Search

This study identified and discussed principals' perceptions of acceleration and enrichment for gifted students. These areas have proven significant for the teaching of the gifted. The research questions included questions about perceptions of giftedness and how principals organize to allow gifted students to develop and learn based on their conditions and needs. The empirical material consisted of open questions where the informants freely could describe their knowledge and perceptions about gifted students and their education. The principals' mission statement formed the theoretical basis for analysis. The method used was content analysis. Previous research has shown that acceleration and enrichment are significant for teaching and learning for gifted students. It is therefore of importance that principals, responsible for the activities of the schools they are responsible for, are aware of these and enable the teachers to work with acceleration and enrichment based on the different needs of the gifted students. The results showed that the principals in the study believed that (a) acceleration should primarily take place in the gifted students' age-appropriate class, (b) second by studying subjects or courses with higher classes, (c) third, that the teachers enable enrichment for gifted students in their age-appropriate class, (d) fourth, grade skipping is complicated and should be avoided.

This article takes a practice perspective on professional learning to contribute through an empirical example of how professional learning can be arranged to enable change in and for professional practice, as well as for nurturing praxis. The theory of practice architectures is used to analyse the process of an action research (AR) in which principals investigated and changed their ways of leading digitalisation in preschool education. The theorising of the co-production of practices was used to visualise how the changes were enabled in this process, as the practices for professional learning and leading became interdependent through shared practice architectures. The findings describe how such a coproduction of practices enabled a process in which the principals went from a technical to a practical approach to change, when leading digitalisation, which further resulted in a critical stance. This was a process that manifested professional learning as praxis-oriented change in which the principals' professional judgement increased.

In the last decade, Europe has welcomed numerous migrants and refugees from Arab countries. The presence of these migrants and refugees in schools has posed the challenge of unfamiliar realities for teaching staff. The issue has been addressed from the perspectives of sociology to psychology, providing insights into the nature of intercultural education. Few studies have delved into pupils' cultural backgrounds, and the history of one's country of origin is seldom regarded as a decisive factor in the formation of identity. The Arabic-speaking Moroccan and Syrian communities are the most significant and have interesting histories and education systems. Using Nussbaum's (2010) multifactorial analysis, this research aims to better understand the educational background of Arabic-speaking pupils, focusing on humanities and religious education of those from Morocco and Syria. The methodology embodies qualitative empirical research conducted in Europe that addressed the main factor identified by Nussbaum (2010). The results show the education experience of Syrian and Moroccan pupils was affected by their home country education policies, especially where minority and relationship issues with Europe, the West and Israel were concerned.

Fractions are core content of elementary school mathematics, and conceptual knowledge of fractions is essential when developing a comprehensive understanding of fractions. Previous research, however, has indicated limitations in student teachers' fraction knowledge. This study investigated 57 Swedish elementary school student teachers' conceptions of fractions. The data were collected using a paper-and-pencil questionnaire and analysed with an analytical framework building on previous research on four core components of fractions. Using the devised analytical framework, we were able to characterise the conceptual content shown in the student teachers' answers and identify gaps in their fraction knowledge. The most severe gaps were identified in relation to interpretations of fractions, where only the part-whole and the quotient interpretations were identified; the measure, operator, rate, ratio, and number interpretations were missing completely. Aspects of fractions related to representations and procedures were better represented in the participants' conceptions of fractions, but we also illustrate substantial differences between the student teachers. In addition to this quantitative description, we provide qualitative examples. The results raise some questions and implications to be addressed in teacher education programs when developing student teachers' fraction knowledge.

In this paper we present findings from an initial phase of a more extensive study focussed on ways in which prospective mathematics teachers negotiate meaning from mathematics teacher education situations. The focus of this paper is on the language of one mathematics teacher educator and specifically the interpersonal aspects from one mathematics teacher education lecture in Sweden for prospective upper-primary school teachers. We draw on the enactivist view of cognition as a theoretical basis for a methodology we develop that utilises Systemic Functional Linguistics as an analytical tool for studying language-in-use. We exemplify our interpretations through a series of extracts from the mathematics education lecture. This initial phase of our study has exposed several important questions about how participating in an initial teacher education situation may contribute to the development of teacher identities, questions we raise throughout our analyses to provoke further investigation as part of our future research.

Purpose: The article focuses on the contribution of didactics and didactic theory as a distinct strand in research on vocational education and training (VET). Empirical research is reviewed to further explore what characterizes vocational didactics in the Swedish context of Upper Secondary VET. Approach: Semi-structured and flexible review methodology was used to identify didactic research and map its emergent features. An analytic framework was constructed for this purpose and used iteratively throughout the review process. The framework expresses the constitutive simultaneous interdependence of the relationships A-B-C. They refer to A) the ways of how the actors engage with the content as meaning and matter or relationship between the actors and the content, B) the relationship between the actors and the method through interaction with the content, and C) relationship between the methods embedded in work tasks and school assignments and how they underpin the content. A total of 26 sources was identified and thematized as school-based vocational didactics, collaborative vocational didactics, and work-based vocational didactics. Findings: Four distinct features of vocational didactics in Upper Secondary Vocational Education and Training (USVET) are outlined: 1) Diversification of the use of simulation as a method in school-based education pointing to vocational knowledge and skills 2) broadening of instruction (and reflection) as a method by inclusion of several parties (e.g., supervisors, workplace staff, instructors-practitioners), 3) work tasks as a method pointing to vocational knowledge and skills as content, 4) interaction between several parties using verbal and non-verbal means. Despite a growing interest in the importance of work tasks in their dual affordance of meaning and matter, few sources deal with students' learning processes in alignment with the logic of the production of goods and services. Conclusion: The analytic framework we have put forth strengthens the conceptual boundaries of vocational didactics from a point of view of profession-related learning objectives (content), actors, and methods involved. Applying the didactic theories to review empirical research on VET strengthens the integrity of vocational didactics as a particular field.

One of the main objectives of international large-scale assessments is to make comparisons between different countries, education policies, education systems, or subgroups. One of the main criteria for making comparisons between different groups is to ensure measurement invariance. The purpose of this study was to test the measurement invariance of the mathematics intrinsic motivation scale across 14 countries. For this purpose, the "students like learning mathematics" scale, which measures intrinsic motivation for mathematics, was included in the TIMSS 2019 cycle. The study sample consisted of a total of 152992 students, 70192 4th grade and 82800 8th grade students from 14 different countries participating in the TIMSS 2019 cycle. Measurement invariance was tested with Multi-Group Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MG-CFA) and Alignment Method. The mathematics intrinsic motivation scale provides only configural invariance according to MG-CFA at the 4th grade level, whereas the scale provides approximate invariance according to the alignment method. At the 8th grade level, the scale provides configural and metric invariance according to MG-CFA, whereas the scale provides approximate invariance according to the alignment method. The results indicate that the mathematics intrinsic motivation scale provides approximate measurement invariance at both grade levels and that comparisons can be made between the scores of the identified countries.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore opportunities to develop higher-order thinking for students in social studies, with a focus on teachers' content coverage and support for engaging in social studies analysis. Design/methodology/approach: A video study using naturalistic classroom observations of 80 social studies lessons was conducted in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden using a predefined observation manual. Findings: The findings showed different patterns of emphasis on content coverage and intellectually demanding analyses across classrooms in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Practical implications: The findings contribute empirical knowledge about naturally occurring classroom practices that can be used for professional development. They also highlight how contextual factors may influence teaching in social studies.

There can be many reasons why students fail to answer correctly to summative tests in advanced computer science courses: often the cause is a lack of prerequisites or misconceptions about topics presented in previous courses. One of the ITiCSE 2020 working groups investigated the possibility of designing assessments suitable for differentiating between fragilities in prerequisites (in particular, knowledge and skills related to introductory programming courses) and advanced topics. This paper reports on an empirical evaluation of an instrument focusing on data structures, among those proposed by the ITiCSE working group. The evaluation aimed at understanding what fragile knowledge and skills the instrument is actually able to detect and to what extent it is able to differentiate them. Our results support that the instrument is able to distinguish between some specific fragilities (e.g., value vs. reference semantics), but not all of those claimed in the original report. In addition, our findings highlight the role of relevant skills at a level between prerequisite and advanced skills, such as program comprehension and reasoning about constraints. We also suggest ways to improve the questions in the instrument, both by improving the distractors of the multiple-choice questions, and by slightly changing the content or phrasing of the questions. We argue that these improvements will increase the effectiveness of the instrument in assessing prerequisites as a whole, but also to pinpoint specific fragilities.

This study analyze data from three national contexts in which teachers worked with the same teaching materials and inquiry classroom activities, investigating teachers' use of strategies to promote interaction and scaffolding when participating in a professional development program. The data material is collected from three case studies from the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, respectively. Each case is from a teaching unit about green plants and seed sprouting. In one lesson in this unit, students were involved in planning an experiment with sprouting seeds, and this (similar) lesson was videotaped in three national settings. The main research question is, as follows: How do primary teachers use questions to scaffold conceptual understanding and language use in inquiry science activities? The data analysis shows that teachers ask different kind of questions such as open, closed, influencing and orienting questions. The open, orienting questions induce students to generate their own ideas, while closed orienting and influencing questions often scaffold language and content-specific meaning-making. However, both open, closed, orienting and influencing questions can scaffold student language and conceptual understanding. Often, teacher questions scaffold both language content-specific meaning-making at the same time. The study shows the subtle mechanisms through which teachers can use questions to scaffold student science literacy and thereby including them in classroom interaction.

While many Vietnamese students are reported to study abroad, the experiences of home-making among Vietnamese returning students are paid scant attention to in current research on Vietnamese international student mobility. Following a Heideggerian perspective on building and dwelling at home, this study explores the sense-making of home through conversations with 13 Vietnamese returning graduates. The analysis of the empirical material shows that home which is constructed and experienced by the returning graduates' use of intersecting materials is socially shared. It is an embodiment of returning migrants' engagement in the world with familiarity and discomfort created by their friction with the interrelated materialistic and discursive aspects of life. Their returns involve incomplete life happenings with diverse emotions and experiences of belonging. The findings of this study add nuance to the extant understanding of home as belonging and challenge the common conceptualization of home as a private space.

We report on three episodes from a case study where upper secondary students numerically explore the definite integral in a Python environment. Our research questions concern how code can mediate and support students' mathematical thinking and what kind of sociomathematical norms emerge as students work together to reach a mutual understanding of a correct solution. The main findings of our investigation are as follows. 1) Students can actively use code as a mediator of their mathematical thinking, and code can even serve as a bridge that helps students to develop their mathematical thinking collaboratively. Further, code can help students to perceive mathematical notions as objects with various properties and to communicate about these properties, even in other semiotic systems than the mathematical language. 2) For the participating students, a common norm was that an acceptable solution is a sufficient condition for the correctness of the solution method although students were aware of a problem in their code, yet also other norms emerged. This demonstrates that learning mathematics with programming can have an effect on what kind of sociomathematical norms emerge in classroom.

There is a recognized need to understand the current state of programming implementation in the Swedish compulsory school system. This study focused specifically on the implementation of programming in the school subject of technology for grades 4-6. In Sweden, the responsibility for choosing teaching and learning material lies with individual teachers. Recent studies have indicated the prevalence of visual programming languages (VPLs) in classrooms. However, no empirical research has specifically investigated why teachers select particular programming learning environments (PLEs) and the challenges they have overcome in this process. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the PLEs used by teachers and the factors influencing their choices. In addition, this study explored the role of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and the influence of systemic and situational amplifiers and filters in shaping the programming education landscape, highlighting the importance of understanding these factors for effective implementation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 experienced programming teachers in grades 4-6 to gather insights. The results revealed that VPLs, particularly Scratch, have been widely adopted, but the study also identified three textual programming languages being utilized. Furthermore, the findings indicate that teachers' previous education plays a significant role in shaping their PLE preferences. This suggests that programming education in both professional development and preservice teacher training is crucial for effective implementation. By investigating PLE choices and the factors influencing them, this study contributes to a better understanding of the current landscape of programming education in Sweden's compulsory school system.

This study aims to understand how students manage higher technical education and contribute to research on institutional culture, STEM education, and students' educational strategies by identifying patterns of how students navigate within one university's engineering education. To achieve this, we define and use the concept of technical science capital and habitus reconstruction. We collected data through a survey sent to engineering students who have followed an engineering program's intended linear progression and those who have taken a 'detour' within the same cohort at one specific Swedish university. The survey had a high number of qualitative questions, including free text answers that captured students' narratives. The results indicate that having a large amount of technical science capital alone is not enough for students to be successful in their studies. The university culture has its own structure, which can be intolerant. Within this culture, specific social skills and experiences are desirable, which provides students from a particular background with a greater opportunity for success. Despite possessing high technical science capital, students from other social groups or cultures face challenges. We discuss various measures that could make higher technical education more engaging. This study is limited to one Swedish university, and future studies could include a broader sample that represents several universities.

To estimate the distribution of the number of acquaintances of the members of a society, the network scale-up method asks survey respondents about the number of people they know with features for which national statistics are available. While many features have been used for this purpose, first names have been suggested to produce particularly low levels of transmission error and recall bias. For this method to be precise, a set of names needs to be selected for the survey that jointly represents the population in relevant variables such as gender or age. This article provides a solution approach to finding the optimal set of names. This can be applied to any population for which a joint distribution of first names and relevant variables is available. We show that our approach successfully provides sets of names closely mirroring the population distributions for six countries with different name statistics.

It is vital that upper secondary students gain a rich and deep knowledge of sustainability issues, as they will enter adulthood and working life within a short time. The students belong to a generation that will be intensely involved in managing several environmental issues to achieve sustainable development for our Earth. However, earlier research indicates that many teachers have a low self-efficacy for teaching sustainability issues. This study aimed to explore how science teacher teams in Swedish upper secondary schools can develop their knowledge and expertise in sustainable development (SD) through collective reflections with the support of the reflective tool Content Representation (CoRe). Science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) development in teaching SD was examined. Twelve in-service science teachers participated in the study. The qualitative research design included semi-structured interviews and science teacher teams' collective meetings. The findings covered four themes about how the collective reflections with support of the CoRe tool stimulated teachers' PCK development: (1) creating structure and a focus for learning conversations, (2) modification of the teaching approach, (3) development of new content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge in SD, and (4) shared language to stimulate equal opportunities for students to learn SD. The conclusion is that with the support of CoRe, the teacher team's collective PCK in SD was developed; therefore, we recommend that decision-makers within the school system organize regular meetings in science teacher teams and introduce CoRe to the teachers.

School absenteeism is a major societal problem, with a range of potential adverse long-term consequences. This scoping review aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the research on school absenteeism in autistic children and adolescents, expose important gaps in the literature, and explore possibilities for future systematic reviews. Five relevant databases were searched systematically from inception to June 2023, yielding a total of 46 eligible reports from 42 separate studies. All studies were conducted in high-income countries, and most were published in the last decade. Three major themes emerged: occurrence, contextual factors, and interventions. The results of large-scale population-based studies clearly suggested that autistic children and adolescents were absent from school more often than their non-autistic peers, which partly was attributable to co-occurring conditions. Bullying also emerged as a potential risk factor. Only a few preliminary studies were available on targeted interventions, emphasizing the need for more robust studies. More research is also needed on the mechanisms leading to and maintaining school absenteeism in this group of learners. Overall, the diversity of research questions, methods, and definitions used in this body of research suggests that systematic reviews with narrow focus on a few key questions may still be premature.

Two educational trends that have had major impacts on school policies of the last few decades are inclusive education and digitalisation. To that end, the purpose of this study is to examine how inclusive education and the digitalisation of education are related, understood, and represented in one case of Swedish special education practice. Using activity theory as a theoretical framework, the results of this study suggest that the meaning of inclusive education has shifted, and that digitalisation has entailed both congruencies and contradictions in special education activities aiming for inclusive education. Although digitalisation was described as providing alternatives for inclusive school practices, new expectations and work assignments sometimes exceeded the special educators' professional knowledge.

This piece is a collective exploration by seven doctoral researchers in Child Studies, who discuss notions of listening to children and young people in a Swedish context. We approach different aspects of listening in research and in practices such as education, psychiatry, and social work. The discussions in this collective writing are an invitation for continuous reflections about the contexts where listening to children is done, its challenges and possibilities.

This article explores and displays some of the literacy events taking place in the context of early childhood education in Sweden. More specifically, the literacy events are part of the educational practices in the atelier of Reggio Emilia inspired preschools in Sweden. As parts of an ethnographic study of aesthetic activities, including digital technology, these literacy events awoke the researcher's interest. The literacy events are analysed from a sociocultural perspective reinforced by the use of multimodal theory. The results show how the literacy events in the ateliers become playful explorations. The children use the atelier's specific cultural and social potentiality to explore and develop written and oral language as part of the visual and aesthetic literacy practices taking place there.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the motivations that key policy documents have put forward as justifications for Sweden's mother-tongue instruction in immigrant and historical minority languages as a multicultural policy that has endured for nearly half a century. The diachronic development of these motivations is analysed in four periods and interpreted with the help of Ruiz's (1984) orientations in language planning. The corpus consists of 26 key policy documents making up the coordinative discourse among policy actors. Based on an innovative mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the motivations are presented in a three-tiered taxonomy consisting of motivational units, themes and language-planning orientations. The results point to both continuity and change in how mother-tongue instruction has been justified over time. Confirming previous research, the results show that the language-as-resource orientation has played a central role in justifying both the establishment and the maintenance of mother-tongue instruction in Sweden and that language as right complemented this orientation. Furthermore, the study illustrates that the language-as-problem orientation need not always be detrimental to bilingualism and minority-language maintenance. Contrary to some claims in the literature, it is argued that language as extrinsic resource is not necessarily underpinned by neoliberalism, as there are also social liberal and conservative inroads to this orientation. The paper concludes that although the language-as-resource orientation plays an indispensable role in supporting bilingualism in education, not only the language-as-right orientation but also the language-as-problem orientation should not be neglected.

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) are emerging as a promising approach for educational change by closing the gap between educational research and practice. However, these partnerships face several challenges, such as addressing cultural differences as well as relationship-building in a historically unbalanced relationship between researchers and practitioners. Scholars have argued that these cultural differences, also called boundaries, have learning potential if approached constructively, but that we need to know more about what characterizes them in an educational context. The aim of this study is to contribute to our understanding of frameworks for RPPs. By analysing 45 hours of video recordings from meetings in an RPP between four researchers and 300 practitioners, the study offers a characterization of seven different boundaries organized into three different boundary themes: (a) prerequisites for collaboration, (b) collaborative practices, and (c) collaborative content. Moreover, the different boundaries affect the positioning of different actors in the RPP. For example, depending on the boundary expressed, teachers are positioned as either flawed implementers or co-inquirers. We argue that the boundaries and different participant positions within the RPPs they reinforce may affect their learning potentials.

Multilingual children living in areas with low socioeconomic status (SES) are at an increased risk of having speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). Many multilingual children with SLCN in Sweden have insufficient basic vocabulary knowledge in the majority language, preventing them from achieving the school's learning goals. However, there is a lack of studies of interventions that could improve vocabulary development in this group, and that can be delivered in an everyday educational setting. This pilot study evaluates the effect of a school-based vocabulary group intervention, which combines elements from shared book reading and the Lexicon Pirate method, on vocabulary skills. A non-randomised pretest-posttest control group design was used. Eighteen six- to seven-year-old multilingual children attending preschool class in low SES areas either received intervention (n = 9) or were included in a control group (n = 9). The intervention group participated in 12 intervention sessions over six weeks. Word knowledge, semantic fluency, and comprehension of semantic relations were assessed pre- and post-intervention. Results revealed that children in the intervention group demonstrated significant gains in knowledge of both trained and untrained words, compared to the control group. No effects were found on semantic fluency or comprehension of semantic relations.

International teaching experiences, even if short-termed, are great opportunities for student teachers to challenge their assumptions and scrutinise their beliefs, to discover different ways of approaching teaching and learning, and to better understand their own education system through a global education lens. They offer student teachers the context to develop their teaching competencies and serve as the milieu to crystallise their teacher identity and build a more global mental schema of teaching. This exploratory study examines how the National Institute of Education, Singapore, strived to broaden student teachers' perspective by providing them with the opportunity to do their teaching assistantship overseas. Specifically, the inquiry question of the study was to find out what student teachers learned during their international teaching assistantship. To answer the inquiry question, reflective journals of 13 student teachers who participated in 5-week international teaching assistantship in Denmark (n = 5), Sweden (n = 4) and the United States of America (US) (n = 4) were analysed. Thematic analysis was used to identify, analyse, and report themes that emerged from the qualitative data. The themes were coded as "connection to a wider world (sub-themes: culture awareness, alternative viewpoints, global education lens)", "observations of the school (sub-themes: class size and composition, learning assessment, technology integration)", "professional growth (sub-themes: teacher as facilitator, understanding class profile, classroom management practices)", and "personal growth (sub-themes: overcoming personal limitations, greater flexibility and willingness to change)". Despite the student teachers in Denmark and Sweden facing language barrier challenges, the results indicate that all the student teachers benefited immensely from the experience. They developed broader perspectives of societies and education, made important observations of the schools, and grew professionally and personally. They noted that although there were differences in the different education systems, there were similarities in the role of teacher as facilitator, as well as curriculum goals and pedagogical approaches. They had greater appreciation of their roles as teachers and the importance of knowing their students. They overcame personal limitations and became more flexible and open to changes. The article concludes with suggestions on how to improve such experiences to enhance the growth and cross-cultural competency of student teachers.

In this article, a collaborative Deleuze-Guattarian-inspired cartography is produced with preschool practitioners to explore the assemblages of teaching in preschool. The aim is to map how teaching comes into being in preschool planning and reflection practices following the movements of territorialisation and re-/de-territorialisation. Unwinding from a policy change that 4 years ago introduced teaching to the Swedish preschool curriculum, the overarching question of what teaching is and could be to follows through the text. The preschool teaching assemblages are visited through three territories in which different continuums of (un)teaching unfold when staying with the emerging messiness. The movements of de-territorialisation open for divergent thinking, questioning traditions and assumptions of how to conduct teaching in preschool practice, in entanglement with both local and global movements.

In this paper, we argue for the moral and not merely the legal right to education for refugee children. National education in many countries is challenged by refugee flows and influx of displaced people. However, there is a tendency to think of refugee flows as isolated events rather than parts of the dynamics of a world society that national education systems needs to respond responsibly to and build capacity for. Consequently, there is a gap between the legal right to education for refugee children and its practical realization, and granting refugee children access to national education systems is becoming part of the problem and not only a solution to the de-territorializing and cosmopolitan challenges of refugee flows and displaced people. We argue that education for children of refugees' need to meet with a cosmopolitan design of education in order to respond responsibly to the right to education for refugee children. In the first part, we discuss the legal right to education for refugee children, and moral challenges with regard to its practical realization in nation-centred school systems and schools. In the second part, we discuss de-territorializing effects of refugees in education by reviewing research on refugee education, refugee children's experiences of education and by discussing refugee education in Sweden as a case. In the final part, we discuss ideas for a cosmopolitan design of education. We argue for a moral commitment to the education of refugee children in order for us to respond responsibly to their legal and moral rights and situation, but also to the legal and moral rights, and situations of those affected in host countries. We also argue for the importance of critical cosmopolitan imagination in education that does not restrict education to norms of national loyalty and national integration, or to economic norms of competitiveness and effectiveness.

Based on the expectancy-value perspective on identity and identity formation, this paper explores the relationship between math identity (MI) and the dimensions of motivation (i.e. intrinsic value, attainment value, utility value and perceived competence) and math achievement in primary school. An additional aim of our research was to explore these relationships in different cultural contexts and investigate potential gender and grade differences concerning MI. The participants were 11,782 primary school students from Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Finland, Portugal and Serbia. All predictors from the motivation spectrum were significant for students' MI across the examined countries and had a stronger association with MI than math achievement. Among the motivational dimensions, intrinsic value had the strongest association with students' MI. Boys had significantly more positive math identities than girls in Estonia, Finland, Norway and Portugal. The results showed that the grade 4 students perceived themselves less as "math persons" than their grade 3 peers in all countries.

In studies of academic resilience, the concept is typically operationalized by pre-defined cutoff values of students' achievement level and their social background. A threat to the validity of such arbitrary operationalizations is that students around the cutoff values may be misclassified. The main objective of the current study is to apply a modeling approach to identify academically resilient students. Data come from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2016. The primary method used was latent profile analysis. The study demonstrates that it is possible to identify a group of academically resilient students using a set of variables indicating achievement level and protective factors. Even though results suggest that academically resilient students have higher reading achievement compared to other less-advantaged students, it is evident that they have higher interest and confidence in reading than the non-resilient groups. A sensitivity analysis for other countries indicated similar results. Implications stemming from the results are discussed.

Research has shown that some students who underperform in mathematics overestimate their performance, while others who excel in mathematics underestimate it. Looking at this mismatch of performance and confidence judgement--the Dunning-Kruger effect (DKE)--the current study investigates how well students' confidence judgement and item-specific mathematics competence relate with each other and whether such a relationship differs across six European countries (i.e., Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Serbia and Portugal). We also examine whether perceived competence, mathematics identity, gender, socioeconomic status and immigration background predict this mismatch and whether these demographic factors function differently between the examined countries. The results show that the DKE could be found across grades three and four in all six countries. However, there are country-specific patterns regarding the relationship between performance, mathematics identity and perceived competence; the DKE; and how different demographic variables predict its occurrences in particular subpopulations.

Mathematics teachers' beliefs are central to mathematics teaching and student learning. Because different aspects of motivation and affect--particularly enjoyment--primarily develop within the classroom context, examining how different teachers' beliefs may affect student outcomes in mathematics is imperative. The current study examines teachers' beliefs about the nature and learning of mathematics in connection to students' motivation (i.e. intrinsic value, utility value and perceived competence) and enjoyment of mathematics across different settings by considering students' mathematics achievement, gender and classroom composition (i.e. socioeconomic and behavioural). Data were collected from 3rd- and 4th-grade mathematics teachers (N = 686) and their students (N = 11,782) in six countries (i.e. Norway, Finland, Sweden, Portugal, Estonia and Serbia). A two-level structural equation modelling technique (TSEM) (i.e. student level and classroom level) with random slopes was employed to address our research questions. The results indicate that students' intrinsic value and perceived competence positively relate to their enjoyment of mathematics in all six countries. Teachers' beliefs about the nature and learning of mathematics moderate the within-classroom relationship between boys and girls and the motivation and enjoyment of learning mathematics in Portugal and Norway. Unlike boys, girls consistently perceive themselves as less competent in mastering mathematics, even in primary school. Classroom socioeconomic composition had a more pronounced influence on teachers' beliefs in Sweden, Norway and Serbia. In relation to teachers' beliefs, classroom behavioural composition was relevant in Estonia and Sweden. In Finland and Norway, classroom composition was essential to boys' and girls' differential motivation and enjoyment of mathematics learning.

Sleeping difficulties among adolescents constitute a pressing public health issue, and it is of the utmost importance that these are approached from a health-promotion perspective. This study explores adolescents' suggestions on how their sleep could be supported. Data were collected via eight focus group interviews with 43 adolescents aged 15-16, in Sweden, and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results describe the adolescents' suggestions on how their sleep could be supported in three themes: being supported by involved parents--routines, engagement, and warmth are vital; being supported to achieve knowledge on the "whys" and "hows" of sleep--increased knowledge gives the ability to make well-grounded sleep choices; and being guided into finding balance--balance in life is difficult to achieve and adolescents desire support. Parents, school nurses, health professionals, and anyone who has the opportunity to improve and promote sleep should consider adolescents' suggestions.

The present study administered six test instruments to 13- to 14-year-old learners of English in Austria and Sweden (N = 213), countries offering settings with more explicit and implicit learning environments, respectively. Confirmatory Factor Analyses for Austria yielded a factor comprising timed grammaticality judgment tests, an oral narrative test, and elicited imitation, labelled in this study Automatized and/or Implicit Knowledge, and a factor including an untimed grammaticality judgment test and a metalinguistic knowledge test, named in this study Explicit Knowledge. In the Swedish context, goodness-of-fit indices provided some evidence that a single-factor model shows a better fit, although a comparison of this model with two-factor models did not reach statistical significance. The findings point to the potential importance of considering the specificities of a learning environment in interpreting learner achievement on measures of the implicit versus explicit knowledge spectrum.

This study focuses on ethical dilemmas that arise in moments of inclusion and equity in mathematics teaching and how they might be tackled through teachers' professional judgment. Skovsmose's inclusive landscapes of investigation approach was used to design the study and to collect teachers' joint reflections on moments of inclusion and equity in their teaching. Ethical dilemmas and professional judgment were the analytical foci for a qualitative thematic content analysis. Three explorative workshops were held with two teams of teachers from two schools in Sweden. The analysis identified three themes of ethical dilemma, and ways in which these were responded to by teachers' professional judgment: (1) dilemmas of diversity and acting justly; (2) dilemmas of resources and allocating them fairly; (3) dilemmas of values and recognising diversity. We conclude that mathematics teachers' professional judgments involve showing bravery, going outside of the norm, negotiating values and duties, listening to the students, and throughout this, engaging in collegial learning in the best interests of the learner.

Given that camouflaging has been suggested to contribute to delayed diagnosis and mental health problems among autistic people, validated measures of the construct are needed. This study describes the psychometric evaluation of the Swedish adaptation of the self-reported Camouflaging Autistic Traits Questionnaire (CAT-Q) in autistic (n = 100) and general population (n = 539) samples aged 10 to 83 years. Analyses indicated good-to-excellent internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Construct validity was supported by autistic participants scoring higher than non-autistic, and autistic females scoring higher than autistic males on the measure. Also as expected, camouflaging was associated with theoretically linked traits, including autistic behaviors and depressive symptoms. On the other hand, the factor structure of the original CAT-Q did not provide a good fit in the Swedish data set, and validity issues were found, particularly in children younger than 15 years, warranting further investigation of the construct validity of the scale. Different age trajectories were observed, where camouflaging behaviors decreased during adulthood in non-autistic people but remained at an elevated level among autistic people.

The educational mission of most western schools today includes the nurturing of children's sexual upbringing, which many scholars see as a way of controlling their sexuality and forming them into "sexual citizens." This article examines how official Swedish school guidelines and textbooks have mediated sexuality norms through education on masturbation. The professional discourse on masturbation started to change during the first half of the twentieth century, when masturbation shifted from being perceived as something harmful to something accepted as natural and harmless. This article focuses on a period following that shift in opinion: circa 1945-2000. The analysis shows that boys' sexuality during this time received more attention than girls', and a strong new norm about sex contributed to masturbation taking on less importance than heterosexual intercourse within a relationship. This article shows how state-controlled curricula have created norms about gender and sexuality, thus contributing to the development of a sexual citizenship.

This study analyzes how emerging adults negotiate their relation to alcohol in the context of declining youth drinking and how this relationship changes over time. The sample consists of longitudinal qualitative interview data (N = 28) with 9 boys and 19 girls aged 15 to 21. The participants were recruited through schools, social media and non-governmental organizations from mainly the Stockholm region and smaller towns in central Sweden to reach a heterogeneous sample in terms of sociodemographic factors and drinking practices. We interviewed the participants in-depth three times between 2017 and 2019. Thematic coding of the whole data with NVivo helped us select four cases for more detailed analysis, as they represented the typical trajectories and showed the variation in the material. We used the master narrative framework and Bamberg's narrative positioning analysis to examine the data. The analysis demonstrates what kinds of narrative alignments in identity development encourage heavy drinking, moderate alcohol consumption, and fuel abstinence. The results suggest that the decline in youth drinking is produced by a co-effect of multiple master narratives that intersect and guide the identity development away from heavy drinking.

This article provides an account of the making of KBLab, the data lab at the National Library of Sweden (KB). The first part discusses the work involved in establishing a lab as both a physical and a digital site for researchers to use digital collections at previously unimaginable scales. The second part explains how the lab has deployed the library's collections as data to produce high quality Swedish AI models, which constitute a significant new form of digital research infrastructure. We situate this work in the context of uneven AI coverage for smaller languages, and consider how the lab's models have contributed to the making of important AI infrastructure for the Swedish language. The conclusion raises the possibilities and challenges involved in continuing this type of library-based AI development.

Research has suggested that Swedish higher education institutions' (HEIs') language policies may exclude some academic staff from work-related activities due to (dual) monolingual ideologies requiring one language at a time. This study, based on the analysis of twenty-one language policy texts, investigates HEIs' policies using a lens of inclusion at workplaces with linguistic diversity, drawing on concepts from diversity management and language policy for democracy of inclusion. All documents examined began with statements of HEIs' values relevant to the policies. Inclusion was seldom explicitly emphasized, although policies suggested ways to facilitate it. We argue that some of the approaches--namely, taking a top-down monolinguistic approach to language choice, requiring staff to be highly proficient in both Swedish and English, and offering unspecified language support--reinforce language-based in-groups and out-groups, likely compromising rather than facilitating inclusion. Another approach, emphasizing individuals' rights to choose what language they use, facilitates inclusion only if support is provided for everyone's understanding. Providing immediate language support and encouraging bottom-up, flexible language choice were less common approaches but seem particularly likely to facilitate inclusion. Our analysis suggests that policies prioritizing successful communication, not specific languages, facilitate inclusion and help employees develop job-related language and intercultural communicative competence.

Research informing adult education teachers' didactic practices in distance education is scarce. Approaching the adult learner's perspectives on how distance education is perceived is key to informing future initiatives. This study explores adult learners' perception of distance education, concentrating on aspects such as, social presence, course structure, and perceived learning and satisfaction. A survey was distributed to teachers (n = 78) in five schools organising adult distance education. Findings show that teacher accessibility and course structure correlated positively with social presence and perceived learning and satisfaction. Overall, adult learners are satisfied with their distance teaching. A challenge facing adult distance education is to create a sense of social presence despite the high demand for flexibility. Thus, we explored learner perceptions of benefits and challenges in distance education and structured these into social, cognitive, spatio-temporal, emotional, and technical dimensions. Findings reveal that one challenge in the social dimension was a lack of connection with peers, and a benefit in the cognitive dimension referred to autonomy and self-regulation. These findings are important as educational institutions and policymakers may strive for high flexibility, which in turn may lead to lower group cohesion and a lack of social presence.

The basis of this article is a follow-up study of a cohort of pupils in the third largest city of Sweden, Malmö. The pupils finished fourth grade at compulsory school in 2008. We have data about every individual in the cohort as well as corresponding information about their parents. The information concern educational choices, educational accomplishments, employment relations, incomes from work and different kinds of social benefits and allowances. We got annual data on these variables from 2008 until the last follow-up year 2019 when most of the individuals were 21 years old. Most of them left upper secondary school in 2017 when they were 19 years old. They were therefore in the beginning of their transition 2019, either aiming for education or work. The results show that vocational education generated favourable conditions for work and incomes provided that the diploma goals ware reached. Individuals with foreign background and with unfavourable socioeconomic origins were overrepresented among those that didn't reach the diploma goals; this was true for students on VET-programmes as well as higher education preparatory programmes. It should also be mentioned that experiences from a national programme in upper secondary school generally improved conditions for establishment. Those that didn't reach the goals of compulsory school and weren't eligible for studying at a national programme met the greatest difficulties in finding jobs and decent income levels.

Principal autonomy has been identified as an important ingredient in effective and healthy schools. However, little is known about the various dimensions of the phenomenon and how it takes form in different contexts. This article presents an analytical device contributing to further understand the complex nature of principal autonomy. The device follows the seminal work of Richard Ingersoll on autonomy in school organisations operationalised as decision-making and control. Moreover, we put forward a multidimensional device to organise decisions and control in several schooling domains: educational, social, developmental and administrative. By exemplifying the device on principals' perceptions of autonomy in the very North of Sweden, Norway and Finland, we can reveal important differences between the three Nordic neighbouring cases. Related to these reforms, principals' work can be compared in terms of different grades of complexity and risk, with corresponding consequences for their autonomy.

Significant collaborations with research partners in China are seen in many Western countries. With increasing US-China geopolitical tensions, governments, research institutions, and individuals in established scientific systems are increasingly required to address a proliferating array of risks and challenges associated with collaboration with China. Academic researchers are only beginning to describe how countries are responding to the ongoing need for global scientific collaboration amidst intensifying geopolitical competition. Several studies have examined the securitization of scientific connections with China in the USA, while others have documented developments in nations such as Australia, the UK, and Sweden. However, there is limited comparative research on approaches to international science amid geopolitical tensions. This paper bridges the gap, illuminating the key dimensions of variation in country-level responses by comparing the cases of Sweden and Australia. The questions we ask are as follows: Who responds to the challenges? By what means? And to what ends are responses directed? Swedish government have been largely passive, but Swedish funding agencies have developed "responsible internationalisation" guidelines that aim to induce proactive reflection by institutions and individual researchers. Australia's approach, by contrast, has centred on legislation, the exercise of ministerial powers, along with sector-wide enactment of expanded due diligence protocols. The comparison highlights key differences in the actors, methods and goals of responses to the intensifying geopolitics of scientific collaboration.

Integration is vital to student well-being in higher education but integrating new students from different countries can be challenging. To ascertain students' integration into their new environment, this mixed method study combined the data collected from weekly diary entries of home and international students at the start of one engineering program, with follow-up interviews. These students studied primarily online due to the pandemic. The diary entries focused on their adjustment to the program from an academic, social and pair work perspective. Results show that the students reacted slightly negatively to the academic experience but very positively to their pair work. It seems that the teacher-formed pair work helped to bridge the academic and social gap and not only alleviate some of the stress caused by assignments, but in some cases, provided new social contacts. The article concludes that structural factors within the course can facilitate interaction and thus support integration.

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore the school principal's role in promoting physical activity for inactive children in school settings. Design: Exploratory qualitative interview study. Setting: The study was conducted in seven elementary schools in central Sweden. Method: Data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews with eight school principals. Theories of bioecology and teacher agency informed the study and shed light on the environmental factors and resources affecting school principals' efforts to promote physical activity for inactive children. Result: The most common strategy school principals described was to delegate responsibility for planning organised activities to dedicated school personnel working with the children. In their leadership role, principals described having the power and opportunity to recruit school personnel with positive attitudes towards promoting physical activity, which likely increases inactive children's opportunities to engage in PA. Conclusion: When provided the adequate resources, and by virtue of their management position within the school, principals have the opportunity to make a difference to promote PA for inactive children. Delegating responsibility to school personnel may however create unequal PA opportunities, and if there are no initiators dedicated to this work, inactive children may be left out of PA opportunities in school.

In this article, ambassadors of the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) Open Educational Resources (OER) Advocacy Committee (OERAC) provide a snapshot of regional and global Open Educational Resources (OER)initiatives. This committee has been active since 2017 with membership renewed biannually. The ambassadors work to further OER awareness and understanding, to increase global recognition of OER, and provide policy support for the acceptance and application of OER. This overview highlights national and regional initiatives associated with the UNESCO OER recommendation and the five action areas that include: building capacity and leveraging OER; developing supporting policies; ensuring equity and effectiveness; encouraging sustainable OER model development; and, promoting and facilitating international collaboration. In addition, monitoring and evaluation of the action areas are suggested to be prioritized. This overview is not exhaustive, and much work remains to implement the OER Recommendation at scale, maximize its implementation, connect these recommendations to the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), along with the futures of education with a new social contract for education, individuals, and the planet.

Using data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, this paper compares the earnings premium and employment share of jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) across 11 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results reveal that the STEM wage premium is higher in the United States than in any of the other comparison countries, despite the fact that the U.S. has a larger share of workers in STEM jobs. We also find evidence that the premium varies significantly across STEM sub-fields and education levels, and that the premium tends to be higher in countries with lower unionization rates, less employment protection, or a larger share of employment in the public sector.

Following a professional program to ensure qualification for school leadership is a growing trend. However, school leaders have also come to understand and use content from educational programs in widely different ways. There is therefore a need to study how participating school principals experience learning differently within one and the same program. This empirical study uses qualitative methods to examine fourteen compulsory school principals' experiences of how the mandatory Swedish National Principal Training Program contributes to their professional development. The findings show how program elements can be experienced as contributing to professional development of some principals while being experienced as obstacles for others, depending on becoming active or passive driving forces for participants in terms of orientation, reflection, exploration, and interplay. Applying a theoretical framework made it possible to describe and understand their professional development through program participation in a nuanced way. In terms of analytical generalization such knowledge may form the basis for development of school leader programs.

The empirical data in this study are from a series of two lessons on measurement implemented in seven classes with 119 six-year-old students in Sweden. Both problem solving and problem posing were shown to be important in early mathematics when students in this study worked on one problem-solving task and one problem-posing task on measurement. As there are few studies specifically on problem posing in early mathematics and on young children's understanding of measurement, this study adds knowledge of value for both teachers and researchers. In the study, paper-and-pen work from the students was analysed together with interviews conducted after the students had worked on the two tasks. When solving the task on measurement, the students discerned shape, size, distance, and number as mathematical aspects of measurement. When asked to pose a similar task, only size and number reoccurred as mathematical aspects of measurement. However, other features from the problem-solving task reoccurred in the posed tasks: similar drawings were used in combination with questions on measurement as the mathematical content.