Although women's representation in STEM fields and occupations has increased, science and math continue to be stereotyped as male domains. This paper links psychological and sociological explanations for gendered disparities in STEM by examining the relationship between the local "micro-situational" female learning environment and the…

In this paper we explore how 15-16-year-old Norwegians experience social and cultural norms that shape their relationship with health and physical activity (PA) in a country where participation in PA is normative, in the sense that it is not only a widely shared practice but, in having significant cultural traction, is commonly understood as a…

This article sheds light on the elusive presence of race, racism, and Whiteness in Norwegian primary schools. Empirical examples from observations at six schools exemplify how race and racism appear as taboo concepts, but nonetheless play central roles in structuring conversations in the classroom. I argue that applying an affective theoretical…

This paper includes an analysis of legal acts concerning primary and lower secondary teacher education in Norway. The objective is to determine how multicultural education is perceived in these acts -- whether it is regarded as a supplementary subject or as a mindset that underlies teacher education. The theoretical framework includes critical…

This article explores the link between the OECD TALIS 2013 survey's framework for defining the ideal teacher and national educational goals by focusing on the teacher self-efficacy items, using cross-country comparisons. Surprisingly, cross-country analysis of the TALIS 2013 data combined with World Value Survey data about Desired Child Qualities…

This study aims to analyze the issue of morality in a teaching and learning set up. After discussion and answering the question "Is it ever the case that teachers hold students morally blameworthy or praiseworthy for factors that are known to be beyond their control?" the study concludes that teachers hold students to be morally…

This article explores factors that promote the practice of environmental citizenship in science education and aims to contribute to the development of the concept of practising environmental citizenship. We follow six Norwegian secondary students (aged 16-17) participating in a small-scale intervention study conducting an assignment on a…

This article describes two young Norwegian ethnic-minority girls in their efforts to involve social networks and to position themselves as learners in the transition between lower and upper secondary school. The article explores how they experience future possibilities represented by education and how they use resources in negotiating their…

Latin American students consistently score low on international tests of cognitive skills. In the PISA 2012 results, students in seven Latin American countries had an average score of 395 in mathematics, or about 100 points lower than the average score of 497 in four Scandinavian countries. We estimate the effect of socioeconomic characteristics…

Enhancing young learners' knowledge about appropriate and inappropriate sexual behaviour is crucial for the protection of children's rights. This article discusses teachers' understandings of their practices and approaches to the topic of child sexual abuse in Norwegian upper secondary schools, based on phone interviews with 64 social science…

Educational policies and practices are influenced by cultural, political, and economic factors, and this is also true of specialized educational approaches such as gifted education. Factors such as a country's cultural tendency toward egalitarianism or meritocracy, whether the political system is centralized or decentralized, and the degree to…

The perplexing numbers of Somali children withdrawn from schools in Norway and sent to Somalia is the concern of this study. These students are often brought back and re-enroll later as adolescents with concomitant educational challenges. The findings are critically analyzed employing John Ogbu's cultural ecology of minorities and a CHAT-based…

In recent years, plagiarism has been on the increase across the Western world. This article identifies Internet access as a contributory cause of this trend and addresses the implications of readily available Internet sources for the teaching and assessment of writing in schools. The basis for the article is a previous study showing a wide…

This article builds from a multi-sited ethnographic study on immigrant students' musical agency, conducted in three lower secondary school classrooms in the capital cities of Finland, Sweden and Norway. The focus of the article is twofold, and concerns what kinds of meanings the participating students ascribed to the music from their own or their…

This paper focuses on teachers of secondary level religious education in England, Estonia, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway. It presents a study of the teachers' perceptions of and responses to the diversity within their classes, in relation to their professional role and their personal and professional biographies. The study employed…