The article explores the major features of the Swedish Government's new initiative -a school based Upper Secondary Apprenticeship model. The analyses are guided by activity theory. The analysed texts are part of the parliamentary reformmaking process of the 2011 Upper Secondary School reform. The analyses unfold how the Government, the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), and the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise (SN) construct Upper Secondary Apprenticeship as an activity in the 21st century. The conclusion highlights how three traditional aspects of Swedish initial vocational education and training (IVET) collide in the formation of Upper Secondary Apprenticeship -a curriculum of labour market based apprenticeships, a curriculum of school based IVET, and ill-defined curriculums of school based apprenticeships. The emerging Upper Secondary Apprenticeship curriculum foreshadows multifaceted educational trajectories where the learning targets, and not the responsibility for the student's learning are displaced from the school to the workplace setting.

Higher vocational training (HVE) is a new form of post-secondary education that was introduced in 2009 in

A study was undertaken in order to identify variables predicting the willingness of male and female

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Research dealing with preschool teacher education has been, for a long time, criticalof a binary divide between theory and practice. Based on that issue, this studyinvestigates a preschool teacher education programme in Sweden. It focusses onreflection upon theory and practice as an affordance offered to students in studies andwork. The study used a questionnaire with two groups: campus studentsfollowing the regular programme and students who were nurses already working atpreschools. Analysis shows a fragmented education where the groups faced differentproblems, but also that neither of them could connect reflections on theory andpractice at the workplace to their own learning approaches in either studies orworking matters. How the students experienced affordances depended on theireducational skills and knowledge, and the programme relied mostly on individualreflection as the solution to the binary divide. This reliance seemed to work better forcampus students, who were challenged by the new environmental affordances. Thestudents in the field-based programme were close to the preschools’ pedagogicalmicro-practice, which limited the possibility for critical reflection on theory andpractice and its contextual conditions, especially for students who were nurses.Workplace routines seem to structure the students’ learning instead.