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The study presents a bibliometric network analysis of the two most recent schools reforms in Norway. Two research questions have been pursued: First, do the government-appointed expert commission use (in Green Papers) the same type of knowledge as 'evidence' for their reviews and recommendations as the Ministry of Education and Research (as reflected in the White Papers)? How has the use of 'evidence' changed over the two reform periods? Second, which body of knowledge amassed by the expert commission has the Ministry of Education and Science actually used for policy formulation? The network analysis shows (i) distinct changes in reference patterns over the two reform periods (e.g., average number of references more than doubled and references to international texts increased significantly), and (ii) an unexpectedly low usage of the 'evidence' presented by the expert commissions. The Ministry of Education and Research only draws on 9.5 percent of the references presented by the expert commissions. Strikingly, almost all of the adopted references are from a commissioned report that locally adapted and translated OECD's Definitions and Selections of Competencies project. The authors suggest 'studying up' and paying more attention to how scientific 'evidence' is actually used, translated, and edited at the political level.

A concern that has been raised with the transition from pen and paper examinations to electronic examinations is whether this will make cheating easier. This article investigates how teachers and students perceive the differences in ease of cheating during three types of written examination: paper exams, bring your own device e-exams and e-exams using university-owned devices. It also investigates perceptions about the effectiveness of some typical countermeasures towards cheating across these examination types. A mixed-method approach was used, combining questionnaires and interviews with students and teachers in the authors' own university. A total of 212 students and 162 teachers participated in the questionnaire survey, and then, a more limited number were interviewed to get a deeper understanding of the results. Six-different cheating practices were considered -- impersonation, forbidden aids, peeking, peer collaboration, outside assistance and student-staff collusion and seven different countermeasures were considered -- proctors, biometry, mingling, shuffling, random drawing, sequencing and broadcasting. Both students and teachers perceived cheating as easier with e-exams, and especially with bring your own device. They also thought some countermeasures would be easier to implement with e-exams.

The purpose of this article is to analyse how students use inscriptions as tools for thinking and learning in mathematical problem-solving activities. The empirical context is that of learning about geometric series in a small group setting. What has been analysed is how students made use of inscriptions, self-made as well as those provided by text books and teachers, and the role these inscriptions played in the coordination of students' learning/communication. Through the use of inscriptions (made on the chalkboard and with paper and pencil), the students externalised their thinking while engaging in mathematical reasoning on the topic of geometric series. The inscriptions were significant as anchor points for arguments in the ongoing discussions. Three main issues are highlighted: (a) how the inscriptions used contribute to the process of appropriation, (b) how the students use inscriptions to externalise and clarify their ideas and attempts at meaning-making, and (c) how the inscriptions are conducive to closing the gap between the original problem as given in the text book and the mathematisation necessary. It is argued that inscriptions, through their material nature, play a decisive role in learning mathematical reasoning. (Contains 3 figures and 5 notes.)

Google Docs and EtherPad are Web 2.0 tools providing opportunity for multiple users to work online on the same document consecutively or simultaneously. Over the last few years a number of research papers on the use of these collaborative tools in a teaching and learning environment have been published. This work builds on that of Brodahl, Hadjerrouit, and Hansen (2011) expanding its case study. The theoretical framework is the same as the one underlying Brodahl et al. (2011), drawing on two learning theories, the social-constructivist learning theory and the community of practice, and their relationships to collaborative tools. The literature review is extended to cover the recent research work in the field, related to Web 2.0 technologies in higher education. The case study of Brodahl et al. (2011) involved 201 education students who had just begun their four-year initial teacher education. However, 24 students are omitted in the current work, and the result tables from Brodahl et al. (2011) accordantly updated. Disregarding particular groups of students was due to their specific local dispersion, as they conducted their entire assignment and collectively reflective essay paper at the same physical location and, with respect to this, reported the use of collaborative tools as superfluous and unwanted in their setting. Partly based on the same survey, this work presents a case study investigating education students' perceptions of collaborative writing reflective essay papers. However, where Brodahl et al. (2011) presented a solely quantitative study derived from closed-ended questions, this work incorporates the survey's open-ended questions in a qualitative analysis. The analysis also draws on the students' written reflections on their experiences. The qualitative analysis supports the conclusion of Brodahl et al. (2011) that technical problems were a major issue, mostly related to EtherPad. All but one complaint about technical difficulties stemmed from EtherPad users during a limited period of time. Other major negative feedback concerned group size; several groups pointed out difficulties with organizing the work, problems of keeping track when editing simultaneously, and failure to produce a unified document. Positive issues frequently mentioned are the ability to work asynchronously and from different places. Furthermore, a majority of the reports on commenting on and editing each other's work were positive, mentioning that it is an advantage to be able to correct spelling errors and bad formulations, that it is educational, that one may contribute with ideas that the others do not have, and that it improves the final text. Larger issues on the negative side were fear of insulting or misunderstanding, and difficulties because of various work modes. Also qualitative results indicate that females are more concerned with group size than males, but less preoccupied with technical difficulties. Furthermore, younger students appear more concerned about the importance of preparation and planning than older ones. The major conclusions are that EtherPad and Google Docs facilitate new ways of approaching communication, for different collaborative writing work modes as well as in different settings. However, the setting in which the tool is used exerts an influence on the way students perceive its usefulness. Recommendations derived from students' perception of factors of success for using the collaborative writing tool include the following: group size should preferably not exceed three persons; the students ought to be prepared for technical difficulties and have a contingency plan; and they should have time in advance to discuss their work mode and agree on rules for commenting on and editing each other's work.

This paper explores the development of policies dealing with teachers' digital competence in Norway, Ireland and Spain. Using a documentary research approach, the study analysed relevant policy documents from each country over a thirty-year period to the present day. Analysis of the documents highlights historical differences and similarities in how technology in education policies developed during that period and differences in how teacher education was addressed. Despite these differences, the analysis indicates a convergence in recent years towards a common understanding and the importance of teachers' digital competence influenced by supranational frameworks. The paper discusses the potential influence of these supranational frameworks and examines the opportunities and challenges of this policy convergence.

Universities are expected to strive for excellence but also for gender balance. Narrow interpretations of excellence in universities hinder women's advancement in academia. In this paper, we ask if there are ways that these policies may be reconciled. Excellence is an "empty signifier" that must be filled with meaning. We have investigated how Heads of Departments enact "excellence" and gender balance in hiring processes in four Norwegian universities. Many HoD argued for broadening excellence criteria and framed excellence as a "collective" rather than an individual concern. This allows for reconciling top-down institutional demands for excellence and diversity while catering to local needs. Thus, our paper suggests that in a context where increased diversity among faculty is called for, this may open up a space for critical reflection about the criteria for assessing academic quality.

Nationally and internationally equity in education has become a key goal. In Norway, a White Paper has been tabled to address how equity can be improved through education. In this paper the pedagogic and knowledge orientation of the initiatives are analyzed and discussed in relation to two models of equity: "equity through equality" and "equity through diversity." The paper finds that although contradictions are present, the Norwegian ministry clearly favors the equality model. The author claims that the presented policies can be understood as a response to the global educational trend that Apple refers to as "conservative modernization." This can further be related to Bernstein's "Totally Pedagogised Society," where the adaptable, trainable individual is a key notion. The paper concludes that the lack of attention given to the diversity of citizens may be a major shortcoming, as lack of recognition is in many ways what causes educational failure in the first place. (Contains 3 tables and 7 footnotes.)

Objective: To explore effects of the technological interface on reading comprehension in a Norwegian school context. Participants: 72 tenth graders from two different primary schools in Norway. Method: The students were randomized into two groups, where the first group read two texts (1400-2000 words) in print, and the other group read the same texts as PDF on a computer screen. In addition pretests in reading comprehension, word reading and vocabulary were administered. A multiple regression analysis was carried out to investigate to what extent reading modality would influence the students' scores on the reading comprehension measure. Conclusion: Main findings show that students who read texts in print scored significantly better on the reading comprehension test than students who read the texts digitally. Implications of these findings for policymaking and test development are discussed. (Contains 2 tables.)

This article is documentation of the personal professional reflection processes as well as staff discussions reflecting the staff's ongoing efforts to improve the quality of teaching in the teacher education programme at the University of Bergen. The documentation is two-dimensional: video clips have been inserted into the traditional text form. This allows the reader to personally view the discussed issues and thus better form a personal opinion of the situation, without having to rely solely on written documentation and the authors' subjective analysis. The authors claim is that video-paper as a form for publication allows for a more comprehensive presentation of the data and enables the reader to examine the documentation on which the authors base their reflections and discussions. The validity of the findings is improved as they are open to examination by a wider audience.

Mergers in higher education are large-scale, complex organisational change processes seeking to integrate former independent institutions into a new organisational entity. Mergers are often justified by reference to broad overarching goals such as quality, relevance, and efficiency. In practice, mergers entail attempts at organisational integration which can be inhibited by several obstacles, increasing and large internal distances can be such a hindrance to integration. In this paper, we explore how different forms of distance to leadership in the context of higher education can be conceptualised, and how experiences of different forms of distance interrelate. This paper shows that geographical distance can also mask other conceptualisations of distances and that geographical distance can also interact with other forms of distances. The empirical basis consists of data from a large-scale research project addressing the organisational transformations taking place in Norwegian higher education due to mergers between 2016 and 2017.

This article investigates how learning outcomes, a concept inspired by an Anglo-Saxon curriculum approach, are expressed in policy documents, with an emphasis on expectations articulated to teachers. Developments in education policy for the last two decades reflect a widespread expansion of learning outcome orientation in curricula and assessment in most of the modern world. These developments have led to changes in how education is governed and practised, and this makes it necessary to form critical concepts to understand how curricula are formed and functioned today. The research questions of the study are: How is learning outcome-oriented policy defined in key policy documents and what are the implications of these policies for the teaching profession? The topic is investigated through a document content analysis of key policy documents. A complex picture of teachers emerges in which they are to be both controlled and autonomous. The study also identifies a strong belief in 'alignment between teachers' competences and practices and students' life opportunities. The findings indicate that the policies move back and forth between different parameters for describing teachers and teaching, and as such, teachers must be able to adapt as chameleons in the context of each policy.

Human rights education (HRE) has been recognised in international educational discourses as a sustainable practice to develop active citizenship and protect human dignity. However, such education has not been fully explored in a broader political context. In addition to contributing to empowering citizens to resist human rights violations, HRE plays several roles in society, contributing to both national identity and international image-building. The article explores possible relations between national identity construction, foreign policy and HRE in Norway through the following research question: "What interplay occurs between Norwegian foreign policy and national identity in relation to human rights, and, within this context, what is the role of HRE?" The article presents a qualitative analysis of Norwegian policy documents and reports, arguing that HRE is a component of Norwegian national identity as well as political currency in foreign relations.

Educational research in Norway has experienced unprecedented structural expansion and cognitive shifts over the last two decades because of greater state investments and the strategic use of extensive and multi-year thematic programmes to fund research projects. Using a neo-institutionalist framework, we examine institutionalisation dynamics in cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative dimensions by means of interviews, research programme calls, policy documents and funding data. In the cultural-cognitive dimension, we find references to the knowledge society, the perceived importance of evidence in policymaking and ideas of quality, excellence and relevance. In the normative dimension, we find the introduction of new professional and methodological standards, reflecting broader global patterns of academic and epistemic drift. In the regulative dimension, the strengthened role of both government and the Research Council of Norway is manifest in substantial growth in both funding and large-scale, long-term planning, including thematic choices--evidence of 'programmification.' The importance of external models has grown in an era of internationalisation, yet translation occurs at every level of the governance of educational research. This results in a specific Norwegian research model, guided by a mode of governance of programmes that maintains social values that are traditionally strong in Nordic societies.

Both international actors, like the OECD, and Norwegian policies for teacher education aim to increase students' academic competence and the collaboration between university and practice. Mentoring dialogues between students and mentors in practice are in the intersection between university and the profession. Thus, this gives the mentors the responsibility to realize these policy intentions. This actualizes what is discussed in mentoring and how the negotiation of control between mentors and students has impact on what policy intentions are recontextualized in mentoring. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate which intentions are realized in mentoring through the use of criteria and the selection of the content to be discussed. The findings indicate that the mentor has strong autonomy, and where what is discussed is focused more on practical issues than considerations about the academic subject. Given these findings, this paper discusses different perspectives on a close collaboration between university and practice.

This study examines the reference societies of Norway and Sweden embedded in their education policy documents. We examined 4,260 bibliographic references in 19 white papers and green papers prepared for the 2016/2020 renewal of the Knowledge Promotion Reform in Norway and the 2015/2018 Knowledge Achievement Reform in Sweden. In addition, we interviewed 10 policy experts who participated in the preparation of the analyzed policy documents. The results show that the reference societies overall reflect the existing knowledge production and dissemination mechanisms in education policy; however, they significantly differed between Norway and Sweden regarding whether and to what extent they reference knowledge produced in other Nordic countries. Specifically, while Norway drew extensively on knowledge from its neighbors, particularly Sweden, Sweden seldom referenced knowledge produced in other Nordic countries. Policy actors identified similarity, relevance, accessibility, reform contexts, and institutional arrangements as reasons for (not) referencing neighbors. This study calls for further consideration of the political, social, and cultural embeddedness of the 'socio-logic' to understand implicit reference societies.

Internationally, the emphasis on school reforms is increasing, and school leaders play a key role in realising reform initiatives for school development and change. Often, the formation of partnerships between researchers and practitioners for school improvement is promoted to facilitate professional development and enhance student learning. However, limited attention has been directed towards the underlying ideas, values and beliefs in government-initiated strategies for partnership in the policy context of educational reform. This paper examines how partnerships between schools and higher education institutions are conceptualised and legitimised in Norwegian reform policy documents. We analyse three government white papers, each coupled with an executive partnership strategy document. The analysis applies a discourse analytical approach to policy as text and transmission. Our findings show a shift in the official national discourse on partnerships in education, underscoring new tensions regarding the power to define focus areas in the local reform work.

This paper examines how superintendents and school principals enact national policy reform expectations and what characterises their local organisational arrangements. Furthermore, the paper investigates how superintendents and school principals deal with tensions as entrepreneurs. The study builds on qualitative interview data from two municipalities in Norway. Analytically, the study draws on institutional theory, more specifically, on entrepreneurship, which to a limited degree has been applied in educational and empirical studies. The superintendents and principals interviewed referred to various local arrangements and resources that were partly adapted and changed through reform work to better fit local needs. Such arrangements included intra and interorganisational dependency and cooperation with several actors and organisational resources. Superintendents and principals seemed to partly break away from existing patterns of interaction. The entrepreneurial work entailed dealing with several tensions emerging within and across institutional boundaries in the process of enacting national reform policies.

This paper aims to provide evidence on student teachers' perceptions of Flipped Classroom (FC) to help teacher educators (TEs) to make informed decisions about implementing FC and support student teachers to reflect on the value of FC in their teaching practice. FC, a pedagogical model requiring digital competence of students and teachers, has been a popular teaching approach for nearly two decades in K-12 and higher education. After the outbreak of Covid-19, more teachers have started to implement FC. In post-COVID-19, with the possibility of reusing video lectures made during the pandemic and the familiarity of digital skills to create digital lectures, a question for teachers is whether to continue with this approach. This paper follows an explanatory sequential mixed methods research approach. Insights from student teachers (STs) in the field of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Norway are the primary data, and surveys and focus group interviews are the main instruments to collect the data. FC's advantages and challenges perceived by STs are reported, and the possibility of STs becoming future flippers is explored. Findings from this paper indicate that STs would like to have more courses flipped in their studies, yet STs seem hesitant about flipping their courses in their teaching practice. STs also provide some practical suggestions on implementing the FC approach.

This paper investigates the material complexity and relational emergence of 'teaching'. Reporting on a video-based ethnographic study of an upper secondary classroom in Norway, the paper centres on the following research questions: Which material-discursive practices 'matter' in upper secondary teaching situations, and how are participants' bodies shaping and being shaped by these practices? The paper combines sociomaterial practice theory with the agential realist concepts of material-discursivity and apparatus to trace the spatial and bodily enactment of a teaching situation. In the first part of the paper, I identify two material-discursive practices: the practice of tasks and the practice of friendship. Second, I examine the two practices' material intertwinement, proposing that they entangle and coarticulate a larger material arrangement termed the teaching apparatus that regulates the possibilities and limitations for 'doing' in the classroom. The paper offers a perspective on teaching that increases our awareness of its interconnectedness and unpredictability, allowing for a more fine-grained understanding of the embodied liveliness and material complexity of everyday teaching encounters. Finally, I propose that thinking with a spatially, bodily and relationally produced teaching apparatus offers an affirmative and agential approach to discussing educational quality.

Purpose: Microteaching is a teacher training method based on microclasses (groups of four or five students) and microlessons lasting no more than 5-20 min. Since it was first explored in the late 20th century in experiments at Stanford University, microteaching has evolved at the interdisciplinary level. The purpose of this paper is to examine the networks found via an analytical bibliometric study of the scientific output related with microteaching in teacher training, through a study and examination of the Web of Science database. Design/methodology/approach: This research was conducted with the VOSviewer tool for content analysis through data mining and scientific network structure mapping by means of the normalisation technique. This technique is based on the association strength indicator, which is interpreted as a measurement of the similarity of the units of analysis. Findings: Two hundred and nine articles were thus obtained from the Web of Science database. The networks generated and the connections among the various items, co-authorship and co-citation are presented in the results, which clearly indicates that there are significant authors and institutions in the field of microteaching. The largest cluster is made up of institutions such as Australian Catholic University. The most often-cited document is by Rich and Hannafin. Allen (1968), who defines microteaching as a technique based on microclasses and microlessons, is the author most often cited and has the largest number of connections. Research limitations/implications: This research's limitations concern either aspects that lie beyond the study's possibilities or goals that have proved unattainable. The second perspective, which focuses on skill transfer, contains a lower percentage of documents and therefore has a weaker central documentary structure. Lastly, the authors have also had to bear in mind the fact that the scientific output hinges upon a highly specific realm, the appearance and/or liberalisation of digital technologies and access to those technologies in the late 20th century. Originality/value: This research shows that microteaching is a promising area of research that opens up vast possibilities in higher education teacher training for application in the realm of technologies. This paper could lead to several lines of future research, such as access to and the universal design of learning from the standpoint of different communication and pedagogical models based on microteaching.

Immigrant minority (IM) languages have a significant presence in certain European regions. Nonetheless, these languages are not usually included in the school curriculum. This paper aims to analyse the studies published between 2010 and 2020 considering IM languages in multilingual European education contexts. The method included a search of academic papers published in the databases ERIC, Web of Science and Scopus, which yielded 42 studies. The studies were analysed by considering: (1) the demographic characteristics of the countries where the studies were conducted, (2) the sociolinguistic or psycholinguistic focus of the papers in relation to the European country, and (3) the characteristics of the bi-multilingual education programme including IM languages. The results indicate that: (1) the demographic characteristics of the country are not strictly related to the number of studies published, (2) most studies have a sociolinguistic approach even though many studies analyse both sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic factors, and (3) only seven multilingual education programmes including IM languages were described in these papers. We conclude that there is a lack of research focusing on IM languages in educational settings and discuss how addressing these gaps could create opportunities for building equitable multilingual communities in Europe.

This article presents an innovative way to engage schoolchildren in discussions on multilingualism and multilingual identity using research data they helped generate. Adopting an exploratory, participatory approach to research, our study uses digital data visualisations in interactive sessions aimed at engaging lower secondary students in identity formation and negotiation. The paper starts with a contextualisation of multilingualism and language learning in Norwegian education and the contributions of our study to relevant research in the field. Next, we discuss the epistemological and pedagogical implications of our participatory approach and its integration within the general mixed methods framework of the Ungspråk project, a three-year study that investigates different aspects of multilingualism in Norwegian lower secondary schools. The paper then focuses on the development of the main pedagogical tools used in the interactive sessions: digital visualisations based on data from an online questionnaire previously answered by participants. Particular attention is paid to the design of the visuals in promoting students' engagement with the data and autonomy in interpreting research findings. The paper concludes with a discussion of the main findings from interactive sessions in which participants engaged in reflections on multilingualism and multilingual identity via interaction with the visuals, researchers and their peers.

This paper discusses the role of formative feedback in teaching academic writing for a large class of first-year business students. The paper contributes to our knowledge on how to design an effective formative feedback process for a class in excess of 300 students. Based on survey data from 2018 the paper addresses how the students respond to being taught academic writing in two different feedback modalities: face-to-face interaction and electronic annotations. Our findings indicate that there are no significant differences between the two modalities and that the students are relatively satisfied with the feedback they received. The majority of the students report that feedback has helped them accomplish their learning goals, they pay attention to feedback, and feedback motivates them in their studies. Even with these positive responses from the students, we question whether our approach is sustainable in the long run. Unless smarter and more efficient ways of providing personalised feedback are developed for large student groups, the transition to the new paradigm for feedback, where the emphasis is placed on dialogic interaction, will not be practicable.

The reliance on the use of virtual learning environments, particularly computer-supported collaborative learning environments, is increasing in higher education institutions. This paper explores the perceived sociability of a virtual learning environment after it was implemented in an interdisciplinary project-based course in a higher education institute in Norway due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It describes the validation of a sociability scale in a sample of 1,611 students. The paper also reports on differences in perceived sociability according to gender, field of study and personality and the extent to which perceptions of sociability relate to the experience of a sudden change from a real-life learning environment to a virtual one. The results of this large-scale study suggest that the Norwegian version of the sociability scale can be used as a valid and reliable instrument to measure the perceived sociability of a virtual learning environment in the context of self-organized student project teams.

Studies have shown how school professionals deal with large quantities of student test data and accountability policies in different ways. However, the subtle ways in which school leaders and teachers use their time, their power and their talk when dealing with external policy demands in daily practice is understudied. Using data from interviews with formal school leaders and video observations of leadership teams and teaching teams, this paper investigates how school leaders and teachers deal with external testing policy demands in a fairly new policy context of national testing in Norway. The study aims to explore micro-political aspects of the issue, by applying a theoretical framework on leadership, micro-policy actors and ideas about time. The paper contributes to the field of education policy and reform by introducing the role that time plays in micro-politics in general and how time issues contribute to the shaping of stakeholders' understanding of and relationship to external policy demands. Findings surrounding middle leaders as crucial in the micro-policy construction of time and space, suggesting a need for research aimed at understanding school leaders' and teachers' sharing experiences of time and the care for the collective self.

This paper explores teachers' educational values and how they shape their judgements about physically active learning (PAL). Twenty one teachers from four primary schools in Norway participated in focus groups. By conceptualising PAL as a didaktikk approach, the findings indicated that teachers engaged with PAL in a way that reflected their professional identity and previous experiences with the curriculum. Teachers valued PAL as a way of getting to know pupils in educational situations that were different from those when sedentary. These insights illustrate how PAL, as a didaktikk approach to teaching, can shift teachers' perceptions of pupils' knowledge, learning, and identity formation in ways that reflect the wider purposes of education. The paper gives support to a classroom discourse that moves beyond the traditional, sedentary one-way transfer of knowledge towards a more collaborative effort for pupils' development.

The purpose of this study is to examine how physics students position themselves compared to other student groups on various attitudes and opinions relevant to the tradition of "scientific skepticism". Previous research has shown physics students identifying and having mindsets in line with the epistemic ideas from this philosophical tradition, promoting disbelief in epistemically unfounded ideas, and skeptical inquiry as a tool for evaluating claims. In this, we employ quantitative constructs testing conspiracy beliefs and supernatural beliefs along with established psychological constructs for social dominance orientation, and the conspiracy mentality questionnaire that have previously been shown to have interconnectedness. After showing several direct comparisons between different student groups, the paper also examines other elements that can influence "scientific skepticism", like education level, education type, and gender via multivariate regression analysis. The results suggest physics students tend to position themselves to the end of the spectrum on several constructs connected to scientific skepticism, both compared to students from the humanities and social sciences, and students from other STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, and the regression analysis finds being a physics student contributes a statistically significant contribution along the tested dimensions. The paper discusses possible reasons for this and what this tells us about physics students and physics education.

This study aimed to investigate common features and ways of understanding quality culture (QC) within higher education institutions (HEIs) in Nordic countries. While the concept of QC is commonly accepted and often used, its meaning is not always clear. This paper focuses on how Nordic universities frame QC in their internal documentation. The Nordic context was chosen due to the close cooperation on quality issues that characterise HEIs within the Nordic region. The discussion section of this paper outlines QC in relation to quality assurance (QA) among HEIs within the European and Nordic regions. Sixteen universities participated in the study by sharing documents describing their QCs. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis and discussed from different perspectives, such as regarding how the universities use the concept of QC and how QC is created. Based on the results, a model was created that provides an overview of how QC emerges and how the concept is implemented in documentation. It is hoped that the results will both contribute useful input to the ongoing collaboration on quality issues among HEIs in the Nordic region and will also be useful in enhancing QC at universities in other regions.

This article sets out the findings of a systematic review on research into career guidance policy in the Nordic countries between 2008 and 2022. In total 60 papers were reviewed from across the Nordic region. They focused on national career guidance systems, career guidance systems for young people, the adult guidance system and career guidance for migrants. The corpus proved to be methodologically diverse with studies utilizing a wide range of different research strategies, although important differences were found between academic and grey literature. Most of the papers reviewed were atheoretical, with the remaining, mainly academic, literature drawing heavily on critical theory. The thematic analysis identified four major themes in the corpus: the context for career guidance policy; career guidance provision and practice; technologies of governance; and beneficiaries and outcomes of career guidance policies. The findings are discussed in relation to the strengths and weakness of the corpus and used to propose a research programme for the next 15 years.

ITE has been criticised for being disconnected, with different languages being spoken in the two learning arenas of campus and schools. Bringing people together, such as through formal university-school partnerships, is not enough to open up communicative learning spaces -- sites of collaborative learning that are democratic, safe and supportive. Practicum is recognised as a capstone experience in teacher education in which the mentor's role is crucial. However, there are significant variations in the types and quality of mentoring and only some supportive frameworks. This paper investigates what arrangements are needed to enable mentoring practices as communicative learning spaces. An intervention was designed that structured conversations between student teachers, school-based mentor teachers and university-based teacher educators around an observation-grounded mentoring framework (OMF). Data was gathered from completed worksheets, reflection logs, and interviews and analysed through the lens of practice architectures. We explore issues of knowledge and power in the facilitation of learning when university-based teacher educators visit the school, and classroom observations frame the mentoring conversations. Findings show that the OMF offered a shared language for tripartite mentoring conversations as communicative learning spaces. The paper contributes to knowledge about supportive mentoring practices in ITE.

The international business press has been a powerful and influential voice in modern societies and, as its formative years took place during the Cold War, a closer look at the ideologies that were promoted in this part of the press is of interest. Until the 1970s, Farmand was the only Norwegian business magazine of any size and standing. Trygve J. B. Hoff, Farmand’s editor from 1935, was part of the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS), a neoliberal intellectual collective established in 1947 with participants such as Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. This article is a study of the ideas that Hoff promoted, particularly in Farmand, from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Following community interaction theory and drawing upon the concept of boundary crossing, this paper investigates students' experiences of career learning across contexts when involved in placement activities. Specifically, this work focuses on students' experiences of continuity and discontinuity in relation to tensions naturally embedded in career education. For students to experience coherent career learning in lower secondary schools, career education must help relate career activities to career choice and learning by encouraging systematic reflections during preparation and follow-up. From a continuity/discontinuity perspective, when activities in out-of-school contexts are accompanied by an educational infrastructure, it can limit students' freedom to reflect on their experiences. Analysis results point to the emancipatory potential of collective reflection after the placement activities. Furthermore, the results highlight the unfulfilled potential of discontinuity as a source of career learning when moving across contexts.

Issues concerning interprofessional collaboration (IPC) for children at risk have become a priority globally as well as in Norway. By international standards, the Norwegian educational system is regarded as inclusive and collaborative in terms of the external services that support schools and pupils. However, a debate continues on how to best collaborate to meet the needs of pupils with complex problems. Thus, the aim of this paper is to analyse how the relationship between IPC and inclusive education is reflected in important Norwegian educational policy documents. A problem-driven content analysis revealed three categories: (1) inclusion as an impetus for IPC, (2) IPC as a strategy for inclusion, and (3) commitment to IPC when necessary. Major findings included: (1) IPC in national educational documents should be described more clearly to promote inclusive education; (2) IPC connected to other support mechanisms, such as multidisciplinary teams and individual plans; and (3) schools can commit IPC when necessary. The results in this study show that when green papers, white papers, and legislation fail to offer clear recommendations, schools and teachers may not prioritise IPC.

The aim of this study is to identify the most prolific countries in the field of special education and to discuss the widespread impact of their papers by taking into account the country's h-index. Through a bibliometric analysis, the data were collected in the Web of Science Core Collection category "Education, Special" in the Social Science Citation Index during 2011-2020. The 25 most prolific countries in the field of special education were determined in terms of paper productivity, and it was seen that the leading country was undisputedly the USA (54.42%). Meanwhile, a strong positive correlation was found between the h-index and the number of papers published by the countries (r=0.864). On the other hand, when the ranking in terms of the number of papers was reconfigured by the h-index, it was relatively changed. The possible reasons for this change for the countries with the most changing rankings were discussed by considering some definitive criteria such as the journal quartiles, the percentage of international and domestic, and the percentage of open access papers. This study reports a positive correlation between the quality and quantity in the field of special education for the publications of countries. It has been shown that where the positive correlation deviates, then especially, the journal quartiles, the percentage of international collaboration and the percentage of open access papers have a significant effect. The bibliometric findings may be useful to enrich the discussion about the widespread impact of papers and debate whether the use of h-index is acceptable for cross-national comparisons.

The recent Norwegian curriculum reform for schools, called "The subject renewal", is part of an international trend regarding knowledge-based curricula. The Norwegian curriculum, which places decisive emphasis on subjects and subject concepts, aims to bring in-depth learning and knowledge back to schools. This paper is based on Rata's theory, referred to as the curriculum design coherence (CDC) model, and examines the curriculum for social studies. The analysis reveals significant differences in the curriculum's goal formulations, with designs that lack connections between subject concepts and content knowledge, which sheds light on how the transition to a knowledge-based curriculum is accompanied by several unresolved issues. The paper explains why curricula with coherent designs and epistemically structured knowledge are a prerequisite for in-depth learning and cumulative knowledge building in schools.

Background: Several studies suggest that deviations from proper authorship practices are commonplace in medicine. The aim of this study was to explore experiences of and attitudes towards the handling of authorship in PhD theses at medical faculties in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Methods: Those who defended their PhD thesis at a medical faculty in Scandinavia during the second half of 2020 were offered, by e-mail, to participate in an online survey. Survey questions dealt with experiences of violations of the first three of the ICMJE authorship criteria and misuse of authorship order in the thesis articles, as well as respondents' attitudes to these matters. Both questions with fixed response alternatives and questions with free-text responses were used. Quantitative data were analysed statistically using the Table functions in SPSS 25 and Chi-2 tests. Free-text responses were analysed qualitatively using manifest content analysis. Results: 287 valid questionnaires were returned (response rate: 34.1%). Almost half (46.0%) of the respondents reported that the ICMJE authorship criteria were not fully respected in at least one of the papers in their thesis, while a vast majority (96.7%) found it important that authorship is handled according to the ICMJE authorship criteria. 24.4% reported inadequate handling of authorship order in at least one paper. The qualitative results provide a wide spectrum of examples of how the ICMJE authorship criteria are circumvented. Conclusion: Despite increasing educational efforts to reduce deviations from good research practice at Scandinavian universities, the handling of authorship in medical papers remains problematic.

This paper contributes to the contemporary focus on literacy and digital stories in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions. When a group of young children create an animated story together, they might collaborate, both with their peers and with their teacher. By drawing on social semiotic multimodal perspectives as the theoretical framework, the purpose of this paper is to describe and explore how different modalities and narrative devices contribute to the development of an animated story created by six children (aged 4-5 years) and a teacher in collaboration. The study is a qualitative case study, focusing on contemporary events in a Norwegian kindergarten. The empirical material consists of video-recorded field observations of the process as well as the final product. Through an inductive exploration of the development of verbal narrative, three analytical strands are identified: (i) verbal narrative in the final product, (ii) multimodal narrative in the final product, and (iii) narrative devices applied by the children during the process. The findings demonstrate the importance of including and considering the process, the product, narrative devices and all the modalities--in particular the kineikonic mode--when creating an animated story with young children. An implication of these findings is for ECE teachers and researchers to acknowledge and integrate all the various aspects that contribute to the final product when young children create animated stories.

This paper reports a study of university lecturers' and students' experiences of teaching and learning mathematics following the abrupt requirement to switch to online teaching in 2020. A goal of the study is to share experiences that could be useful to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics in online settings. The qualitative research described is a phenomenological study and draws on interviews with ten mathematics lecturers and six undergraduate students who were enrolled in at least one university mathematical course during the lockdown in 2020. The interview data were analysed using a thematic approach. This paper reports findings regarding perceptions of lecturers and students about the challenges and benefits of online teaching and learning of mathematics, how the transition to online education has influenced assessment and sharing useful approaches for teaching and learning mathematics in online settings.