Hilde Wågsås Afdal

In this scoping review, we explored research on the use of intervention and standardised quality assurance programmes in Nordic early childhood education and care (ECEC) from 2010 to 2025. By examining peer-reviewed articles, we aimed to map the characteristics of research on the use of such programmes, focusing on their purposes, findings, implications, knowledge gaps, limitations, and directions for future research. We systematically searched eight educational databases, and after a comprehensive screening process that included hand searches, we identified 69 studies that met the inclusion criteria. The results revealed a significant increase in studies on intervention programmes in ECEC, particularly between 2021 and 2023. Most of the studies employed quantitative methods, including quasi-experimental and randomised controlled trials. The studies consistently advocated implementing intervention programmes in ECEC as part of a preventive early strategy. Rooted in Anglo-American traditions of evidence-based intervention and effectiveness research, these developments contrast with key features of the traditional Nordic model and may indicate an ongoing ideological shift in Nordic ECEC. However, such developments should also be understood considering broader international trends towards intervention- and outcome-oriented research. This study highlights the need for further qualitative research exploring how such programmes shape pedagogical practices, professional autonomy, and children’s participation in Nordic ECEC.

This chapter explores developments in how teachers’ professional ethics are practiced within a context of increased accountability. Professional ethics are seen at a broader level as it is practiced in the profession within a contested and dynamic educational policy in which teacher quality is being continuously redefined. Drawing on recent research conducted in the Norwegian context, the analysis shows that increased political expectations to use broader professional knowledge, student performance data to support learning, and more collaborative approaches to practice development have actualized new dimensions of professional ethics. These are related to evaluating the validity and relevance of professional knowledge, including the role of student performance data in promoting such values as educational equality, social mobility, and inclusion. Using empirical examples, we illustrate that the way professional ethics are being practiced makes value-laden, ethical dilemmas underlying professional practice more visible. We conclude that the new dimensions of professional ethics direct attention beyond the micro-level of situated ethics of care and classroom interactions to a macro-level of broader professional values and the social mandate. This suggests a more collective understanding of teacher quality, one related more closely to the quality of collectively developed professional knowledge and knowledge practices at schools than to teachers’ individual performances.

This article explores how teachers in Finland, Norway, and the United States reflect on their professional space for decision-making when planning. Various planning activities are at the core of teaching practice, and contextual factors are also at play. Teachers’ reflections on decision-making when planning might therefore be expected to vary. Hence, this study explores in what ways the opportunities to make decisions for planning may vary across the three country contexts. Using “professional space” as an analytical lens, the analysis shows, firstly, that teachers’ opportunities to make decisions about planning take place in a multidimensional space between professional autonomy and external control. Secondly, teachers’ opportunities to make decisions about planning are contextually situated in time and space.

In this study, an undergraduate teacher education course is used to explore whether and how academic reading seminars reflect the theoretical notion of academic literacies and provide a learning environment for developing academic and professional learning and engagement. The data analyzed in this article are transcribed recordings of small group activities where students discuss scientific articles based on a template. First, our empirical analysis shows that the use of the template facilitated dialogical discussions and the development of a cognitive skillset and disciplinary categories when used in a social setting. Second, we found that the most challenging part of designing a reading practice related to the academic literacies tradition was fostering a dialogical environment for discussing the validity of findings across different contexts and provide for discussions encompassing complexity, nuances, and meaning making. We found traces of such discussions in all the transcripts; however, many examples were in a premature stage. The paper concludes with a discussion on, and some suggestions for, further development of the template used in the reading seminars.

This article revisits methodological perspectives on international comparative research on teacher education (TE). Benefits and problems related to comparative educational research methodology in general are discussed. Further, methodological issues associated with designing and carrying out an international comparative study on TE are addressed using a multi-level study on teacher education in Finland and Norway an as example. Towards the end of the article, the promises and limitations of international comparative research on TE are presented. Important benefits of comparative education on TE include widening the understanding of one’s own and other TE systems as well as gaining an understanding of international trends. However, uncritical use of such research may lead to decontextualised, ahistorical and standardised transfer and development of education and educational policies. The article concludes by urging researchers in the field of international comparative research on teacher education to address the questions: What is being compared? How is context addressed?

Changing conditions in the realm of teacher professionalism have consequences for teachers’ professional values and ethics. To a large degree, the literature concludes that increases in accountability policies seem to result in more restricted space for teachers’ professional values and ethical autonomy. Less attention has been given to which kinds and forms of ethics and value logics teachers negotiate and prefer in situations involving accountability policies. In this paper, we analyze how the Union of Education Norway negotiated teacher values in the process of developing their professional ethics code and the final code text. Previous research has shown clashes and struggles between two value systems, or as a change from traditional professional to neoliberal values. However, based on the analyses in this article, a third relation is suggested—one where increased accountability creates a paradoxical situation for teachers’ professional values and ethics—in which the professional ethics of opposition may analytically empty teacher practice of ethical aspects and where professional ethics of engagement may lead to decreased conditions for ethical engagement.