Conference Agenda

Contribution

The transition between Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and primary school is one of the major early transitions in a child’s life and can cause both positive and negative experiences regarding well-being, learning and development for the child. This transition is much debated in Norway, where children enter school the year they turn six. 98% of all children in Norway attend ECEC before starting school (Norwegian Directorate for Education, 2023). By law ECEC and schools must collaborate in the child’s transition (Ministry of Education and Research, 1998) to ensure a safe and sound transition and minimizing negative effect due to the change children experience. The municipalities are obliged to define and plan and implement the collaboration between ECEC provisions, schools, and after-schools, with subsequently variations.

A common understanding in Norway is that ECEC provisions and schools have similarities, but also differ in their pedagogical approaches when it comes to didactic literacy pedagogy. In this study we aim to explore if the use of books as transition objects, can bridge these two didactic literacy pedagogies, and provide the opportunity for children to use their literacy competence across the institutions. For this purpose, we have formulated the following research question:

How can books as transition objects bridge the gap between didactic literacy pedagogy in ECEC and school?

In 2023, the municipality of Stavanger (146,000 residents) initiated a project aimed at enhancing collaboration and easing the transition between ECEC, after-school programs, and primary schools. As part of this initiative, a backpack was introduced, containing various transition objects such as two books, a jumping rope, a songbook, figures, and a pamphlet offering tips for engaging activities. This backpack was distributed to ECEC teachers responsible for school-starters, as well as first-grade teachers in schools.

The concept of transition objects has been deliberated in Norway as a strategy to soften the transition process (Hogsnes, 2017). Originally denoted as items providing comfort to children in the context of parental separation (Wakenshaw, 2020), subsequent studies have expounded on their utility in the ECEC-to-school transition (Hogsnes, 2015). Transition objects can involve objects, actions, activities and learning styles (Hogsnes, 2015). The Stavanger municipality project afforded an opportunity for a research-based evaluation of the efficacy of transition objects in bridging the ECEC-to-school transition. This presentation specifically concentrates on the role of books as transition objects, examining their function as a bridge between didactic literacy pedagogies and as scaffolding mechanisms (Bruner, 1985) facilitating the transition.

Within the Norwegian ECEC framework, literacy is conceptualized as emergent literacy, including all reading, and writing behaviours that precede and evolve into conventional literacy (Dickinson & Porche, 2011). During the transition to school, the majority of children remain in this emergent literacy phase, lacking formal reading and writing skills while their focus on the written language intensifies. Both ECEC and schools in Norway adopt a socio-cultural perspective on learning (Säljö, 2000). Nevertheless, literacy didactics in ECEC is characterized by a process-oriented approach, whereas school didactics align more closely with standardized competence goals defined for schools but not for ECEC. The pronounced differences in didactic literacy can be ascribed to modality, where ECEC predominantly emphasizes oral communication, while schools pivot toward written language due to their formalized reading and writing instruction (Skaftun & Wagner, 2019).

In the EU report “10 trends transforming education as we know it' (2019), learning how to learn is mentioned as a value and as one of the current trends and visions for education in 2027.

A learning environment that ensures the opportunity for the child to explore the world, express him/herself and use everyday life experience as a learning experience forms the basis for child’s self-directed learning. In Latvia, the guidelines for pre-school education that envisage children's self-directed learning have been implemented since 2019. Therefore, it is important to identify the challenges and conditions that affect the implementation of children's self-directed learning in teachers’ pedagogical practice, ensuring a balance between the teaching and learning, which forms children's personal understanding of the relationship between interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary connections to everyday real life.

In this context, the research on pre-schoolers’ self-realization and on teachers’ activities when developing a child-centred environment is of great importance (Mikelsone, Grava, 2018; Grava, Pole, 2021) as it reveals such significant factors of child's self-directed learning in preschool as a meaningful teacher’s support, provision of a positive emotional experience and the opportunity to explore, solve the problems. The research also emphasizes the challenges of the pre-school teachers related to the shift in teachers’ understanding on 1) teacher’s professional pedagogical activity, 2) its content, and 3) implementation methods and evaluation of pedagogical strategy.

However, the study of the current situation in Latvia shows contradictions between pre-school education and the implementation of successful learning activities at school, revealing underdeveloped skills of pupils, such as ability to listen, to complete the work, to solve problems independently and express one's own ideas.

Thus, the research objective is to discover the determining factors of the child's self-directed learning, revealing the challenges of the pre-school education teachers in organizing self-directed learning process.

The research question: What are the challenges for pre-school teachers in implementing self-directed learning in preschool?

In our paper, self-directed learning of preschool children is analysed, linking it with the concept of self-realization from a philosophical, pedagogical and psychological point of view, encompassing different approaches in the explanation of the concept. Summarizing the academic research findings, the determining factors of children's self-directed learning are described.

The teacher’s professionalism is characterized by the ability to adapt and assess one's activity and position not emphasizing the reproduction of the knowledge content, but the practical application of knowledge, applying it in the new situations (Bialika, Fadels, Trilings, 2017). We will discover a shift in teachers' understanding of their professional pedagogical activity, its content and implementation methods related to metacognitive abilities, in order to effectively plan, organize and evaluate their pedagogical strategies (Bialika, Fadels, Trilings, 2017).

In our paper, we will stress the need for purposeful teacher’s participation in the learning process, including in learning taxonomy such basic components as learning how to learn, basic knowledge, responsibility, application of knowledge, emotional aspect.

From our position as researchers and teacher trainers in didactics of physical education (PE), we note that the transmission of sport techniques is the subject of contrasting discourses. In the field of the history of sports techniques and technologies, there as been an ongoing debate on technique as a cultural object and as an object of teaching, in other words on the relationship between technology and didactics. This debate has centred on a crucial tension which attempts to reconcile two realities (Arnaud, 1986; Garassino, 1980; Robène, 2014): (a) technique as a product of human culture, likely to be historicised as a significant motricity; and (b) body technique understood as a process, i.e. a creative activity. In the PE didactics literature, an evolution is apparent, from an approach privileging the transmissible and rational character of technique as an effective gesture to an approach centred on creativity, innovation and adaptation, opposing the “fixist” dimension of technique to the dynamic of the subject who acts technically (Goirand, 1987; Robène, 2014). We assume that the first approach is the foundation of the teaching tradition “Teaching PE as Sport-Technique”, according to which sports techniques are at the core of PE teaching, using a molecular approach of dividing and segmenting the content to be learned (Forest et al., 2018; Kirk, 2010), while the second approach refers to the teaching tradition “Teaching PE as Physical Culture Education”, according to which the subject to be taught in PE is the rich and complex configuration of knowledge that is at the core of the social practices taken as reference (Cliff et al., 2009; Forest et al., 2018).

In this paper, we focus more specifically on aesthetic sports. Best (1985) contrasts these sports where the aim cannot be specified independently of the means of achieving it with purposive sports, where the aesthetics is not intrinsic to their purpose which is to win by scoring the most goals, tries, baskets, points, runs, or the recording of the best times and distances. Arnold (1990) distinguishes partially aesthetic sports (e.g., gymnastics, skating, trampolining) from artistic activities (dance, mime), the latter being by their very make-up intrinsically concerned with aesthetic considerations. Both can be taken as social practices (Martinand, 1989) for the teaching of PE at primary school. How does technique determine the aesthetics of sports? It as been frequently argued that when sport is technically excellent, it takes on aesthetic qualities (Da Costa & Lacerda, 2016; Kreft, 2014; Wright, 2003). However, while the relationships between technical qualities and aesthetic ones are important, they cannot on their own ensure the aesthetic value of a particular movement or series of movements. The aesthetics in sport involves an emotional response/experience and not just the recognition of a technically efficient or functionally excellent performance (Wright, 2003).

The aim of this paper is to identify (dis)continuities in official (i.e. curriculum), pre-service and in-service training discourses, in terms of teaching techniques in aesthetic sports. What conceptions of sports technique emerge at these different levels? A “fixist” conception and/or a “dynamic” conception? How is technique considered in relation to aesthetics? What PE teaching tradition(s) do these discourses reveal? Answering these questions will give us a better understanding of the possible tensions to which future primary school PE teachers are exposed during their training, which takes place in several successive institutions. This is a first step towards networking the stakeholders from these different institutions, with the aim of achieving a more coherent approach to teacher training in our context.

In many European countries, reading proficiency is declining amongst children and adolescents (Mullis et al., 2023; OECD, 2023). Furthermore, almost 20 percent of young children seem to not like reading at all. There is also a wide gap between schools and students in many countries. Children from less fortunate socioeconomic backgrounds and children with migration background are disadvantaged within the educational system. Heterogenous classrooms, with great variation of students’ levels of reading proficiency and stated interest in literature, a growing number of students that lack sufficient reading skills and interest, and classrooms where most students lack both the sufficient skills and interest in reading, raises the demand on teachers to make an even greater effort than before to engage all students in school reading. This calls for further research on how engaging literature teaching can be organized. The present study interviews 15 teachers with a focus on the questions of which kind of didactic strategies or methods teachers use to engage students in school reading as well as the teachers’ views on and experiences of student engagement in school reading. The study’s aim is to contribute knowledge about engaging literature instruction for students that are unexperienced and/or unwilling readers and who seem reluctant to participate in school reading.

Sweden serves as an interesting case in the study, with the purpose of highlighting trends in school reading, contributing to the fields of literature didactics as well as L1 research and practice all over Europe. Reading among Swedish adolescents seems to have declined in the past ten years, although the decline have flattened at a low level in recent years. Only 14 percent of Swedish 17–18-year-olds read daily, compared to 23 percent in 2012. There also seems to be a decline in students reporting that they enjoy reading, but at the same time the same students seem to think that they do not read enough (Andersson, 2023; Mullis et al., 2023; OECD, 2023). Sweden has also seen a decline in reading, both fiction and non-fiction, in the compulsory work in school. The proportion of students who read one full page or more during their school day has decreased significantly and students who never read fiction at all in grades 7-9 has increased from 44 percent in 2007 to 81 percent in 2017 (Vinterek et al., 2022). Moreover, an alarming trend is the increased difference in test results between Swedish speaking students and second language students and a widening school segregation that mirrors the societal segregation and socioeconomical gaps in Sweden (Mullis et al., 2023).

To address the current challenges, the Swedish government has launched several efforts to support and effect school reading, such as funding and legislation to guarantee students' right to staffed school libraries (Utbildningsdepartementet, 2023), and a committee, which will propose a Swedish Literature canon to be taught in schools (Kulturdepartementet, 2023). The upcoming new syllabus for Swedish in the upper secondary school also has a stronger emphasis on reading fiction and of the esthetic experience of reading (Skolverket, 2023).

This project draws on the theory of situated leaning and communities of practice developed by Lave and Wenger (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998). School reading is regarded as a community of practice in its own right that does not mimic recreational reding. Furthermore, school reading is situated in educational settings thar are unique to some extent. Every school, group of subject teachers at a school and every class can be regarded as a community of practice. In line with this a qualitative focus group interview study with upper secondary teachers is carried out.

Nazarbayev Intellectual schools in Kazakhstan are a unique educational institution that gives learners an opportunity to study subjects in three languages.

In October 2006, the President of Kazakhstan introduced the project called “Trinity of Languages”, which was seen as the major index of the competitiveness of the country. Kazakh is a state language, Russian is a language for international communication, and English is considered as a language for successful integration into global economics (Bridges, 2014).

In Nazarbayev Intellectual schools, grade 11 and 12 students study several subjects in English. These subjects include Chemistry, Biology, Physics, and Computer Science. The subjects are conducted by local teachers who know English at a good level and by foreign teachers who provide support to local teachers.

The given research has been conducted among grade 11 students who study Computer Science specifically in the English language. Their mother tongue is either Kazakh or Russian. English for them is considered a third language. For instance, despite their main language is Kazakh, students study some subjects in Russian. Thus, Russian is their second language. English is a third language for all school students, and they are obliged to study 4 subjects in it.

Even though the tendency of studying subjects in a third language has existed for several years, there has not been much research in this field. Even De Angelis (2007) mentioned that there are studies that focus on the acquisition of the first and second languages, but the languages acquisition beyond these two are often missing.

In addition, Cenoz (2011) states that acquisition of a third language is comparatively a new field of research.

That is the reason why we have decided to investigate how grade 11 students study Computer Science in the English language, what challenges they face and how teachers try to overcome the identified challenges.

Studying literature on this research topic has been quite challenging for us because we haven’t been able to find articles or other resources that focus on studying the subject in a third language. Most of the literature mainly focuses on teaching or acquiring the third language, but not on learning the subject in it. This made us feel confident about the novelty and significance of our research.

In the school, where research has been conducted, Computer Science is taught only by a local teacher and there is no assisting native speaker teacher.

In the school, there are 2 groups of grade 11 students who are taught Computer Science in English.

All in all, 16 students (94% of all the students that study Computer Science in a third language) took part in the given research. All the participants participated in the research on a voluntarily basis and they were not chosen beforehand.

The participants’ abilities in the subject were different. There were excellent students, good students and those who struggled with understanding the subject in a third language.

The main aim of this qualitative research is to investigate the challenges of studying Computer Science in a third language and the ways students cope with them.

Research questions: 1. What are the barriers to understanding Computer Science in the English language? 2. What actions do grade 11 students take to struggle with difficulties? 3. What actions should teachers take to eliminate the identified obstacles?

The importance of the research: the lack of research on the process of studying Computer Science in a third language even though this tendency has taken place for several years, the opportunity of research results to give ideas to teachers about the difficulties of teaching the subjects in a third language and some possible solutions.

In this presentation, we present a chapter published in the anthology Developing a Didactic Framework Across and Beyond School Subjects (Klausen & Mård, 2023). In the chapter, we examined crosscurricular teacher collaboration, meaning that teachers with different subject affiliations develop the curriculum and teach together. Recent trends suggest that many international and national policy documents expect crosscurricular teacher collaboration but leave it to the schools and teachers to organize the efforts. Policymakers and school leaders sometimes set overly optimistic goals for crosscurricular teacher collaboration and expect it to enhance a range of matters, such as teachers’ professional and school development, student learning, and professional learning communities (Horn et al., 2017; Lysberg, 2022).

The chapter aimed to revise a didactic model for crosscurricular teaching developed by the authors (Mård & Hilli, 2020). The model provides a didactic framework by highlighting factors relevant for crosscurricular teaching on school and classroom levels, called decisional (subjects, competences, values and aims of education, student needs and interests, contemporary issues, and methods) and conditional (curriculum, collaboration, and school culture) factors. The model is framed by Didaktik theories, which respect teacher autonomy and cultural and political contexts of education but lack concepts for teacher collaboration. In the first version, we did not further examine collaboration, as it was one of many important factors raised in the empirical cases analyzed. In this chapter, we revised the didactic model while considering crosscurricular teacher collaboration, its potential and pitfalls.

Topic:

Since 2019, secondary education in Flanders is being gradually reformed (Flemish Ministry of Education and Training, 2023). In particular, this reform stimulates interdisciplinarity in various ways and gives individual schools a lot of freedom in how to organize the concrete realization of the curriculum in a specific school. While mandatory learning goals before the reform where listed under well-defined school subjects that had to be implemented as such, legal learning requirements are now listed as groups of competencies not anymore associated to the obligation to organize learning based on specific school subjects. This implies that Flemish schools today can choose to work with traditional school subjects, interdisciplinary clusters, projects, seminars or other organizations of teaching and learning. As a result, in the last years a multitude of school-based, interdisciplinary practices with an experimental character arose in Flemish secondary schools, providing a very interesting context for didactical research with focus on interdisciplinarity.

Objective:

In a Flemish qualitative study, we engaged in short-term ethnographies of cases considered to be interdisciplinary by local school actors, and we coupled the observations to the study of the relevant reformed curricula. The cases included both general and vocational secondary education, for school subjects within the domains of STEM, the arts, and broad integrated clusters.

Our work aimed at achieving a rich, complex description of the teaching taking place in the newly arisen interdisciplinary contexts within the reformed curricula. In particular, we have identified common emergent didactic features characterizing the observed ‘modernized’ interdisciplinary didactics.

Conceptual or theoretical framework:

While seminal papers classified at a theoretical level the many ways in which interdisciplinary curricula can be constructed and organized combining elements from different subjects (Fogarty, 1991) and how this shapes instruction (Lederman & Niess, 1997) (Nikitina, 2006), the recent changes in the Flemish secondary school system suggest a different perspective: to consider interdisciplinarities as complex and diverse educational practices, to be studied as such by suitable research approaches and methods (Tamassia, Ardui & Frenssen, 2023).

Engaging in ethnography in contexts considered to be interdisciplinary by local school actors allowed us to experience, describe and analyze interdisciplinarities as practices in today’s modernized secondary schools. In particular, we could observe interdisciplinary didactics in its full complexity, involving new spaces, times, things, people and gestures.

Ethnographic approaches in interdisciplinary educational contexts have been previously used for instance to gather information on perspectives of teachers on interdisciplinarity, within a framework where the implementation of well-defined interdisciplinary instruction was the underlying background (McBee, 1996). An ethnographic approach had been previously taken for the study of educational practices with a specific focus on the materiality of education (Roehl, 2012), highlighting the contribution of things to classroom practices seen as complex, interwoven assemblages.

In our study, we took the perspective of studying interdisciplinarities as rich, diverse and situated didactical practices in schools.

Research questions:

- What common aspects or elements arise (if present at all) from the analysis of the ethnographic descriptions of the studied practices, that can be associated with their being ‘interdisciplinary’?

- Which of the identified common features are didactical in nature? How can ‘modernized interdisciplinary didactics’ be characterized, as observed in the studied cases?

European relevance:

While our research has been focusing on interdisciplinarity as stimulated in Flemish secondary schools by a local reform, a similar trend is present in other European countries (see for instance the case of Finland (FNBE, 2016)), and has been driven by European policy (EC - European Political Strategy Centre, 2017). For this reason, our approach and results can be relevant for researchers in other European countries.

Topic:

Many European countries are currently facing a shortage of teachers and a high teacher drop-out, including Flemish Belgium (European Commission, 2020, 2023). This complex issue is often looked at from the perspective of the (lack of) attractiveness of the teacher career (OECD, 2019; Macdonald, 1999), or from the perspective of organisational psychology, see for instance (Madigan, Kim, 2021; Thomas et al., 2018). Behavioural issues with today’s youth are often also mentioned (Williams, 2018). The reasons given by (Flemish) teachers for having quit the job have also been studied (Struyven, Vanthournout, 2014).

In this context, a didactic perspective is rarely taken, although didactics is central to the teaching profession.

In this presentation we will discuss four case studies focusing on young Flemish teachers experiencing pressure or dilemma’s that are essentially didactical. We will discuss how these teachers make specific didactical choices and accept certain compromises, finding a balance in their tense situation through didactics. This ‘balancing act’ allows them to cope with the tension in their didactic practice and to stay (for the moment being) in the teaching job.

The four cases are selected from a broader study, in the context of which we have collected, analysed and visualized diverse ‘tensions’ experienced by both senior and young teachers.

Conceptual or theoretical framework:

The underlying working hypothesis of the study is that the complexity of today’s teachers’ practice causes various forms of emotional tension. This ‘tense practice’ is to be considered inherent to the teaching job, and the capacity of the individual teacher to ‘handle’ tensions in a concrete way is crucial to the resilience of the teacher and his/her capacity to stay in the profession. By doing so, we take a positive perspective by studying not teachers who quitted the job, but teachers who manage to stay in the job ‘in between’ different tensions.

The complexity of the context into which teachers have to function today, implies that tense teachers’ practices need to be studied in their own complex context from different perspectives.

The actor-network theory is a theoretical framework allowing to study and visualize a complex issue from different perspectives (see for instance (Fenwick, Edwards, 2010) for the application to educational research). Therefore, this theory was suitable to provide a conceptual framework for the study and to inspire the methods we have used to map the tensions in their contexts.

Since the didactic perspective is rarely used to address the issue of today’s lack of well-being of teachers, we have selected the data where didactics plays a central role looking at these cases to identify and highlight didactic aspects that can be causing distress in teachers, and to see how teachers react within the realm of didactics.

Research questions:

General research questions of the broader study:

- What tensions do teachers experience in their practice?

- What is the context of the tension? (who, what, when, where, how)

- How does the teacher handle this tension or cope with it?

Specific research questions addressed in the presentation:

- Under which circumstances is a tension experienced by a teacher didactical in nature?

- Which concrete elements play a role in the way the collected didactic tensions arise and are handled by teachers?

- What concrete didactical choices do the studied teachers make to address or cope with the tension in their didactic practice?

Objective

The objective of this study is to identify potential aspects in didactics that might play a role in the complex issue of (young) teacher drop-off, and by doing so to contribute from a didactical point of view to a multi-perspective approach to this concerning European issue.

This EERA session picks up on current developments under the name Open Science. The open movement and digitalization in scholarship are promoting a cultural shift in research towards accessibility, reusability and participation (UNESCO 2021). Open science has become an umbrella term for these developments. Open access, open data and open metrics are just some of the terms used.

While for decades scholarship did not need to review its basic infrastructures that supported and stabilised its research and scholarly communication some fundamental shifts are taking place. It is time to discuss, reflect and articulate our views and ideas about our scientific practice. Open Science offers this, but it encounters heterogeneous epistemic cultures and different national and institutional manifestations. Thus, Open Access and its changing funding model in educational research meets a bibliodiverse publication landscape, and open data meets heterogeneous epistemological practices (Rummler/Schindler 2018, Zee 2018, Dijk et al. 2021, Schindler et al. 2020, Krammer/Svecnik 2020). Therefore, open science needs to be adapted to the cultures and practices of educational research and its privileges and inequalities need to be balanced.

EERA has initiated a process to discuss and adjust open science to our heterogeneous practices and needs. At the EERA Council meeting and the Link Convenors networking seminar, we discussed Open Science and the specificities of different countries and research fields. The panel discussion aims to open up this process and invites you to participate and discuss initial ideas for an open research agenda at EERA. The panel discussion will start with a short introduction to the Open Science discourse (10 minutes), followed by a presentation of the draft Open Research Agenda at EERA (10 minutes). Marit Honerød Hoveid will then moderate the panel discussion, outlining various aspects of Open Science: Klaus Rummler addresses the topic of Open Access, Paulína Koršňáková addresses (open) research data, Christoph Schindler addresses open scientific information and Maria Figueiredo addresses the role that EERA can play. After short opening statements on each open science aspect, some questions will guide the panel discussion. To open the discussion, 30 minutes will be reserved for audience participation. The panel discussion will end with a short summary.

Please feel free to add your thoughts, ideas and questions before and during the session to this etherpad at:

https://yopad.eu/p/EERA-Open-Science-Session

The symposium is committed to exploring, defining, and questioning the interplay and links between teacher ethics and teaching quality in Scandinavian schools. The guiding research for the Symposium is based on studies recently published in the edited volume Teacher Ethics and Teaching Quality in Scandinavian Schools: New Reflections, Future Challenges, and Global Impacts (Knudsen, et al., 2024). Theoretically, the contributions of the book vary but generally stem from a perception that the Scandinavian schools mirror the countries’ welfare systems and emphasize the democratic freedom and responsibility of both schools and individuals and democratic societies with respect for institutions and individuals (Colnerud & Granström, 1993).

In the symposium the three presentations both confirm and challenge the scope of this picture. On the one hand, Scandinavian schools represent a child-centred pedagogy where teachers have the autonomy to tailor their lessons to support students’ individual learning processes, prerequisites, and social, mental, and health conditions, which is also evident across the various Scandinavian teacher education and in-service training programs (Bergem et al., 1997). On the other hand, as the Scandinavian welfare systems change, so do the school systems, responding to new educational demands such as student testing and control. Hence, the core components of the school systems are under pressure (Moos, 2019).

This situation raises the opportunity to examine closely what is at stake, what changes are underway, and how these tendencies are global. In the symposium, the presenters discuss current developments in the Scandinavian school systems and explore how emerging educational ideas and practices can offer inspiration to educators in other European countries. As such, the symposium is dedicated to studying, characterizing, and challenging the relations and connections between teacher ethics and teaching quality in Scandinavian schools to inspire educational research beyond Scandinavia.

This paper explores the question of what the consequences are of the influx of new ideas and governance and education practices for Danish teachers’ ethics and quality of work. Over the past three to four decades, national governments have met a growing wealth of ideas and inspiration for education and governance reforms from transnational agencies like the OECD or the European Commission. Two discourses form the focus of the discussion: the outcomes-based discourse with transnational and national governance and policy roots and history, and the democratic Bildung discourse that builds on a selection of educational concepts and theories. Governing schools and teachers’ working conditions and aims have changed fundamentally over the past four to six decades partly due to the intake of new international forms of power and influence, as clearly illustrated in the Danish School Act of 2013 and, more generally, in the use of new forms of public sector governance and relations in contracts.

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. The Critical Study of Language. Harlow: Longman. Longman. Foucault, M. (1983). The subject and power. In H. L. D. P. Rainbow (Ed.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (pp. 208-226). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Moos, L. (2014). Educational Governance in Denmark. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 13(4), 424-443. Moos, L. (2017). Neo-liberal Governance leads Education and Educational Leadership astray. In M. Uljens & R. Ylimaki (Eds.), Beyond Leadership, Curriculum and Didaktik. Dordrecht: Springer. Moos, L. (2018). Educating and Leading for World Citizenship: Through Technocratic Homogenisation or Communicative Diversity? Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education(NJCIE), 2(2-3), 7-24.

Teacher shortage is an increasingly problematic phenomenon across Europe. In many countries, this problem is addressed by introducing qualification frameworks that define teacher qualities, and these definitions are subsequently used to test whether a sufficient level of quality is present or not. However, the introduction of such testing regimes resulted in an objectification of teachers and disabled teacher agency (Biesta, 2023). Problematically, this objectification disregards that teachers need a personal ethical position to think, judge, and act as professionals. Testing regimes replaced the ethical position out of which teachers act with a consequentialist ethics that sees teachers as factors in the production of learning outcomes. However, recent studies indicate that high-stakes testing restricts professional learning and innovation at schools and has a negative effect on the teacher workforce (Darling-Hammond, 2021). This effect is also present in Nordic countries that introduced national testing regimes, namely Sweden and Denmark who struggle with teacher shortages (Böwadt et al., 2019). In Nordic countries, this led to a discussion on educational policy and the need to reframe teacher quality in more adequate ways (Moos, 2017). One possibility for such a reframing is to comprehend teacher quality through ethics of care (Wieser, 2024). Based on an international review of 122 articles on teacher retention, teachers stay on their job when four qualities are in place: (1) A teacher identity to manage a wide range of tasks, spanning from classroom interaction to lesson planning and administration. (2) Having professional autonomy over teaching, curriculum, and assessment. (3) Self-care and attention to well-being on the job. (4) A work environment that provides support and opportunities for exchange. Exploring these qualities, I argue that we should consider their common foundation in ethics of care: While the presence of care is obvious in the latter two qualities, it can also be found in the former two: From a care-ethical perspective, teacher tasks require an attitude of caring that is constituted by receptive attention to students. Concerning professional autonomy, I argue that teaching relies on building relations, a creative practice in which lack of control is fundamental, and thus requires teachers to be receptive and ‘supplied with intention’ (Noddings, 2013). Ethics of care thus takes a position fundamentally different from the consequentialist ethics of testing regimes and its universalist constructions of teacher quality, emphasizing interpersonal relations and asserting that partiality with persons and their particular situation has moral value.

Biesta, G. (2023). On Being a Teacher How to Respond to the Global Construction of Teachers and Their Teaching? In S. Krause, M. Proyer, & G. Kremsner (Eds.), The Making of Teachers in the Age of Migration: Critical Perspectives on the Politics of Education for Refugees, Immigrants and Minorities (pp. 15–31). Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350244184 Böwadt, P., Pedersen, R., & Katrine, N. (2019). Når Verdens bedste job bliver for hårdt En undersøgelse af, hvordan lærere har det i folkeskolen. Københavns Professionshøjskole. Darling-Hammond, L. (2021). Defining teaching quality around the world. European Journal of Teacher Education, 44(3), 295–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2021.1919080 Moos, L. (2017). Neo-liberal Governance Leads Education and Educational Leadership Astray. In M. Uljens & R. M. Ylimaki (Eds.), Bridging Educational Leadership, Curriculum Theory and Didaktik (Vol. 5, pp. 151–180). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58650-2_2 Noddings, N. (2013). Caring: A relational approach to ethics & moral education (Paperback ed., 2. ed., updated). Univ. of Calif. Press. Wieser, C. (2024). Teacher qualities that make teachers stay in the profession: Addressing teacher shortage in Nordic countries with ethics of care. In L. E. Damgaard Knudsen, M. Wiberg, K. Bjerg Petersen, & L. Haastrup (Eds.), Teacher ethics and teaching quality in Scandinavian schools: New reflections, future challenges, and global impacts. Routledge.

This paper builds on insights from the symposium book 'Teacher Ethics and Teaching Quality in Scandinavian Schools: New Reflections, Future Challenges, and Global Impacts,' as well as my own research. It aims to spark a discussion on teacher ethics, teaching, and quality in the context of Scandinavian schools, emphasizing the inherent European dimension. By comparing Scandinavian perspectives with global viewpoints, the paper addresses the necessity for research to navigate the challenges, opportunities, and potential issues intertwined with the teaching profession, professional ethics, teacher professionalism, and quality. The paper intricately examines three core themes: (1) a critical analysis of 'quality' in teaching, (2) a scrutiny of the objectives of education and the criteria used to assess quality, and (3) an exploration of the complex connection between teacher quality, quality teaching, and the cultivation of an ethics of care in teaching. This analytical exploration sheds light on various aspects such as teacher quality, ethical considerations in teaching, and the essential conditions supporting teachers' sustained dedication to their profession. Furthermore, the research highlights the importance of understanding the intricate and diverse global teaching landscapes. The paper positions itself within a global context, fostering a nuanced understanding of teacher ethics, teaching practices, and quality. This approach acknowledges the interconnectedness of educational systems and underscores the significance of diverse perspectives in shaping the future of teaching globally.

Bergmark, U. (2020). Rethinking researcher – teacher roles and relationships in educational action research through the use of Nel Noddings’ ethics of care. Educational Action Research, 28(3), 331–344. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2019.1567367 Berkovich, I., & Benoliel, P. (2020). Marketing teacher quality: Critical discourse analysis of OECD documents on effective teaching and TALIS. Critical Studies in Education, 61(4), 496–511. Biesta, G. (2017). Education, measurement and the professions: Reclaiming a space for democratic professionality in education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 49(4), 315–330. Churchward, P., & Willis, J. (2019). The pursuit of teacher quality: Identifying some of the multiple discourses of quality that impact the work of teacher educators. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 47(3), 251–264. Madalinska-Michalak, J. (2021). Pedeutologia. Prawno-etyczne podstawy zawodu nauczyciela [Pedeutology. Legal and ethical foundations of the teaching profession]. Warsaw University Press. Madalinska-Michalak, J. (Eds.). (2022). Quality in teaching and teacher education. International perspectives from a changing world. Brill. Skourdoumbis, A. (2017). Teacher quality, teacher effectiveness and the diminishing returns of current education policy expressions. Journal for Critical Education Studies, 15(1), 42–59.

Environmental change is an inescapable challenge for our society. Consequently, early, inclusive and equitable education is needed to contribute to sustainable development. This is one of the demands of the United Nations' 2030 Agenda. The goal is to provide primary and secondary school students with a quality education and a sound STEM knowledge. This is to ensure that they are actively engaged in a society facing ongoing and complex sustainability challenges, and to give them the opportunity to act as active and reflective participants. The alarming results of the most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, 2019) on the scientific literacy of primary and secondary school students provide an urgent reason to improve STEM education (Schwippert et al., 2020). Students' basic STEM literacy is becoming increasingly poor, and nearly 50% of primary school students have inadequate science literacy as they transition to secondary school (Schwippert et al., 2020). Overall, there is a general decline not only in interest, but also in self-centered cognitions among students (Möller, 2014). Given the proven importance of self-centered cognitions for interest (Krapp & Prenzel, 2011), the sustainable promotion of self-concepts in STEM is necessary.

Students tend to be more likely to be interested in subject areas in which they register stronger ability-related self-concepts. There is a general negative trend in the development of science interest (e.g., Gebhard et al., 2017), which can be attributed to increasing academic demands and stricter grading in secondary schools. The main reason students cite for finding the content difficult is a lack of relevance to everyday life (Winkelmann et al., 2021). Recent research indicates declining interest in science learning and a gender gap in student interest in STEM (Oppermann et al., 2020).

Out-of-school learning offers an opportunity to promote learning and interest in science and technology that has not been considered in prestigious studies (e.g., TIMSS) (Derda, 2020; Wenzel, 2022). The importance of out-of-school learning places of learning for education in Germany has been clearly emphasized since the first PISA results in 2001. Out-of-school learning is known for its outstanding ability to motivate and cognitively stimulate students, which ultimately leads to the promotion of interest (Henriksson, 2018; Füz, 2018; Schiefer et al., 2020).

Optimizing the transition of science and technology learning from primary to secondary school is not only a research desideratum but also a practical problem with regard to the possibilities of integrating out-of-school learning sites. There is a lack of empirically grounded and practice-oriented examples of the integration of science and technology learning at the transition from primary to secondary school.

This is where our quasi-experimental study comes in. Fourth graders aging between ten and eleven years old who are on the verge of transitioning to secondary school take part in a short teaching and learning unit (two 90-minute lessons) in science class on the topic of "wind and wind energy." The intervention is then supplemented by an accompanying visit by an expert to the didactically prepared out-of-school learning location of a regional school laboratory. We use pre- and post-questionnaires to record the multiple learning effects of the fourth-graders.

This project aims to optimize science and technology learning in inclusive primary school and raise interest in STEM through the symbiosis of teaching inside and outside the classroom.

Communication skills are very much needed in the 21st century. Written and oral communication skills are important skills that the students must have in the future because both of these abilities are critical abilities needed in various professions (Chan, 2011). Kivunja, Larson and Miller state that the communication ability is one of the missions of science education that is useful so that the students can define phenomena/problems around humans (Kızılaslan, 2017).

The ability that is included in the category of communication is the ability to argue [5]. Arguments can be delivered both in the written and spoken form (Eemeren, Henkemans, 2016). Argumentation is a form of communication that can be stated through media to provide views to convince others [9]. Meanwhile, the definition of scientific argumentation is a statement given by someone which contains truth because it contains data and theories that are related and can support the statement. The argument is an attempt to build the truth because the claims given are supported by data, warrants (in the form of a relation between claims and data provided), backings that can be in the form of an appropriate theory, or qualifier (a special conditions where the claim applies) [10]. Argumentation is a verbal, social, and rational activity aimed at convincing a reasonable critique of the acceptance of certain opinions by proposing one or more propositions designed to justify that point of view [6].

The study was conducted among 11th grade students in order to identify the problem of a low level of argumentation and evidence in written and oral answers. The results of the summative assessment showed that the average percentage of completion of tasks requiring reasoned answers was only 34%. Oral speech was also characterized by a lack of logic and supporting evidence.

After analyzing the situation, the following problems were identified:

Integration and interpretation in English is difficult due to lack of understanding of the questions and the inability to use data from the context.

Lack of reflection and assessment skills, which manifests itself in the inability to work on one’s own mistakes and make recommendations for improving work.

Inability to formulate reasoned answers to CLIL problems due to lack of academic language and inability to structure sentences.

These problems led to a decrease in the level of knowledge in biology in the first and second quarters, where traditional teaching methods were used. In the first quarter the average result was 60.5%, and in the second quarter – 76%. However, despite the increase in average results, the majority of students (54%) had difficulty solving higher-order problems.

To solve this problem, the 5E method was chosen, which includes 5 stages aimed at effectively involving students in the learning process. A study conducted by V. Yossyana et al. using N-Gain analytical criteria showed that students' ability to make scientific arguments in writing increased after applying the 5E learning cycle at the intermediate level [11].

Liu et al. (Citation2009) found, in their research, that a student group exposed to the 5E model recorded improvements in their scientific knowledge and perceptions. At the same time, Bilgin et al. (Citation2013) found that, at the end of an instructional period using this model, students inquired into the knowledge they had already brought into the learning environment. That is, when they were exposed to real-life situations, the students used their observations and data to offer scientific explanations and that with regard to scientific concepts, they passed through an accurate interpretation process.

Presently, numerous teachers face significant challenges teaching students with special educational needs (SEN). They often feel ill-prepared to adequately support the academic progress of students with SEN in particular. This unpreparedness may stem from a lack of guidance in translating general effective teaching principles, formulated in teacher effectiveness frameworks and evidence-based practices, into context-specific effective teaching behaviors, considering the specific students in the classroom as well as characteristics of the classroom setting. This study addresses this prevailing problem by (1) outlining teachers’ translations of general effective teaching principles into specific context-bound teaching behaviors and by (2) comparing these translations across teachers from two classroom settings, i.e., mainstream education teachers (MET) and special education teachers (SET).

To accomplish this twofold research goal, the Great Teaching Toolkit (GTT; Coe et al., 2020) was used. The GTT is a widely-supported evidence-based model for effective teaching, in which many general effective teaching principles are outlined. The model outlines general principles on three levels, following a detailed hierarchical structure. The first level includes four overarching dimensions: (1) understanding the content; (2) creating a supportive environment: (3) maximizing opportunities to learn; and (4) activating hard thinking. At a second level, 17 more detailed teaching elements are specified nested within these dimensions and the third level consists of several indicators associated with each element (Coe et al., 2020). Several meta-analyses underscore the effectiveness of the GTT dimensions and elements in fostering students’ learning and development (e.g., Hattie, 2009; Scheerens, 2016). It is important to notice that the GTT is a general framework, it describes effective teaching for all students and is, therefore, not SEN-specific. Considering the multitude of teaching behaviors teachers implement daily when teaching students with SEN, this study focuses only on the pedagogical-didactical dimension of the GTT: ‘Activating Hard Thinking’ (AHT). This dimension is of particular interest as it is the only one that is essentially focused on the actual learning of students (Coe et al., 2020), which is the focus of this study. AHT is the largest dimension in the model, encompassing six elements: structuring, explaining, questioning, interacting, embedding, and activating (Coe et al., 2020). These six effective teaching elements from the AHT dimension were used as general effective teaching principles for teachers to translate in this study.

As it would be unfeasible to examine all elements of AHT in depth in one study, two elements were selected for in-dept analysis of the translations: structuring and explaining. Research consistently shows that these elements, and the associated indicators, are effective, especially for students with high-incidence disabilities (Ennis & Losinski, 2019; Muijs & Reynolds, 2018; Nelson et al., 2022). Structuring consists of four indicators: (1) choice, selection and sequencing of learning goals and tasks; (2) signaling importance; (3) differentiating; and (4) scaffolding and supporting. The explaining element consists of five indicators: (1) clear, concise, appropriate and engaging explanations; (2) connecting with prior knowledge; (3) using (non-)examples; (4) modelling and demonstrating and (5) using (partly) worked-out examples (Coe et al., 2020).

In summary, two research questions guided the analysis:

• RQ 1: Into which specific teaching behaviors, effective for students with SEN, do teachers translate the general effective teaching indicators of the structuring and explaining element of the Great Teaching Toolkit (Coe et al., 2020)?
• RQ 2: How do teachers across classroom settings, i.e., mainstream education teachers (MET) and special education teachers (SET), differ in their translations of general effective teaching indicators of the structuring and explaining element of the Great Teaching Toolkit into specific teaching behaviors effective for students with SEN?

The round table invites everyone to discuss research in didactics with colleagues from the host country. Four papers will be presented:

Irene Drymiotou: Promoting Open Schooling: Partnerships Between Schools, Academia, the Community, and Industry for Science Learning

Kyriakos Demetriou: Teachers and students co-creating short animation films for the promotion of the values of inclusion

Agni Stylianou-Georgiou: XILOMATA: Deconstructing art and reconstructing multimodal spaces for embodied inquiry in an art gallery

Agni Stylianou-Georgiou, Maria Hadjianastasi, Maria Vrikki: Fostering social perspective taking through dialogue and ‘radiant reading’ of wordless short animated films.

Networks hold a meeting during ECER. All interested are welcome.

Education in an age of uncertainty cannot be confined to individual school subjects. To prepare for the future and respond to the current environmental and societal crises, teaching must move across and beyond the subjects, highlighting relationships between different topics and fostering students’ ability and readiness to act (cf. Savage, 2011). Yet despite a widespread recognition of this on a policy level, there is a profound lack of theoretical foundations and practical guidelines for cross- and transcurricular teaching.

The newly published anthology Developing a didactic framework across and beyond school subjects (Routledge, 2023) attempts to fill this gap, based on a contemporary version of the Bildung tradition. The symposium presents key contributions to the book, covering both the general didactic principles and particularly important topics like education for democratic citizenship, the integration of bodily movement in education across the curriculum, and how to unfold the potential for Bildung and crosscurricular teaching of the often-neglected subject of craft. Acknowledging that crosscurricular teaching might be challenging and controversial, the symposium will also facilitate an open discussion about which didactics is most appropriate for crosscurricular teaching in this age of uncertainty and how to handle the practical challenges it gives rise to.

This presentation outlines the theoretical basis for an inclusive and flexible approach to crosscurricular teaching. It demonstrates how the classical conception of Bildung and its more recent developments can support a wide range of aims and goals of teaching and show them to be interrelated. Specifically, it argues that the concern for fostering competences, meeting societal needs, and answering societal challenges is compatible with ideals of self-cultivation and critical and non-conformist thinking. It uses the idea of Bildung to strike a balance between the need to relate to students’ personal interests and lifeworld and the importance of observing transpersonal constraints grounded in disciplinary knowledge and societal norms and challenges. Grounded on the idea of crossing curricular boundaries to enhance the overall cultivation of students, and being sensitive to the conditions of schools and teachers, we suggest the terms crosscurricular and transcurricular as a conceptual framework for education across and beyond school subjects. The commonly used concepts multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinarity, are problematized as being more related to disciplinary collaboration than school teaching. Since our framework is based on the tradition of Bildung-centred Didaktik, we use the term curriculum in a broad and neutral sense (cf. the tradition of curriculum studies). We use it to refer to the totality of school subjects – for example, mathematics, history, English, foreign languages, music, arts, and social studies – in a given institutional context. Hence the terms crosscurricular and transcurricular designate different ways of teaching across or beyond the institutionalized or traditional school subjects. This is not only in line with a common usage of the term curriculum (Goodlad et al., 1979; Young, 2014), but also reflects recent developments within educational research and practice (Krogh et al., 2021).

Goodlad, J. I., Klein, M. F. & Tye, K. A. (1979). The domains of curriculum and their study. In J. I. Goodlad (Ed.), Curriculum inquiry. The story of curriculum practice (pp. 43–76). McGraw-Hill. Klausen, S. H. & Mård, N. (2023). Rationale and aims of crosscurricular teaching and learning: For life, knowledge, and work. In S. H. Klausen & N. Mård (Eds.), Developing a didactic framework across and beyond school subjects: Cross- and transcurricular teaching (pp. 19-32). Routledge Research in Education. Krogh, E., Qvortrup, A. & Graf, S. T. (Eds.), (2021). Didaktik and curriculum in ongoing dialogue. Routledge. Mård, N. & Klausen, S. H. (2023). Speaking and thinking about crosscurricular teaching: terms, concepts, and conceptions. In S. H. Klausen & N. Mård (Eds.), Developing a didactic framework across and beyond school subjects: Cross- and transcurricular teaching (pp. 7-18). Routledge Research in Education. Young, M. (2014). What is a curriculum and what can it do? The Curriculum Journal, 25(1), 7–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2014.902526

This presentation examines the prerequisites for Bildung-oriented and crosscurricular, taking the experiences from Denmark over the past 20 years as the starting point. What didactical challenges do these experiences point to, and how can they be understood from a theoretical perspective? To answer these questions, the intentions behind the 2005-reform of the Danish Upper Secondary School-system is presented. Then three cases are presented and analyzed and discussed based on a theoretical reflection on Bildung-oriented and crosscurricular teaching. It is argued that Bildung-oriented teaching must be crosscurricular, that it must be nonaffirmative, and that it must position students as actors who construct knowledge about epochal key problems. This type of teaching will enable students to empower themselves and be authoritative citizens in a democratic society.

Hobel, P. (2023). Crosscurricular work and Bildung: Empowering the students. In S. H. Klausen & N. Mård (Eds.), Developing a didactic framework across and beyond school subjects: Cross- and transcurricular teaching (pp. 33-46). Routledge Research in Education.

We address the issue of cross-curricular teaching and learning in mathematics education from different viewpoints and base our discussion on both theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence. A pivotal question is why school mathematics is frequently conceived as difficult to integrate with other subjects, sometimes even consciously left out when teachers plan for cross-curricular activities. We argue that the marginal position of mathematics within cross-curricular teaching and learning can be explained by the dominance of an instrumental view on mathematics and its learning. If mathematics education is instead viewed from a complementary perspective, from a relational view, we argue that a cross-curricular educational context could provide a meaningful, realistic setting in which to engage in doing mathematics and making learners’ mathematical knowledge less inert.

Braskén, M, Hemmi, K., Kurtén, B. (2019). Implementing a multidisciplinary curriculum in a Finnish lower secondary school – The perspective of science and mathematics. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 63(4), 1–17. Doig, B., & Jobling, W. (2019). Inter-disciplinary mathematics: Old wine in new bottles? In B. Doig, J. Williams, D. Swanson, R. Borromeo Ferri & D. Drake (Eds.), Interdisciplinary mathematics education, (pp. 245–255). Springer. Doig, B., Williams, J., Swanson, D., Borromeo Ferri, R., & Drake, D. (Eds.). (2019). Interdisciplinary mathematics education. Springer. McPhail, G. (2018). Curriculum integration in the senior secondary school: A case study in a national assessment context. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 50(1), 56–76. Meier, S. L., Cobbs, G., & Nicol, M. (1998). Potential benefits and barriers to integration. School Science and Mathematics, 98(8), 438–445. Röj-Lindberg, A-S., Braskén, M. & Berts, K-E. (2023). Mathematics across and beyond the curriculum. In S. H. Klausen & N. Mård (Eds.), Developing a didactic framework across and beyond school subjects: Cross- and transcurricular teaching (pp. 106-118). Routledge Research in Education.

This presentation explores how craft as a school subject can contribute to learning in a broader sense. The artifact sometimes overshadows the more abstract learning of the process (Borg, 2009). In the general discussion, it is often the practical benefits that are discussed, while craft teachers and researchers have a broader view of the subject’s learning potential. Different models and terminology have been developed to capture the breadth of learning, such as material and intangible learning, practical benefit and general knowledge, along with a focus on product and/or process. We present two models for learning, one for aesthetic subjects (Lindström, 2012) and one for crafts in teacher education (Huovila & Rautio, 2008). By analyzing the similarities and differences between the two models, a developed model for analyzing domains of learning for crosscurricular teaching takes shape. The new model is discussed with the help of a craft case. The aim of the model is to give the individual teacher and teaching team that works with crosscurricular teaching a tool helping them systematically analyze and make visible how learning in crafts, both on its own and in crosscurricular teaching, can contribute to Bildung.

Hartvik, J. & Porko-Hudd, M. (2023). Analyzing domains of learning for crosscurricular teaching —Educational crafts in focus. In S. H. Klausen & N. Mård (Eds.), Developing a didactic framework across and beyond school subjects: Cross- and transcurricular teaching (pp. 144-160). Routledge Research in Education. Huovila, R., & Rautio, R. (2008). Käsiksi käsityönopetukseen – nelikenttä käsityönopettajan ja opettajankouluttajan työvälineenä [Grasp craft teaching – the four-fielder as a teacher's and teacher-educator's tool]. In P. Kaikkonen (Ed.), Työ haastaa tutkimaan opettajien arkihavainnoista kokonaisuuksien ymmärtämiseen (125–140). Jyväskylän yliopisto. Lindström, L. (2012). Aesthetic learning about, in, with and through the arts: A curriculum study. International Journal of Art & Design Education, 31, 166–179. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2012.01737.x

Great advances have been made in how we conceptualize, operationalize and measure aspects of teaching quality (Charalambous et al., 2021). However, this field of research is fragmented. Scholars work in silos, drawing on their own specific framework despite what are often strong commonalities in ambition, terminology, and structural features across frameworks. We argue that classroom video provides an avenue to work across these silos, allowing multiple frameworks to be applied to the same videos. This provides a common ground for discussions across frameworks, facilitating communication and potentially the integration of different frameworks for understanding teaching.

This symposium uses classroom videos as a common ground to break out of our silos through analyzing the same videos with a broad range of frameworks. This symposium consists of 3 papers (with three additional papers in a linked symposium) that use unique frameworks to investigate teaching quality. The frameworks in this symposia stem from different traditions and are at different stages of development. The three quantitatively-oriented frameworks are International Comparative Analysis of Learning and Teaching (ICALT; van de Grift et al., 2007), Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO; Grossman, 2015), and the Teacher Education and Development Study-Instruct framework (TEDS-Instruct; Schlesinger & Jentsch, 2016). The two qualitatively driven frameworks are the Model for analysing Teaching Quality derived from the Joint Action framework in Didactics (JAD-MTQ; Sensevy, 2014; Ligozat & Buyck, accepted), the praxeological documentary video analysis (DVA; Martens & Asbrand, 2022). Part 1 of the double symposium (this part) focuses on PLATO, JAD-MTQ, and a lens model comparison of the two frameworks. The quantitatively oriented frameworks pre-determine definitions of teaching quality based on rubric dimensions and performance categories. The qualitative approaches understand teaching as a situated practice developing within a dynamic system of social, material, and semiotic interactions.

This symposium’s ambition is to have participants reflect on how one’s framework shapes how one constructs an understanding of teaching and the limitations and benefits of each framework through comparing the decompositions of the focal lessons across frameworks. Through this, we hope to build common understandings across frameworks and break out of our silos. To this end, we have asked each individual paper to attend to three research questions:

1. What are key patterns of teaching quality (in the focal videos) according to this framework?
2. How are aspects of the frameworks shaping constructing decompositions of the focal videos?
3. What are benefits and challenges with using this framework in analyzing aspects of teaching quality?

The contributors provide an overview of their respective frameworks based on the following categories: purpose and the theoretical grounding of the observation framework, facets of teaching captured, specific focus, grain size (e.g., unit of analysis on time scales), and empirical evidence and use. Then, contributors analyze the same four videos of lower secondary mathematics and language arts lessons from Nordic classrooms. Each contributor presents patterns of findings derived and afforded by their respective framework. To that end, we especially discuss patterns of teaching quality and how differences in the above-mentioned categories might shape the construction of findings as well as limitations and affordances across frameworks.

The inclusion of both mathematics and language arts, as well as both quantitatively and qualitatively oriented frameworks, sets this work apart from past important efforts in this area (e.g., Charalambous & Praetorius, 2018)

In this paper we use the observation system Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO; Grossman, 2015) as a lens into teaching quality in Norwegian lessons from two different subjects, mathematics and language arts. PLATO was developed at Stanford University in the USA and was originally a tool for studies aiming to link English Language Arts (ELA) instruction to student learning outcomes. Since then, it has been used for different research purposes and in different subjects (e.g., Cohen, 2018) and has been the main tool to describe teaching quality in several publications from the Nordic context (Klette et al., 2017; Tengberg et al., 2022). In this paper we demonstrate PLATO’s way of constructing patterns of teaching quality by focusing on aspects such as theoretical grounding, grain size, and discuss what type of information regarding teaching quality that PLATO may offer and for what purposes that might be useful. PLATO conceptualizes teaching quality in four domains (Instructional Scaffolding, Disciplinary Demand, Representation and Use of Content, and Classroom environment) that together consist of an ensemble of specific teacher practices (e.g., elements), all considered relevant for student learning. These practices are reflected in PLATO’s 12 elements and sub-elements, which are all independently rated on a 1-4 scale for every 15 minutes of a lesson. Together, the 12 elements provide a detailed and rich view of teaching patterns by pointing to whether the specific practices are present as well as the degree of quality of these practices. The findings reveal that the mathematics lessons receive consistently high scores on all PLATO while the patterns in the language arts lessons are more mixed of high and low scores fluctuating across different parts of the lessons. Grounded in this analysis of key patterns using PLATO’s lens of teaching quality, we present benefits and challenges with PLATO. Benefits include a detailed view of how different practices have different foci within and across lessons, while challenges include the way PLATO privileges some instructional formats above others and how to deal with arbitrary cut-off points. Finally, we discuss provoking questions such as whether everything we observe is equally important, and whether we can really determine normatively what patterns of high-quality teaching looks like across different lessons and tasks.

Cohen, J. (2018). Practices that cross disciplines?: Revisiting explicit instruction in elementary mathematics and English language arts. Teaching and Teacher Education, 69, 324–335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.10.021 Grossman, P. (2015). Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations (PLATO 5.0). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Klette, K., Blikstad-Balas, M., & Roe, A. (2017). Linking instruction and student achievement: Research design for a new generation of classroom studies. Acta didactica, 11(3), 11-19 Tengberg, M., van Bommel, J., Nilsberth, M., Walkert, M., & Nissen, A. (2022). The Quality of Instruction in Swedish Lower Secondary Language Arts and Mathematics. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 66(5), 760–777. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2021.1910564

This paper presents a model (JAD-MTQ) for observing and analyzing classroom practices based on the Joint Action framework in Didactics (JAD; Sensevy, 2014; Sensevy & Mercier, 2007). This model aims at contributing to international debates on the conceptualization of teaching quality. In the French-speaking research, classroom qualitative studies carried out with the JAD framework typically investigate what and how knowledge contents develop in the teacher and students’ classroom interactions. Over the years, JAD has proved its capacity to analyze classroom practices in various subjects (mathematics, sciences, physical education, French language, etc.; e.g., Amade-Escot & Venturini, 2015; Ligozat et al., 2018). However the use of concepts from JAD is still open to different interpretations, depending on the research objectives pursued. The Model for analysing Teaching Quality based on JAD (JAD-MTQ) presented in this paper systematizes classroom observations according to three dimensions: selection of knowledge contents and tasks, structuration of learning situations and organisation of teacher and students’ interactions (Ligozat & Buyck, accepted). Each dimension is explored at a specific level of analysis, featured by a grain-size and a timescale of teaching unit (Tiberghien & Sensevy, 2012) and decomposed into a set of criteria, allowing to reduce the level of inference to be made from classroom video and transcripts. Similarly with findings from other frameworks presented in this symposium, JAD-MTQ rates the three dimensions of the mathematics lessons as high while the dimensions of the language arts lessons range from medium to very low. However these findings may be grounded in different rationales. In this paper, we highlight JAD-MTQ’s way of constructing patterns of teaching quality as relying upon the dual generic/specific nature of its criteria: they reflect certain aspects of teaching that are found in most classrooms (goals, instructional tasks, group works, classroom discussions, uptakes, etc,) but these criteria are also content-specific because to say something about them it is necessary to analyse the epistemic characteristics of instructional tasks. We argue that JAD-MTQ provides a content-based analysis of teaching quality with a set of dimensions and criteria that are not subject-specific. From this perspective, JAD-MTQ offers a didactic approach to teaching quality, in exploring systemically (according to the relations featuring the didactic system; Chevallard, 1985/1991; also see Schoenfeld, 2012) the power to learn certain specific knowledge contents afforded to the students in the classroom.

Amade-Escot, C., & Venturini, P. (2015). Joint Action in Didactics and Classroom Ecology : Comparing Theories using a Case Study in Physical Education. Interchange, 46(4), 413 437. Chevallard, Y. (1985/1991). La transposition didactique : Du savoir savant au savoir enseigné. La Pensée Sauvage, Ed. Ligozat, F., & Buyck, Y. (accepted). Comparative Didactics. Towards a « didactic » framework for analysing teaching quality. European Educational Research Journal. Ligozat, F., Lundqvist, E., & Amade-Escot, C. (2018). Analysing the continuity of teaching and learning in classroom actions : When the joint action framework in didactics meets the pragmatist approach to classroom discourses. European Educational Research Journal, 17(1), 147 169. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904117701923 Schoenfeld, A. H. (2012). Problematizing the didactic triangle. ZDM, 44(5), 587 599. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-012-0395-0 Sensevy, G. (2014). Characterizing teaching effectiveness in the Joint Action Theory in Didactics : An exploratory study in primary school. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46(5), 577 610. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2014.931466 Sensevy, G., & Mercier, A. (Éds.). (2007). Agir Ensemble : L’action didactique conjointe du professeur et des élèves. Presses universitaires de Rennes. Tiberghien, A., & Sensevy, G. (2012). The Nature of Video Studies in Science Education. In D. Jorde & J. Dillon (Éds.), Science Education Research and Practice in Europe : Retrospective and Prospecctive. SensePublishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-900-8_7

The growing interest in observationally assessing classroom instruction has lead to the proliferation of observation frameworks. In order to organize and synthesize results from studies using different observational frameworks, there is a need to understand how different frameworks decompose instruction. This paper adopts a lens model (Brunswik, 1952) to compare such frameworks. The lens model breaks down how frameworks decompose observable features of teaching into scores that are meant to characterize that instruction. Namely, each framework directs raters’ attention to specific pieces of evidence (and away from other evidence) while providing guidance on interpreting evidence and assembling evidence into overall scores. This highlights three specific areas where observation frameworks can be compared: (1) what specific pieces of evidence are identified?; (2) how is each piece of evidence interpreted?; and (3) how is evidence aggregated to create summary scores? The paper uses the lens model to compare how the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO; Grossman, 2015) and the Model for analysing Teaching Quality derived from the Joint Action framework in Didactics (JAD-MTQ; Sensevy, 2014; Ligozat & Buyck, accepted) make sense of one mathematics and one language arts lesson from Nordic lower secondary classrooms. This analysis shows how the two frameworks uniquely decompose teaching while acting as a model for comparisons of other frameworks. Overall, the two frameworks identify similar pieces of evidence and make similar interpretations of that evidence. In this way, the two frameworks are quite aligned, providing coherent understandings of instructional practice. However, the frameworks differ in scope and grain size. For example, PLATO considers only whether a teachers’ statement does or does not count as uptake while JAD-MTQ codes teacher statements within several different uptake categories. The largest difference between the frameworks, however, is in how they aggregate evidence to generate overall scores. Like other formalized frameworks, PLATO summary scores are based largely on the frequency and quality of the evidence for a category while JAD-MTQ interprets specific evidence in light of the broader instructional contexts in which that evidence occurs (i.e., meso- and macro-levels). Through demonstrating the lens model, this paper seeks to contribute a novel comparison of the PLATO and JAD-MTQ frameworks while also introducing a novel and fine-grained way to compare how observation frameworks decompose teaching. This can make an important contribution to harmonizing understandings of teaching quality across the many frameworks used in the European context. (Charalambous & Praetorius, 2020).

Brunswik, E. (1952). The Conceptual Framework of Psychology. University of Chicago Press. Charalambous, C. Y., & Praetorius, A.-K. (2020). Creating a forum for researching teaching and its quality more synergistically. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 67, 8. https://doi.org/10/gwsf Grossman, P. (2015). Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations (PLATO 5.0). Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Cohen, J. (2018). Practices that cross disciplines?: Revisiting explicit instruction in elementary mathematics and English language arts. Teaching and Teacher Education, 69, 324–335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2017.10.021 Klette, K., Blikstad-Balas, M., & Roe, A. (2017). Linking instruction and student achievement: Research design for a new generation of classroom studies. Acta didactica, 11(3), 11-19 Ligozat, F. & Buyck, Y. (accepted). Comparative Didactics. Towards a Didactic Model for Analyzing the Quality of Teaching. European Educational Research Journal. Tengberg, M., van Bommel, J., Nilsberth, M., Walkert, M., & Nissen, A. (2022). The Quality of Instruction in Swedish Lower Secondary Language Arts and Mathematics. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 66(5), 760–777. https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2021.1910564 Sensevy, G. (2014). Characterizing teaching effectiveness in the Joint Action Theory in Didactics: An exploratory study in primary school. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46(5).

Great advances have been made in how we conceptualize, operationalize and measure aspects of teaching quality (Charalambous et al., 2021). However, this field of research is fragmented. Scholars work in silos, drawing on their own specific framework despite what are often strong commonalities in ambition, terminology, and structural features across frameworks. We argue that classroom video provides an avenue to work across these silos, allowing multiple frameworks to be applied to the same videos. This provides a common ground for discussions across frameworks, facilitating communication and potentially the integration of different frameworks for understanding teaching.

This symposium uses classroom videos as a common ground to break out of our silos through analyzing the same videos with a broad range of frameworks. This symposium consists of 3 papers (with three additional papers in a linked symposium) that use unique frameworks to investigate teaching quality. The frameworks in this symposia stem from different traditions and are at different stages of development. The three quantitatively-oriented frameworks are International Comparative Analysis of Learning and Teaching (ICALT; van de Grift et al., 2007), Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation (PLATO; Grossman, 2015), and the Teacher Education and Development Study-Instruct framework (TEDS-Instruct; Schlesinger & Jentsch, 2016). The two qualitatively driven frameworks are the Model for analysing Teaching Quality derived from the Joint Action framework in Didactics (JAD-MTQ; Sensevy, 2014; Ligozat & Buyck, accepted), the praxeological documentary video analysis (DVA; Martens & Asbrand, 2022). Part 2 of the double symposium (this part) focuses on ICALT, TEDS-Instruct, and DVA. The quantitatively oriented frameworks pre-determine definitions of teaching quality based on rubric dimensions and performance categories. The qualitative approaches understand teaching as a situated practice developing within a dynamic system of social, material, and semiotic interactions.

This symposium’s ambition is to have participants reflect on how one’s framework shapes how one constructs an understanding of teaching and the limitations and benefits of each framework through comparing the decompositions of the focal lessons across frameworks. Through this, we hope to build common understandings across frameworks and break out of our silos. To this end, we have asked each individual paper to attend to three research questions:

1. What are key patterns of teaching quality (in the focal videos) according to this framework?
2. How are aspects of the frameworks shaping constructing decompositions of the focal videos?
3. What are benefits and challenges with using this framework in analyzing aspects of teaching quality?

The contributors provide an overview of their respective frameworks based on the following categories: purpose and the theoretical grounding of the observation framework, facets of teaching captured, specific focus, grain size (e.g., unit of analysis on time scales), and empirical evidence and use. Then, contributors analyze the same four videos of lower secondary mathematics and language arts lessons from Nordic classrooms. Each contributor presents patterns of findings derived and afforded by their respective framework. To that end, we especially discuss patterns of teaching quality and how differences in the above-mentioned categories might shape the construction of findings as well as limitations and affordances across frameworks.

The inclusion of both mathematics and language arts, as well as both quantitatively and qualitatively oriented frameworks, sets this work apart from past important efforts in this area (e.g., Charalambous & Praetorius, 2018).

In the educational effectiveness research tradition, classroom observation has been recognized as a key instrument for uncovering variations in teaching quality in terms of student achievement (Muijs et al., 2018). In general, all existing observation instruments have the common goal for unravelling variations in teaching effectiveness to support teachers with valuable information that can help them develop their teaching skills. Several classroom factors matter for student attainment, including curriculum quality, the amount of learning time, various teaching skills including the creation of a safe and stimulating learning environment, efficient classroom management, the quality of instruction, teaching students how to learn, monitoring student progress, adapting teaching to student differences, and attention for students at risk of falling behind (eg., Creemers, 1994; Hattie, 2012; Scheerens & Bosker, 1997) Notably, not all behaviours synthesized from the literature are easily observable in classrooms. These factors are best revealed by means of teacher interviews and -surveys, student surveys, and value-added measures (Coe et al., 2014; van de Grift et al., 2014). The International Comparative Analysis of Learning and Teaching (ICALT, van de Grift, 2007) is a generic, non-subject specific teaching observation instrument, originally developed by the Dutch Inspectorates in cooperation with the Central Inspectorates in several European countries. This generic observation instrument focusses on capturing observable teaching behaviours of the whole lesson using high- (32 item) and low-inference (120 items) indicators. The indicators provided in the instrument are commonly observed in typical classroom practices, but are not all-inclusive. The observer can add good practices to justify his/her feedback. Although the ICALT framework is used as a formative feedback tool in teacher education and induction of early career teachers in the Netherlands, there is no research illustrating this formative potential. Our results reveal how low inference feedback shapes and provides justification for the overall teaching quality feedback provided by trained observers, which contributes to increasing the objectiveness of ratings. This is revealed by providing a) time indicators alongside illustrative quotes from the lesson, b) examples of (lacking) good practices, c) interaction symbols to increase the clarity of the feedback, following the increasing skill complexity levels inherent in the structure of the instrument.

Coe, R., Aloisi, C., Higgins, S., & Elliott Major, L. (2014). What makes great teaching? A review of the underpinning research. London: The Sutton Trust. Creemers, B. P. M. (1994). The effective classroom. London: Cassell. Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing the impact on learning. London: Routledge. Muijs, D., Reynolds, D., Sammons, P., Kyriakides, L., Creemers, B. P. M., & Teddlie, C. (2018). Assessing individual lessons using a generic teacher observation instrument: how useful is the International System for Teacher Observation and Feedback (ISTOF)? ZDM, 50, 395–406. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-018-0921-9. Scheerens, J., & Bosker, R. (1997). The foundations of educational effectiveness. Oxford: Pergamon. van de Grift, W. (2007). Quality of teaching in four European countries: A review of the literature and application of an assessment instrument. Educational Research, 49(2), 127–152. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131880701369651. van de Grift, W., Helms-Lorenz, M., & Maulana, R. (2014). Teaching skills of student teachers: Calibration of an evaluation instrument and its value in predicting student academic engagement. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 43, 150-159.

Effective teaching has been extensively researched for decades. Studies have demonstrated the significant influence of teachers' performance on student achievement in various school subjects (Grossman et al., 2014; Hill et al., 2005). Theoretical frameworks and observational systems have been developed to conceptualize and measure teaching quality (e.g., Danielson, 2007; Klieme et al., 2009), often taking either generic or subject-specific perspectives. In this study, we discuss a hybrid observation system that draws on the established generic framework of Three Basic Dimensions but aims to address also subject-specific aspects of teaching quality to better explain student achievement in mathematics classrooms. The observation system was developed in the context of the Teacher Education and Development Study-Instruct (TEDS-Instruct). It captures four dimensions of teaching quality, two of which are considered generic (classroom management, student support), and two of which are considered subject-specific (cognitive activation, and educational structuring). This means that their operationalization is informed by the norms and concepts of the subject (Charalambous & Praetorius, 2018), and teachers need substantial (pedagogical) content knowledge to perform teaching behavior that reflects high levels of cognitive activation or educational structuring (e.g., posing challenging mathematical problems, changes of representations, being precise regarding mathematical language, providing adequate explanations). In this paper, we analyze generic and subject-specific dimensions across two Norwegian double lessons employing high-inference observer ratings. This means that videotaped lessons are presented to trained observers, and after a certain amount of time (i.e., a segment of a lesson), they provide an informed judgement on teaching behaviors and teacher-student interactions on 4-6 items per dimension (Jentsch et al., 2022). The results show that important aspects of teaching quality are captured by the observation system. For example, in the mathematics lesson, the items “teachers’ correctness” and “dealing with error” within educational structuring were assigned substantively higher scores than any other items in that dimension. Moreover, we argue that there was much variability in scores across the items assessing educational structuring. In contrast, for classroom management, all the items were assigned high scores. In the language arts lesson, different patterns emerge. There is more variability across items measuring cognitive activation. In addition, the teacher provides a lot of individual support to students but does little to support collaborative learning. A goal for future research on our observation system (and potentially others) could be to explore for which contexts and purposes valid conclusions can be drawn from classroom observation.

Charalambous, C., & Praetorius, A.-K. (2018). Studying instructional quality in mathematics through different lenses: In Search of Common Ground. ZDM Mathematics Education, 50, 535-553. Danielson, C. (2007). Enhancing professional practice: A framework for teaching. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Grossman, P., Cohen, J., Ronfeldt, M., & Brown, L. (2014). The test matters: The relationship between classroom observation scores and teacher value added on multiple types of assessment. Educational Researcher, 43(6), 293-303. Hill, H. C., Rowan, B., & Ball, D. L. (2005). Effects of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching on student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 42(2), 371–406. Jentsch, A., Heinrichs, H., Schlesinger, L., Kaiser, G., König, J. & Blömeke, S. (2022). Multi-group measurement invariance and generalizability analyses for an instructional quality observation instrument. In M. Blikstad-Balas, K. Klette & M. Tengberg (Hrsg.), Ways of analyzing teaching quality. Potentials and pitfalls (pp. 121-139). Scandinavian University Press. Klieme, E., Pauli, C., & Reusser, K. (2009). The Pythagoras study. In T. Janik, & T. Seidel (eds.), The power of video studies in investigating teaching and learning in the classroom (pp. 137–160). Waxmann.

This paper examines the role of Documentary Video Analysis (DVA; Martens & Asbrand, 2022) in research on teaching quality. It applies DVA to two different lessons from the Nordic LISA study – one in mathematics and the other in Norwegian language arts (L1). By integrating these cases into an existing typology that emphasizes cognitive activation in classroom interactions (Schreyer, 2024), the study utilizes the qualitative reconstructive capabilities of DVA to examine the intricate dynamics of subject-specific teaching and learning processes. DVA is characterized by its ability to capture the complexity of classroom interactions and allows for uncovering the multifaceted relationships between the development of knowledge, embodied practices and the deeply rooted habitus of both teachers and students (Bohnsack, 2021; Martens & Asbrand, 2022). This methodological approach highlights the interconnected relationships between different aspects of teaching and contrasts with the more deductive methods used in previous research on teaching quality, which relied heavily on standardized observation manuals (e.g. Bell et al., 2019). This descriptive method aims to assess the quality of teaching following the empirical analysis. For this purpose, opportunity-use models (Vieluf & Klieme, 2023) are used to assess whether and how teaching stimuli are understood and used in a subject-specific context. Analyzing classroom situations in mathematics and Norwegian language arts through the lens of DVA reveals contrasting aspects of cognitive activation. In mathematics classrooms, the focus is on the teacher's central role in creating an environment that fosters cooperative learning, metacognition, and problem solving through the presentation of challenging tasks. This practice fits seamlessly with the theoretical constructs of cognitive activation (Praetorius et al., 2018). In contrast, the language arts classroom shows a notable divergence from the teacher's pedagogical standards and objectives, especially in student presentations where important literary devices are insufficiently identified and discussed, underscoring a discrepancy between the targeted instructional goals and actual knowledge development. The study discusses the potential of DVA as a tool for assessing teaching quality and critically examines its limitations in evaluating this. It emphasizes the strength of DVA in providing a descriptive rather than an evaluative analysis and questions the usefulness of the method for a comprehensive understanding of teaching quality through the comparative analysis of two subject-specific lessons.

Bell, C. A., Dobbelaer, M. J., Klette, K., & Visscher, A. (2019). Qualities of classroom observation systems. School effectiveness and school improvement, 30(1), 3-29. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2018.1539014 Bohnsack, R. (2021). Rekonstruktive Sozialforschung: Einführung in qualitative Methoden. (10th ed.). Barbara Budrich. Martens, M., & Asbrand, B. (2022). Documentary Classroom Research. Theory and Methodology. In M. Martens, B. Asbrand, T. Buchborn, & J. Menthe (Eds.), Dokumentarische Unterrichtsforschung in den Fachdidaktiken: Theoretische Grundlagen und Forschungspraxis (pp. 19-38). Springer VS. Praetorius, A.-K., Klieme, E., Herbert, B., & Pinger, P. (2018). Generic dimensions of teaching quality: the German framework of Three Basic Dimensions. ZDM: mathematics education, 50(3), 407-426. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-018-0918-4 Schreyer, P. (2024). Kognitive Aktivierung in der Unterrichtsinteraktion: Eine qualitativ-rekonstruktive Analyse zu Passungsverhältnissen im Mathematikunterricht. Waxmann. Vieluf, S., & Klieme, E. (2023). Teaching effectiveness revisited through the lens of practice theories. In A.-K. Praetorius & C. Charalambous (Eds.), Theorizing Teaching: Current Status and Open Issues (pp. 57-95). Spinger Nature. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25613-4_3

In this paper, we shed light on the concept of attunement in literary reading (Felski, 2020) and its role in a school that is focused on becoming. Attunement is an emotional process, in which text and reader become in sync. In education, we are exposed to things that make us rethink, re-experience and remake perceptions. What seemed insignificant, or impervious, might become valuable, and appear transparent. For this reason, we argue that attunement can be understood in scholastic terms. When school is understood as free time (Masschelein & Simons, 2013) – time that a teacher and her students use together to found something new in relation to subject matter – then there is space for attunement. And when attunement occurs, it is in a process of becoming. It is not the sedimentation of preconceived student identities, it is the opportunity to come into being as someone in relation to the literary text. Furthermore, this is a process in which the text has its own agency, and at the same time becomes something new. The aim of the paper is to explore attunement in the teaching of literature, from a democratic angle. The fusion of democratic theory, scholastic theory and theory of literary reading is central to the reasoning, but theory is presented in light of an empirical example. The research questions are firstly, how can attunement be understood in students’ meeting with a text that they are assigned to read in school, and secondly, what is the democratic potential of attunement?

The theoretical underpinning is Chantal Mouffe’s idea of liberal democracy as a tension between two logics – the liberal logic and the democratic logic (Mouffe, 2009). Her critique of the current state in west European and American liberal democracies is that democracy has increasingly come to be identified with liberal values. She identifies the situation as post-democratic. It is insufficient to treat democracy as a set of liberal values, and consequently, to treat democratic education as socialisation into a liberal value system. In a Mouffean, agonistic understanding of democracy, identity formation is central; democratic politics is concerned with the formation of collective identities that fight each other on political issues.

For this reason, we explore a way of approaching democracy in literature education that differs from the liberal arts tradition. We regard the classroom as democratic in its own right (Biesta, 2011), and thus as concerned with collective identity formation. Masschelein and Simons trace school back to its Greek origin scholè, meaning ‘free time,’ that is, time that is free from work, non-productive time. In school, the world is suspended, turned into subject matter and freed for novel use. The teacher presents subject matter, brings it into the present tense. She puts it on the table, without telling students how to react to it. But she does not only suspend the world by transforming it into subject matter, she also suspends ideas of who students are, by bringing them into the present tense. The scholastic ideal is thus that preconceived student identities are not sedimented, but suspended, so that school becomes a place where the students get a chance to become someone. But not only must school be a time and a place for students to become someone, it must also be a time and a place for the future generation to form its own generation, in relation to the subject matter that the teacher presents. We explore this as a democratic process.

The quality of teacher-led text-based discussions is essential to students’ reading engagement and comprehension. Qualified implementation of discussion can foster an explorative and cooperative attitude in students that promotes interpretation and analysis of more complex texts (Murphy et al., 2009). However, studies show that such discussions are largely absent from today’s classrooms, partly because many teachers experience that to lead open-ended, probing discussions about complex texts is a challenging task, they distrust their ability to do it, and ask for support in terms of useful discussion models (Fodstad & Gagnat, 2019; Murphy et al., 2016).

This study assesses the effects of a year-long intervention designed to improve the quality of teacher-led discussions about complex literary texts in lower secondary school. Through repeated sessions of criteria-based observation and feedback to teachers, the intervention aimed to promote the enactment of a specific type of talk called “Inquiry Dialogue” (ID) (Reznitskaya, 2012; Wilkinson et al., 2017). In ID, teachers facilitate students’ explorations of text-based problems by encouraging peer-cooperation and critical examination of alternative understandings. The study tried to answer the following research questions:

1) What are the effects of the intervention on the quality of teachers’ classroom enactment of literature discussions?

2) What are the effects of the intervention on students’ explorative and interpretive cooperation during literature discussions?

3) What are the effects of the intervention on teachers’ self-efficacy related to classroom enactment of literature discussions?

4) What are the effects of a year-long implementation of ID on students’ reading ability (comprehension and literary interpretation) and reading-related self-efficacy?

The intervention was implemented in 25 eighth grade language arts classrooms in Sweden. Teachers taught a selection of short stories and received criteria-based feedback (using RIDL) at four occasions across the school year. Feedback was followed up by team group discussions for debriefing and sharing experiences.

To assess effects on quality of discussions, teacher-led literature discussions were videotaped and analyzed before and after the intervention, using a target-specific observation protocol (Rating Inquiry Dialogue about Literature, RIDL). Teachers’ and students’ self-efficacy was measured using questionnaires before and after the intervention. Students’ reading ability was measured before and after the intervention using two different tests (general comprehension and literary interpretation). In addition, complementary data was gathered to provide in-depth explanations of how and why the intervention activities contributed to teachers’ gradual professional development, and what kind of challenges they faced. These data consisted of videotaped teacher-led literature discussions and audiotaped team group discussions between teachers during the intervention, and interviews with teachers after the intervention.

Findings from the study indicate overall positive effects of the intervention. There was a statistically significant and medium-sized increase of quality of discussions at both teacher and student level. Teachers’ self-efficacy related to classroom enactment of literature discussions increased significantly, whereas neither students’ reading-related self-efficacy nor their self-efficacy related to participation in discussion changed. Students’ reading ability (general comprehension and literary interpretation) increased significantly, but the increase was not significantly different from students in control classrooms, whose teachers had not participated in the intervention.

In previous studies, ID has been shown to engage students in careful and cooperative consideration of text-based arguments, and prepare them to make well-reasoned judgments (Wilkinson et al., 2017). The specific pedagogical objective of this study was to foster students’ ability to meet complexity in literary texts, including both ethical dilemmas and aesthetic challenges, with exploration and cooperation instead of with debate and conflict. Detailed qualitative and quantitative analyses showed that both teachers’ and students’ ability to formulate and explore open-ended problems in the stories improved across the school year.

Introduction

Reading literacy becomes particularly significant when we are now in an information age. International organizations such as OECD conduct large-scale assessment of students’ reading literacy. Evidence indicated the reading interests of adolescents can positively predict their reading literacy (OECD, 2019). Exploring effective teaching methods to enhance reading literacy and interests is recognized as an important issue globally (Liu & Jin, 2006; Costa & Luisa, 2018). In line with international trends, the National Chinese Curriculum Standards pointed out the importance of fostering students’ reading interests in order to support their development on core competencies (MOE of the PRC, 2020). However, current reading class reveals deficiencies, including the solidified teaching strategies (Luo, 2021), identical teaching modes (Liu, 2022) and students’ insufficiency of participation (Yang, 2019). More research attention is needed on exploring how to unleash students’ reading interests through effective teaching methods.

Literature circle (LC), recommended by the International Reading Association, is a collaborative learning method for increasing reading literacy. LC has been widely used in the language and literature curriculum in western countries such as the UK (Stien & Beed, 2004; Allan et al., 2005). The benefits of LC is multifaceted, encompassing fostering deep exploration of literature works (Blum et al., 2002), mutual understanding of diverse viewpoints (Ali, 1993), and stimulation of students’ reading interests (Zhu & Liao, 2013). However, the application of LC in teaching native language in China, particularly in high schools, remains under-explored.

This study presents how to design LC activities tailored for Chinese high school students’ needs to stimulate their reading interests. To do this, the research builds on the concept of “Communities of Practice” (CoP) and uses action research as an empowerment approach. This study provides a real-world example of how Chinese high school teachers implement LC model to unleash students’ reading interests in novel reading. This case study is designed with the dual purpose of theoretically refining and optimizing the LC strategy in a manner that more precisely aligns with students’ learning needs; and secondly, to provide native language teachers with practical insights regarding instructional design, specifically tailored to cultivate students’ reading interests.

Theoretical Framework

Harvey Daniels (1994) firstly introduced the concept of “literature circle”. LC integrates various learning strategies, and combines independent learning, collaborative learning, and inquiry-based learning. The key steps of LC are as follows: (1)selecting reading materials (2)forming reading groups (3)assigning student roles (4)establishing group reading rules (5)completing reading tasks (6)facilitating communication and sharing (7)concluding with summarization and evaluation.

“Communities of practice” (Lave & Wenger, 1991) is a social learning system based on the theory of situated learning. Through sharing information, knowledge, and experiences, members of CoP learn from each other and attain advancement. Wenger (1998) identified three requisites for building an effective CoP: (a) mutual engagements (b) shared repertoire of negotiable resources (c) and joint enterprise.

The fundamental principle underpinning both LC and CoP is rooted in cooperative learning. The activities in LC, such as reading and discussion, could be seen as “practical activities”. Reading groups organized around a shared text, and role groups centered on similar reading functions, form two types of “communities”. The knowledge accumulated in LC constitutes the “shared knowledge domain”. Meanwhile, the three structural elements of CoP correspond to the LC learning practices. “Mutual engagements” points to members’ collaborative involvement. “Joint enterprise” is exemplified in students’ collective reading assignments and “shared resources” symbolizes a platform for disseminating outcomes. This study uses CoP as a broad theoretical umbrella to refine and innovate the traditional LC mode. Furthermore, we utilize the modified LC model to guide novel reading practices in native language teaching in Chinese high school.

This study explores how teachers and students respond to ethical and moral themes in open and ambiguous literary texts. The core of our research lies in understanding the integration of ethical and moral perspectives within the framework of teaching literature, a practice gaining importance in today's complex global context (Nussbaum, 1997).

Open and ambiguous texts offer fertile ground for ethical engagement and moral reflection (Lesnick, 2006; Taylor, 2010; Campbell, 2018). This approach to literature education enables students to grapple with the intricacies of texts and life experiences - fostering a deeper level of engagement and understanding (Lesnick, 2006). The significance of such an approach is amplified in the current global landscape, encouraging a cosmopolitan hospitality towards diverse perspectives and cultures (Choo, 2017). Additionally, integrating these perspectives in literature classes facilitates the development of an ethic of care, promoting empathy and understanding among students (Hilder, 2005).

However, to include and incorporate ethical and moral discussions in literature classroom is not without challenges. One obstacle could be the presumption that this approach marks a regression to outdated teaching methods (Booth, 1998). Furthermore, the quality and effectiveness of teacher-led discussions on text-based, complex ethical topics are important for student engagement and comprehension (Sønneland & Skaftun, 2017; Johansen, 2022). Qualified implementation of such discussions could foster explorative and dialogic learning environment, enabling students to delve into and tolerate complex layers of meaning, including ethical and value-laden topics.

Preliminary research results find a notable absence of these discussions in contemporary classrooms . Many teachers find leading open-ended, probing discussions about complex texts daunting (cf. Tengberg et al., 2023). This apprehension often stems from a lack of confidence in their ability to facilitate such discussions effectively, leading to a call for support in terms of practical discussion models.

In response to this educational need, our project titled “Inquiry Dialogue to Promote Comprehension and Interpretation” investigates the effects of a targeted intervention designed to support language arts teachers in leading and facilitating classroom conversations about open and complex literary texts. The intervention focuses on enacting a pedagogical approach known as “Inquiry Dialogue” (ID) (Reznitskaya & Wilkinson, 2017). This method aims to enhance students' comprehension and interpretation skills through guided discussion and inquiry-based learning.

Despite the challenges faced, addressing the ethical and moral dimensions in teaching is important, especially considering the varieties of global challenges and results of technological progress (AI) the world is facing. Ethical dimensions are often overlooked in teacher education programs, yet they hold significant value in fostering a well-rounded educational experience (Osguthorpe, 2013). Literature-based moral education, especially in elementary settings, serves as an invaluable tool for teaching values, responsibility, and sound judgment (Lamme, 1992).

In our project, teachers facilitated classroom discussions on complex literary texts, adhering to dialogical principles from RIDL (Rating Inquiry Dialogue about Literature) but with the flexibility to tailor each discussion to their classroom dynamics. The texts chosen for this study were selected based on criteria such as compositional complexity, thematic openness, poetic language, contextual distancing, direct shock, and the presence of ethical dilemmas (Tengberg et al., 2023).

A comparative analysis of classroom discussions pre- and post-intervention revealed a consistent underrepresentation of value dimensions, despite the rich potential offered by the selected texts for exploring such topics. This study analyzes and explores video sequences where teachers or students address value-related textual topics. We investigate how conversations evolve concerning the ethical aspects raised by events in the text and how these responses are managed. Furthermore, we explore the extent to which the selection of these topics correlates with the opportunities presented by the chosen texts.

The aim of this study is to investigate the hypothesized relation of students’ situational engagement, conceptualized as optimal learning moments (Schneider et al., 2016), and science learning. Engagement in educational contexts has received increasing interest (Fredricks et al., 2019; Pöysä et al., 2020; Sinatra et al., 2015), and its role in learning and socio-emotional development seems evident (Finn & Zimmer, 2012). Enhancing students' engagement in sciences is crucial, as society will persistently require individuals capable of sustaining, advancing, and innovating key functions, including healthcare and technical infrastructure, in the future. However, motivation and interest in the study of natural sciences and technology among students have recently declined globally, and especially in Europe (OECD, 2016; Osborne & Dillon, 2008; Potvin & Hasni, 2014).

Engagement can be understood and defined in several ways, and the definition may depend, for example, on whether engagement is examined at the micro or macro-level. Micro-level engagement refers to a student's engagement to a specific situation, task, or activity, while macro-level engagement may refer to a student's engagement to a class, school, or society (Sinatra et al., 2015). In this study, engagement is examined at a micro-level, referring to a situationally varying construct. Furthermore, we employ a concept of optimal learning moment as a construct of situational engagement. Optimal learning moments are ought to occur when students experience interest and challenge in their task, and concurrently feel sufficiently skilled to perform the task (Schneider et al., 2016, 2020; Shernoff et al., 2003). Interest plays an important role in the manifestation of situational engagement, as it facilitates concentration on the present task and motivates the learner to engage cognitively, even in the face of challenging tasks (Hidi & Renninger, 2006; Schraw & Lehman, 2001). However, situational interest may not necessarily persist for long if the student perceives a lack of competence and necessary skills for completing the task. Therefore, it is important for situational engagement that the student perceives themselves as capable of effectively managing the assigned task, leveraging their knowledge, and applying their skills (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). On the other hand, for the preservation of students’ interest and learning, it is crucial that the task also presents appropriate levels of challenge (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Shernoff et al., 2003). Such situations, characterized by high levels of interest, skill, and challenge, have been referred to as optimal learning moments because they are hypothesized to positively impact learning (Schneider et al., 2016). In this study, we define learning as a process in which a person acquires new skills, knowledge or understanding; whereas performance or achievement are considered as more stationary constructs, reflecting merely the state of a learning process (Gross, 2015).

In the present study, we combine students’ self-reported, real-time experience sampling method (ESM) data about situational engagement to pre and posttest scores measuring students’ academic performance and science learning. We conceptualize pretest performance as prior knowledge, posttest performance as learning outcome, and the change in performance as learning or learning progress. We investigate the relations between optimal learning moments, their components, and learning using mediation analyses. This approach allows us to examine the impact of optimal learning moments on learning outcomes while accounting for prior knowledge, and the mediating role of optimal learning moments and their components in the learning process. The research questions are:

RQ1: How the components of optimal learning moments (interest, skill, and challenge) relate to students’ science learning?

RQ2: How the optimal learning moments relate to students’ science learning?

In the evolving landscape of education, there is a notable shift towards more engaging pedagogical methods to meet diverse student needs. Project-Based Learning (PBL) stands out as an exemplary model, embodying an experiential, collaborative, and interdisciplinary paradigm in education (Thomas, J.W., 2000). PBL not only instills problem-solving skills but also nurtures critical thinking, creativity, and research abilities through the formulation of research questions, case study methodologies, and small-scale studies within lessons (Tretten, R. and Zachariou, P., 1995).

Project-based approaches play a pivotal role in cultivating profound understanding and meaningful learning experiences. They hold immense potential for developing higher-order thinking skills, fostering collaboration, and facilitating the application of knowledge in real-world contexts (Barron B., Schwartz D., Wai N., 1998). These methods exert a substantial impact on student motivation, engagement, and the cultivation of metacognitive skills.

Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS) explores the concept of PBL in the history of Kazakhstan and its role in developing research skills for high school students (grades 11-12). Despite the implementation of innovative teaching methods at NIS, challenges persist in the effective integration of PBL in the classroom, coupled with difficulties faced by students in completing design and research tasks during lessons. The study is valuable as it identifies challenges and offers insights into how PBL-based research can benefit both teachers and students, proposing strategies for the systematic integration of PBL into history lessons in Kazakhstan.

The research aims to enhance the methods of project-research teaching for NIS history teachers using the PBL method and to develop students' research skills. Specifically, it investigates how PBL affects students' development of various research skills, including media and information literacy, critical thinking, and design thinking, through the creation of research projects of different durations (short, medium, long). The research questions considered are:

• How does PBL teaching affect students' knowledge and skills?

• What are the opportunities and challenges of PBL teaching?

• How is PBL implemented according to the tasks in the textbooks "History of Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan in the Modern World)"?

Project-Based Learning, as a pedagogical methodology, steers students towards addressing complex, regionally specific problems or projects, contrasting with traditional memorization-based methods (Johnson, M., Smith, L., 2017). It champions active exploration, analysis, and construction, promoting individual-centered approaches that stimulate critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity.

The NIS program's curriculum aligns with the GCE AS Level 2021-23 programs, particularly in the subject of "History of Kazakhstan (Kazakhstan in the modern world)," with tasks for teaching based on PBL integrated into each chapter. The organizational and implementation structure of PBL in history lessons involves short-term, mid-term, and long-term research projects, each contributing distinctively to students' research skills and knowledge acquisition.

Short-term research activities occur during lessons, addressing specific research questions, while mid-term projects, spanning 4-6 classes, allow students to delve into small-scale research endeavors. Long-term projects extend over 2 years, enabling students to engage in extensive project and research work outside the classroom under teacher supervision. This progression underscores the systematic development of research skills through varying project lengths.

In conclusion, the strategic deployment of Project-Based Learning in history education, as evidenced in the NIS context, emerges as an invaluable method for cultivating multifaceted research skills and knowledge acquisition. This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on innovative pedagogical approaches, shedding light on the challenges and opportunities associated with PBL implementation in the history classroom, and offering practical insights for educators and curriculum developers. The focus on research questions and the systematic examination of the impact of PBL on various facets of student learning provides a robust foundation for future educational research endeavors.

Introduction

Assessment dramatically impacts students' learning outcomes and the quality of their involvement in school activities (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Schellekens et al., 2021). In the last 30 years, the concept of assessment has changed, and the discussion has focused on the distinction between "assessment for learning," "assessment of learning," and "assessment as learning" (Dann, 2014). In this proposal, we argue the three components of the assessment process should act according to an interdependent pattern. Each assessment approach connects to the other to maximize students' educational outcomes in both cognitive and non-cognitive domains (Van Der Vleuten et al., 2017). Combining different approaches or using one process instead of another may depend on different educational purposes.

With the O.M. 172.04-12-2020 reform - "Periodic and final evaluation of students' learning in primary school" - the Italian primary school has adopted a new evaluation system. The new rules provide for the replacement of votes - expressed on an evaluation scale ranging from "0 to 10" - with descriptive judgments that indicate four levels of learning accomplishment: "in the initial phase," "basic," "intermediate," and "advanced." The O.M. 172.04-12-2020 formally assumed the perspective of assessment for learning. The reform places the pupils' learning process and outcomes at the center of evaluation and the design of teaching strategies to enhance them (Cerini, 2021). The assessment must improve learning and promote the construction of personal resources and skills (Clark, 2012), which go beyond the specific domains of curricular knowledge (Black et al., 2016). In more strictly cognitive and psychological terms, formative assessment, in addition to impacting learning outcomes, can positively color the school experience of pupils (Black et al., 2016) and could contribute, for example, to activate psychological resources (non-cognitive skills) such as resilience, hope, optimism and a self-efficacy; conscientiousness and open-mindedness; a motivation-oriented learning goal; internal and controllable causal attributions, autonomous motivation and positive academic self-concept (Gentile & Pisanu, 2023).

However, once reform is approved, it is not fully obvious to expect a consistent change in teaching practices and teachers' conceptions. It is suitable for a realistic vision of the reform processes to consider a gap between the intentions of the legislator and the actual application problems that teachers face in implementing reforms (Gouëdard et al., 2020; Wiliam, 2018). Personal (Pan & Wiens, 2023) and contextual factors (Gouëdard et al., 2020) can hinder or facilitate these changes. According to Gentile et al. (2023), the following dimensions can play a crucial role: teachers' self-efficacy, beliefs about the general aims of teaching, openness to innovation, and the perception of the organizational climate of the school workplace. Regarding the evaluation reforms, the following factors could affect the teachers' receptivity: the assessment approaches (assessment for/of/as learning) and teachers' assessment literacy (Coombs et al., 2020).

The study analyzes the following research questions:

• RQ 1: What kind of relationship do teachers perceive between cognitive and non-cognitive learning in the context of the four levels of learning provided by the reform?
• RQ 2: Is there a distinct degree of separation between the assessment approaches, or to some extent, can reciprocal relationships depend on specific evaluative purposes?
• RQ 3: Are there differentiated profiles in primary teachers' approaches to evaluation reform?