Purpose: The aim is to qualitatively explore Civics teachers' assessment decisions regarding content, skills, and methods in Swedish upper secondary schools. Methodology: Thematic analyses of assignments and interviews of thirteen Civics teachers in Swedish upper secondary school. Findings: The open Swedish curriculum and Civics syllabus enables…

Internal and external factors influence teachers' daily assessment decisions. The purposes of teachers' assessments are crucial, as these purposes guide the assessment process. Still, little is known about teachers' assessment purposes. The aim of this study is to identify and describe the different purposes of assessments that Civics teachers…

Research has revealed that teachers find teaching and assessing socioscientific argumentation (SSA) to be challenging. In this study, ten pre-service science teachers (PSTs) tested a new Practical Assessment of Socioscientific Argumentation Model (PASM) that was developed to enhance skills in assessing SSA. The models' design is based on the…

The objective of this study is to expand teachers' knowledge base of assessment in teaching by exploring pre-service language teachers' construct of grading literacy during their pedagogical studies and immediately after. We conceptualize pre-service language teachers' grading literacy with a literature-based flow model of decision-making…

This article examines the role and pedagogical implications of supportive assessment strategies at the interface where curriculum, general "Didaktik" and pedagogy meet; theoretically, the article draws upon concepts from research in each of those domains. This interplay is examined in relation to the performance-orientation on two…

Purpose: This paper presents a qualitative systematic review of Swedish research on vocational education and training (VET) at the upper secondary school level over the past 20 years. The review is based on a theoretical model on curriculum making as social practice that may serve as model for comparative studies between countries. By introducing…

Improving school effectiveness is a priority for many countries. The Swedish instrument "Pedagogical and Social Climate in School" (PESOC) has been widely used for measurement of school improvement. Since pedagogical leadership is an important component of school effectiveness, this study aimed to describe the psychometric properties of…

'Quality' in education has become a global phenomenon, and is frequently discussed in transnational and national policy. In such discussions, 'quality' seems to be both worthwhile and demanded, but at the same time, the concept has also been criticised in previous research as it seems to have attained a 'common sense' status. In this context, the…

The current paper draws on data generated through group interviews with students who were involved in a larger ethnographic research project performed in three science classrooms. The purpose of the study from which this data was generated, was to understand science teachers' assessment practices in an upper-secondary school in Sweden. During…

This book provides a rich and unique longitudinal account of content and language integrated learning (CLIL). The chapters report on the findings from a large-scale, three-year research project undertaken at senior high school level in Sweden. The ecological perspective, with quantitative and qualitative methods, gives voice to both learners and…

This paper reports on a project aiming at describing professional practice in the assessment of collaborative digital projects among a group of inservice English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers within the context of a single workplace, a technologically well-resourced upper secondary school in Sweden. In a previous project (Allen &…

The focus of the current study is students' perceptions of assessment and assessment practices. Assessment is understood as practices closely connected to the planning, enactment and evaluation of teaching and learning activities. The data derive from focus group interviews and dialogical meetings with students at a Swedish comprehensive school.…

This study presents the development process and initial validation of the NyTid test, a process-oriented movement assessment tool for compulsory school pupils. A sample of 1,260 (627 girls and 633 boys; mean age of 14.39) Swedish school children participated in the study. In the first step, exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) were performed in…

Grading is often perceived as one of a teacher's most difficult tasks. Despite most teachers endeavoring to grade their students as objectively as possible, many students feel that they are subject to unfair grading. The aim of this study is to describe what it is about a teacher's grading that contributes to the perception of unfairness. This…

This article falls within the research area of school development. It also takes into account neo-liberal tendencies, such as they have been approached in educational research. The article takes as its starting point a development project that began when four rural secondary schools turned to their regional university for scientific support. It…