Practical experience and first-hand insight into the school systems of other countries enables student teachers to cultivate global understanding. Teacher education programme in Sweden has four placements. Student teachers are encouraged to complete one of these abroad. The aim with this study is to examine student teachers' experiences of…

School systems across the world are working to make the classroom more inclusive for all children, regardless of their origin and capacities, so that they have equal opportunities for quality learning. It has become essential to integrate students with special needs into mainstream formal education and they are, increasingly, enrolled in regular…

Curriculum resources such as textbooks and lesson guides communicate messages about the social relations between the teacher, students, artefacts, and the mathematics. Because of their implicit nature, these messages can be hard to surface and perhaps therefore are not frequently covered in curriculum resource analysis. Tackling this shortcoming,…

It is known that an appropriately developed foundational number sense (FONS), or the ability to operate flexibly with number and quantity, is a powerful predictor of young children's later mathematical achievement. However, until now not only has FONS been definitionally elusive but instruments for identifying opportunities for children to acquire…

This article discusses the significance of in-kind taxation and payments in kind for the establishment of an elementary school system in Sweden, in the 1840-1870 period. By analysing the funding of teachers' wages, the heating of the school facilities, and school building construction in the 12 rural school districts of the Sundsvall region, this…

Starting from theoretical issues concerning places for children and from historical studies of childhood and education, the present article deals with the history of the school playground in a Swedish context. The focus is on a school playground debate in the 1970s, in which school playgrounds were the subject of lively discussion and the object…

The present article approaches the phenomenon of indirect bullying through detailed analysis of the interactional practices that a group of preadolescent girls make use of as they reconstruct the social organization of their peer group, the effect being that one girl is eventually excluded. The data are drawn from ethnography combined with video…

It is all too common, given the considerable day-to-day challenges facing those involved in education, to focus on the here and now rather than look further afield. The authors of this article have been fortunate enough to see "primary science" in a wide range of international settings, from Nigeria to Chile, North America and Canada,…

According to the Simple View of Reading, reading ability can be divided into decoding and language comprehension. In the present study, decoding and comprehension's contribution to reading ability was studied both in children with reading difficulties and in children with typical reading ability. Decoding and comprehension was further divided into…

The aim of this article is to identify a technical domain of knowledge in the curriculum of the Swedish elementary school and views on elementary school technology of two interest groups--school teachers and engineers. Gradually during the early to mid-1920s there was increased technical content in the Swedish elementary school, if we look at the…

In this article, the author, a Forest School Leader with Shropshire Wildlife Trust, shows how nature is the best teacher. She describes a new approach to out-of-classroom learning during which qualified leaders use simple challenges and achievable tasks to encourage child-initiated learning in the great outdoors. At Forest School, children are…

This study describes children's awareness of what it means to teach a game to a peer where the act of teaching becomes expression of the child's possible awareness. Awareness is defined as the attention to different aspects of the teaching process shown by the teaching child, sometimes through their own verbal reflection. This implies an…

How do we support the enthusiasm children show for biology in school? Unfortunately, lack of exciting practical work and boring biology lessons seem to make science less popular. As a senior lecturer in plant physiology at Karlstad University I have simplified experiments intended for students at university and then tested them on 10-11 year old…

We can note a varied use and attitudes to song and music in Islam. In the classroom of Sana--a primary school teacher of Islamic religious education (IRE) in a Muslim school in Sweden--music is an important but not uncontested part of IRE. The music not only supports themes discussed in the classroom but also gives variation to the education. A…

Describes the Situation in the Primary School (SIPRI) project, a study of the purpose of pedagogy and the role of primary schools in Sweden. The subprojects and the role of the contact schools that will serve as a field of observation and experimentation are summarized. Brief critical comments are included. (SR)