.This can create a problem within the democratic policy process as policy does not materialize in the way that politicians intended. I used a qualitative research design and interviewed ten teachers in upper secondary schools about their exercise of authority, in order to investigate a factor that may lead to policy-making: logics of action. I claim that logics of action are suitable tools for analyzing and discussing the policy-making that street-level bureaucrats perform in the democratic policy process. The main purpose of this study is to contribute to such a discussion. A second purpose is to elucidate logics of action as a type of factors that guides teachers’ exercise of authority, but which has not been noticed to any great extent in previous research. I investigated which logics of action are mainly present in teachers’ exercise of authority concerning assessment and grading: a logic of consequences or a logic of appropriateness; a manufacturing logic or a service logic; and an instrumental logic or alternative logics. The relationship between logics of consequences and appropriateness is complex. It is difficult to say that one logic is the dominant force behind teachers’ exercise of authority. This is because of the constantly changing circumstances in the school environment. As for the manufacturing and service logics, the latter is dominant in assessment and grading. This does not influence decision-making as such, but enriches policy with a certain value production. Lastly, teachers claim that they instrumentally follow the guidelines in their exercise of authority. But at the same time alternative logics, such as gaming and cheating with the rules, are very much present in assessment and grading. Alternative logics distort teachers’ decision-making in several ways. These results show that logics of action are indeed tools that can help us to better understand what influences street-level bureaucrats’ exercise of authority, and how this contributes to policy-making. I conclude by suggesting how the use of logics of action as analytical tools can enhance our knowledge of street-level bureaucrats’ discretion in future research.

The aim is to study and reach an understanding of how upper secondary school students perceive the subject of physical education and health through the assessment practice they experience. Part of the interest concerns the content of the assessment practice and the picture of the subject emerging from this. Another part is to study what students perceive to form the basis of the actual assessment. A third field of interest is directed towards the assessment practice at large and the ways in which students perceive how far this gives them equal opportunities of showing their knowledge and skills. Focus group interviews were carried out inspired by different vignettes, based on various dilemmas identified through earlier research. Four upper secondary schools from southern Sweden are represented, with 38 interviewed students. To further understand and analyze student perceptions, a New Institutional perspective is applied focusing on normative, regulative and cultural conditions1 (Scott 2008). The regulative and normative conditions are understood on the basis of different policy documents, and the cultural conditions are interpreted through previous research in the field. It can be established that institutionalized club sport receives priority both before school policy documents and the less institutionalized health field. Some normative elements are perceived to be important, especially those linked to club sport, like cooperation, consideration, understanding and fair play, while other normative and regulative requirements are neglected or not mentioned at all, like outdoor education. The interpretation may be that above all the culturally based requirements in the form of sport affect students’ perception of the subject of physical education and health. The interviewed students perceive physical education and health as an unfair subject. There are those students who have learned to perform ”correctly” according to sport norms, while at the same time there are those who do not have these skills, and none of the students perceive that they master the sport norms correctly. / Syftet är att undersöka och förstå hur elever på gymnasienivå uppfattar ämnet idrott och hälsa genom den bedömningspraktik de erfar. Ett delintresse utgörs av innehållet i bedömningspraktiken och vilken bild av ämnet som därigenom framträder. Ett andra delintresse är vad eleverna uppfattar ligger till grund för själva bedömningen. Ett tredje delintresse är riktat mot bedömningspraktiken i stort och på vilka sätt eleverna uppfattar i vad mån denna ger dem likvärdiga förutsättningar att visa vad de kan. Elevernas uppfattningar har studerats med hjälp av fokusgruppsintervjuer med inspiration i tre olika vinjetter. I studien deltog 38 elever på fyra olika gymnasieskolor. För att vidare kunna förstå och analysera elevernas uppfattningar användes ett nyinstitutionellt perspektiv där normativa, regulativa och kulturella villkor står i förgrunden (Scott 2008). De regulativa och de normativa villkoren förstås utifrån olika styrdokument och de kulturella villkoren utifrån tidigare forskning om ämnet. Analysen visar att den institutionaliserade föreningsidrotten får företräde framför både skolans styrdokument och ett mindre institutionaliserat hälsoområde. Vissa normerande inslag uppfattas som viktiga, speciellt de som kan kopplas till fostrande aspekter så som exempelvis samarbete, hänsyn, förståelse och fair play, medan andra normerande och reglerande villkor negligeras eller nämns inte alls, som exempelvis friluftsliv. Detta skulle kunna förstås som att det framför allt är de kulturella villkoren i form av föreningsidrott som påverkar elevernas uppfattningar om ämnet idrott och hälsa. De intervjuade eleverna uppfattar idrott och hälsa i stora drag som ett orättvist ämne. Det finns de elever som kan ”rätt” idrott och samtidigt finns de som inte har dessa färdigheter och ingen av eleverna uppfattar att de kommer till sin rätt i ämnet.

Improved production and reduced consumption of beef is often highlighted as key aspects for tackling sustainability issues of the food system because the environmental impact of beef is ~100 times higher than plant-based foods. Both scientist and civil society organisations argue that eating “less but better” beef is important for sustainability. Better quality can encompass better eating quality as well as improved sustainability, but despite the two being very important for overall quality, very little research on interactions between them exists. No tools, applicable in Sweden, allowing for joint assessment have been developed. This study investigates the synergies and trade-offs between eating quality and environmental sustainability by using Swedish beef production as a case study. It reviews peer reviewed literature on factors that contribute to eating quality (flavour, tenderness and juiciness), and four factors that contribute to environmental sustainability (climate, biodiversity, feed/food competition and animal welfare). Based on the findings, an indicator-based sustainability assessment framework and a meat quality grading scheme differentiating Premium and Standard eating quality is developed, aimed to be practical tools for Swedish beef assessments. The study provides a systems-based understanding of synergies and trade-offs that may occur when “less but better” is presented as a strategy for tackling the environmental impact of beef. Results show that there are synergies between eating quality and biodiversity, animal welfare and with the right choices of feed, feed/food competition but with consequent trade-offs with climate impact. The discussion addresses the potential of enhanced eating quality to increase the profitability of Swedish beef production without consequent substantial negative impact on sustainability. The suggested methods have the potential to facilitate a shift from quantity- to quality-based consumption, but further empirical studies are required.

The following study aims to contribute knowledge about the challenges civics teachers at secondary schools faced in assessment and grading when the digital teaching was applied due to the pandemic. The purpose of this study has been to find out how the grading and assessment practice was affected by the prevailing distance studies. In the study, the questions that have been answered are: In what ways was the grading and assessment practice affected by distance learning according to the social studies teachers? And the question: What were the biggest challenges and opportunities with grading during distance learning according to the social studies teachers? The method applied in the following study is semi-structured qualitative interviews. The selection of respondents was based on two criteria. One criterion for selection was that the teacher worked at secondary school level and within the subject of social science, and that the teacher in question taught digitally during the distance period. Eight teachers participated in the study. The theoretical framework that was applied in the analysis of the results is the TPACK framework. The results show that several different challenges and opportunities could be identified. Among other things, the teachers felt that legal certainty was a challenge during distance learning, the reduced interaction with the students and other external circumstances such as home conditions affected the teaching, which in turn also affected the grading. Two knowledge requirements within the subject of social studies are distinguished as particularly challenging to assess and grade remotely, factual knowledge and different forms of presentation. The reduced classroom interaction also meant that the discussion and communication which is what characterizes the subject civic, was challenged during the distance period. The possibilities of the digital tools that could be ascertained from the results section are, among other things, that the teachers perceived that the formative assessment became more efficient and structured and that more new accounting forms appeared in connection with the introduction of digital technology.