A sample of 60 children in Grade 3 was followed over one year. In the first year, an extensive battery of assessments was used including aspects of reading, arithmetic, and working memory. Teachers rated the children on 7-point scales on various motivational dimensions summarized to a total score tentatively called task orientation. In the…

Studied how Swedish schools try to promote students' reading through examination of school-run booktalk conversations held by students in grades 4 through 7. Observations of eight groups show the conflict between the stated aim of promoting reading for pleasure and both tasks presented to students and problems in synchronizing the reading of…

Studied personal context and continuity in the thinking of 23 Swedish students from grade 2 through grade 8 using data from a longitudinal study of conceptualizations of ecological processes. While there was substantial conceptual development, there was also a strong element of personal continuity for these students. (SLD)

Studied secondary language learning and literacy practices for Swedish deaf bilingual students for whom Swedish Sign Language is the primary language and written Swedish is the secondary language. Observations in schools for the deaf over 3 years show how everyday classroom interaction makes available and restricts opportunities for students to…

Life in the classroom is governed by a variety of rules. One typical classroom rule is the rule of silence or low noise. Teachers often deal with students' noise-making and conversations by hushing them. This article reports an investigation of how hushing can create moral dilemmas for students at their desks in the classroom. This study is part…

Differences across gender and culture lines provided support for the existence of biases in gender-role training that may differ among cultures. The fact that some children make cross-sex choices suggests that socialization practices do not influence all children uniformly. (Author)

This study examined content and conventions of stories made up by 6- and 7-year-olds from China, Hungary, and Sweden. Analyses revealed qualitative differences in children's life worlds, which could be related to their cultural backgrounds. The study also explored the origin of characters in the stories, characteristic plot events, and cultural…

The purpose of this study is to analyse pupil welfare team meetings as an institutional context for handling dilemmas of schooling. Our focus is on how difficulties encountered by teachers and pupils are categorized and accounted for by team members (teachers, school administrators, and various experts). As a discourse community, the pupil welfare…

A study of interactions among Swedish intermediate-grade students as they solved a nonstandard mathematics task confronting the phenomenon of infinity shows that the children can reach a considerable understanding of the problem by contextualizing the problem in different ways. The collective orchestration of problem variations results in enhanced…

Results from achievement and ability testing of about 150 Swedish urban children in third, fifth, and sixth grades were analyzed according to the children's physical maturity and social background. Social background played the main role in performance on the achievement and most of the mental ability tests. (MP)

This article will show how children (9-12 years old) describe the Internet in terms of different models. It is related to how they understand the reliability of the Internet as well as some other aspects. The study was carried out in a 4th-grade class in 1998/1999. The study has an ethnographic approach. With inspiration from information research…

An experiment involving 14 small groups of Swedish students (usually 3 per group) aged 10, 11, and 12 years shows that these students acting in groups and creating shared contextualizations were able to solve mathematics word problems calling for real-world knowledge. Research has shown students acting alone to have difficulty with the same types…

As part of the National Evaluation Program of the Swedish school system, proficiency in the English language is evaluated for students in grade 5 (at age 12 years). Variation between classes and variation within classes were studied in a multilevel factor analysis (MFA) using a sample of 3,162 students in 162 classes for whom student questionnaire…

This paper discusses the question of whether, in a multilingual society, the child's first or second language is best as a language of instruction in primary school. Reviewing eight case studies from seven countries in which initial primary schooling was given either in the second or first language, the discussion compares achievement in reading…

After a short introductory discussion, the results are presented from a series of mapping studies in which headmasters, supervisory teachers, student teachers and different teacher and student groups have expressed their views on co-influence in the school--how they experience the situation today and how they would like the influence to be divided…