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…

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 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…

There has been an increasing effort to integrate use of self-reports and a more profile-oriented approach with observations and interviews conducted during the actual learning process. The purpose of the present study was to investigate how students with different goal orientation profiles involve themselves in actual learning situations over four…

Studied teachers' development in a large English "comprehensive" school during a period of intense educational reform, focusing on eight experienced teachers. Findings highlight a range of factors that appeared to constrain teachers' professional development. Considers the implications for recent Danish policy related to school-focused teacher…

Studied aspects of listening comprehension skills in 107 second, fourth, and sixth graders in Finland using the Sentence Verification technique. Findings, comparable with previous research, show age-related improvement in listening comprehension for narrative, but not expository, passages. Cluster analysis produced four comprehension strategies.…

Studied personal context and continuity in the thinking of 23 Swedish students from grade 2 through grade 8 using data from a longitudinal study of conceptualizations of ecological processes. While there was substantial conceptual development, there was also a strong element of personal continuity for these students. (SLD)

Analyzed the contexts of texts written by Swedish school chidlren in order to gain a picture of their experiences of school and then related those experiences to the democratic goals of integration and practices of selection and segregation that are occurring in Swedish school systems. Findings for 185 childrens' texts show the importance of…

Studied the relationships among academic achievement, learned helplessness, and psychological adjustment (self-esteem and depression), controlled for gender and age, for 1,580 students with data collected in grades 3 and 4, 6 and 7, and 8 and 9. Results show that academic achievement is directly and indirectly related to the pattern of…

Studied teacher certainty in 1,153 Norwegian teachers in elementary and junior high schools using confirmatory factor analysis and generalizability theory. Results indicate a good fit for a model that operationalizes teacher certainty as a second order latent variable with three first order latent variables: teacher's perceived didactic certainty,…

Presents a theoretical framework for analyzing students' social, emotional, and motivational interpretations and demonstrates the application of the framework in two studies involving 8 12-year-old boys and 14 12-year-old boys in which such interpretations were analyzed in a cognitive apprenticeship-based technologically rich learning environment.…

Studied the conceptualization of the role of the recreation teacher (instructor in leisure time centers in schools) during team planning sessions in two Swedish schools. Recreation instructors were generally viewed as teachers' assistants, a finding that suggests that recreation instructors who want to develop an occupational identity as the…

Studied the preconditions and obstacles to building network contacts for two teams of five Finnish elementary school teachers each. Results show that breaking traditional patterns of teacher work, especially the tradition of single- handed lesson planning and implementation, results from team work in building a shared object. Results show the…

Studied the functions of Turkish- and Kurdish-speaking teachers in the Danish "folkeskole" and their positions relative to other teachers in the system. Despite their Danish teaching qualifications, most still attend to the integration of Turkish- and Kurdish-speaking minority students and occupy a subordinate position to majority teachers. (SLD)

Analyzed the data from the Rutter Children's Behaviour Questionnaire (M. Rutter, 1967) from 450 Swedish children in grades 2, 5, and 8 using latent variable analysis. Findings show a structure described by a nested hierarchical model with seven first order factors. Some items have rather weak relations to their latent factors. (SLD)