Katarina Lindahl
Educational Developer
PIL Pedagogical Development & InteractiveAbout Katarina Lindahl
Background
I joined PIL in January 2023 and work as an educational developer. Previously, I have worked as a lecturer at Dalarna University, where I mainly worked with online-teaching. I have taught on courses both within the English subject and the subject Pedagogical Work.
I am a certified subject teacher of English and Religion and hold a Licentiate of Philosophy in Subject Matter Education with a focus on English. I studied at Gothenburg University at the Centre for Education Science and Teacher Research (CUL) and finished my licentiate thesis in 2015. Prior to my research studies, I received a Master of Education degree from Karlstad University and worked in both secondary and upper secondary school as a teacher of English and religion.
At Dalarna University, I taught both within the teacher training programme and the English subject. have taught mostly on language teaching courses, language proficiency courses and courses on pedagogical leadership and assessment in the teacher training programme. I have also supervised students’ degree theses on both bachelor’s and master’s level for several years. In pedagogical work I have worked with teaching and leadership courses and especially on the teaching placement courses or “VFU” as we call them in Swedish. In 2021 I was awarded the distinction Excellent Teaching Practitioner.
Research interests
In my licentiate thesis I focused on vocational English in the Building and Construction Programme. The aim of the licentiate thesis was to examine how, and in what ways, vocational English is a part of English language teaching in the Building and Construction Programme in Sweden, and what the influences were for such pedagogy. The main research question was how policy documents relate to the views of teachers and their educational practice regarding vocational English. The study consisted of two parts: a textual policy analysis of the three latest upper secondary school reforms in Sweden (Lgy 70, Lpf 94, and Gy 2011), and semi-structured interviews with practicing English teachers in the Building and Construction Programme. The interviews are categorised by using Spradley’s (1979) semantic relationships and taxonomies. Balls’ (Ball, 1993) and Ozga’s (1990; 2000) concept of policy enactment is used in the analysis as well as Bernstein’s (1990; 2000) theoretical framework of classification, framing, and horizontal and vertical discourse.
In recent years I have worked more with net-based learning and teaching. I am interested in how digital tools can be used in course design and how online learning can be improved through digitalisation. Increased demands on digital competence among teacher students have also inspired me to focus on how we as teacher educators in turn can show teacher students how to improve their own digital competence, and I have published several book chapters and conference papers on the topic.
My work at PIL
At PIL, I work with courses and modules on teaching and learning in higher education