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This article aims to analyze discourse about professional development in preschool, represented by knowledge movements in meta-conversations about peer counseling. Empirically, this article presents a case study based on audio recordings of focus group discussions on peer counseling. The underlying study highlights findings in the form of various speech acts as markers for central discourse among preschool teachers. Habermas' theory of communicative action is used as a framework for analyzing the preschool teachers' statements, showing that the concepts of lifeworld and system are central in their discussions. The study highlights knowledge movements pertaining to learning and becoming part of the community, knowledge movements that threaten professional aspects, and dynamics between the participants' everyday lives and the system. Peer counseling in groups appears to be a crucial transformative learning activity in the preschool setting studied. The findings presented can contribute to bridging preschool teachers' everyday lives and the system they function within and can be used to improve the education of preschool teachers.

Objective: This paper explores the expectations of teachers to contribute to fostering students' wellbeing in the revised Norwegian curriculum. A new construct in the curriculum is three interdisciplinary topics -- health and life skills; democracy and citizenship; and, sustainable development -- included to give priority to prevailing societal challenges. Our specific concern is the content of these topics, and the extent to which they provide a framework for connecting with complex health and social issues. Method: Thematic analysis is used to examine how wellbeing is framed in the curriculum texts. Results: Our analysis reveals an emphasis on individualism, the responsibilizing of choice, and the importance attached to individual agency and skills in the three interdisciplinary topics. The topics emphasise the importance of informed, ethical, and wise choices in a way that disconnects people from the world around them. This limits opportunities for students to be introduced to a socioecological perspective on human existence as well as overlooking opportunities for developing a sociocritical approach to students' wellbeing through engagement with the real world. Conclusion: More emphasis on collective challenges and dilemmas might stimulate students' engagement and could thereby connect wellbeing to empowerment and to a sense of meaning in belonging to a larger whole.

Objective: This study's purpose was to determine if COVID-related stress predicted suicide risk among college students and if this risk was attenuated by higher levels of social and psychological resources. Participants: The sample included 65,142 college students who participated in the National College Health Assessment survey in Spring 2021. Methods: SPSS PROCESS was used to test the association between COVID-related stress and suicide risk while controlling for demographic covariates and to determine the potential stress-buffering roles of social connectedness, resiliency, and psychological well-being. Results: Higher levels of COVID-related stress predicted increased suicide risk yet this risk was attenuated when social connectedness, resiliency, and psychological flourishing were greater. Conclusions: Findings indicate that efforts to increase social connectedness, resiliency, and psychological flourishing could help reduce the risk of college students' suicidality under conditions of high COVID-related stress.

In this paper we explore how 15-16-year-old Norwegians experience social and cultural norms that shape their relationship with health and physical activity (PA) in a country where participation in PA is normative, in the sense that it is not only a widely shared practice but, in having significant cultural traction, is commonly understood as a 'normal' part of Norwegian daily life. The study draws upon qualitative data generated from 31 focus groups involving 148 10th graders (15-16-year-olds) in eight secondary schools in Norway. A key finding was that health was primarily viewed as synonymous with physical health and physical health as closely related to PA. A symbolic marker for physical condition -- and, by extension, physical health -- was physical appearance and 'looks' (in other words, physical attractiveness), revolving around gender normative bodily 'shape'. In this vein, the youngsters tended towards individualistic views of health -- seeing health as a responsibility that lay largely in their hands. We argue that the significance of growing up and living in a wealthy, social democratic nation-state, with high living standards and high social and cultural expectations, can have profound implications for youngsters' perceptions of health and PA, the impact of neoliberalism notwithstanding.

Educational systems change in top-down and bottom-up processes. One example is when authorities introduce a new curriculum, but it can also be changed by agents active in the system. In education, agents of change include educators, students and institutions. In this article, we explore the narratives of educators (n = 4) in the bachelor's programme for signed language interpreter education (both deaf and hearing students) at Humak University of Applied Sciences in Helsinki, Finland. Data were collected through interviews conducted in 2016. We used content analysis and the theory of agency as a framework for analysis. Here, agency is understood as threefold building on the past, present and future. We explore the different dimensions of becoming an agent of change, being an agent of change and being an agent in a changing field. We find that within the context of this sign language interpreting programme, educators' previous experiences, intercultural competence and ideas about the future contribute to changes in the curriculum and possibly to social change.

Social media (SoMe) is an important part of how young people socialize and communicate with each other and there are concerns that this may negatively impact peer relationships. The aim of this article was to explore how high school students experience the impact of SoMe on their peer relationships and the quality of these relationships. We performed qualitative semi-structured interviews with 12 Norwegian high-school students. Results showed that SoMe changed the quality of peer relationships as well as online and offline communication. The impact of SoMe on peer relationships depended on whether the students had both online and offline peer relations. Unlike offline relationships, where the youth experienced real friendships, online relationships were primarily described as contacts. The results suggest that online peer relationships often resemble affiliations rather than attachments. This may negatively impact social competence, especially among students whose peer relationships are mainly online-based.

"Research Findings": Early childhood workers (ECW's) play a pivotal role in shaping children's emotional competence. This study examined the efficacy of Tuning in to Kids for Kindergarten Teachers (TIK-KT) used with CLASS observations to improve ECW's emotion socialization, kindergarten emotional climate and children's functioning. Five hundred and forty-eight ECW's and leaders from 49 Norwegian kindergartens (children 1-5?years) were cluster randomized into intervention or control. Senior employees from intervention kindergartens received a two-day TIK-KT training, ECW's participated in a one-day training to learn emotion socialization skills and then ECW's received supervision to use emotion coaching with the children. Baseline and 10-month follow-up measures included questionnaires with ECW's and parents, and observations of kindergartens. Compared to controls, intervention ECW's reported a significant decrease in emotion dismissing and distraction, and a significant increase in emotion coaching. Intervention but not control kindergartens were observed to have significantly increased positive climate, teacher sensitivity, regard for student/child perspective, and behavior guidance. There was no change in parent reported child behavior; however, floor effects at baseline and a short follow-up during the COVID pandemic may have made change difficult to detect. "Practice or Policy": These findings provide preliminary support for use of TIK-KT as a universal intervention.

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 Food and Health subject is a mandatory subject in primary and lower secondary schools in Norway and has many similarities to the internationally known subject Home Economics. This study aimed to examine how learning activities are structured in Food and Health education, both from the teacher's and the student's perspective. Momentary time sampling was used as the observation method, and we created "lesson signatures" of the Food and Health education based on the observational data. "Lesson signature" is a term used for an aggregate number of observed teaching sessions, and is intended to reveal specific external patterns, considering time use, organisation and teaching patterns. Data were collected from 23 observed Food and Health lessons from sixth and ninth grades in Norway. The signatures show that although the activity level of both teachers and students was high, teachers controlled and regulated the lessons. Teaching methods consisted mainly of group work. Students spent a small proportion of the lesson listening, and conversation and discussion as a collective were virtually absent.

In this article, we explore and discuss how the clustering of values in local educational governance manifests in the case of inclusion. Public values and the role that these play as mediating factors are important in local governance processes; however, they are often overlooked in empirical studies. Inclusion is interesting because it is currently one of the most dominant political aims in education. Based on extensive data from interviews with municipal administrators in Norway, the following three aspects were important in their meaning-making around inclusive education: (1) an assumed common understanding of inclusion; (2) a general approach to adaptation; and (3) a broad view on school development. These largely reflected public values, such as equality and participation, rule of law and accountability, professional autonomy and innovation. However, because the values are clustered in particular ways, inclusion largely becomes a practical and didactic issue. This is important to discuss as the municipal level arguably needs to be involved in analytical discussions to enhance inclusive education. Professional autonomy and accountability are both emphasised and may create value conflicts. How public sector values are mediated and clustered with each other should be discussed, as how this is done give directions for educational practices.

Background and aimsTo investigate the prognostic value of blood neurofilament light chain protein (NfL) levels in the acute phase of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).MethodsWe conducted an individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis after screening on MEDLINE and Scopus to May 23rd 2022. We included studies with hospitalized adult COVID-19 patients without major COVID-19-associated central nervous system (CNS) manifestations and with a measurement of blood NfL in the acute phase as well as data regarding at least one clinical outcome including intensive care unit (ICU) admission, need of mechanical ventilation (MV) and death. We derived the age-adjusted measures NfL Z scores and conducted mixed-effects modelling to test associations between NfL Z scores and other variables, encompassing clinical outcomes. Summary receiver operating characteristic curves (SROCs) were used to calculate the area under the curve (AUC) for blood NfL.ResultsWe identified 382 records, of which 7 studies were included with a total of 669 hospitalized COVID-19 cases (mean age 66.2 ± 15.0 years, 68.1% males). Median NfL Z score at admission was elevated compared to the age-corrected reference population (2.37, IQR: 1.13-3.06, referring to 99th percentile in healthy controls). NfL Z scores were significantly associated with disease duration and severity. Higher NfL Z scores were associated with a higher likelihood of ICU admission, need of MV, and death. SROCs revealed AUCs of 0.74, 0.80 and 0.71 for mortality, need of MV and ICU admission, respectively.ConclusionsBlood NfL levels were elevated in the acute phase of COVID-19 patients without major CNS manifestations and associated with clinical severity and poor outcome. The marker might ameliorate the performance of prognostic multivariable algorithms in COVID-19.

Intratumor heterogeneity associates with poor patient outcome. Stromal stiffening also accompanies cancer. Whether cancers demonstrate stiffness heterogeneity, and if this is linked to tumor cell heterogeneity remains unclear. We developed a method to measure the stiffness heterogeneity in human breast tumors that quantifies the stromal stiffness each cell experiences and permits visual registration with biomarkers of tumor progression. We present Spatially Transformed Inferential Force Map (STIFMap) which exploits computer vision to precisely automate atomic force microscopy (AFM) indentation combined with a trained convolutional neural network to predict stromal elasticity with micron-resolution using collagen morphological features and ground truth AFM data. We registered high-elasticity regions within human breast tumors colocalizing with markers of mechanical activation and an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). The findings highlight the utility of STIFMap to assess mechanical heterogeneity of human tumors across length scales from single cells to whole tissues and implicates stromal stiffness in tumor cell heterogeneity.

We know that teachers' identities and their ideological assumptions of teaching and learning mathematics are critical in influencing their teaching and thinking about classroom practices. To better understand prospective mathematics teachers' identity during teacher education, this study investigates how two participants negotiate their identity within the different ideologies they experience during their teacher education program. This study takes the position that prospective mathematics teachers' identities are understood in terms of the narratives they construct and tell about themselves and others. By using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), this study reveals that the participants either experienced a non-negotiation of identity or a negotiation of a new identity. We know that prospective mathematics schoolteacher's identity and ideology have substantial consequences for the teaching and learning of mathematics. The educational ideology of mathematics, within the context of their teacher education program, can further shape the prospective teacher's identity about the discipline. This study suggests greater focus on prospective mathematics teacher identities and ideologies and indicates the support they need through teacher education to be equipped for their future role as mathematics teachers.