In which ways do curricula recognize existential questions of compulsory school students, and what direction is given regarding how to address them? By asking these two questions, this study analyses syllabi for the school subject of religion education and its equivalents in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and in the two German regions of Bavaria and…

The Bologna process and the 3+2-degree structure presents students with several decision points in higher education, both which bachelor's programme to choose, and whether to continue beyond bachelor. Based on a small-scale survey containing both closed and open-ended questions, this paper studies reasons the students give for entering a master's…

Throughout history educational leaders have looked to other countries and have attempted to learn by borrowing useful examples to implement in their own educational systems. As recent comparative policy research shows, processes of policy lending and borrowing have their own socio-historically defined dynamics. In this paper, the authors approach…

This paper examines the role of digital technology in national guidelines and regulations in Norwegian and Danish teacher education over the course of 28 years (1992-2020). These policy documents are used to examine policy perspectives on digital technology through an analytical framework based on Wartofsky's artifact categories. The analytical…

The Council of Europe's 2008 'Recommendation' advocates the study of 'non-religious convictions' in schools in addition to religions. In 2018, there is evidence of growing academic interest in the inclusion of non-religious worldviews in the school curriculum, but few European countries include such a study within religious education. The guidance…

Regulation of time is an important structuring tool of everyday practices in kindergarten. Despite the fundamental importance, investigation of temporal patterns have been underestimated in early childhood education research. The purpose of this article is to illuminate how ideas of childhood and children's cultural formation are embedded in the…

This book identifies the cultural and moral foundations of country-specific educational governance and school leadership and presents the principles of justice and the diversity of common goods that guide leadership practices in schools. It contributes to an existing research field that studies diversity and ethical leadership in schools. The…

This article explores the role of psychiatry in the sorting of schoolchildren in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden from 1920 to 1950. Whereas the role and rise of educational psychology and IQ-testing in the differentiation processes in schooling have been examined through earlier research, the role of psychiatry in the interprofessional collaboration…

English for Academic Purposes (EAP) is a growing field which aims to enrich curriculum in order to bridge the gap between general knowledge of English, and academic or discipline specific use of English. This paper considers past attempts to develop consistent academic courses as it examines EAP courses in Norway and Iran, where English as a…

This paper explores comparatively and historically why Nordic and Continental welfare and education regimes differ in the degree of comprehensiveness of their primary and lower secondary school systems. It analyses how school reforms, reform attempts and coalitions in the post-war decades were shaped by different cleavage structures in Norway and…

By analysing five separate OECD reviews of evaluation and assessment practices with Norway and Sweden as cases, our study illustrates different ways in which a specific international educational reasoning is blended into more context-based national education policies and, as such, works in parallel with internal reforms and agendas. It is evident…

The IEA Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M) is the first large-scale international study of the preparation of primary and lower-secondary teachers. The study investigated the pedagogical and subject-specific knowledge that future primary and lower secondary school teachers acquire during their mathematics teacher…

This paper focuses on a generational change taking place in the Polish academic profession: a change in behaviors and attitudes between two groups of academics. One was socialized to academia under the communist regime (1945-1989) and the other entered the profession in the post-1989 transition period. Academics of all age groups are beginning to…

The Teacher Education and Development Study (TEDS-M) is the first crossnational study to examine the mathematics preparation of future teachers for both primary and secondary school levels. The study, conducted under the auspices of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), collected data from…

This article describes and analyses changes made in the organisation of higher education studies in Germany and Norway, following the recommendations of the Bologna Declaration. In both countries, the characteristic modes of university study have been circumscribed by the tradition of Humboldtian values and ideals, albeit to a different extent. On…