The learning environment of students is a fundamental part of school life, both socially and academically. The ambition to create a school serving the best interests of all children is explored by analysing key concepts encompassing students' right to a healthy school environment, and examining how this discourse has unfolded over five decades in…

The use of standardized assessment tools for the evaluation of quality in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is on the rise, yet a greater understanding of the applicability of these tools across contexts is still needed. This study investigates the factor structure of two assessment tools, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System Pre-K…

Applying a broad interpretation of education, this paper investigates how one Sámi (the Indigenous people of Northern Norway) sports club teaches traditional lingual knowledge to its youth members. Using Wittgenstein's language philosophy and Mead's understanding of figurative cultures as theoretical frameworks, and qualitative methods, two…

We investigated the between- and within-person longitudinal relationship between perceptions of a caring school climate and mental well-being, and the role of socioeconomic position (SEP) for these constructs among high school students in Norway (N = 1508; 60.7% girls). Using a random intercept cross-lagged panel model, we found positive…

Prior research has suggested that well-performing school leadership clusters around a set of general core practices, which appear to be effective across a range of national, social and cultural contexts, yet contingent of school leaders being responsive to context and responding appropriately to their different contextual demands when they employ…

Increasing awareness of the consequences of bullying leads to efforts to address deficiencies in the learning environments in which bullying occurs. This study explored factors that determine the learning environment and their influence on bullying experiences at two universities in Norway. The study employed a cross-sectional design involving 438…

Purpose: This study aims to convey lessons learned from two sustainability initiatives at Norway's largest university. This contributes to knowledge-based discussions of how future, sustainable higher education institutions (HEIs) infrastructures should be envisioned and planned if the fundamental uncertainty of the future development of learning,…

Critical thinking as a concept, has a rich history and is central to much of the debate within international educational research and increasingly within environmental and sustainability education (ESE). Currently, it is gaining a foothold in the curriculum and in practice in Nordic countries. However, to date, there has been no proper account of…

In studies of academic resilience, the concept is typically operationalized by pre-defined cutoff values of students' achievement level and their social background. A threat to the validity of such arbitrary operationalizations is that students around the cutoff values may be misclassified. The main objective of the current study is to apply a…

Studies show that despite many programs with intentions to create a positive and inclusive learning environment, bullying and exclusion is still a challenge. This article investigates the following: (a) What challenges are there in the psychosocial learning environment in primary school, from a student perspective, and (b) what strategies can…

This paper investigates the material complexity and relational emergence of 'teaching'. Reporting on a video-based ethnographic study of an upper secondary classroom in Norway, the paper centres on the following research questions: Which material-discursive practices 'matter' in upper secondary teaching situations, and how are participants' bodies…

Institutional change is being called for to renew higher music education (HME). But what institutional pressures, specifically, are driving these calls, and how are HME organisations responding to pressures to change? By turning to institutional theory, we lean on the concept of institutional isomorphism to shed light on how HME organisations may…

While it is established that parental "wh"-questions, as a high-quality language input, are associated with child language outcome, less is known about the role of children's "wh"-questions in their language development. This study examines whether children's "wh"-questions during a dinnertime conversation are…

The induction period is a frequently discussed element in a teacher's career. While there is a recognised need for support during induction, the access to support is not available to all newly qualified teachers (NQTs). However, little is known about the micro-political processes of NQTs' access to support in the workplace. The purpose of this…

International trends promoting school diversity and choice have reshaped education across Europe, leading towards a multiplicity in ownership structures and varied governance configurations. More recently, this can also be seen in European countries with a long history of state-owned and governed public schools, such as in the Nordic states. The…