Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE)

Global Assemblages and National Narratives

Saija Volmari — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This article builds on the author’s doctoral dissertation and the accompanying lectio praecursoria, offering a critical reflection on evidence-based policymaking in Nordic school reforms. Drawing on assemblage thinking and spatiotemporal theory, it explores how global policy discourses and national ambitions are interwoven through networks of experts and knowledge. The article highlights the contested and co-constructed nature of evidence-based policymaking, shaped by multiple actors and sites in national, Nordic and global policy spheres. It argues for a nuanced and relational understanding of policy space—one that enables researchers to trace sites and situations of policymaking and identify potential moments of interruption. These ideas are further developed in the author’s current postdoctoral project, which follows future vision for comprehensive education in the making in Finland.

Non-compulsory Instrumental Music Education in Poland and Norway

Katarzyna Julia Leikvoll — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This article compares non-compulsory instrumental music education systems in Norway and Poland, by describing their organisation, accessibility, educational goals, curriculum framework, and the target group, and discussing consequences the chosen form of organisation and vision might have for the users. The analysis of government documents and statistics shows that while Polish Music Centres and Norwegian Schools of Music and Performing Arts offer similar instrumental education for their users, in Poland there is also a highly specialised system of music schools providing goal-oriented professional tuition for young people at all educational levels. Analysis of the target groups and curriculum frameworks reveals that the concept of music school is understood differently in the two countries. Polish music schools prepare students to become musicians and do not serve as a leisure activity, in contrast to Norwegian Schools of Music and Performing Arts, which do not make strict demands of commitment and goal-oriented participation. Poland’s system is more structured and standardised, potentially leading to high levels of technical and musical proficiency, while Norway’s system is more flexible and inclusive, promoting broader educational and personal development goals.

Beyond Push and Pull: A New Theory of International Student Mobility

Wei Liu, Xiaobing Lin — Mon, 05 May 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The global mobility of students is a central feature of the internationalization of higher education. The discussions in the current literature on the issue of international student mobility seem to concentrate on three main questions: 1) What is the current pattern of international student mobility? 2) How do we explain the current mobility pattern? 3) More importantly, should we regard the current mobility pattern as a normal state of affairs or a cause for concern? What is missing in the current discussions is how we should steer the future direction of international mobility. Based on a review of the different theoretical approaches to understanding international student mobility, this paper aims to propose a new Glo(bal)-Noble Theory that recognizes the benefits of globalization and the role of neoliberal forces but encourages noble and mindful practices in international education to gradually narrow the gap between the rich and the poor in the world.

Maps and Territory

Kirsten Marie Hartvigsen — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This study investigated the implementation of the LK20 educational reform by comparing how three religious education teachers incorporated two core elements of the upper secondary curriculum into their teaching. The focus was on the two digital/paper-based templates (forms) that the educators created to scaffold students’ exploration and comparison of religions. These templates, along with transcripts of video-recorded lessons, were first analyzed using thematic qualitative text analysis. Subsequently, the data were examined hermeneutically as two primary cases, one of which was analyzed as two interrelated subcases. These analytical methods were used to evaluate the overall scope of the materials while closely examining and comparing the teachers’ templates and how they contextualized them orally during lessons. One teacher employed Ninian Smart’s seven dimensions of religion as the foundational model for her template. The other two teachers collaboratively developed a template focused on specific aspects of religions, including history, rituals, deities, worldviews, and potential sources. Furthermore, the template emphasized the management of exploration and effective communication concerning feedback. During their presentations, all teachers referenced elements associated with the World Religions Paradigm and the interpretive approach, albeit in different ways. Finally, they introduced tasks to contextualize and prepare students for engagement with the templates.

Power and majority discourses in education - critical perspectives

Ane Bergersen, Anne Grethe Sønsthagen — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Demodernizing Schooling

Jeremy Jiménez — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Who’s Afraid of Education?

Artem Ingmar Benediktsson — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Who’s Afraid of Education? is an ethnodrama in four acts based on data collected at two university colleges in Denmark. The main characters, Myriam and Mahmood, embody the collective voices of seven student teachers, all of whom were in the final year of their teacher education program at the time of the study. The ethnodrama centers on the characters’ experiences, deliberately prioritizing their perspectives over the researcher’s interpretations. The reader is invited to form their own interpretations and to critically reflect on the tension between the characters’ cultural identities and the expectations of a predominantly monocultural educational system. By encouraging a deeper level of engagement with the research findings, the ethnodrama breaks away from conventional academic writing formats, making the research more accessible to a wider audience.

Teacher perceptions of digital life skills in upper secondary school

Anja Ramfjord Isaksen, Greta Björk Gudmundsdottir — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0200

The introduction of a new curricular reform in 2020 led to life skills becoming a widely discussed topic in Norway. Other commonly debated topics are young people’s technology use and time spent online. Their lives seem intricately dependent on technology and social media, which highlights a need to address societal pressures, including mental health, exclusion and online risks in their education. Given these developments, it has become important to further examine digital life skills to address the juxtaposition between digital technologies and life skills in young people’s lives to capture these challenges and understand how they are addressed in school. This study aims to enrich existing research by examining the concept of digital life skills and contributing to the conceptualisation of this concept through teachers’ perspectives in Norway. We interviewed 13 upper secondary school teachers from general and vocational study programmes to capture their views on the concept of digital life skills in two school subjects. Our findings indicate that the teachers relate to digital life skills and consider them important. The teachers connect digital life skills to three themes we have labelled digital detox, digital footprints and digital responsibility. This study presents pedagogical and didactical implications of teachers’ perceptions and integration of digital life skills into their instructional practices. Furthermore, the findings provide valuable insights for policymakers and school leaders, enhancing their understanding of how upper secondary teachers in English and social science in Norway conceptualise digital life skills.

Understanding The Everyday Digital Lives of Children and Young People

Maren Svendsen Folkvord — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

“Understanding The Everyday Digital Lives of Children and Young People”, edited by Halla Holmarsdottir, Idunn Seland, Christer Hyggen and Maria Roth is an exploration of the impact of technological transformations on children and young people aged 5-18 years, referred to as the Digital Generation. This book is a useful and important contribution to increasing our insight into children and young people's digital everyday lives today, in a holistic and curious way, as it goes beyond the technological determinism implicit in studies that repeatedly find small correlations between online activity and adolescent well-being. The book is also an important starting point for further research on children and young people and can especially be of inspiration regarding the use of various creative methods that involve children and young people in research, to bring out the young people's own perspectives, understandings, thoughts, feelings and practices.

How Do Teachers Use Digital Technology When They Engage Students in Mathematical Inquiry?

Roar Bakken Stovner, Ove Edvard Hatlevik — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This paper addresses how digital technology is used during mathematical inquiry in Norwegian secondary school following the implementation of a new national curriculum in 2020. The curriculum emphasizes inquiry-based learning, while digital technology is widely available and frequently used in Norwegian education. We analyzed 95 video-recorded lessons, subdivided into 343 fifteen-minute segments, using observation instruments that capture both digital technology use and inquiry. The results were that segments featuring advanced use of digital technology were more likely to feature mathematical inquiry. During mathematical inquiry, dynamic geometry software and spreadsheets were the most used digital technologies, while computer algebra systems and programming environments were the least used. We also conducted a qualitative analysis of the functions that digital technology had for mathematical inquiry. On the one hand, digital technology enabled mathematical inquiry by efficiently drawing graphs, either by saving labor or by enabling visual reasoning before formal learning. On the other hand, digital technology sometimes shifted mathematical inquiry towards computational approaches and use of software features. These findings highlight both the potential and limitations of digital technology during mathematical inquiry, cautioning against overly simplistic views of their impact.

«Alle disse følelsene og tankene er jo gjennom personal forteller»

Henriette Hogga Siljan — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This study investigates how analytical exploration of the novel Innsirkling unfolds in literary discussions in the L1-subject Norwegian language arts in high school (first year). The discussions are student-led and arranged in groups. According to the Norwegian Directorate of Education, the students shall explore texts to a greater extent than before. This study contributes new knowledge on this topic. The comparative video analysis shows that students draw analytical aspects into the all the discussions, and that they are particularly interested in exploring literary characters and narrator perspectives. However, the analytical exploration identifies three different ways of how connections between the novel and the analytical terms are made; (1) Text based exploration, which is used by the first student group, entails starting with text examples and then connecting the examples to literary terms. (2) Term based exploration, which is used by the second student group, take analytical questions and terms as a starting point, and then move to text examples from the novel. (3) Alternating exploration, which is used by the third student group, entails moving the discussion back and forth between text based and term-based exploration. I discuss how knowledge of analytical aspects and terms can help students both to discover relevant elements in the novel, as well as how analytical tools and the text can be linked together in an appropriate way in the exploration process.

Deep learning in the primary school English classroom in Norway

Tony Burner, Delia Schipor — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Deep learning or deeper learning plays an important role in curricula and educational policies, including the most recent curriculum in Norway. Nonetheless, there is scant research on how teachers perceive and work with deep learning in lower levels of education. This study is part of a longitudinal research study, “Evaluering av fagfornyelsen” (2021-2025), evaluating the implementation of the Norwegian curriculum in four subjects. This article explores nine English teachers’ conceptualizations and practices of deep learning at four primary schools in Norway. Interviews and classroom observations were used to collect data from the same teachers in two consecutive years. The findings indicate that English teachers succeed to some extent in realizing their conceptualizations of deep learning in actual classroom practices, realized through interdisciplinary themes, formative assessment, and multilingual practices. Furthermore, the teachers’ understandings of deep learning are mostly in line with educational scholars’ definitions of deep learning. The findings from this study are relevant for teachers, policymakers and teacher educators in providing knowledge about English teachers’ conceptualizations and practices of deep learning. We call for similar studies in other school subjects across educational levels and national contexts.

Computational Thinking in Nordic Teacher Education and Schools

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Youth organizations’ capacity building on youth media literacy

Magnus Henrik Sandberg, Lars Opdal, Larysa Kolesnyk — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This study investigates the intersection of media literacy and civic engagement within the context of youth organizations across three countries: Finland, Norway and Romania. Employing a comparative cross-national research design, and drawing on interviews with youth organizations, we explore how NGOs understand and conceptualize media literacy and civic engagement. Subsequently, we identify national NGOs' capacity building strategies for working with media literacy in ways that encourage youth civic engagement. Our findings reveal nuanced differences in the operationalization of media literacy and civic engagement concepts across the three countries, shaped by local political, economic, and cultural contexts. We found that whereas the term “media literacy” is understood similarly in all three countries, the position and role of the youth organizations themselves seems to be quite different depending on country context.

By highlighting the distinct strategies employed by NGOs in Finland, Norway, and Romania, this study underscores the critical role of tailored capacity-building initiatives in addressing national disparities. The findings offer actionable insights for policymakers, educators, and NGOs, emphasizing the need for cross-sectoral collaborations and international knowledge exchange to enhance youth empowerment. It also emphasizes the importance of understanding contextual factors in shaping organizational approaches to media literacy and civic engagement and contributes to the discourse on youth empowerment and civic participation in the digital age.

TALIS 2018 data indicates that teachers need support for developing skills in Pedagogical Decision Making

Susan Wiksten — Tue, 22 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0200

From a sociology of education perspective, a concern in teacher education is that teaching practices and expectations to the professional role of teachers often build on assumptions that derive from the social context of instruction. Whereas international comparisons regularly focus on characteristics of individuals or selected segments of the population, such as pre-service teachers or individual teacher education programmes, this article contextualizes socially derived expectations using secondary analysis of survey data for fourteen countries across four continents. A review of publicly available data from the World Bank and the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) was carried out. The secondary analysis consists of a juxtaposition and visualization of descriptive data. Analysis of survey data highlights shared assumptions and expectations across fourteen countries. The data indicates that some teacher attitudes are not a result of characteristics specific to individual teachers or the teacher profession in general but are associated with variation between countries. The article draws theoretically and methodologically on prior Comparative and International Education (CIE) research and proposes that teachers across subject matter specializations and across contexts benefit from the development of Pedagogical Decision-Making skills (PDM). More attention to the development of specific PDM skills is proposed as a means for strengthening teacher resilience.