Investigating Teaching Quality through Video Capture: Equity and Quality in Nordic Classrooms

This Open Access book provides insights into teaching qualities and issues of equity across lower-secondary classrooms in the Nordic countries. It focuses specifically on features of teaching qualities in three subjects, i.e. mathematics, language arts and social science education. The work highlights similarities and differences across subjects, classrooms and countries. The book draws on comparative, large-scale classroom video data and student perceptions data across all five Nordic countries with implications for understanding classroom teaching and, thus, students’ opportunities to learn.

The video dataset is coded using an observation manual as an analytical lens and provides a shared conceptual framework and language for describing features of teaching qualities. The book combines broader analyses of large-scale patterns in teaching with qualitative and in-depth analyses of distinct instructional features, such as classroom discourse, intellectual challenge, students’ well-being and the role of explicit instruction. Analyses focus on patterns both across and within subjects and countries. The findings provide empirical evidence for dilemmas in contemporary classroom teaching: how to balance students’ engagement with content while still supporting their academic well-being. Teachers’ use of explicit instruction and scaffolding techniques raise questions for the equitable access to education in the Nordics. This book offers practitioners and policy makers a unique insight into subject matter teaching in the Nordic countries, with evidence toward enactment of values and educational aims as well as highlighting areas for development and improvement. The findings and conclusions are relevant to teacher educators, professional development, policy makers and practitioners in the Nordic countries and beyond.

Kirsti Klette is a distinguished professor at the University of Oslo, Department of Teacher Education and School Research. Her research interests comprise research on teaching and learning, teaching quality, comparative classroom studies and teacher education. She has been the PI for several international and comparative projects targeted classroom learning, including been the director and PI of the recent Nordic Center of Excellence Quality in Nordic Teaching (QUINT).

 Dr. Camilla Gudmundsdatter Magnusson is an associate professor and teacher educator at the Faculty of Teacher Education and Languages at Østfold University College, Norway. She received her doctoral degree in Norwegian L1 education from the University of Oslo in 2021 and was a Postdoctoral fellow in the Nordic Centre of Excellence Quality in Nordic Teaching (QUINT). Her research work has largely focused on reading and literacy instructional practices in L1 classrooms, life skills teaching, and L1 teachers’ professional development.

 Dr. Jóhann Örn Sigurjónsson is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Akureyri. He completed his Ph.D. in educational science at the University of Iceland in 2023 and now works for the Directorate of Education and School Services. His research focuses on quality aspects in teaching such as cognitive activation and support for learning, the use of educational materials, as well as curriculum and assessment in mathematics.