'The knowledge question', addressing what students need to know and learn, becomes particularly relevant during the process of a new school reform. This paper examines the political messages and the role of knowledge in the current curriculum reform initiative for primary and secondary education in Norway (2020). The study is based on a document…

This study contributes to our understanding of children's development of map-reading skills through a systematic 'step-by-step approach'. Utilising an ecological research design, we investigated how children perceive and utilise maps in a large-scale outdoor environment. A total of 156 children, aged 5-11 (both boys and girls), participated in the…

Lecturers who are actively engaged in shaping their teaching and teaching practices demonstrate agency. Teacher agency has increasingly been described as a key factor in educational development at universities. Lecturers are expected to innovatively develop courses and continuously improve their teaching practices to respond to, for example,…

This article reports on the design of interdisciplinary units in five International Baccalaureate schools in Norway and Denmark, each with fewer than 100 students in their Middle Years Programme. The mixed methods study describes subject combinations and time frames of 37 enacted units and 111 hypothetical interdisciplinary units, and the…

International trends promoting school diversity and choice have reshaped education across Europe, leading towards a multiplicity in ownership structures and varied governance configurations. More recently, this can also be seen in European countries with a long history of state-owned and governed public schools, such as in the Nordic states. The…

This longitudinal case study examined the impact of in-service teacher professional development (PD) on teacher cognition relative to multilingualism and pedagogical practices in linguistically diverse classrooms. Two teachers of English as an additional language (EAL) at a primary school in Norway, who teach large numbers of linguistically and…

The first of two volumes dedicated to this little-explored topic, this volume gathers international perspectives to critically assess how Waldorf education has been perceived and discussed in both public and academic arenas. The book thereby challenges the historical concept of Waldorf education as an international movement championing…

The article focuses on Teacher Time Outs (TTOs) in rehearsals and co-enactments as part of a practice-based approach to professional development, aiming to support teachers' learning of ambitious mathematics teaching. Ambitious teaching requires teachers to be responsive to students' ideas in-the-moment of instruction. This is complex and places…

Dialogues between ecological wisdom across the East and the West contribute to generating unorthodox education, improving cross-cultural ecopedagogical praxis, and reinforcing education for sustainable development (ESD). In this article, Chinese Daoism and Norwegian Naessian ecosophy are compared and integrated to form an intercultural…

Research on practice-based mathematics teacher education has identified core practices, principles and design features that lead to effective programs. Yet, some teachers do not perceive such practice-based development programs as relevant or useful. In response to this, the study reported in this article investigated three Norwegian teachers'…

This article presents findings from a study examining teacher talk in the early and late phases of a 4-year project in a Norwegian elementary school where Lesson Study was used as a method for professional development. The study focuses on inclusive and adapted education and aims to explore the changing beliefs about student needs and the…

Worldwide, pupils with migrant backgrounds do not participate in school STEM subjects as successfully as their peers. Migrant pupils' subject-specific language proficiency lags behind, which hinders participation and learning. Primary teachers experience difficulty in teaching STEM as well as promoting required language development. This study…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to gain insight into and understand the authentic lived experience of the processes of collaborative inquiry in teamwork from the perspective of teachers. Design/methodology/approach: Data comprises stimulated recall interviews and semi-structured interviews. Seventeen teachers from four different teams in…

Many studies on professionalization research deal with the question of how teachers actually learn or how teacher change occurs. In this context, Clarke and Hollingsworth (2002) describe a model for capturing teacher change in different domains (external, personal, domain of practice and domain of consequence) and how changes in one domain can…

Research methods based on modelling and simulation (M&S) are gaining popularity among social scientists to study societal dynamics. Emphasising the importance of this research approach, the Department of Religion, Philosophy and History at the University of Agder initiated a methodology module to help students on the religious studies…