Approximately 43 percent of schools in Norway are nongraded schools. A study of teacher thinking and planning in social studies was carried out in six small, nongraded schools in rural Norway. An obligatory social studies theme in the national curriculum is "the human being in society." At each school, one teacher of students aged 11-13 was observed while presenting four lessons on this theme. The lessons lasted 1 hour to 1 day, and afterward the teacher was interviewed about her understanding of what happened in the classroom and the influence of the larger school context. The teacher's understanding of the instructional patterns in their contextual framework was analyzed in relation to some main goals of education common in pedagogical literature and teacher education in Norway. This paper presents analyses for five teachers. The teachers differed in their ability to cope simultaneously with all the important dimensions of teaching. Only one teacher had a good balance among all dimensions, was able to familiarize herself and the students with appropriate action patterns in the classroom, and therefore created joint control of the teaching situation. The extent to which teachers balanced or overemphasized dimensions of teaching was related to school leadership and school culture. Other findings are concerned with the home-like atmosphere of small ungraded schools, the relationship of such schools to their community, and the nature of teacher knowledge from an epistemological perspective. (Contains 16 references.) (SV)