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The digitalization of schools has intensified in recent years. It is reflected in policy documents as well as in extensive investments in digital technology and professional development initiatives to promote digitalization. At the same time, attempts are being made to “tame” the same digitization sometimes by regulations banning smartphones in class. This study aims to examine how smartphones are interpreted by vocational teachers in Sweden using the theoretical lens of technological frames.

The data consist of ten semi-structured interviews with vocational teachers, representing eight vocational programs in Sweden.

The results show breadth in how teachers understand, interpret and relate to the smartphone in vocational education. The authors show how the smartphone often forms an integral part of professional work and is thus difficult to separate from vocational teaching and nurturing vocational competencies.

The authors’ contributions include using technological frames to explore how smartphones are interpreted and understood by vocational teachers by demonstrating how they relate to the nature of the smartphone, the strategy for the smartphone and the smartphone in use. The theoretical framework is used to interpret restrictions on technology use, in this case a smartphone, in education. The results could be of interest to researchers as well as to teachers, school leaders and policymakers.

In the present discourse of university politics, collegiality has come to be viewed as a slow force – seemingly inefficient and conservative compared to popular management models. Concerns have thus been raised regarding the future prospects of such a form of governance in a society marked by haste and acceleration. One way to bring perspectives on this contentious issue is to perceive it in the light of the long history of the university. In this article, I derive insights about the shifting state of collegial governance through a survey of an intense period of reforms in Sweden c. 1850–1920 when higher education was allegedly engaged in a process of modernization and professionalization. Drawing on recent work in historical theory and science and technology studies (STS), I revisit contests and debates on collegiality in connection to a number of governmental commissions. Focusing on the co-existence – and collisions – of multiple temporalities reveals that overcoming potential problems associated with heterogeneous rhythms required an active work of synchronization by universities in order to make them appear timely, as higher education expanded along with the mounting ambitions of national politics, focused on centralization, efficiency, and rationalization. The analysis is structured around three focal issues for which collegial ideals and practices, including their temporal characteristics, were particularly questioned: (a) the composition of the university board, (b) the employment status of professors, and (c) hiring or promotion practices. Pointing at more structural challenges, this study highlights how collegiality requires a constant maintenance paired with an awareness of its longer and complex history.