In the education sector, media outlets have been increasingly active in reporting on standardized testing. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most recurrent discursive frames used by the Norwegian regional and local press when informing their readers about national standardized testing, and to explore whether differences over time and…

This paper explores student teachers' academic preparation to be teachers. Despite the fact that a persisting criticism is directed towards the 'academic' part of teacher education, we know little about student teachers' academic learning practice as learners in higher education. The paper reports on a Norwegian study of 24 student teachers and…

The Norwegian folk high schools have a legally defined role in the national educational system as a value-based pedagogical alternative without grades, exams or pre-defined curriculums. The roots of the schools can be traced to the theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig and his ideals of a learning that develops not just the mind but the whole student. The…

In this article, we explore how minority parents construct and promote cultural identities through a multicultural school event in Norway. Such events respond to the call for diverse and inclusive initiatives to facilitate learning, belonging, and cohesion in schools. Schools see these events as helping further inclusion. Prior research on the…

According to general relativity (GR), we live in a four-dimensional curved universe. Since the human mind cannot visualize those four dimensions, a popular analogy compares the universe to a two-dimensional rubber sheet distorted by massive objects. This analogy is often used when teaching GR to upper secondary and undergraduate physics students.…

Product design pedagogical approaches require a specific mix of competences that demand multiplicity of perspectives, hybrid knowledge that exceeds professional field silos, and continuous problem reformulations. To do this, design studio education follows many traditions, among which is design critique. Design critique is believed to provide…

This study explored how practitioners interpreted educational practices from the perspective of values in Nordic preschools. Drawing data from group interviews in five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden), practitioners reflected on an observational episode about children dressing for outdoor play in a Swedish preschool.…

Current Norwegian curricular guidelines oblige schools to educate citizens with a critical perspective on society. From a discourse theoretical perspective, this obligation implies that various school subjects, and in particular social studies, offer discourses on social issues that allow for different points of view and critical evaluation.…

Linguistics has long recognised that figurative language in the form of metaphorical expressions structures and communicates attitudes towards the ideas and concepts being expressed and that multilingual students also employ linguistic figures frequently in their writing. In this study, multilingual students use figurative language to both…

Both national and international evaluation studies have criticised Norwegian teachers for not being sufficiently specific and learning-oriented in their feedback practice. The feedback is largely characterised by general comments such as "Excellent" and "Good work", and less by feed-forward-oriented messages informing students…

In a sample of 157 Norwegian political science undergraduates, two dimensions of epistemological beliefs concerning Internet-based knowledge and knowing were identified through factor analysis. The first dimension, general Internet epistemology, ranged from the integrated view that the Internet is an essential source of true, specific facts to…