Conference Agenda

Nordic schools have a strong tradition around 1) the focus on students’ learning conditions and well-being from a lifelong learning perspective (Telhaug, Mediås & Aasen, 2006), 2) the values that students develop as part of their schooling in relation to the idea of Bildung (Wiberg, 2016), and 3) teacher autonomy (Hopmann, 2007). These elements of schooling are alive and reflected in the daily practices of education throughout the Nordic countries, yet there may be contexts and country-based differences and variation in their realization.

Schools’ daily practices were challenged by the more than two-year-long devastating COVID-19 pandemic. The restrictions and insecurities that were an inevitable part of the pandemic negatively changed the working conditions of teachers (Heikonen et al., 2024) and affected many students' learning (Engzell, Frey, & Verhagen 2021) and well-being (Lykkegaard, et al. 2024; Rimpelä et al., 2023). Furthermore, it is suggested that also some of the fundamentals of students’ existence such as their values were challenged (Qvortrup, 2022: Kutza & Cornell, 2021; Hyun-Sook, 2021; Krumsvik, 2020). Although the studies already carried out point to several consequences, further research is needed to follow-up the situation. Based on a mapping of quantitative studies on COVID-19, OECD concludes that there is limited and contradictory evidence regarding the consequences of the pandemic (Thorn & Vincent-Lancrin, 2021). The contradictory results may be because the COVID-19 situation is complex, in that the consequences arose as a result of a multifaceted interaction between many different factors. Furthermore, time is a factor that can amplify or mitigate immediate consequences, which means that the medium to long-term consequences of COVID-19 cannot be easily deduced from the short-term consequences that we have experienced and researched so far. Finally, not just time but also context is crucial when it comes to understanding the consequences. The consequences vary with the strategies and approaches chosen in particular contexts.

In order to understand the medium to long-term consequences of COVID-19 and to develop knowledge and prepare the Nordic schools to ensure societal security going forward, the project Inquiring Nordic Strategies, Practices, Educational Consequences and Trajectories (INSPECT) conducts comparative studies across the different national contexts of the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. The project is based on a multidisciplinary and mixed method research design aimed at investigating the medium and long-term-consequences taking form throughout the data collection as an interplay between survey/ interview responses and student characteristics, e.g., gender, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and family conditions. In the symposium, we present three subprojects from INSPECT: one on students’ well-being, one on students’ values, and one on the teacher’s role and identity. In the presentations, researchers from Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland are represented, and all subprojects focus on cross-country analyses based on data from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. All presentations reflect their results to the tradition of Nordic schools.

Nordic schools have a strong tradition around the focus on students’ well-being from a lifelong learning perspective (Telhaug, Mediås & Aasen, 2006), but in recent years the well-being of children and young people has become more and more shrouded in uncertainty. In addition to the impact of increased performance expectation and competition, an unpredictable labour market, increased individualization and self-representation in real life and on social media (Furlong & Cartmel, 1997; Ottosen, 2018), the prolonged and devastating COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a global call to address the impact on the well-being of children and young people (Rimpelä, A., Kesanto-Jokipolvi, H., Myöhänen, A., Heikonen, L., Oinas, S., & Ahtiainen, R., 2023)). A new Danish longitudinal study on students' emotional, social, and academic well-being finds that fluctuations in all three dimensions of wellbeing can be attributed to individual differences (trait) and the natural maturation of students over time (grade), but also context (state) (Lykkegaard, Qvortrup, Juul, 2024). The context dependency of the three well-being dimensions makes it interesting to investigate whether there are differences across the Nordic countries. Comparative studies of activities and efforts can be a solid knowledge base for developing interventions aimed at strengthening students’ well-being and thus maintaining this as central to the Nordic school tradition. Based on this, the research question of this paper is: To what extent do students’ academic, social, and emotional well-being differ across Nordic countries in the post-pandemic time period? The paper is based on survey data from the five Nordic countries Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland (N = 4.500) collected as part of the large-scale project INSPECT Societal Security after COVID-19. Students’ responses to questions related to three well-being dimensions: social, emotional, and academic well-being, are analyzed with factor and cluster analysis. The paper finds that all three well-being dimensions differ across the five countries. Compared to the other countries. Iceland scores remarkably low on all three wellbeing dimensions, while Denmark is lower than Norway on academic wellbeing. The paper discusses the situation with the Nordic schools’ tradition regarding well-being and invites reflection on how schools can support students’ well-being in the post-pandemic era

Furlong, A., & Cartmel, F. (1997). Risk and uncertainty in the youth transition. YOUNG, 5(1), 3-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/110330889700500102 Lykkegaard, E.; Qvortrup, A. & Juul, C. (2024). Studentsʼ well-being fluctuations during COVID-19: a matter of grade, state, or trait? Education Sciences. 14(1): 26. doi:10.3390/educsci14010026 Ottosen, M.H., Graa Andreasen, A., Dahl, K.M., Hestbæk, A.D., Lausen, M., Rayce, S. (2018): Børn og unge i Danmark – Velfærd og trivsel 2018: https://pure.vive.dk/ws/files/3032016/B_rn_og_unge_i_danmark.pdf Rimpelä, A., Kesanto-Jokipolvi, H., Myöhänen, A., Heikonen, L., Oinas, S., & Ahtiainen, R. (2023). School and class closures and adolescent mental health during the second and later waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in Finland: a repeated cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health, 23, Article 2434. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-17342-8 Telhaug, A.O.; Mediås, O.A. & Aasen, P. (2006) The Nordic Model in Education: Education as part of the political system in the last 50 years, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50:3, 245-283, DOI: 10.1080/00313830600743274

The World Value Survey (WVS, 2015) consistently underscores the pivotal role of individuals' values in shaping economic development, fostering the emergence, and flourishing of democratic institutions, promoting the rise of gender equality, and determining the effectiveness of government within societies. According to the WVS (2015), the five Nordic countries - Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland - all belong to the group of nations with the highest scores in 'secular-rational values' (placing less emphasis on religion, traditional family values, and authority, and viewing divorce, abortion, euthanasia as relatively acceptable) and also the highest scores in 'self-expression values' (giving high priority to environmental protection, fostering tolerance of foreigners, gays and lesbians, promoting gender equality etc.). However, except for the Danish value survey (Bertilsson, 2020), there is a notable absence of longitudinal studies examining the stability and changes in Nordic values in individual Nordic countries. Our objectives for this paper are: to 1) map the situational values of a student group within and across Nordic countries, 2) trace the stability and changes of these values over time, and 3) delve into the underlying reasons and driving forces behind variations and shifts in students' values. We define values as comprising students' self-awareness and perspectives on diverse aspects, such as social relationships, family and home life, freedom, and environmental concerns. The paper draws upon qualitative narrative interviews conducted as part of the INSPECT project. A cohort of five focus students from lower secondary schools in each of the five Nordic countries (N=25) was purposefully selected to maximize the diversity of their initial values. These focus students underwent biannual interviews to capture fluctuations and trajectories in their values through lower secondary school. In the paper, we present analysis on the initial three rounds of interviews (May 2023-May 2024). Employing a social-psychological identity framework, we conduct within-case analyses (student by student) and cross-case analyses to comprehensively explore how values were shaped by the students individually and how these values were influenced by contextual factors such as gender and the country, in which they live. Our findings highlight the significance of social relationships, primarily within the family and secondly among friends. This observation is intriguing, given the broader context of 'secular-rational values' prevalent in Nordic countries (WVS, 2015). We explore whether this emphasis on family among the focus students represents a new Nordic tendency or if it is influenced by the age of the lower secondary students.

Berthelsen H, Westerlund H, Bergström G, Burr H. Validation of the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire Version III and Establishment of Benchmarks for Psychosocial Risk Management in Sweden. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 May 2;17(9):3179. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17093179. PMID: 32370228; PMCID: PMC7246423.

“Didaktik” is the center of teacher education in the Nordic countries. The modern understanding of Didaktik is an invention of nineteenth-century teacher education in Germany and some neighboring areas, not least the Nordic countries (Hopmann, 2007). Despite an almost unlimited variety of foci within the field today (Hopmann, 2007, Krogh, Qvortrup & Graf, 2023b), Didaktik theories have a number of shared characteristics (Hopmann, 2007; Qvortrup, Krogh, & Graf, 2021). Two of the shared characteristics is firstly, the autonomy of the teacher (Hopmann, 2007) and the ‘pedagogical freedom’ or ‘freedom of method’, and secondly, the conceptualisation of schools as places where democratic ideals such as equality, freedom, justice are instilled in individuals as part of its commitment to the idea of Bildung (Hopmann, 2007; Qvortrup, Krogh, & Graf, 2021). In recent years, it has increasingly been reported that these shared characteristics have been challenged by changing conditions of schooling (Krogh, Qvortrup, & Graf, 2023). This leads to the research question, of whether these characteristics – the autonomy of the teacher and the democratic ideals – are today recognizable features of the Nordic schools, and whether we can identify differences across the Nordic countries. The paper is based on survey data from the five Nordic countries Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland collected as part of the INSPECT project. Teachers’ responses to questions related to the teacher's job and the characteristics of schools are used to answer the research question. We suggest that the two characteristics in focus are important quality features of Nordic teaching and Harvey & Green (1993) argues that “quality is 'stakeholder-relative'. […] It is not possible, therefore to talk about quality as a unitary concept” (Harvey & Green, 1993, p. 29). When it comes to specifying different stakeholders, more studies suggest focusing on teachers (Entwistle et al., 2000; Townsend, 1997). According to Goe et al. (2008), teachers “are the only ones with full knowledge of their abilities, classroom context, and curricular content, and thus can provide insight that an outside observer may not recognize” (Goe et al., 2008, p. 38). We present similarities and differences in teachers’ view of the teaching profession and the values of schools, in how teachers feel supported by the curricula, their principals, and their students’ parents, and in how their experience their relationship and collaboration with colleagues. The paper discusses its results with research on the tradition of Didaktik in Nordic schools.

Entwistle, N., Skinner, D., Entwistle, D., & Orr, S. (2000). Conceptions and beliefs about “good teaching”: An integration of contrasting research areas. Higher Education Research & Development, 19(1), 5-26. doi:10.1080/07294360050020444 Harvey, L., & Green, D. (1993). Defining quality. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 18(1): 9-34. doi:10.1080/0260293930180102 Hopmann, S. (2007). Restrained Teaching:the common core of Didaktik. European Educational Research Journal, 6(2): 109-124. doi: 10.2304/eerj.2007.6.2.109 Krogh, E.; Qvortrup, A. & Graf, S. (2023a). Bildung, Knowledge, and Global Challenges in Education: Didaktik and Curriculum in the Anthropocene Era. New York: Routledge Krogh, E.; Qvortrup, A. & Graf, S. (2023b). The question of normativity: Examining educational theories to advance deliberation on challenges of introducing societal problems into education. In Krogh, E.; Qvortrup, A. & Graf, S. (red.). Bildung, Knowledge, and Global Challenges in Education: Didaktik and Curriculum in the Anthropocene Era (s. 171-202). New York: Routledge