With a specific example from Norway and inspiration from Sara Ahmed's The Promise of Happiness, this article demonstrates how today's educational rhetoric lacks the language and will to recognise a key pedagogical dimension in education: what happens when the normative ambitions of education and students meet. At best, teaching students life…

Thinking of physical education (PE) as "education through the physical" provides adequate opportunities for enhancing necessary life skills such as developing communication and cooperation strategies with peers and helping them set goals. To advocate life skills among students, social inclusion (SI) should be employed in different…

This paper is an account of a developmental action inquiry research project in which teachers from 13 secondary schools were trained to philosophize the Dialogos way with their 8th-grade students, as part of ongoing curriculum reforms in Norway. In the reforms, and in this paper, the themes of life skills and democratic citizenship are in the…

While entitled to education, the curriculum for pupils with intellectual disabilities (ID) remains unresolved. In a time of curriculum renewal, this study inquires into Norwegian school policy in the period 2014-2018 to evaluate this learner group's course of study. Attentiveness to special education and curricular approach are discussed through…

The domains of the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI) cover self-care, mobility and social function. Employing this inventory as an operational definition of functional performance of everyday life activities, this performance in an age-cohort of children with Down syndrome (DS) was measured at ages 5, 7 (n = 43) and 14 (n = 38).…

Objective: This paper explores the expectations of teachers to contribute to fostering students' wellbeing in the revised Norwegian curriculum. A new construct in the curriculum is three interdisciplinary topics -- health and life skills; democracy and citizenship; and, sustainable development -- included to give priority to prevailing societal…

Adolescents with intellectual disability experience psychological and social challenges in their transition to adulthood. Knowledge about the diagnosis and insight into own strengths and difficulties can help them manage the limitations and barriers they face, but suitable interventions with this purpose are scarce. The present paper presents a…

In Norway, the interdisciplinary theme Public Health and Life Skills has been introduced in the new National K-12 curriculum, with the intention of promoting students' physical and mental health and enhancing their social and academic coping resources. This paper presents a case study related to a project of expanded student services in an upper…

Physical education (PE) can be a context in which students are 'educated through the physical', which includes the possibility to learn social inclusion as an important life skill and contributor to the greater good of society. A key goal in the Norwegian educational system is that such positive life skills become internalised in students. The…