(Re)harmonising the Academy: Integrating life-long learning and science communication in Swedish higher education

Licentiatavhandling, 2022

Higher education today performs a complex system of functions with a variety of goals and

expectations, including research, teaching, and disseminating research to the surrounding

society. It is however not always clear what these functions should entail, and how they should

be played out. Similarly, institutions, departments, and individual researchers’ role, or roles,

are multifaceted and ever-evolving and researchers are frequently expected to take on new tasks

and acquire new skills as a consequence of ambitions in policy.

This licentiate thesis explores how the ambitions of Swedish higher education, as expressed in

policy and regulations such as goal statements and promotion and recruitment processes, are

realised in practice in two specific areas: students’ life-long learning and their acquisition of

learning skills—with a focus on self-regulated learning, and researchers’ engagement in

science communication. The aim is to investigate potential areas of disharmony between policy

ambitions and practice, as well as among individual researchers’ multiple roles.

The three papers included in this thesis illustrate different facets of how policy ambitions are

realised in a Swedish STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) context.

Paper 1 focuses on the extent to which students acquire learning skills, i.e., to what extent the

ambition that students should acquire these skills is realised. This study used a questionnaire

to investigate engineering students’ learning skills in terms of learning strategies, self-regulated

learning, and awareness of what constitutes effective learning. Paper 2 explores to what extent

researchers engage in science communication i.e., to what extent the ambition that researchers

should engage in dissemination of science is realised in practice. By analysing data from a

publication repository along with corresponding full texts, this study mapped the science

communication practices at a Swedish STEM university. Finally, Paper 3 focuses on what

characterises expert scientists’ writing process when addressing non-academic readers,

providing input for training and eventual incentives that may promote science communication.

Seven researchers in STEM with extensive experience of science communication were

interviewed to pinpoint what strategies they use when writing science communication texts and

how they regulate this writing process.

My thesis paints a vivid picture of how higher education in Sweden today involves a

complexity of functions and practices, and faces the challenge of integrating new tasks and

skills, such as learning skills and science communication writing, into teaching and into

academic scholarship. Taken together, the findings from the three papers align with previous

research in Sweden and internationally, and suggest that policy ambitions in these areas are

realised to some extent—as shown by students’ awareness of the effectiveness of various

learning skills, and the fact that some researchers do engage in science communication.

However, there is clearly room for improvement: students’ need more scaffolding of learning

skills, which in turn may require incentives and training for higher education teachers, and

researchers need incentives and training in science communication. In summary, this thesis

suggests that there is a shortage of both incentives and training despite policy ambitions

expressed for instance in the Swedish Higher Education Act and in regulations for promotion,

tenure, and recruitment processes in Swedish and internationally. Overall, disharmonies seem

to be built into the system and into individual researchers’ academic scholarship. Finally, my

thesis provides some concrete suggestions about how to take small steps towards less

disharmony, i.e., harmonising, or perhaps reharmonising, the academy.