Can Teachers’ Instruction Increase Low-SES Students’ Motivation to Learn Mathematics?

Students’ motivation in mathematics has been shown to predict their achievement and whether they pursue a later career in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). To sustain equity in education, it is important that students are motivated for the STEM fields, independent of their background characteristics (e.g., gender and SES). Previous research has revealed that students’ motivation declines from primary to secondary school. The present study investigates whether this unwanted development may be related to students’ SES, and more importantly, what aspects of teachers’ instruction are related to student motivation for low, medium, and high-SES student groups in grade 5 and 9. We use data from students in grades 5 and 9 and their teachers who participated in TIMSS 2015 in Norway. Multilevel (students and classes), multi-group structural equation modelling is used to answer the research questions. In line with previous research from Germany and the USA, the results showed that SES is more important to student motivation in secondary than primary school, that low SES students’ motivation depends more on their teachers’ instructional quality than high SES students and that this dependency is stronger in secondary school than in primary school. The implications and contributions of the study are discussed.

Digital Inclusion in Norwegian and Danish Schools—Analysing Variation in Teachers’ Collaboration, Attitudes, ICT Use and Students’ ICT Literacy

The capability to use digital technologies in an appropriate way has become a fundamental requirement of everyday life and wide adoption of digital technologies has gained a firm footing into the educational systems. Equity is a central goal in the Nordic model and ICT integration policies are warranted at the national level along with massive improvements in ICT infrastructures. The schools in their efforts towards realizing this objective have to integrate digital technology in teaching and learning in such a way that all children are given opportunities to participate in work, life and society. It is thus of interest to study the extent of digital inclusion, by examining the variation in computer and information literacy of students both within and between schools by addressing access and use of ICT in instruction among teachers. Data for the present study comes from 138 schools from Norway (2436 students, 1653 teachers) and 110 schools from Denmark (1767 students, 728 teachers) who took part in the International Computer and Information Literacy Study in 2013. Using a multilevel approach, variations at both levels in student computer and information literacy score and teacher collaboration in ICT use were examined. The results indicate that availability of digital technologies is a significant contributor towards student ICT achievement and teacher collaboration in both countries. There are small differences in computer and literacy score between the schools, while significant variations are noted between the students. Additionally, teachers’ attitudes are found to contribute significantly towards collaboration between teachers.

The Black Box of Nordic Education Held Against the Light of Large-Scale International Assessment Resources—A Critical Commentary

This book answers the following general question: when it comes to the impact of socio-economic status (SES) on student results in the context of the so-called Nordic model, what can we learn from large-scale international student assessments? The findings presented are not only new and valuable, but they also raise critical questions, some of which I will discuss below.

Exploring Diversity in the Relationships Between Teacher Quality and Job Satisfaction in the Nordic Countries—Insights from TALIS 2013 and 2018

Equity and quality are the common goals to strive for in the Nordic education systems. Yet the mechanisms through which the separate education systems approach these goals have become more diverse. The chapter provides evidence in support of the different facets of teacher quality, such as self-efficacy, as well as teacher-students relations concerning their importance for teachers’ job satisfaction across the Nordic countries. Diversities, however, were also observed. The results from the TALIS 2013 model outlined two subgroups of the Nordic countries with similar mechanisms: the Norway-Sweden and the Denmark-Finland groups. No distinctive group was found in the TALIS 2018 results, producing more country-specific patterns, such as the importance of social utility value for Norway, adverse classroom composition in Sweden or teacher effective professional development positively impacting the personal and social utility values of teachers in Finland. These observed diversities and changing patterns may find their reasons in the gradually dissolved unity of the Nordic model by the different reform actions taken in recent years, such as in the example of Sweden, and in the long-term prerequisites for the teaching profession, where Finland is the country that stands out.

Equity, Equality and Diversity in the Nordic Countries—Final Thoughts and Looking Ahead

In the process of preparing this volume, especially in our review of previous scientific work on the Nordic model of education, it appeared that different researchers approached the topic primarily in the form of historical–political policy analyses (Telhaug, Mediås, & Aasen, 2006) and through the qualitative description of individual country portraits or the differences between these (e.g., Antikainen, 2006; Blossing, Imsen, & Moos, 2014; Lundahl, 2016). In these previous analyses, the question was raised whether a common Nordic model of education can be identified at all and to what extent neoliberal policies and broader globalisation trends affect the further development of education systems in the Nordic countries. The latter has especially been discussed in light of the increased competition between these systems emerging currently, here running against the common thread that was adopted shortly after World War II. In contrast to the works mentioned above, this book explicitly chose a quantitative empirical approach to the topic, linked with the attempt to indicate, measure and evaluate educational equity across the Nordic countries using data from large-scale assessment studies. Thus, the approach of this book was more data driven and descriptive than oriented on the political question of whether a common model exists.

Measuring Equity Across the Nordic Education Systems—Conceptual and Methodological Choices as Implications for Educational Policies

Ever since international large-scale student assessments made it possible to rank countries according to their equitability, Nordic countries have topped these rankings. Nevertheless, a decline in equity has been reported lately. However, the process of empirical enquiry that leads to specific inferences on equity partly stays obscure to education decision-makers. This unawareness of the boundaries of specific methodological and analytical approaches may lead to wrong interpretations and policy implications. Therefore, our aim is to discuss and empirically illustrate how the array of choices taken throughout the research process, from equity conceptualization and operationalization to its measurement, may affect the inferences on educational equity for Nordic countries. Our sample includes fourth- and eighth-grade students from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland who participated in TIMSS 2015. We applied two-level multigroup regression models within the structural equation modelling framework to investigate the sensitivity of the countries’ level of equity to: (a) operationalization of the socioeconomic status measure; (b) operationalization of equity or, in other words, the method of analysis employed (e.g., bivariate analysis versus univariate); (c) single-level against multilevel analytical approaches; (d) the grade/age of students; and (e) the choice of the learning outcome across subject domains. Prior to the analyses, we estimated the comparability of SES as a latent construct between Nordic countries. Our results confirmed that some of the most common choices to measure educational equity do matter. Thus, we would encourage a researcher to report elaborately on the research process and inform on its limitations because if interpreted wrongly, it may have unfavourable consequences for a particular group of individuals.

Resilient and Nonresilient Students in Sweden and Norway—Investigating the Interplay Between Their Self-Beliefs and the School Environment

Using TIMSS 2015 data and a person-centred approach, the chapter focuses on academically resilient students in Norway and Sweden in grade eight. The self-belief profiles of academically resilient students compared with the nonresilient groups (i.e., low SES/low achievement, high SES/low achievement and high SES/high achievement) are investigated. Further, we evaluated the characteristics of the classroom environment for each of the profiles. After accounting for student SES and achievement, personal characteristics, advantages and disadvantages in the classroom and the school environment, we identified distinctive student profiles that might be more prone to risk. In the context of the equality–inequality paradigm, recognition of these profiles can strengthen the possibility to reduce the gap in battling different aspects of inequality across social groups. Concurrently, although we distinguish the same student groups across Sweden and Norway, their distribution within the countries differs. The latter results contribute to the ongoing debate on the dissolution/unification of the Nordic model, especially regarding particular trends within the Swedish education system.

Equity, Equality and Diversity—Putting Educational Justice in the Nordic Model to a Test

Equity, equality and diversity are often linked to educational policy within the Nordic countries in the form of goals and principles. This can be traced back to the common educational tradition of these countries within the Nordic model of education. Because the terms are often used interchangeably, it seems appropriate to first grasp the theoretical and philosophical understanding of the terms before concrete educational policy measures can be assessed regarding to these goals. The chapter provides an overview of the terms and concretises educational policy measures to achieve equity, equality and diversity in the context of the Nordic countries. Today, societal developments and political changes call into question the common ground of the Nordic countries when it comes to matters of educational equity. Among other things, it will be discussed what contribution large scale international comparative studies can make to understanding equity, equality and diversity.

The Case for Good Discipline? Evidence on the Interplay Between Disciplinary Climate, Socioeconomic Status, and Science Achievement from PISA 2015

In both educational and psychological research, the relation between socioeconomic status (SES) and academic achievement is the most widely examined contextual effect. While several research syntheses have reported evidence of positive and significant SES–achievement relations (i.e., higher SES is associated with better academic achievement in several domains), they also reported substantial variation across educational contexts, such as classrooms, schools, and educational systems, and proposed mechanisms underlying these relations. This chapter addressed this variation and tested three hypotheses on the interplay between socioeconomic status, the disciplinary climate in science lessons, and science achievement—the compensation hypothesis, the mediation hypothesis, and the moderation hypothesis. Utilizing the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015 data from the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), multilevel structural equation modeling provided evidence to test the contextual, indirect, and cross-level interaction effects. While evidence for the compensation hypothesis existed in most Nordic countries, evidence supporting the mediating and moderating roles of the disciplinary climate for the SES–achievement relation was sparse.

Equity and Diversity in Reading Comprehension—A Case Study of PISA 2000–2018

This chapter studies equity in reading performance in PISA 2000–2018 in three Nordic countries: Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Using regression analyses, the study investigates how the reading performance trend for groups of students with different genders, home backgrounds and minorities has developed. The study is contextualised through an up-to-date description of reading comprehension instruction in the countries. In addition to trend analyses of general reading performance, the study examines if the differences between groups of students are consistent across different text formats in the digital version of the PISA test, distinguishing between static text types (e.g., articles, letters, stories) and dynamic text types (e.g., websites, forums and e-mails, etc.). We find a consistently high reading literacy performance in all Scandinavian countries compared with international development. There are large gender differences in the average reading performance in all three countries, disfavouring boys, especially low-performing boys from low SES home backgrounds. We find a huge and stable gap between minority and majority students’ reading achievement, even when corrected for SES. Taking these findings into account, we assert that there is no basis for concluding that the school systems give more equitable learning conditions for groups of students now than when the PISA assessments started. However, it appears that the new online text formats in PISA 2018 might shrink the differences between student groups. Based on our findings, we argue that it is highly doubtful if one can still speak of a Nordic model of education, both as an idea of equity and fairness and as a model that is united across the Nordic countries.