Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education (NJCIE)

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.

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.

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.

The Shadows of Internationalisation

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0100

This forum proposes the use of concept of “shadows” in the analysis of internationalisation policies to make visible the decision-making processes and practices appearing at all levels of internationalisation policies. We focus on the problematic effects appeared at the intersect of internationalisation policies implemented by the countries perceived academic values differently on example of Finland as the EU member state and pre-war Russia. We consider these effects as preventing equal access to quality higher education and life-long learning for all (SDG4, target 4.3). The forum conceptualises the lessons of the EU/Finnish-Russian internationalisation for further usage the suggested theoretical lens in policy implementation in other countries developed their own internationalisation policy on different value basis. This study address to what happens when the internationalisation policies promoted European view on fundamental academic values, are implemented with such policies in the countries where these values are perceived in another way. We answer the question of how and why the shadows of internationalisation appear and have an impact at a macro-, meso-, and micro-level, and conceptualize them for future policy improvement. The forum discusses the implications of internationalisation policies from the practice perspective and what might be learnt by the stakeholders previously involved in these cooperation partnerships.

Integrating Environmental Education for Sustainability

Joel Jonathan Kayombo, Syed Nitas Iftekhar, Leatitia Gabriel Mashaza — Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

This study employs a qualitative inquiry and a phenomenological case study design to critically examine environmental pedagogies within the context of Tanzanian secondary schools. The primary aim is to identify the contextual needs for reorienting education towards environmental justice through the lens of ecopedagogy. Specifically, the research explores three key aspects: stakeholders’ perceptions of the human-environment relationship, the integration of environmental education into school curricula, and stakeholders' recommendations for enhancing environmental education in secondary schools. Guided by the Ecopedagogical Pyramid Framework, the study informs both data collection and the interpretation of findings. The study highlights the importance of environmental education in Tanzania, highlighting the need for a multidisciplinary approach to teach students about environmental issues. It calls for a balance between theory and practice, focusing on practical, action-oriented approaches. The Ecopedagogical Pyramid Framework, which advocates for a balance between theory and practice, can help foster environmental competencies in secondary school students. The study also emphasizes the role of media in shaping environmental consciousness but also calls for more government resources and teacher training to ensure effective environmental education.

Teacher competencies in job advertisements for teachers

Ville Mankki, Mirva Heikkilä, Lauri Kemppinen, Riitta-Leena Metsäpelto — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0100

Teaching requires a diverse range of competencies. This study investigates teacher competencies articulated in job advertisements for teaching positions in Finland. Given the global teacher recruitment challenges, particularly in rural schools, and the regional differentiation within Finland, the study also examines the variations across rural, semi-urban, and urban municipalities. Data were collected from a centralized recruitment website, resulting in 596 job advertisements for class teacher positions. A deductive qualitative content analysis was performed using the individual teacher competencies defined in the multidimensional adapted process model of teaching (Metsäpelto et al., 2022) as a framework. The findings highlight the prevalence of teacher competencies related to knowledge base of teaching and learning, social skills, and personal orientations. Notably, advertisements from rural municipalities featured fewer competencies compared to those from semi-urban and urban municipalities. By illustrating the desired teacher competencies in the field, this study provides a valuable tool for evaluating and developing teacher education goals and teacher recruitment strategies.

Immigrant parents’ experiences and perspectives on the early childhood education stages in Nordic contexts

Samah M. Migdad, Kjersti Lea, Martin M. Sjøen — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0100

To explore the state of research on immigrant parents’ experiences in early childhood education (ECE) stages, we conducted a literature review through a qualitative meta-synthesis of 22 studies. Guided by sociocultural theory, which emphasizes the co-construction of meaning and the interplay between individual agency and social context, the synthesis highlights both the barriers immigrant parents face and opportunities for enhancing inclusion and support within Nordic ECE contexts. While the articles acknowledge these challenges, they also found that some parents increasingly appreciate Nordic ECE values and practices over time. Communication emerges as a central theme in the reviewed literature; it deeply impacts the integration process of immigrant parents in Nordic ECE systems. Synthesized findings across the studies highlight communication as a key factor shaping parents’ experiences within the categories of “initial experiences and adaptation,” “parental concerns,” and “cultural and social integration.” The review reveals a predominance of host-country researchers, the majority being female, with minority groups underrepresented, which could potentially lead to biases. Despite methodological limitations that impact the understanding of immigrant parents' experiences, the studies offer valuable insights into the parents’ reported experiences and provide a foundation for improving inclusivity and understanding in Nordic ECE.

Multicultural and multilingual educator professionalism

Ulla Lundqvist, Signe Hvid Thingstrup, Annika Åkerblom — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This article investigates how multicultural and multilingual educator professionalism unfolds as a dynamic phenomenon among educators in Danish and Swedish preschools and primary schools. Reflexive dialogues were produced with educators in three different action research studies. These dialogues were analysed by employing conceptual approaches of educator professionalism, equity pedagogy, and multicultural and multilingual education. The analyses show how the educators: (i) critically examine their constructions of pupils/children, (ii) develop increasingly broad views on how knowledge and learning can be productively produced in classroom interaction, and (iii) show awareness about societal language ideologies. The educators’ nuanced reflections on their own pedagogical practices displayed contradictions and ambivalences. We argue that the educators’ reflections point to possible renewals of pedagogical practices that place multiculturalism and multilingualism at the centre of educator professionalism.

Studentmobilitet for kvalitet i høyere utdanning

Ane Bergersen, Prisca Bruno Massao — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Student mobility has long been a desired form of internationalization in higher Education in Norway. Previous research shows increased personal, professional and intercultural competencies after their stay in Zambia and Tanzania. In this paper, we shed light on how cooperation partners in Zambia and Tanzania, through equal knowledge exchange and positions, can contribute to strengthening the quality of student mobility from Norway. We conducted qualitative interviews with six coordinators in Zambia and Tanzania to learn from their reflections regarding student mobility from Norway. The themes discussed in the interviews are student mobility, global justice and de-colonial awareness. The theoretical framework is critical pedagogy and de-colonialization, which analyses power, positions, and pluriversity in international cooperation. Our findings indicate the reproduction of colonial structures and more academic responsibility to colleagues in Zambia and Tanzania, and they suggest adequate preparations with particular learning outcomes to increase the quality of student mobility.

Racialized narratives about multicultural parental collaboration in early childhood education and care

Anne Grethe Sønsthagen, Prisca Bruno Massao — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This study examines what racialized narratives emerge when staff in two Norwegian early childcare centers discuss multicultural parental collaboration. Results stem from a re-analysis of the narratives from two focus group interviews from a previous study that focused on staff conversations about their descriptions of their collaboration with parents and families with refugee backgrounds. Theoretically, the study draws on symbolic power and violence theories, white privilege, and critical race theory. The results were dominated by two main narratives: Normality and Language. Normality narratives appear to emphasize whiteness and Norwegianess as the norms that all parents are expected to follow, and parents who do not conform risk being alienated and generalized as representatives of "the others." Language narrative highlights the place the Norwegian language occupies in judging parents' and children's abilities and ways of interaction. Given the importance placed on parents and children mastering the Norwegian language for future success in Norwegian society, other forms of communication and interactions are devalued and condemned, marginalizing parents and children struggling to learn and understand the Norwegian language and culture. The consequences of these narratives minimize the early childcare center’s role as a bridging institution.

Beyond exceptionalism

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0100

The idea of Nordic countries as benevolent, egalitarian nations largely innocent of colonialism, is increasingly challenged by researchers. Yet, there is still reluctance within Nordic education systems to properly examine issues of coloniality, race, and white privilege. In this conceptual paper we first draw on research from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden to deconstruct the notion of Nordic exceptionalism. We highlight a shared history of colonial complicity and ongoing coloniality towards Indigenous and minoritised groups. We also show that the Nordic emphasis on societal equality is based on a narrative of cohesion, an imagined sameness, that increasingly fails to reflect their diverse populations. This egalitarian ideology results in colour-blindness in society and an unwillingness to acknowledge or confront issues of race, white supremacy, or inequality for fear of disturbing the equilibrium.

Using decolonial theory, we then suggest that within education, Nordic exceptionalism has led to a singular historical narrative and attempts to assimilate minoritised groups, in the process valorising Western epistemology. Educators either dismiss, or are ignorant of, what Quijano (2000) terms the colonial matrix of power: the system of Western domination that continues to normalise epistemic violence and devalue other knowledges and perspectives. Educators prefer to protect white sensitivities rather than allow critical discussion and uncomfortable questions of coloniality. We demonstrate that Nordic education needs to decolonise itself, but that this cannot be achieved until it overcomes a discomfort with difference that prevents alternative knowledges and practices from being valued or adopted. We conclude with some thoughts on how to begin this process.

Kan tosprogede elever være ordblinde?

Hatice Secilmis Filikci — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Dyslexia is the most common cause of reading and writing difficulties, yet bilingual students diagnosed with dyslexia are significantly underrepresented in Danish public schools. This article examines how knowledge about dyslexia and bilingual students is constructed and problematised in educational policies on emu.dk, using Carol Bacchi’s WPR approach (What’s the Problem Represented to Be?). The analysis reveals a clear distinction between the categories, where dyslexia is primarily understood as a neurobiological condition, while bilingual students’ reading difficulties are framed through a linguistic and deficit-oriented perspective that focuses on their Danish language proficiency and reading comprehension. This discursive separation results in bilingual students’ reading difficulties rarely being recognised as related to phonological decoding challenges or dyslexia. The article discusses the potential implications of this representation for educational practices, including challenges in detecting and supporting bilingual students with dyslexia, as well as how policies may contribute to underdiagnosis, overdiagnosis, and misdiagnosis of this student group.