This study explores how experienced Danish caseworkers who work with young people at municipal job centres justify and make decisions regarding referring young clients to psychosocial interventions. Twelve caseworkers and a line manager from two municipalities were interviewed. A thematic analysis was conducted. Key themes were: in-house and…

STEM, STEAM education is important for building a better future, and teachers have a key role in attracting students to the field of STEM. However, when teachers need to shift from traditional disciplinary-based education to integrated STEM education, they often find this transition challenging. This difficulty arises because their beliefs about…

Denmark and Sweden have witnessed a historically significant amplification of parental influence in compulsory schools during the past two decades. The emphasis on parental involvement in these two countries reflects international trends of neoliberal governing of educational processes. We know very little about the interplay between beginning…

Despite recent developments in measurement tools to assess the quality of life of individuals with intellectual disability, little is known about the cultural aspects that affect their quality of life. This study examined the universal and cultural characteristics of the quality of life of individuals with intellectual disability in Denmark and…

In this article, I look at the teaching artist practice that emerges in the partnerships between professional artists and school institutions. The cultural context is Danish compulsory education. In this case, the Culture Laboratory hosted partnerships among diverse professionals and practitioners. I was curious about the role of professional…

International teaching experiences, even if short-termed, are great opportunities for student teachers to challenge their assumptions and scrutinise their beliefs, to discover different ways of approaching teaching and learning, and to better understand their own education system through a global education lens. They offer student teachers the…

This paper, based on the Praxis Lecture I delivered at the National Association of Kinesiology in Higher Education Conference in January 2024, articulates how my experiences at a Danish gymnastic folkehøjskole (folk high school) and højskole pedagogy inform my teaching and service. After defining højskole pedagogy, I discuss how I incorporate its…

This qualitative study examines the factors that facilitate or inhibit the academic identity development of four Vietnamese doctoral students in Denmark. Using the combination of Genetic method and Activity theory, the paper provides insights into the participants' experiences of becoming and being an academic, which is context-dependent and…

Across Europe, assumptions are often made within the academic literature and by some social commentators that students have come to understand the purpose of higher education (HE) in increasingly instrumental terms. This is often linked to processes of marketisation and neo-liberalisation across the Global North, in which the value of HE has come…

Contribution: This article illustrates a theoretical model and an analytical tool for understanding the influence of diverse elements of the project-based learning (PBL) environment on engineering identity development in students. Supportive elements in three dimensions that contribute to students' identities as future engineers are identified to…

Citizenship education played a crucial role in the 19th century transition from royal sovereignty to democracy in the Nordic region, with folk high schools (FHS) playing an important role. While established to empower the people ("folk") for active participation in society, the contemporary folk high schools have reoriented from their…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore whether participating in an entrepreneurship education programme with short-term international placements can help pre-service teachers to identifying the characteristics of entrepreneurial competence from a wide definition of entrepreneurship (Lackeus, 2015) rather than from a business centred…

Students' emotions during stays abroad have mainly been treated as "culture shock", where difficulties are interpreted as universal "stages" towards "adaptation". This paper explores how students from different cultural and educational traditions experience studying abroad differently. The study presents a qualitative…

The drivers of learning for mid-career workers with few initial qualifications from the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy and Poland are examined. The focus in this article is upon the learning pathways and experience of the low-qualified drawn from empirical research which gathered and analysed the strategic career and…

In recent decades, a range of policy measures to support young people's school-to-work transitions has been initiated across Europe. However, these transition policies have rarely been studied systematically, particularly from a comparative perspective. Thus, the aim of this article is to compare Swedish, Danish and Finnish policies for supporting…