Undervisning under förändrade villkor : Universitetslärares erfarenheter av breddat deltagande i högre utbildning

Sammanfattning

Over the past decades, Swedish higher education has undergone major transformations driven by national efforts to widen participation. As a result, universities now enroll increasingly heterogeneous student groups, characterized by substantial variation in language proficiency, study habits, prior knowledge, and disabilities. These developments create new conditions for university teachers, who are expected to design and deliver teaching that is both accessible and academically rigorous. The aim of this study is to examine the consequences of this broadened participation for teachers’ work, and to explore how they reason about accessibility, pedagogical support structures, and academic standards. The study is guided by frame factor theory, which explains how teaching is shaped by external conditions such as time, resources, organizational structures, and the composition of student groups. These factors both constrain and enable teachers’ pedagogical choices. The theoretical framework is complemented by a critical perspective on higher education, highlighting how governance trends and societal changes influence expectations on universities to achieve both inclusion and employment relevance. Empirically, the study is based on semi‑structured interviews with eight university teachers from different disciplinary fields at two universities. The interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis, allowing patterns in the teachers’ accounts to be identified and structured. The results are organized into three main themes. The first concerns factors shaping teaching practice, including challenges related to heterogeneous student groups, varying linguistic and academic abilities, and organizational conditions such as limited time, scarce resources, and fixed examination formats. The second theme concerns pedagogical ideals, where teachers emphasize clarity, structure, variation, and the need to link theory and practice to support student progression. The third theme addresses the balance between inclusion and quality, where diversity is seen as both enriching and challenging. Insufficient prior knowledge often requires substantial adjustments but cannot always be compensated for without compromising academic standards and legal certainty. Overall, the study shows that widened participation has complex implications for university teachers’ work, and that sustainable support structures and clear organizational frameworks are essential for meeting the needs of increasingly diverse student groups.