A study in a grade 6-7 Canadian elementary class identified three "spaces of inquiry" that encourage student participation in school science: generative spaces for brainstorming and collaboration; rehearsal spaces for presentation of ideas to the class for refinement; and performative spaces for presentation of finished creations to, and…

A study involving eight female Canadian elementary teachers and counselors used metaphors to help teachers reflect on their experiences of student anger. This strategy enabled emotional detachment from students' anger, was more accessible than other strategies at highly emotional times, had moderating effects on inappropriate student behavior, and…

In Winnepeg (Canada), a survey of 319 urban high school students, 51% of whom had received peer mediation training in junior high school, found no significant differences between the two groups in their attitudes and beliefs about conflict resolution or in their satisfaction with their abilities to resolve conflicts. Possible explanations relate…

A study of 300 children in kindergarten, grade 2, and grade 6 found that background music improved visual discrimination task performance at the youngest and middle ages and had no effect on the oldest participants. On a square identification task, background music had no influence on easy and difficult tasks but lowered performance on…

The personal development of the Danish minister, poet, and social historian N. F. S. Grundtvig is explored in the contexts of the Danish "folkeliege" social movements, which included the folk high school and free-school movements and an anthropological theory of social movements based on the "revitalization movement" work of A. Wallace. (SLD)

Teachers' emphases on six general educational goals were studied in samples of 144 and 157 Norwegian teachers over two years. Results suggest that teachers' goal emphases are, to a considerable degree, the result of professional socialization, and that several classroom characteristics are basically unrelated to individual differences in teachers'…

Current research on students' experiences in encounters with their classmates in school is explored by using the narrative of a 25-year-old nursery school teacher in Sweden about her own experiences as a quiet and well-behaved student. Her story illustrates some of the built-in conflicts of the comprehensive school. (SLD)

Sources of organizational learning were studied for 131 employees, 109 of whom were managers, who participated in projects with external consultants in a large public-transport company in Norway. A multiple regression analysis explained 69% of organizational learning as a function of attitude toward learning. Differences between managers and other…

The numbers of students who teased and students who were teased and their characteristics were studied in two longitudinal studies in Finland involving 100 elementary school students and 119 secondary school students. Teasing was very common and students but not teachers, were aware of who was being teased and who did it. Influencing teasing in…

The seven chapters of this theme issue focus on efforts in four countries to understand and improve the experiences of students traditionally defined as having disabilities or special needs. The chapters include a discussion of the language of special education reform and accounts of inclusion-related issues in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and the…

The 11 chapters of this theme issue explore important issues that relate cognitive style to educational concerns. They link cognitive style with reading comprehension, parental teaching, family qualities, teaching, distance learning, strategic learning, socialization, and athletic performance. (SLD)

Results of a questionnaire completed by 282 heads of Russian schools suggest that their problems in mastering foreign models of management stem from differences in the general logic of activity of Russian and Western educational managers, differences that are caused by differences in "external orders" toward schools. (SLD)

Analyzes didactics as the hard core of Finnish pedagogic discourse and relates changes in the state educational discourse in Finland to recent developments in department-level curricula in teacher education at Finnish universities in the 1980s and 1990s. The tendency in Finland has been toward a decontextualized and nonhistorical science of…

A majority of 1071 Norwegian eighth graders studied reported satisfactory support from teachers and relations with peers, although 12% reported more severe emotional complaints and 10% reported more severe musculoskeletal complaints. Exposure to harassment at school and a perceived lack of academic support show the strongest associations with…

Explores the meeting ground between Christian Socialist and Social Democratic ideas and practices in the development of adult education between 1900 and 1930 in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, focusing on cross-cultural dissemination and reception of Christian Socialism and the influence of the Woodbrooke Settlement in the United Kingdom and…