This article looks at a challenge-based learning (CBL) approach that aims to engage students in sustainable transitions within urban and regional planning. Drawing on CBL, we focus on how living labs -- the idea of using a city as a site for user-driven innovation and development -- can be used as a site and methodology in education and research…

In mathematics classrooms, it is common practice to work through a series of comparable tasks provided in a textbook. A central question in mathematics education is if tasks should be accompanied with solution methods, or if students should construct the solutions themselves. To explore the impact of these two task designs on student behavior…

Research review articles over the years have established that studies on teaching critical thinking suffer from methodological and theoretical deficiencies, making results unreliable. The methods have been criticized for not handling threats to internal validity (designs without control groups or proper randomization) and the theories have been…

The purpose of this intervention study was to develop and evaluate a support model for teachers, designed to assist them in diagnosing students' (age 16-19 years) difficulties and providing feedback to support students' mathematical problem solving. Reporting on an iteration in a design research project, the results showed that the support helped…

The intention of the study was to examine the effects of a fraction intervention in a whole-class environment. The intervention aimed to enhance students' conceptual fraction knowledge, with a major focus on fraction magnitude understanding. This study included 120 fifth-grade students in standard classroom settings. Utilizing a cluster randomized…

In the face of the global sustainability crisis, schools and teachers are called on to transform education and implement educational innovations to strengthen sustainability education. One of these innovations is 'open schooling': educational practices that involve students in identifying, exploring, and tackling real-world sustainability problems…

Learning to calculate with natural numbers by structuring seems promising but how this can be taught in a sustainable manner remains an open question. An eight-month-long intervention based on the idea of using a structural approach to addition and subtraction, and particularly bridging through ten, was implemented in four Swedish first-grade…

This article examines how teachers and students connect disciplinary knowledge to contexts outside the classroom in naturally occurring teaching in 80 Nordic lower secondary social studies lessons using a standardized observation manual. We found evidence that teachers often connected disciplinary knowledge to students' experiences and wider…

In literature, teaching for an authentic learning experience is seen as rewarding and interesting, promoting better understanding of for example sustainable development and fostering students' independence. Some upper secondary schools emphasise authentic teaching and learning on their websites, showcasing how students engage in authentic tasks.…

Background: To make students more interested and engaged in science, new teaching approaches have been developed aiming at higher order thinking. Context-based learning approaches emanate from an idea that science content knowledge should be presented in a relevant context for students to improve their learning outcomes as well as making them more…

This study aims to investigate affordances of models and modelling in design projects in technology education. To learn more about affordances when working with models and modelling, four Swedish technology teachers were interviewed using a narrative approach. Despite a small number of informants data were rich, containing detailed descriptions of…

The aim of this study is to measure the effects of teaching problem-solving strategies as an integrated part of the mathematical content prescribed by the curriculum. By implementing the designs principles developed in the previous study, we carry out a one-year-long teaching intervention in a Swedish upper secondary school. Pre- and post-tests…

Background: In this cross-national study, Spanish, Finnish, and Swedish middle and high school students' procedural flexibility was examined, with the specific intent of determining whether and how students' equation-solving accuracy and flexibility varied by country, age, and/or academic track. The 791 student participants were asked to solve…

The purpose of this study was to explore similarities and differences between special educator preparation in Norway and in Sweden. Graduates of special education programmes at two Norwegian (n = 320) and two Swedish universities (n = 425) who completed their training between 2001 and 2012 responded to surveys. Findings indicate that both Swedish…

This study aims to investigate the ways in which a particular digital technology, the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB), mediates preschool teachers' teaching. Over five months in 2017 and early spring 2018, five preschool teachers and 22 children aged 4--6 were video observed. By identifying aspects of IWB as a mediational means, the findings of the…