In recent years, several anti-bullying programs have been developed, for instance in the UK, USA and New Zealand, but how successful these programs might be outside their own cultural context has not been investigated. This paper describes an action research project, the aim of which was to determine whether a pro-active model against intolerance…

The aim of this study was to investigate differences, if any, in reading achievement among Swedish pupils 9 years of age with respect to school size and location. Data from the IEA reading tests for approximately 3400 children in 124 different schools were used for the analyses, which were carried out using a structural equation modelling…

Children today live in different cultural settings. The pre-school culture is one of them and the media culture outside the pre-school another. These cultures are in different ways characterised by opposite and often even conflicting traditions. This article shows how educators and children handle this dilemma by using interaction as a tool to…

The present study describes the private pursuit of improved Finnish elementary education in the time of Gustavus (1771-1808). In those days, the Government did not have enough resources to reorganise the Swedish educational system as a whole; therefore, the most efficient way to promote elementary education was to rely on private initiatives. The…

The theory behind this study yielded the predictions that successful teacher-pupil interaction in the classroom is essential to the educational and social development of pupils and that teachers' understanding of their own behaviour is therefore of paramount importance. The study examined the behaviour and practices of 20 teachers, 10 in small…

This study examines the prevalence of parental disillusionment with school and its relationship with demographic variables, and phase, size and location of schools. Findings are based on data from 1569 parents of children in grades 5 to 10 from 20 schools in 9 municipalities in Norway. Previous research in other countries shows benefits for the…

The theme of this article is education as nation building in the Scandinavian countries: Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Starting with an overview of their Social Democrat parties' ascension of to near hegemony immediately following the Second World War, and these parties' impact on education, we go on to sketch the interplay between general political…

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationships between achievement goals, perceptions of motivational climate and sportspersonship in a sample of young male Norwegian handball players. A cross-sectional study of 440 male handball players aged from 14 to 16 was conducted, in which the players responded to a questionnaire measuring…

The current popular case against the use of standardised ability tests in bilingual assessment is not as unequivocal as may be commonly assumed. Evidence currently available indicates that such tests generally measure the same constructs, with equal accuracy, regardless of language backgrounds. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to this…

This paper advocates the argument that philosophical and empirical modes of inquiry are seldom brought together to gain a better understanding of pedagogical ethics in the natural settings of school life. Here, it is hoped that this kind of combination provides interpretative lenses for the deliberation of pedagogical practices. The paper aims to…

The article presents some findings from the York-Jyvaskyla Teacher Professionalism project. The project was a follow-up study to earlier case-study research in six schools in Finland and six schools in England on the impact of educational reforms on teachers' work. Data were collected by re-interviewing a sample of teachers from the original…

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international study coordinated by governments of participating countries, through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In 2000, a total of 265,000 students from 32 countries took part in PISA. The main aim of PISA is to assess how well 15-year-old…

In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) the items are organised in small clusters relating to the same stimulus material (called 'units'). Homogeneity analysis (HA) is used to develop a detailed description of the relationship between all the items in one unit, using the categorical information available in the PISA data. The…

In this paper we have set out to search for similarities and differences between the Nordic countries concerning patterns of competencies defined as scientific literacy in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. The first part focuses on gender differences concerning the two types of competencies, understanding of…

Finnish students' multiliteracy profiles are examined from the perspectives of both traditional printed reading and Internet activities in the light of the data collected as a national option integrated into the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000 study. After reciting some previous findings on reader profiles as revealed by…