New professors at the Faculty of Education

Beach Dennis
DENNIS BEACH
Born: 1956
Title of doctoral thesis: Making Sense of the Problems of Change: An Ethnographic Study of a Teacher Education Reform
Dennis Beach obtained his doctorate from the University of Gothenburg in 1995, became Docent (Reader) in 2000 and remained a staff member here until 2005 when he transferred to the University of Borås. He conducts research primarily within three areas: the consequences that the de- and re-regulation of the public sectors in the Nordic countries have had for the educational system, the new educational discourse regarding creative learning, and youth and social exclusion. He is a member of the Västra Götaland regional board for vetting the ethics of research involving humans, Chair of the Teacher Training Committee at the University of Borås, member of the science council of the Swedish Teachers’ Union and Deputy Editor of the journal Education and Ethnography. In 2001 he received the Ahlström Award and in 2004 the University of Borås’ pedagogy award. In 2010 he was appointed Professor of Pedagogy with a focus in Educational Sociology at the Department of Education and Special Education.

Booth Shirley
SHIRLEY BOOTH
Born: 1945
Title of doctoral thesis: Learning to program: A phenomenographic perspective.
Shirley Booth was born in Leicester, England, grew up in the English Midlands and studied Mathematics at the University of London. After some years in research and teaching mathematics, she moved to Sweden where she became a doctoral student in Education at the University of Gothenburg. She obtained her doctorate in 1992, became Docent (Reader) in 1997 and Professor of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education at Lund University in 2002. In 2007 she was appointed as Professor in Education at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, where she has conducted research on the teacher training programme and other aspects of the University’s educational activities that may potentially contribute to the country’s development. Her research has mostly concerned learning and teaching in higher education in the domains of mathematics, natural sciences and engineering. In May 2010 she was appointed Professor of Subject Didactics at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies.

Clarke David
DAVID CLARKE
Born: 1952
Title of doctoral thesis: Mathematical Behaviour and the Transition from Primary to Secondary School
David Clarke was born in Melbourne, Australia, and obtained his doctorate from Monash University in 1990 after presenting a doctoral thesis on math education. He is Director of the International Centre for Classroom Research at the University of Melbourne. He has studied classroom teaching and the complexity of it within a cross-cultural video-based research programme for 15 years, a project that has yielded several books and articles. He has also published a vast amount of material within the fields of assessment, open-ended tasks in mathematics, research methodology, and professional teacher training. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies.

Johansson Thomas
THOMAS JOHANSSON
Born: 1959
Title of doctoral thesis: Do the right thing. Lifestyle and identity in contemporary youth culture
Thomas Johansson was born in Vänersborg and obtained a Master of Science in Psychology in 1988 and a PhD in Sociology in 1992, both from Lund University. He has held positions at several higher education institutions, most recently as a Visiting Professor at Roskilde University and at University West. His research concerns adolescence and family issues, with a focus on gender, fatherhood and identity. On 1 April 2010 he was appointed Professor of Pedagogy with a focus on Child and Youth Studies at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning.

Popkewitz Thomas S.
THOMAS S. POPKEWITZ
Born: 1940
Title of doctoral thesis: Proposals for Teaching Political Science in Elementary School on the Basis of Analysis of Approaches to Problem-Solving by Selected Political Scientists
Thomas S. Popkewitz was born in New York and has been the head of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include educational reforms in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Southern Africa and USA. He has authored or co-edited over 30 books and about 200 articles and book chapters. Two of the books, Paradigms and Ideology in Educational Research and A Political Sociology of Educational Reform, have been awarded. His most recently published books are Cosmopolitanism and The Age of School Reform (2008), Globalization and Educational Studies and Schooling and the Making of Citizens in the Long Nineteenth Century. He is an honorary doctor at Umeå University, University of Lisbon, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and University of Helsinki and has received several awards. In early 2011 he was appointed Visiting Professor at the Department of Education and Special Education.

Reichenberg Monica
MONICA REICHENBERG
Born: 1950
Title of doctoral thesis: Röst och kausalitet i lärobokstexter. En studie av elevers förståelse av olika textversioner
Monica Reichenberg was born in Gothenburg, has a Bachelor’s degree and has worked as a teacher of Swedish, Swedish as a Second Language and Social Science. She obtained her doctorate in Subject Didactics from the University of Gothenburg in 2000 and became Docent (Reader) in 2006. She has been a Professor of General Didactics at the Department of Education and Special Education since June 2009, and on 1 January 2011 she was appointed Professor of Literacy at Umeå University.