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

Abstract: 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.