The purpose of this paper is to examine the complex relationships between educational policy and classroom practice. By employing a sociocultural perspective, we examine formulations inscribed in socio-material artifacts about what students should learn and how they should engage with knowledge. We explore how these formulations are mobilized in…

Critical thinking is an essential skill for life-long learning, and, given its increasing importance as a graduate attribute, it is vital to evaluate how educational systems can best improve students' critical thinking through their curricula and classroom practices. This study evaluates the differences in the critical thinking skills of students…

Play, games and sport are a part of the content of physical education (PE), and has been the subject of a longstanding debate among educators internationally and in Scandinavian countries. Play refers to something unstructured and free, while sport is a controlled and managed activity. Drawing on Skovbjerg`s (2021) play theory, this article…

Secondary school level quantum physics (QP) courses have recently been implemented in the national curricula of many countries. QP gives opportunities to acquaint students with more recent physics and its applications and to discuss aspects of the nature of science. Research has shown that QP is a challenging area for students. Because the…

The Norwegian 2006 national curriculum reform introduced elite sport as an upper secondary school subject. The purpose of this innovation was twofold. Firstly, it was a political move to oppose the national growth of private elite sport schools. Secondly, the new elite sport curriculum formalizes opportunities for students taking academic programs…

This article reports a qualitative study of teachers' operationalisation of mathematical literacy. A model representing the multifaceted nature of mathematical literacy is used to analyse video recordings of mathematics teaching in three grade 9 classes. Analysis indicates that teachers' operationalisation of mathematical literacy appears to be…

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…

Schools today face the challenge of preparing students to live, work, and prosper in a rapidly changing world. As a response to this global challenge, Norway has adopted a national curriculum focusing on the development of 21st-century skills. In this study, we investigate if and how the tasks in science and language arts textbooks in…

The aim of the study is to map patterns of teaching quality through interactions in Mathematics lessons in lower secondary school classrooms. The sample is 10 ninth-grade classrooms in Norway (pupils' age, 14-15 years). Reciprocal linkages between teaching through interactions in Mathematic lessons and pupils' results on a standardized National…

In Norway, the national curriculum together with the Education Act serves as the foundation for teaching and learning in primary and secondary education and training. Local educational providers are given autonomy to develop local adaptations of the centrally given subject-specific curriculum competence aims. This article explores some structural…

This article investigates the composition of the Norwegian lower secondary school curriculum with a special emphasis on pre-vocational education from a contemporary perspective. The data consist of four official national curricula enacted from the 1970s until the present. Despite differences between the curricula, the main structure of school…

Different religions are treated in different ways in Norwegian sixth form textbooks. We carried out an exhaustive content analysis of the chapters devoted to individual religions in textbooks for the Religion and Ethics course currently available in Norway, using rigorous indicators to code each word, image and question according to whether they…

This Eurydice report sheds light on two different but complementary perspectives of digital education: the development of digital competences relevant to learners and teachers on the one hand, and the pedagogical use of technologies to support, improve and transform learning and teaching on the other. The report covers different areas of digital…

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…

According to Stenhouse (1984), "research is systematic 'inquiry' made public". By bringing "inquiry" into teaching practice we promote learning in three layers: learning of mathematics; learning of the "teaching" of mathematics; and learning of the processes through which mathematics teaching and learning develop.…