Granted projects 2024-2025

The project Good Examples for School Attendance External link, opens in new window. aims to map the ongoing work in Jönköping and Värnamo municipality to increase school attendance and help build a systematic and sustainable work in the area. The project is based on interprofessional collaboration between school staff, teacher educators and researchers from educational sciences, health sciences and humanities. The aim is to create tools to increase school attendance and enable success in terms of passing grades and final grades. The project leader is Maria Bäcke, lecturer in literature.

The project Talrelationer i fokus - ett ULF-projekt om matematikundervisning i F-3, is a collaborative project based on a need to develop mathematics teaching to eventually increase students' goal achievement in mathematics in Mullsjö municipality. Participants are Anna-Lena Ekdahl and Per Håkansson, School of Education and Communication, together with Cecilia Rejgård and Christina Widigs, Mullsjö municipality.

Granted projects in 2022

The project How the natural environment contributes to children's language learning focused on the importance of place for language learning in natural environments, i.e. how the many qualities and phenomena of nature in different ways stimulate children's language learning. The main aim was to explore teachers' experiences of the impact of natural environments on children's language learning - including communicative ability and motivation, language comprehension, vocabulary and pronunciation.

The study was based on the ERASMUS+ project Early Language Development in Nature (ELaDiNa, 2021-2023), and continued in the spring of 2023 through group discussions with preschool teachers working in Jönköping.

Data was collected through closed and open-ended questionnaires (with Swedish, German and Slovenian teachers in the ELaDiNa project) and through group discussions at six workshops with preschool teachers working in Jönköping.

According to the survey, teachers considered natural environments with the presence of sticks and branches to be most important for stimulating children's language learning, closely followed by wildlife and sand.

Sticks and branches were considered to promote speech, communication and dialog. For older children, sticks and branches helped to expand children's vocabulary and knowledge of grammar, such as comparing and contrasting. With sticks, children could also create letters and text.

Wild animals aroused feelings of curiosity and excitement in both pre-school and school-age children; they encouraged oral language development by making children want to call attention and share what they have seen, ask questions and describe.

Sand encourages creativity and imagination. With sand and water, children design and build everything from cakes to castles, while commenting on or describing to other children and adults what they are building. Through collaboration, children learn languages from each other.

In the group discussions with the preschool teachers, several examples emerged of how children's language learning developed when the natural environment significantly increased their enjoyment and stimulated their imagination, compared to indoors.

The results of the part conducted as a questionnaire study have been published and are available in DIVA(Waite and Askerlund, eds., 2023, pp. 108-120).

Participants are Per Askerlund (project manager), Sara Hvit Lindstrand, Ellen Almers.

Project: VA-MER 2.0, project manager: Anna-Lena Ekdahl

The project Language learning potential in experience-based shared reading (2023-24) is a continuation of the project Strengthening language and positive reading habits - expanding the possibilities for dialogical reading aloud and has been carried out in collaboration with the same multilingual primary schools in preschool class and grades 1-4 and the researcher Catarina Schmidt, School of Education and Communication (HLK), JU. In addition, five preschools in Jönköping and Vaggeryd municipalities have collaborated with researcher Sara Hvit Lindstrand, HLK, JU. In the continued project, teachers and researchers have collaborated in three interventions with the aim of contributing didactic knowledge about the ways in which experience-based shared reading can contribute to strengthening children's/pupils' language and commitment to reading. Currently, analysis and preparations for popular science publications are underway for both of these projects.

Projects awarded in 2020

The project Strengthening language and positive reading habits - expanding the possibilities for dialogic reading aloud (2020-22) was carried out in collaboration between teachers at two multilingual primary schools in preschool class and grades 1-3 and researchers Catarina Schmidt (project manager) and Sara Hvit Lindstrand, School of Education and Communication, JU. The project was initiated from a stated desire to use dialogic reading aloud as a way to strengthen students' language and engagement in reading. In three interventions, teachers and researchers have collaborated to change and develop classroom practice in dialogic reading aloud. The aim of each intervention has been for students to 'get into' the literary work and encounter its content while being given opportunities for active language use.

In addition to the dissemination of knowledge at the conference Theory and Practice in Collaboration (teachers and researchers), the results of the project have been made visible in an article in the journal Forskul External link, opens in new window. and in book chapters in the following titles: Communicative Classroom Practices. Early literacy teaching (Schmidt, 2023), Studentlitteratur, and Skrivundervisningens praktiker (Hultin & Jönsson, 2023), Gleerups.

In addition, the researchers in the project have participated in the podcast Lärare & Forskning External link, opens in new window..

Granted projects 2019

The project on Targeted interventions for newly arrived children and students' learning - a local and national development / improvement area aims to describe and analyze the process of how a municipality works to develop a learning environment in preschool and school that promotes learning and development for children who are newly arrived. The focus is on developing governance and management work. The project is based on the following questions:

  • What emerged as important in the mapping work to develop in the work of receiving children and families who are newly arrived?
  • What opportunities and challenges do the project managers experience in the process of improvement work?
  • What results do the project managers perceive that the improvement work has produced in relation to the formulated action plan?
  • What needs for continued improvement work emerged in the final report to Skolverket?

Participants are Karin Renblad and Charlotte Öhman.

Vaggeryd municipality External link, opens in new window.
Anna-Lena Ekdahl and Birgitta Lundberg