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How does the process of racialization unfold as a discursive project at the university? How do students and faculty in the classroom use racial categories in supposedly post-racial places? How do People of Color in higher education in Norway narrate their experiences of being 'Othered'? We draw on two linked studies and use membership categorization analysis and the analysis of narrative interviews to examine the shared dynamics of racialization in classroom discourse and lived experience. We use Nirmal Puwar's (2004. Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Oxford: Berg) Space Invaders to explore the racialized dynamic of disorientation in academic spaces, and how disorientation and assumptions of non-belonging contribute to the condition of epistemic injustice (Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) in higher education.

Some might fear that the local flavours of education will evaporate when encountering the hegemony of global, cognitive standards of the knowledge economy. This paper, however, shows that the evolution of curriculum can emerge in surprising directions, creating hybrid forms of education. We will investigate forms of meaning that emerge in Norwegian curriculum in the timespan 1988-2020, and show how systems theory can contribute to studying curriculum changes in a temporal perspective. The empirical case for investigation, is a diverse range of material, documenting curriculum changes in the mentioned period. Concepts from the late Luhmann's 'theory of distinctions' will thus be used to give meaning to the emergence of school reforms in Norway. The paper shows that Norwegian policy makers use increasingly complex deparadoxification strategies to deal with an uncertain future, conceptualized as externalization, oscillation, asymmetrisation, and internalization (re-entry). This is most pertinently demonstrated in the latest Norwegian reform LK20, in which a new, hybrid, 'temporal' construct of education, called "new-old-curriculum" or 'competence-Bildung' emerges. We thus contribute to the field of curriculum studies by observing how changing observations of the past and future fuel and legitimize the evolution of new reforms.

Cultural images of the knowledge society and the achievement generation are prevalent in current public and policy narratives about young people's education. This article investigates how young people themselves give meaning to education, by reconstructing their narratives about the importance of schooling and education in today's society. We present results from a qualitative in-depth study, consisting of focus group interviews with lower-secondary school pupils in suburban middle-class areas of Norway. From the perspective of narrative methodology, the article identifies how pupils construct, thematize and emplot the role and importance of education in their lives. The article finds that young people navigate a complexity of meaning dimensions in their lives. Although a master narrative of the knowledge society and its inherent achievement imperative certainly dominates the pupils' accounts, they also present refinements and counter-narratives to these cultural imaginaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

21st century skills is a global network of corporate and governmental influences that promotes competences suited to fit the future knowledge economy. Through a discourse analysis of an influential Official Norwegian Report, 'The School of the Future. Renewal of Subjects and Competences' (NOU 2015:8), this paper explores how ideas of 21st century skills are translated into the Norwegian education policy context. Firstly, the paper analyses the context-specific reasons for receptiveness by investigating "discursive warrants." Secondly, the paper identifies how the policy document constructs a set of preferred "subject positions" that constitute an image of an ideal student. Thirdly, the paper investigates the "discursive framing" of these subject positions. We find that the policy document constructs an image of an ideal student who is creative, responsible, cooperative, engaged, self-regulated and in complete control of herself, her learning and her future. This image draws on more pronounced neo-liberal discourses, but also well-established discourses in the Norwegian context, such as social democratic progressivism. This intertwining of discourses shows how traits of homogeneity related to global ideas, as well as heterogeneity related to the Norwegian policy context, are both visible in the Norwegian translation of 21st century skills.

Teacher education is often criticised for not being relevant and for there being a lack of continuity between practice teaching and the university coursework. In the literature, action research is presented as a way to bridge the gap and connect the two. The present article explores, through a qualitative study, how research-based knowledge communicated at the university and experiences from practice teaching interact in student teachers' action research projects. The study also explores the outcome, for the student teachers, of conducting research in their practicum. The findings show that student teachers use theory and research in many different ways, and they are both consumers and producers of research. They especially emphasise the outcome of theory interacting with real situations encountered in the teaching practice. Contributing to a positive impact on their outcome were the opportunity they are offered to reflect on their own practice, the possibility they have to focus on something they find important, and the chance to make their own experiences with a particular tool for professional development.

How does the process of racialization unfold as a discursive project at the university? How do students and faculty in the classroom use racial categories in supposedly post-racial places? How do People of Color in higher education in Norway narrate their experiences of being 'Othered'? We draw on two linked studies and use membership categorization analysis and the analysis of narrative interviews to examine the shared dynamics of racialization in classroom discourse and lived experience. We use Nirmal Puwar's (2004. Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Oxford: Berg) Space Invaders to explore the racialized dynamic of disorientation in academic spaces, and how disorientation and assumptions of non-belonging contribute to the condition of epistemic injustice (Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a case study aiming at deepening the understanding of action research as a tool in professional development in pre-service teacher education. The case is the practice of action research in a teacher education programme for secondary school teachers in Norway. While there has been limited research on consequences of inquiry, this article asks how student-teachers experience the process and outcome of doing action research and what we as their teacher-educators can learn from these experiences about facilitating the student-teachers' processes. For most student-teachers the process started with numerous challenges, but in the end the majority experienced a positive outcome. We found that an important condition to ensure that action research functions as a tool for professional development is enough time and space to make it possible to reflect in depth. Familiarising students with research and linking theory and practice seem to need specific attention even after a completed action research project. Reflecting on actions seems to help student-teachers to develop their practical and theoretical understanding in a way that gives their experiences transfer value.

Researchers are key sources of an increasing amount of research news in the media. Hitherto, the meagre empirical literature on researchers’ media performances has been divided in two strands: one indicating that researchers are generally motivated to report their research in the media, and the other paradoxically reporting negative experiences of and conflict with journalists. The aim of the present study was to explore Norwegian researchers’ motivations for participating in and experiences of journalistic interviews. We find that researchers’ main reason for seeking media coverage is that they want their findings to be of use to society. This makes it essential to avoid errors or misleading framing of the news report. Despite strong motivations to do so, the researchers experience that communicating through the media is stressful and that their motivations for seeking media attention are in conflict with the motives of some research journalists. The study reveals a link between researchers´ motivation for seeking media coverage and their experiences of conflict with journalists.

This article discusses how the mini-enterprise (ME) approach (Young Enterprise) can be understood as a tool for helping to achieve policy goals set for entrepreneurship. Analysis of 12 semi-structured interviews with 17-year-old students shows how social capital from friendship relations constitutes norms for interaction in MEs. To some extent, these norms appear to be at odds with business norms, and tension is created that may interfere with business productivity. The analysis of students' description of interaction provides explanations regarding documented outcomes from the ME approach. Furthermore, the article discusses the connection made between progressive pedagogical ideals and entrepreneurship education. Interviews were conducted during a field study of two classes in business economics in post-16 education in Norway.

Over the last decades, much research on peer learning practices has been conducted. Quantitative, experimental designs focusing on problems of cause and effect dominate. Consequently, effects on achievement are well documented, as is the influence of different conditions on the effect rate. In spite of the general acknowledgment of the importance of peer learning and a large amount of research on collective learning practices, questions regarding the quality of peer interaction, and how peer relations influence learning, are not well elaborated. This paper complements the discussion on effect focusing on the processes of interaction between peers, and relates these to theoretical perspectives on learning as fundamentally social. Inspired by meta-ethnography an integrative analysis across seven qualitative studies was accomplished. The approach enabled an investigation of peer interactions in different educational settings. The analysis elaborates on how instructional designs and students' relational knowledge mediate interaction in peer learning. The paper further discusses the potential of approaches synthesising qualitative studies as a tool in qualitative research. (Contains 2 tables.)

This article argues that participative approaches, such as those found in enterprise or entrepreneurship education, allow several factors to influence learning activity. The "Mini-enterprise" (Young Enterprise) approach is one where students set up and run their own business during a school year. This article is based on the analysis of interactional processes in four mini-enterprises in post-16 education. Given the emphasis on progressive ideas in entrepreneurship education in general, it is important to understand how students themselves form the learning activity. The analysis shows how ideas about friendship, school and business all contribute to students' interaction and to forming the learning process. In order to explore how students' agency is informed by different sets of ideas, the article applies Joas' theory of creative action. This allows a discussion of how students' personal and professional interests interact in productive and less productive ways in the learning activity.

How do university students and instructors engage in discussions about race and racism in a country where speaking about race is perceived as racist? In Norway, as in much of Europe, the concept of "race" is silenced, discarded as a wrong-headed remnant of Nazism, despite continued documentation of racial discrimination in labour, housing, education and interpersonal interaction. We used Membership Category Analysis to explore race-related interactions in classroom discourse in three university courses. We find that students and instructors implicitly equate Norwegianness with whiteness, peacefulness, and innocence, and characterize racism with deviance and non-Norwegianness. The national belonging of racialized "Others" in Norway is ambiguous: accepted, but not unproblematically. The category race is elided with the concepts of culture, ethnicity and biology. We propose discursive meta-awareness as an educational approach to countering race evasiveness (often described as "colourblindness"). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some might fear that the local flavours of education will evaporate when encountering the hegemony of global, cognitive standards of the knowledge economy. This paper, however, shows that the evolution of curriculum can emerge in surprising directions, creating hybrid forms of education. We will investigate forms of meaning that emerge in Norwegian curriculum in the timespan 1988-2020, and show how systems theory can contribute to studying curriculum changes in a temporal perspective. The empirical case for investigation, is a diverse range of material, documenting curriculum changes in the mentioned period. Concepts from the late Luhmann's 'theory of distinctions' will thus be used to give meaning to the emergence of school reforms in Norway. The paper shows that Norwegian policy makers use increasingly complex deparadoxification strategies to deal with an uncertain future, conceptualized as externalization, oscillation, asymmetrisation, and internalization (re-entry). This is most pertinently demonstrated in the latest Norwegian reform LK20, in which a new, hybrid, 'temporal' construct of education, called "new-old-curriculum" or 'competence-Bildung' emerges. We thus contribute to the field of curriculum studies by observing how changing observations of the past and future fuel and legitimize the evolution of new reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

21st century skills is a global network of corporate and governmental influences that promotes competences suited to fit the future knowledge economy. Through a discourse analysis of an influential Official Norwegian Report, 'The School of the Future. Renewal of Subjects and Competences' (NOU 2015:8), this paper explores how ideas of 21st century skills are translated into the Norwegian education policy context. Firstly, the paper analyses the context-specific reasons for receptiveness by investigating discursive warrants. Secondly, the paper identifies how the policy document constructs a set of preferred subject positions that constitute an image of an ideal student. Thirdly, the paper investigates the discursive framing of these subject positions. We find that the policy document constructs an image of an ideal student who is creative, responsible, cooperative, engaged, self-regulated and in complete control of herself, her learning and her future. This image draws on more pronounced neo-liberal discourses, but also well-established discourses in the Norwegian context, such as social democratic progressivism. This intertwining of discourses shows how traits of homogeneity related to global ideas, as well as heterogeneity related to the Norwegian policy context, are both visible in the Norwegian translation of 21st century skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher education is often criticised for not being relevant and for there being a lack of continuity between practice teaching and the university coursework. In the literature, action research is presented as a way to bridge the gap and connect the two. The present article explores, through a qualitative study, how research-based knowledge communicated at the university and experiences from practice teaching interact in student teachers’ action research projects. The study also explores the outcome, for the student teachers, of conducting research in their practicum. The findings show that student teachers use theory and research in many different ways, and they are both consumers and producers of research. They especially emphasise the outcome of theory interacting with real situations encountered in the teaching practice. Contributing to a positive impact on their outcome were the opportunity they are offered to reflect on their own practice, the possibility they have to focus on something they find important, and the chance to make their own experiences with a particular tool for professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a case study aiming at deepening the understanding of action research as a tool in professional development in pre-service teacher education. The case is the practice of action research in a teacher education programme for secondary school teachers in Norway. While there has been limited research on consequences of inquiry, this article asks how student-teachers experience the process and outcome of doing action research and what we as their teacher-educators can learn from these experiences about facilitating the student-teachers’ processes. For most student-teachers the process started with numerous challenges, but in the end the majority experienced a positive outcome. We found that an important condition to ensure that action research functions as a tool for professional development is enough time and space to make it possible to reflect in depth. Familiarising students with research and linking theory and practice seem to need specific attention even after a completed action research project. Reflecting on actions seems to help student-teachers to develop their practical and theoretical understanding in a way that gives their experiences transfer value. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]