Centres of Excellence (CoE) have become a common research policy instrument in several OECD countries the last two decades. The CoE schemes are in general modelled on the organisational and research practices in the natural and life sciences. Compared to 'Big science', the humanities have been characterised by more individual research, flat…

Although there is a notion of a 'Nordic tradition' of outdoor education in the international literature, research from the Nordic countries is rarely included in research reviews. Therefore, this scoping review provides an overview of empirical studies on outdoor education (grades 1-13) from the Nordic countries. Of the 586 hits, 52 studies met…

In the studied master's course, students participated both as research objects in a digital annotation experiment and as critical investigators of this technology in their semester projects. The students' role paralleled the researcher's role, opening an opportunity for researcher-student co-learning within what is often referred to as…

This article explores qualitative shadowing as an interpretivist methodology, and explains how two researchers participating simultaneously in data collection using a video recorder, contextual interviews and video-stimulated recall interviews, conducted a qualitative shadowing study at six early childhood centres in Norway. This paper emerged…

Education is described as a moral enterprise and many of the professional dilemmas teachers encounter have an ethical aspect. Research on ethical situations that novice teachers experience, however, seems to be limited, and we know little about how teacher education can prepare student-teachers for dealing with ethical issues. In this article a…

This paper reviews literature on the rationale, challenges, and recommendations for choosing a nonequivalent comparison (NEC) group design when evaluating intervention effects. After reviewing frequently addressed threats to validity, the paper describes recommendations for strengthening the research design and how the recommendations were…

Visualization and mapping techniques can build a dynamic picture of information practices, including action research, within libraries, raising awareness of how the information landscape at each library may both support and retard research into the library's information practices. These techniques have implications for researchers as they generate…

This paper reports a qualitative study on students' informal reasoning on a controversial socio-scientific issue. Twenty-two students from four science classes in Norway were interviewed about the local construction of new power lines and the possible increased risk of childhood leukaemia. The focus in the study is on what arguments the students…

Over the last 50 years, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) has conducted more than 23 large-scale comparative studies of student achievement. The work associated with teacher preparation as well as experience gained in many of IEA's studies, such as TIMSS, led to a request from members of the…

Originally presented at a forum on participatory research, these theoretical papers and case studies represent an effort to place the overall work of participatory research within the larger theoretical context of research methods, education, and structural change. In the first paper Orlando Fals Borda explores the relationship between science and…