New wine in old skins: Changing patterns in the governing of the adult learner in Sweden

This paper investigates students' initial encounters with the seminar as a working form in higher education. The main interest was to explore how the communication pattern, the aim of the seminar and meaning were negotiated. The results originate from an ethnographic field study where we followed a group of students in a Masters program in Social Science during their first five weeks. Data were analyzed from a socio-cultural perspective and the concepts of participation and reification. We found that there was an implicit negotiation of the communication pattern, what to discuss and the function of the seminar. In these processes, the students and teacher participated in the negotiation of meaning. Different objects were created through a reification process, around which the negotiation of meaning took place.Original publication: Andreas Fejes, New wine in old skins: Changing patterns in the governing of the adult learner in Sweden, 2005, International Journal of Lifelong Learning, (24), 1, 71-86. Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, an informa busines