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The development of intercultural competence is a crucial part of foreign language (FL) education, yet it remains under-explored in teaching materials and teacher education. Transnational perspectives on FL teaching, and specifically literary texts on migration and exile, may help expand teaching beyond the traditional monocultural focus and stimulate the development of intercultural competence. The article presents case studies of three literary texts that can be used for this purpose. The texts may contribute to the development of the students’ intercultural competence as they give access to other perspectives, while simultaneously encouraging students to reflect on their own life-world. However, the texts are highly dependent on contextualization and adaptation of classroom activities, thus underlining the crucial role of the teacher in the development of students’ intercultural awareness. publishedVersion

Background: Cervical cancer screening programs are facing a programmatic shift where screening protocol based on human papillomavirus testing (HPV-Screening protocol) is replacing the liquid-based cytology (LBC-Screening protocol). For safe technology transfer within the nationwide screening programme in Norway, HPV-Screening protocol was implemented randomized to compare the real-world effectiveness of HPV-Screening protocol and LBC-Screening protocol at the first screening round. Methods: Among 302,295 women ages 34 to 69 years scheduled to attend screening from February 2015 to June 2017, 157,447 attended. A total of 77,207 were randomly allocated to the HPV-Screening protocol and 80,240 were allocated to the LBC-Screening protocol. All women were followed up for 18 months. Results: The HPV-Screening protocol resulted in a relative increase of 60% in the detection of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) grade 2 or worse [risk ratio (RR) = 1.6, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.5–1.7], 40% in CIN grade 3 or worse (RR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.3–1.6), 40% in cancer (RR = 1.4, 95% CI = 1.0–2.1), and 60% in colposcopy referrals (RR = 1.6, 95% CI = 1.5–1.6) compared with LBC-Screening. The performance of both protocols was age dependent, being more effective in women ages under 50 years. Conclusions: The HPV-Screening protocol was well accepted by women in Norway and detected more CIN2, CIN3, and cancers compared with the LBC-Screening protocol. Impact: A randomized implementation of the HPV-Screening protocol with real-world assessment enabled a gradual, quality assured, and safe technology transition. HPV-based screening protocol may further be improved by using HPV genotyping and age-specific referral algorithms.

An integrated part of teaching is to face unexpected situations. Teachers have to make immediate decisions, and these decisions may have a great impact on many people. An important question is how teacher education can prepare students for unexpected situations. The aim of this practitioner research study is to investigate if case-based teaching can contribute to reducing the perceived gap in teacher education. A step-wise model was introduced for the students and data based on the student teachers’ experiences was collected through questionnaire and focus-group conversations. The findings show three main arguments for why teacher education should be case-based. First, analysing cases helps students to understand that every situation in practice is unique. Second, cases link to practice and theory, and finally, a case opens for different perspectives depending on how the diagnosis is made. publishedVersion

This qualitative study investigates, through focus groups, how students in upper secondary school in Norway experience schooling. The background for the study is a tension between measurable outcomes and the educational aim of supporting students’ human growth, their Bildung. As teacher educators, we wanted to learn about situations that made an impression on students and thereby might promote Bildung and the desire to learn. Findings show that what made an impression was primarily related to teachers, fellow students, school atmosphere, and to aesthetic experiences and variations. Students emphasise teachers’ attitudes, interpersonal skills and ability to vary their teaching. Teachers content knowledge was taken for granted. Based on the findings, we suggest implications for how to educate teachers, for teachers working conditions and for cooperation in schools. In order to promote students’ Bildung, also teachers’ human development needs to be put on the agenda. acceptedVersion

The present study asks what challenges student teachers meet in today’s school and how they present, respond to, and reflect on these challenges in an online discussion forum. The study explores these questions by analysing cases written by student teachers in their last practice placement in a one-year post-graduate teacher education programme for secondary school in Norway. The findings show that the cases centre around students and classroom management, and that student teachers take on a role as either participant or observer. The responses are a mix of advice, descriptions of similar experiences, and support. They tend to normalise the situations rather than explore them. Learning from challenging incidents does not happen by itself. Timing is crucial, and so is space for reframing, reflection, and for considering alternative perspectives. This means that there is a need for distance to the situation and a process of interaction with various perspectives. publishedVersion

The current study is a collective self-study on how we as 15 teacher educators at a university in Norway tried to improve our teaching through working with cases with the aim of better supporting student teachers in making links between theory and practice. We wanted to address the common criticism in teacher education concerning a perceived gap between practice and theory. Our presupposition was that one way to prepare student teachers for work and bring together theoretical and practical knowledge would be through case-based teaching. We agreed that we wanted to try different ways of working with cases and to follow our own actions with research and conduct a self-study. Throughout the project, each teacher educator experienced to learn about case-based teaching, but our joint learning was limited due to practical issues and lack of time. With teacher education as a shared responsibility, our conclusion is that teacher educators need time to develop as a team, not only as individual teachers. publishedVersion

This article examines the sociocultural shaping of teacher agency by focusing on how various conditions mediate teachers’ perceived professional space. Agency is understood from a sociocultural perspective as the mediated capacity to act, which is achieved and exercised in a professional space, and, consequently, shaped by the perceptions of this space. Based on thematic and interpretative analysis of interviews with Norwegian L1 upper secondary teachers, the article identifies several conditions that mediate the teachers’ perceived professional space: the exam, the curriculum, accountability demands, school leadership, colleagues, students, learning materials, and subject traditions and purposes. Two aspects of mediation are identified, what we respectively term extension and remodelling. Extension conveys how mediating conditions provide resources or constraints that contribute to expanding or narrowing the teachers’ perceived professional space. Remodelling, however, conveys how mediating conditions qualitatively transform the perceived professional space. Findings highlight the subject as a resource for teachers, and teacher agency as socioculturally shaped by the perceived size and character of professional space. acceptedVersion

Anyplex II HPV28 (`Anyplex`) is a semi-quantitative DNA PCR assay divided into set A, comprising 14 high risk (hr)HPV types; and set B, comprising 5 possibly hrHPV types and 9 low risk (lr)HPV types. We compared the ability of Anyplex to that of Hybrid Capture 2 (HC2) and PreTect HPV-Proofer (`Proofer`) to detect cervical intraepithelial neoplasia grade two or worse (CIN2+) by HPV types and viral load. This cross-sectional study included 296 women referred to colposcopy with abnormal cervical cytology and/or persistent HPV infection. CIN2+ was identified in 175/296 women. Liquid based cytology samples were used to perform HPV testing. The sensitivity of Anyplex to detect CIN2+ was 98.9% (95% CI 95.9–99.9) and specificity 43.0% (95% CI 34.0–52.3). Restricting to medium and high viral loads in Anyplex set A, sensitivity and specificity were 97.1% (95% CI 93.5–99.1) and 59.5% (95% CI 50.2–68.3) with positive (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) 77.6% and 93.5%, respectively, comparable to HC2. Restricting Anyplex to the hrHPV types in Proofer, HPV16, 18, 31, 33 and 45, sensitivity and specificity for CIN2+ were 85.1% (95% CI 79.0–90.1) and 71.1% (95% CI 62.1–79.0), comparable to Proofer`s. When adding HPV52 and 58, the sensitivity for CIN2+ was 92.6% (95% CI 87.6–96.0) and CIN3+ 96.5% (95% CI 92.0–98.8). No value of Anyplex set B was found in detecting CIN2+. In conclusion, the clinical performance of medium and high viral loads in Anyplex set A was comparable to HC2. Restricting the test to the 7 hrHPV types included in the 9-valent HPV-vaccine, HPV16, 18, 31, 33, 45, 52 and 58, satisfies the international criteria for cervical cancer screening with relative sensitivity compared to HC2 for CIN2+ and CIN3+ of 0.98 and 1.01, respectively. Detecting all 28 Anyplex HPV types adds no benefit in a referral population. Open Access. Research accepted by PLOS journals is published under a CC BY license. Anyone may reuse the article with proper attribution.

Resume Les papillomavirus humains (HPV), virus a ADN double brin, sont a l’origine de nombreuses pathologies cutaneomuqueuses, benignes ou malignes, allant des plus communes telles que les verrues vulgaires a des neoplasies touchant les voies aerodigestives superieures et la sphere anogenitale. Le diagnostic de l’infection a HPV repose essentiellement sur la detection du genome viral par biologie moleculaire compte tenu du caractere difficilement cultivable en routine de ces virus. La tendance actuelle de la part des societes scientifiques est d’ameliorer la sensibilite du depistage avec de nouvelles methodes et de proposer de nouveaux algorithmes de decision diagnostique et therapeutique. Le developpement du recueil cytologique en phase liquide permet d’associer plus facilement, a partir d’un meme echantillon, le diagnostic cytologique et les tests de biologie moleculaire. Il existe deux grands types de techniques utilisables sur les prelevements cervico-uterins : des techniques d’hybridation en phase liquide et des techniques d’amplification genique ou Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). Des techniques de genotypage ont egalement ete developpees : elles reposent sur une technique d’amplification suivie d’une hybridation avec des sondes specifiques de type. En complement du depistage et du genotypage, des techniques permettent la detection quantitative de l’ADN viral d’un type donne d’HPV et ainsi de suivre l’evolution de la charge virale au cours du temps. Une autre approche repose sur la detection des ARN messagers (ARNm) des proteines oncogenes E6 et E7 qui sembleraient constituer un marqueur pertinent pour identifier et surveiller les femmes presentant un risque d’evolution vers une lesion precancereuse ou un cancer du col.

Human papillomaviruses (HPV), double-stranded DNA viruses, are causing many mucocutaneous diseases, benign or malignant, ranging from common warts to malignancies involving the upper aerodigestive tract and the anogenital sphere. The diagnosis of HPV infection is based primarily on the viral genome detection by molecular biological methods, given the difficulty in routine cultivation of these viruses. The current trend in screening against cervical cancer is to improve the sensitivity of screening with new methods and to propose new algorithms for diagnostic and therapeutic decisions. The development of liquid-based cytology facilitates the cytologic diagnosis and molecular assays from the same sample. There are two main types of HPV detection methods used on uterine cervical samples: signal amplification methods (hybridization techniques in liquid phase) and target amplification methods (the techniques of gene amplification or Polymerase Chain Reaction [PCR]). Genotyping techniques are also developed: they are based on an amplification technique followed by hybridization with probe specific types. In addition to the detection, genotyping techniques allow quantitative detection of viral DNA of HPV genotype and so monitor changes in viral load over time. Another approach relies on the detection of messenger RNA (mRNA) of HPV proteins E6 and E7 oncogenes, which would appear to be a relevant marker to identify and monitor women at risk of progression to a precancerous lesion or cervical cancer.

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