There is global agreement that schools should be inclusive, however both experienced and inexperienced teachers find this challenging. In this study we explore how experienced teachers working as local mentors for newly qualified teachers (NQTs) address the challenges they face in an inclusive school. The study is designed as a qualitative study…

International trends promoting school diversity and choice have reshaped education across Europe, leading towards a multiplicity in ownership structures and varied governance configurations. More recently, this can also be seen in European countries with a long history of state-owned and governed public schools, such as in the Nordic states. The…

The role of research in teacher education is a widely discussed topic by policymakers as well as by researchers and practitioners. At the policy level, there seems to be a general claim that teacher education shall be research based (OECD, 2005; European Commission, 2013; Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, 2021; Norwegian Ministry of…

This article explores the relationship between physical education as a school subject, and physical activity health initiatives in schools. Drawing on curriculum theory and discourse theory we study policy documents related to physical education and school-based physical activity initiatives. We explore the boundaries of knowledge between physical…

In the Nordic countries, policy debates about English often highlight the threat of domain loss for national languages, but the high status of English may also have a differential impact on people in Nordic societies. This article investigates a policy gap in Norwegian upper secondary education, whereby an advanced English subject requirement may…

This paper investigates the educational field by focusing on an integrated teacher education program [ITE] in Norway and OECD policy. The author centers attention on Norwegian teacher education and how globalization through such international agents as the OECD has had impact on national policy documents. Basil Bernstein's concept of pedagogical…

Forming part of the efforts to internationalise European higher education, international student mobility has become a key activity strongly supported and promoted by policymakers. In particular, the mobility of teacher students has become a more prominent issue over the past decades. However, to this date there is a lack of research focussing on…

Analyses of policy documents and interviews with three Norwegian politicians revealed differences in how school leaders were described, positioned and ascribed responsibility in Norwegian education policy between 1990 and 2017. While how politicians positioned school leaders changed substantially during the period, a stable trait was vague…

This book discusses principals' prerequisites and work within the five Nordic countries and focuses on schools as formal institutions that carry out functions delegated to them by the social collective. It includes a discussion about what kind of state policy demonstrates autonomy in Nordic schools, as well as the ways in which school leaders as…

This paper investigates how Norwegian school principals prepared to carry out the LK20 reform process. The importance of school principals and middle-level leaders as enactors of change efforts results from their close ties to teachers and teacher classroom practices. This suggests that without negotiation and support from micro-policy actors,…

In June 2022, the Norwegian Expert Commission on Learning Analytics delivered an interim report to the Norwegian Minister of Education and Research. Motivated by the need to establish a solid foundation upon which to regulate and promote the use of learning analytics in the Norwegian educational sector, the Ministry asked the Expert Commission to…

The reported study investigates the emergence of teacher evaluation (TE) in Norwegian green papers between 1988 and 2019. We examine how knowledge dissemination and discourses in Norwegian official reports shape suggestions for TE and discuss implications for how teachers are "made by policy". Guided by Bacchi's (2009) approach to…

The word 'care' has been removed from Norway's most recent framework for early childhood teacher education. According to ECEC practice policy, care is foundational in ECEC and teachers are expected to care, yet caring is not mentioned in the Framework's description of ECEC, nor is it included as a knowledge or skill goal. Why does care occupy a…

In the long history of the Catholic school in Europe, it has taken various forms, linked to local cultures and to the history, particularly religious but also political, of each state. While it is possible to account for this diversity, it is also important to highlight common features and challenges, such as secularisation and globalisation,…

This article reports from a case study investigating enactment of teacher evaluation (TE) policies in two lower secondary schools in a large Norwegian municipality. The aim of the study was to explore teachers' perceptions of TE, and to unpack how new policy initiatives were shaped by translations, mediations, and negotiations in a national…