SMED - Studies of Meaning-making in Educational Discourses

The research environment SMED (Studies of Meaning-Making in Educational Discourses) is a cross-university research environment in the field of didactics and educational science established in 2003. Members of the group are researchers and PhD students connected to Education and Sport Science at Örebro University. Research leaders are Professor Johan Öhman (Education) and Professor Mikael Quennerstedt (Sports Science). The environment has about twenty members including two professors, three associate professor, six researchers (PhD) and about ten doctoral students. SMED conducts didactic research within preschool education, history education, environmental education, science education, music education, health and physical education, citizenship education and literature education. The group also conducts research related to children's and young people's rights and cultural diversity in education. The environment has since its start ten years ago been focused on publishing research in international scientific journals. During the period 2010-2014 the members of the environment published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. The environment also has a number of international partners who participated as co-author in many of the articles. Members of the group are active with presentations at major international conferences, such as the ECER, AARE, AERA and BERA. Three members are conveners and one is link-convener of three different networks within the largest educational scientific conference in Europe, ECER. Currently, research is conducted within seven externally funded projects with a combined economic size of 16.5 million SEK. Most of these are funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR). The environment is also active in three graduate schools two of which are externally funded by the Swedish Research Council.