Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the relevance and use of the concept "reverse salient" in ambitious infrastructural change. Thomas Hughes, in his seminal study of socio-technical system building, observed that the elimination of "reverse salients", i.e. subsystems that because of their limited performance…

This article focuses on the impact of the physical environment and construction of play culture in kindergartens. Based on a case study, we explore employees' perception of indoor physical environment and children's play. The findings revealed that gender is interwoven in the physical environments and materials. Children's play practices are…

The article explores how space for professional agency is structured and used by teachers in collaborative professional development. Taking an ecological perspective on teacher agency and using a case study of with multiple data sets, the analysis identifies two patterns of agentic orientations. The conclusions discuss limitations associated with…

Relationships between learning environment variables and students' approaches to studying have been investigated from many points of view over the last decades. However, few studies have explored whether such relationships are stable over time. In the two consecutive cross-sectional analyses performed in this study, Norwegian occupational therapy…

Government regulations require businesses to improve their processes and products/services in a green and sustainable manner. For being environmentally friendly, businesses should invest more on eco-innovation practices. Firms eco-innovate to promote eco-efficiency and sustainability. This paper evaluates the eco-innovation performance of…

This paper offers an ethnographic case study of Tomasz, a Polish construction worker, and his professional trajectory as well as daily work life on Norwegian construction sites. The study is based on observations, interviews, and recordings of Tomasz's daily workplace activities and interactions. The Norwegian construction industry is…

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate whether the formal and informal learning patterns of community health-care nurses changed in the wake of a reform that altered their work by introducing new patient groups, and to explore whether conditions in the new workplaces facilitated or impeded shifts in learning patterns. Design/methodology/approach:…

Globally, universities are currently facing increased external demands to strengthen and develop their learning environments. The article examines how a sample of Norwegian universities responds to governmental demands concerning establishing good learning environments. Based on document analysis and interviews, the article demonstrates that the…

In this paper, we explore how a Norwegian teacher education institution promotes education for sustainable development (ESD) through a residential field course. The residential field course was located in a mountain area and data were collected through participant observation. The data included--together with instructional artefacts--evaluation…

Teaching and learning are at stake when classrooms become highly disruptive and pupils ignore the teacher's instructions and leadership. Re-establishing teacher authority in a highly disruptive school class is an understudied area. This instrumental multiple case study aimed to reveal concepts and conceptual frameworks that are suitable for…

Focus of this article is immigrant youth and Norwegians-born to immigrant parents in upper secondary school in Norway. The study was conducted in a first year of a general study class in upper secondary school, where 11 of 24 students were immigrants. Previous research on immigrants in school tends to show a picture of a marginalized group in…

The relationship between learning and innovation has been a central theme in studies of innovation (Fagerberg et al., 2005, Borras & Edquist, 2014, Lundvall & Johnsen, 1994). Studies of the workplace have also claimed a relationship between skills or training and a firm's ability to innovate (Toner, 2011). Recent studies of innovation in…

Objectives: This study investigated academic achievement among adolescents exposed to violence, sexual abuse and bullying. Moreover, we sought to determine the individual and contextual influence of the adolescents' school environment in terms of bullying, classmate relationships and teacher support on academic achievement. Finally, we wished to…

This paper is focused on virtual campuses, i.e. virtual worlds representing real educational institutions that are based on the metaphor of a university and provide users with different learning tools. More specifically, the idea of integrating a virtual campus into the context of a virtual city is suggested. Such a virtual city, where students…

The high drop-out rate in upper secondary education is a major challenge to European and US educational programmes. Upper secondary education in Norway faces a similar challenge, because in recent decades, around one-third of the students drop out of the educational programmes. The majority of the drop-outs are students in vocational programmes,…