Astrid Roe

Teaching and Learning in Lower Secondary Schools in the Era of PISA and TIMSS

This book is the 12th volume in Springer’s series on Professional learning and development in Schools and Higher Education (Series Editors: Christopher Day and Judyth Sachs). The previous volumes in the series covered issues regarding teacher learning, professionalism, and practice in schools and higher education. This book, in particular, presents and discusses a number of video studies through theoretical lenses and methodological approaches intended to continue opening up the black box of classroom teaching and learning practices. In this regard, the book is an important addition to the existing literature on video studies, advancing work done earlier by researchers such as Stigler, Gallimore and Hiebert (2000), Ulewicz and Betty (2001), Clarke, Keitel and Shimizu (2006) as well as Janik and Seidel (2013). In the era of PISA and TIMMS, these kinds of work may prove increasingly important to provide the necessary counter balance when studying the dynamic processes in education systems and not just focusing on the products or narrow outputs of a system. Another goal of this book is to expand the discussion about students’ and teachers’ behaviours and practices in the classrooms – beginning with in-depth inquiries into Norwegian secondary school classrooms, and extending this discussion to Europe and other regions. The first chapter provides an overview of the book, as well as key theoretical and methodological dimensions adopted by the contributors of this book. The four key dimensions that serve as analytical lenses as well as a theoretical backdrop are instructional clarity (clear goals, explicit instruction, content-focused instruction); cognitive activation (quality of the task, cognitive challenge, content coverage); discourse features (student engagement, quality of teacher–-student interaction); and supportive climate (creating an environment of respect and rapport). The authors argue that these dimensions are essential for high-quality instruction, and video studies provide a unique approach to study these dimensions. The chapter then discusses video study designs and strategies for data collection and analyses. The aforementioned dimensions are analysed individually and together, quantitatively and qualitatively – in parallel for some cases – to develop a more nuanced understanding about the complexities of classroom learning. This trove of rich data includes: video recordings from 140 videotaped lessons, 57 videotaped interviews with pairs of students, 42 audiotaped student interviews, 18 interviews with teachers, as well as copies of students’ work and assignments. These data were originally collected under the PISA+ (2010) project to examine some of the issues identified in Norway’s PISA 2000 and 2003 results in science, mathematics and reading. The subsequent eleven chapters are sectioned off into three parts. The first part, which includes chapters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6, focuses on instructional patterns within and across science, mathematics and language arts classrooms. The findings indicate distinct differences between the three subjects, with specific challenges and patterns within each subject. One of the most interesting chapters in the book is Chapter 2, where the authors break away from what they refer to as false conceptual dichotomies and use multi-level coding schemes to analyse instructional practices together with the type of interaction that took place in the science classrooms they observed. The use of multiple analytical lenses in a parallel fashion led to a more nuanced understanding of the possibilities of classroom interaction for the purposes of facilitating learning. Other chapters (3, 4) in this first section reveal the teachers’ struggles in implementing effective practices in the classroom and the support they require in making advances in their professional practice. Inter-subject classroom comparisons also revealed interesting similarities and differences (Chapter 2, 4 and 5). For example, while teachers in language arts classrooms in Norway seemed to vary their instructional practices,

Opportunities to Write: An Exploration of Student Writing During Language Arts Lessons in Norwegian Lower Secondary Classrooms:

Research suggests that student development as writers requires a supportive environment in which they receive sustained opportunities to write. However, writing researchers in general know relatively little about the actual writing opportunities embedded in students’ language arts lessons and how students’ production of texts in class is framed. The present study analyzes 178 video-recorded language arts lessons across 46 secondary classrooms in Norway based on the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation. Specifically, we assess how often and in what situations students get an opportunity to engage in writing or are explicitly encouraged to write. We found that some writing assignments are short and fragmented, especially when students are merely recopying information from teachers’ materials. However, our analysis also provides detailed insight into how some teachers facilitate sustained, genre-focused, and process-oriented writing opportunities. These are powerful examples of successful writing instruction, and they suggest that when Norwegian language arts teachers prioritize writing, the opportunities to write are both sustained and scaffolded, the purpose of writing is explicit, and genre-specific assessment criteria are often used.

Investigating teachers’ and school principals’ enactments of national testing policies: A Norwegian study

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine teachers’ reported experiences, practices, and attitudes on the use of national test results in a low-stakes accountability context. Whether the stakes are high or low, teachers and school leaders have different experiences, knowledge, and beliefs concerning how to use national test results to benefit individual student learning. This paper addresses how teachers experience school leadership and policy requirements for using national test results in local schools. Design/methodology/approach This paper is part of a larger study conducted in a Norwegian educational context investigating school leaders’ and teachers’ enactments of policy demands via the use of national test results data. The sub-study reported in this paper is based on survey data from all lower secondary teachers (n=176) in one Norwegian municipality. Micro-policy perspectives and the concept of crafting policy coherence served as analytical tools. Findings Diversity between the schools was found in how teachers perceive the principals’ role. Practices and attitudes appeared restrained, somewhat conformed by, but still indifferent to the policy intention. However, there was a close relationship between the principals’ facilitation of national tests and the teachers’ practices of utilizing the results. Originality/value This study clarified how micro-policy works in local schools in a low-stakes context. A prominent difference was found between the policy intentions and local schools’ practice of using national test results.

Justice through participation: student engagement in Nordic classrooms

ABSTRACT In this article, we approach large questions regarding justice and equality in the Nordic classrooms. A substantial body of previous research emphasises the importance of student engagement in teaching and learning. Drawing on video data from Norway, Sweden and Finland, we focus on whole-class teaching, i.e. situations in which the teacher addresses the class from the front of the classroom, to investigate justice trough participation. We have approached our topic through two concerns: student participation in classroom discourse and student engagement as providing access to content. Our findings seem to pose some serious challenges for the Nordic welfare society vision of classrooms as core societal hubs for justice and equality. While whole-class teaching is one of the primary tools available for attempting to achieve justice and equality for all, this interaction format seems to contain inherent constraints that do not support equitable student engagement. Further, the way the Nordic classrooms have responded so far to the massive digitisation in their societies seems to pose serious questions rather than provide comforting answers.

Students’ Perspectives on Reading Instruction and Reading Engagement

Good reading skills are a prerequisite for success in education, at work and in everyday life, Moreover, reading engagement and good reading strategies are key factors in achieving such skills. Reading engagement certainly has an immediate influence on students´ reading ability, and it might predict to what extent students will read in the future, and thus influence their learning success in life. Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in the United States shows that adolescents who identified themselves as being interested in reading achieved better scores on the tests, and they had better high school averages than students who were less interested in reading (Donahue et al. 2003).