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This article addresses the question of whether and how creativity is important in children's lives in relation to creative expression in school, with a focus on the Danish educational system. It starts by outlining different conceptions of creativity: the first generation view considers it largely innate and specific for a selected few; the second generation perspective 'democratizes' creativity and emphasizes the fact that we can both teach and learn it. On the background of this latter approach, we analyze the common claim that schools can 'kill' creativity and the implications of this assertion. This leads to a consideration of the implicit and explicit epistemological and ontological assumptions behind creativity theories and the realization that adopting a 'romantic' view of what it means to create can actually be counterproductive in a school setting, at least for some students. An invitation to engage with creativity critically and reflectively in education is offered towards the end.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to ask: what effect does moving from individual to collective understandings of the entrepreneur in enterprising education have on the student's learning? And given this shift in understanding, is there a need for a new paradigm in entrepreneurship learning? Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on ethnographic data from entrepreneurship education (EEd) at a summer school in Denmark. The purpose of the summer school was to bring the students from an awareness of their own competences to a shared understanding of resources, relationships and opportunities for becoming enterprising. Findings: Drawing on the recent developments in understanding creativity, the authors' explore the potential for similarities between becoming an entrepreneur in collaboration with others and being creative in collaboration with others. The authors' found that a focus on the collaborative and distributed character of entrepreneurship, as within the We-paradigm from creativity, does not exclude the importance of perceptions of individuals' self-images as part of a course in entrepreneurship. Yet, a reformulation of these could be an entry point for richer group work and articulation of diverse group potential. Research limitations/implications: This study suggests that it is possible to take at least one step further in what can be achieved during an EEd course. Rather than remain a focus on individual learning and treating group work a didactics instrument, team formation processes can be used as a pedagogy/andragogy experiential tool in the classroom with its own learning outcomes, as presented and discussed above. For educators, this means that they have an additional tool to aid the complicated task of bringing EEd to students across campus. For students, this new approach means that the often dreaded and frustrating process of classroom team formation can become a positive experience of purposeful team assembly and collaboration. Two possible limitations regarding the findings of this paper can be identified: for students with extensive experience in forming teams and working in groups, taking them through this process may not have the desired effect as they may rely on habits and known mechanism without much reflection; it may be difficult to achieve the desired effect with students that know each other well before the course starts, as they may have too strong hidden agendas about who they want to work with and who they do not want to work with that this will over-power the idea/opportunity/subject-matter driven approach (Aldrich and Kim, 2007). Educators should consider if they may be subject to these limitations as this may have an effect on the use of active, opportunity-driven team formation in practise. To counter the second limitation, educators may want to consider how far into a course they want to facilitate the team formation; especially for courses running over significantly longer periods than two weeks. Future research may be able to assess the significance of these limitations. Practical implications: This paper explores how students experience and handle a shift from an individual to a collaborative understanding of entrepreneurship imposed on them by the novel and unique design of a course that explicitly incorporates the team formation process into the curriculum. This is undertaken to gauge the extent to which students experience this shift as fitting the actual and perceived need for shared practices in developing enterprising behaviour, and to shed light on what action/process-based EEd courses may benefit from actively including a team formation process in the course design. Social implications: EEd may be offered for a number of reasons. New enterprises are seen as a potential source of economic wealth and for the student, this type of education offers the possibility of using their knowledge in new ways, becoming entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs. Also, from the perspective of both the higher education institution and the student, in the fast changing world in which we live, the digital mobility and multiplicity of work environments requires a workforce that possesses a range of individual competences. Such as being persistent, engaged and having good ideas, competences that are difficult to teach and hard to learn. Adding to our knowledge of how to handle these concerns, the paper points at a number of social implications of EEd. Originality/value: The research conducted in this research paper contributes to the field of EEd by exemplifying how conceptual understandings of entrepreneurship as a collective enterprise, rather than an individual one, impact students' understanding and experience of entrepreneurship. Furthermore, it provides a foundation for expanding research aimed at providing students with a learning experience more in line with the everyday life of an entrepreneur.

The present article offers a reflection on creativity and creative pedagogy emerging out of an ongoing dialogue between three authors placed in two very different sociocultural contexts--Denmark and Colombia. Despite obvious geographical, economic, and cultural differences, similar concerns animate our practice when it comes to the question of creativity and creative pedagogy. The article opens with a brief presentation of the two cultural settings considered here and, based on it, continues with a discussion of paradigmatic foundations of creativity within education in general and within school in particular. These reflections inform our approach to creative pedagogy and suggest a reformulation of this concept in the light of sociocultural and decolonial theoretical perspectives. In the end, we question today's global ethos in formal educational environments of striving towards accountability and standardisation in ways that minimise, if not outright exclude, difference, diversity, and, consequently, creativity itself.

Purpose: Since 2007, it has been mandatory for all vocational schools in Denmark to assess the prior qualifications of all students when they begin at the school and to use this assessment to divide students into different ability-based courses (streaming) with the aim of increasing the retention of students. The purpose of this paper is to explore students' experiences of being placed on a low-ability course by using case studies of two classes from separate vocational schools in Denmark with different practices regarding the streaming of students. Design/methodology/approach: The study draws on theories of student drop-out and engagement (Rumberger, 1993; Finn, 1989) and on the differentiation-polarization theory (Gamoran, 2010) concerning the effects of streaming students into ability-based classes. Two cases are described, representing on the one hand predominately positive experiences of streaming (better relations to teachers and peers) and on the other hand predominately negative experiences of streaming (low teacher expectations and negative peer-learning). Findings: The study shows that the two schools have organized streaming differently and that the students have very diverse experiences of being placed in a low-ability class depending on the way the schools organize streaming. Originality/value: The paper discusses the basic dilemma that schools face when they have to teach students with very diverse backgrounds and levels of engagement. The study shows that the division of students into separate streams involves a risk of reducing the level of engagement among students in the low-ability courses, but it also suggests how streaming can be organized to increase the engagement of students and possibly reduce their risk of dropping out of vocational education.

This paper reports the results of an interview study of 18 current and former pupils in the Danish "Folkeskole" (primary and secondary public school) from 1930 up to the present. The aim of the study is to provide a forum for usually unheard voices on the subject of everyday life in school. The study pays special attention to relational and everyday aspects of schooling. Against the background of the interviews, narratives of the historically, socially, and culturally changing conditions of learning and school life of the interview participants are presented. In this light, the paper paves the way for a participant-oriented and historical thinking about the social practice of schooling.

The present paper addresses the phenomenon of student dropout from vocational education in Denmark. It does so by addressing the need to critically discuss the term "drop-out" taking the perspective of students' own reflections on the topic. The empirical findings indicate that dropout is considered in terms of two very different, but intersecting broad explanations voiced by students themselves: (1) as something created in educational institutions in various situations, such as when teachers spend more time and resources on the more affluent, quick-witted and clever students or when there is a lack of trainee places and (2) an act resulting from individual initiative and or a lack of perseverance. Secondly, and as a result of analysing the possible interplay between and differences related to the above two broad explanations, the empirical material reveals alternatives to the dropout concept in order to create a potentially creative resource for educational institutions concerned with learning and change. The merits of these different empirical findings are discussed, in relation to strategies for dropout prevention in vocational education. The empirical aspect of the paper consists of 106 interviews with students in eight different basic vocational educational courses in Denmark.

The article is based on an empirical, interview-based research project investigating resources and barriers to creative teaching within three Danish primary and secondary schools. The analysis shows how project-oriented teaching does seem to represent a creativity oasis for both teachers and pupils. Furthermore, the work identifies a distinction between an art-based and a problem-solving approach to creativity, and it is suggested that teachers help pupils to work with the various different opportunities for creative learning represented by different subjects in school. Furthermore, a dilemma is pinpointed between the demand that teachers conform to centrally defined test systems, and the challenges facing our societies in relation to bringing up pupils and students who dare to take risks, challenge the existing order and create something new.

The aim of the present article is to consider the research interview as a dialogical context for the production of social life and personal narratives. It is emphasized that interviews are inevitable, dialogical social events based on repertoires of socially and culturally embedded and constantly changing words and discourses. Rather than viewing the interview as a setting for unfolding an inner and subjective lifestory uninfluenced by the interview setting, it is suggested that the interview is better described as a setting in which dissenting opinion, diverse discourses, and personal narratives are produced through the social, dialogical context of the interview. In this sense, one major objective of qualitative research interviewing is to identify general discursive repertoires in speaking within particular social settings and to fuel public dialogue about research themes beyond the specific interview setting. (Contains 1 table.)

The paper investigates the relationship between assessment and learning through an empirical study of apprenticeship training. The paper suggests that well-established modes of learning, which facilitate meaningful assessment in apprenticeship training, present an "antidote" to a traditional emphasis on assessment as selection and control. In contrast to rejection of apprenticeship modes of assessment as being inappropriate and obsolete at the present time, the paper suggests that the concept of "apprenticeship" assessment can be seen as a highly attractive and effective alternative to current assessment practices in both schools and workplaces. Taking a situated and relational perspective on knowledge and learning, we argue that assessment practices should focus on contextually-anchored reviews of the core competencies of the person. This contextual assessment contrasts with an emphasis on assessment as essentially controlling and selecting students for further education and, on the other hand, with assessment as a process of self-monitoring and self-reflection. (Contains 1 note and 2 tables.)

In this article, special attention is paid to psychologists' experiences of learning trajectories in educational counseling. The data consists of two case studies. They were selected from a total of 15 interviews with psychologists conducted as part of a research project on "Changing Practices in Educational Psychological Practice (CPEPP) in Denmark". The article analyses learning trajectories along what we refer to as the clinical versus the educational track in educational psychological practice. Learning trajectories are examples of how individuals combine and connect learning across both time and different places of work, formal education and further education. The clinical and the educational learning trajectories are analysed in relation to the psychologists' previous educational and present work experience within a context of very substantial organizational change. A general theme of the article is therefore that learning should be analysed over (1) time, past-present-future over the course of a person's life; and (2) place, across contexts of activity and communities of practice with different and overlapping goals, values and rules. In this respect continued learning entails negotiating and coming to terms with a professional identity across time and space.

This article argues in favour of a situated approach to understanding learning in practice at trade vocational school and at trade in vocational education. Boundary crossing is regarded as contributing to expansive situated learning by apprentices across trade vocational school and the trade. The purpose of the article is to show that the relationship between strangeness and legitimacy is central to situated learning across different contexts such as at trade and at trade vocational schools. The article draws on examples from a recent qualitative field study of learning among apprentices in the Danish vocational education sector.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to situate the concept of gendered learning in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents the results of two closely related, qualitative studies of apprenticeship learning in two major industrial companies in Denmark. Findings: The paper finds that the creation of a situated-gendered "being" or "doing" in the workplace constitutes an important and often overlooked aspect of young people's learning processes in vocational training. Two themes of gender and learning are identified and discussed in an empirical analysis. These themes are learning and gendered identities, and gender and future family life. Research limitations/implications: The paper is exploratory in nature, so that it would be useful to confirm the results through further validation and comparison with other professions and workplaces. Practical implications: The design of proliferate learning practices in the workplace should consider gender as a factor which influences the trajectories of the individual learner. Originality/value: The main thrust of the paper is that young people engaged in vocational training in the workplace are "gendered" through their participation in particular work and work-related practices. The "telos" of learning in the context of vocational training in the workplace entails more than just the pursuit of a career trajectory or an occupational identity. The main contribution of the article is therefore its emphasis on the notion that theories on workplace and apprenticeship learning should consider a broader perspective on the learner than possible when focussing only on professional or occupational identity. (Contains 1 table.)

This article considers teaching and learning as a collaborative enterprise in the workplace. The empirical data have been extracted from a field study among apprentices engaged in electromechanical vocational training and education in a major Danish industrial company. Typically, studies of apprenticeship learning do not view aspects of teaching as decisive parts of workplace learning. In this article, I will pin down the specific character of collaborative teaching and learning in the workplace, and compare this with the features of a teaching situation in school with a teacher transmitting knowledge to the pupils. While instruction at school is organised as part of a specifically planned teaching situation, the instruction in the workplace is a more loosely organised part of the joint activity structure of the daily work tasks. The conclusions reached in the article should be useful for the conceptual understanding of instruction and teaching in workplace learning, as well as for policy makers and professionals responsible for the design of apprenticeships and workplace learning. (Contains 2 notes.)