Technical, economical, and social changes place great demands on the qualification of professional forces in all areas of the national economy. The decisive foundations for these qualifications are built in vocational education. Vocational education is an investment in the future and one of the decisive pillars of the prosperity of every state in…

Introduction: Self-guided learning has had a major impact on adult education, where information seeking and use are key aspects of learning. With their lack of experience in study contexts, the students are nevertheless assumed to develop information literacy. Method: The paper aims to create an understanding of how information literacy can be…

This paper reports on the preferences among a group of pre-service English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher trainees for social media rather than "Moodle," an institutional Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), as a forum for support during a recent five week teaching practice in southern Sweden. The teacher trainees responded to a…

TREX, which stands for "translating into the mother tongue as an exercise in written language," is a classroom technique for exploring the native language by translating from a second or source language. The central feature is the individual student activity of translating, with subsequent group examination and comparison of lexical,…

This paper, presented in three parts, examines the role of the early childhood professional in Europe. Part 1 of the paper examines how various European countries broadly conceptualize the early childhood professional role. Four broad categories are described: (1) early childhood pedagogue; (2) preschool specialist; (3) teacher; and (4) social…

Classroom management is defined as the organization of the classroom as a learning environment; the management of student discipline, order, and care; the grouping of students for different tasks and patterns of interaction; and the individualization of student learning. This paper reports on two Swedish case studies of contrasting classroom…

School climates at 12 day care centers in Sweden were compared to investigate effects of center climates on children's social and emotional behavior. Observations and interviews conducted at the day care centers revealed differences in center climates related to child-rearing patterns, patterns of interaction, the distribution of power, and in…

The elementary school English-as-a-Second-Language classroom can be seen as a microcosm of a pluralistic society. Different kinds of control mechanisms influence both teachers and pupils and can lead to divided loyalties. These mechanisms include classroom organization, the number of pupils, and the attitudes of pupils toward one another. It is…

Assessment is discussed as a formal and overt manifestation of quality control. With some experiences in Swedish nursing education taken as the point of departure, assessment is discussed as: (1) a policy implementation and curriculum problem concerning the interpretation and exercise of programs by those in control; (2) a teacher problem…

The educational assessment quality assurance and control practices of Germany, Sweden, France, New Zealand, and Australia are compared to illustrate the considerable variety of approaches and some of the social factors that contribute to this variety. In Germany there is considerable variation from one province to another, and quality assurance…

In modern societies, children are becoming more and more users of a child culture constructed by adults, rather than producers of their own culture. This paper describes a project, implemented in Nordic child care centers and early childhood classes, that provides children the opportunity to narrate and illustrate their own stories, written down…

This paper discusses classroom life in formal adult education, specifically rhetoric concerning the idea of the adult learners' own interest as a driving force for learning. Its two objectives are to describe social interaction as related to this andragogical ideal and the conditions for learning and to raise some methodological standpoints in the…

The information explosion and exponential development of information-accessing tools has had a disempowering effect on many people. A major challenge of the information-centered world is for students and teachers alike to learn how to assert responsibility and control over personal practice. Meeting this challenge may require personal…