Helena Svanängen, adjunct in special education, was inspired by the ideas around educommunication and learning. Together with Anne Eklund and a few other colleagues, she started a shadowing circle to develop teaching.

Lilly Augustine och Helena Svanängen

Podcast Live.

How Educommunication can be applied in teaching Opens in new window. - a conversation between Head of Research Lilly Augustine and Helena Svanängen (from November 2024).

A group of teachers at HLK have started a shadowing circle to be able to give each other feedback on what kind of communication the teaching has created in the classroom. The group asks themselves whether communication and approaches have benefited students' inner conversations and learning.

"The EduCom concept is exciting because it highlights the communication between teacher and student. It's about the inner conversation that needs to start and that I have with myself while I'm learning," says Helena Svanängen, lecturer in special education.

So far, the group has had one round of the shadowing circle. There were many questions raised:

  • Power structures that influence communication. What makes a student dare to expose what they don't know during a lecture/seminar, what makes a student silent?
  • How do assessment cultures affect the conversation and interaction in the classroom?
  • What factors can interact when students exhibit "baby bird behavior" (that the student should be "fed" and the teacher should "feed"). How do we encourage students to seek knowledge themselves and express their needs to the teacher? How does the student's view of his/her own role in learning relate to attendance in non-compulsory parts?
  • How do we view the teaching form "lecture", is this how we best promote student learning? What are the obstacles to change, what are the benefits of what is already being done?
  • The art of using incorrect student answers in teaching, how to do it in a way that leads to learning?

What kind of teaching approach applies to the students learning processes?

The first round of shadowing was thus completed, but everyone in the group wants to continue.

"For spring 2025, we have divided into two groups," says Helena Svanängen.
"Each group will choose a focus that relates to the issues we discussed in round one, and based on that, design a smaller 'action' for the shadowing. The idea is that we get the opportunity to try out ways to develop our teaching towards a more communicative way of working and that through the shadowing we get support from each other to understand how the choices we make affect the students' ability to communicate and learn. After that, we meet again and help each other analyze and reflect on what has happened in our respective classrooms".

The shadowing circle includes: Helena Svanängen and Anne Eklund as informal leaders, as well as Eva-Lena Jonsson, Malin Axelsson, Lene Foss and Mikael Segolsson.

For more information, please contact Helena Svanängen.