Effects of the 2003 Quality Reform on Gender Gaps in Student Learning Outcomes in Norwegian Higher Education

In 2003, the Norwegian higher educational system was reformed. The reform, known as the 2003 Quality Reform, introduced changes in the teaching model and student assessment. The authors wished to study how these changes affected male and female students. Therefore, they addressed student learning outcomes, measured through examination results, with respect to gender. Analysis of 5,772,811 examinations from 1990 to 2009 revealed a switch in average performance, from men performing equally well or better than women to women performing better than men. However, greater male than female variability in performance did not change. The effect of gender persisted when controlling for age, subject, home municipality, and type of institution. Overall, women and older students seem to benefit from the changes introduced by the reform more than men and younger students.     

Explaining Health and Social Care Students' Experiences of Meaningfulness in Vocational Education: The Importance of Life Goals,Learning Support,Perceived Competence,and Autonomous Motivation

The experience of meaning in a learning situation is a stated goal of Knowledge Promotion Reform in Norway. This study, guided by self-determination theory, examines how pursuing intrinsic and extrinsic life goals relates to the experience of meaning in vocational education. The study also examines how learning support, perceived competence, and different types of autonomous motivation are associated with students' experiences of meaning. The sample consisted of health and social care students (N?=?405) in upper secondary school. The results indicated that intrinsic goals encouraged meaningfulness in all subjects, whereas extrinsic goals related to perceived meaninglessness in vocational subjects. Learning support, perceived competence, and autonomous types of motivation all have a positive link to students' experiences of meaning, either directly or indirectly.     

“I feel I mean something to someone”: solution-focused brief therapy support groups for bullied schoolchildren

The aim of this study was to investigate how bullied schoolchildren experience solution-focused brief therapy support groups, and to examine how members of the support group experience their participation in the group. An explorative qualitative design, with individual and focus group interviews, was used. The sample consisted of 19 schoolchildren, aged 12–13 years, three of whom were bullied. Six individual interviews were conducted with the bullied children and three focus group interviews were held with the support groups. The bullied children reported that the bullying stopped after they received help from the support group and the improvements remained after three months. Their daily lives at school changed and they felt safer and happier and made friends. Members of the support groups reported that they were doing a meaningful job in helping the victims. It is important that school nurses, educational psychologists and teachers, together with parents, follow up bullied children, to prevent further bullying.     

Task-oriented reading of multiple documents: online comprehension processes and offline products

We explored readers’ judgments of text relevance and strategy use while they read about a controversial scientific issue in multiple conflicting documents using a think-aloud methodology and had them write a short essay after reading. Participants were university-level students. There were three main findings. First, readers discriminated between more- and less-relevant information while they read. Second, the frequency with which they used strategies differed while they read more- and less-relevant information. Specifically, while they read more-relevant information, students were more likely to build connections between that information and information in other texts. Third, their judgments of more-relevant segments as relevant and their evaluation of less-relevant information while they read were related to the quality of students’ essays after they read. We discuss how the findings may contribute to the literature on task-oriented reading of multiple documents.     

Contagious Media Effects: How Media Use and Exposure to Game-Framed News Influence Media Trust

The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which trust in media is affected by personal media use and the framing of politics as a strategic game. The study is based on a four-wave panel survey matched with media content data, which allows us to investigate not only correlations but also individual-level effects on media trust. In accordance with previous research, our analyses show that the use of specific media types leads to more trust in those specific media. The results also show that media framing of politics as a strategic game has a negative effect on trust in the media. The more citizens are exposed to game-framed news, the less they tend to trust the media, with the exception of tabloid newspapers. Overall, these results lend support to the assumption of contagious effects of game-framed news. In a concluding section, we sum up our results and discuss the implications of our findings.     

‘It's the other assessment that is the key’: three Norwegian physical education teachers' engagement (or not) with assessment for learning

The international agenda for assessment continues to convey a growing interest in assessment for learning (AfL) as a tool to support learning and enhance teaching. Complementing this, the recent literature on assessment in physical education acknowledges the need for physical educators to integrate AfL into their teaching and assessment practice as an important part of the future development of the subject. Appreciating that physical education must be recognized as part of the larger movement culture in society and is a place to learn about movement culture, this study explores how AfL is understood and enacted by physical education teachers and the extent to which such enactment complements or challenges learning movement cultures within physical education. This study shares how three Norwegian physical education teachers used AfL to term what they were practicing with respect to assessment in physical education. We follow the interactions of the selected teachers throughout focus groups, using the empirical data as our ‘dialogue partner’ in reconstructing and discussing their assessment stories. We conclude that the need of embedding AfL in learning theory may well be one of the strongest challenges to enacting AfL in physical education. We acknowledge that not only are most existing theories of learning defined cognitively, but also that learning connected to physical education and activity is, to a large extent, practical and embodied, and also linked to the powerful discourses of sport and related areas such as health.     

Classroom disciplinary climate of schools and gender – evidence from the Nordic countries

ABSTRACT

Classroom disciplinary climate has emerged as a crucial factor with regard to student achievement. However, most previous studies have not explored potential gender differences in both students’ perceptions of the classroom disciplinary climate and the association between classroom disciplinary climate and student learning. Using data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 for the Nordic countries, we found a significant association between the perceived classroom disciplinary climate of schools and students’ mathematics performance across countries. On the basis of an analysis of a pooled sample consisting of all 5 Nordic countries, we found that the correlation between classroom disciplinary climate of schools and maths achievement is significantly stronger for boys than for girls. Further analyses showed that this finding may partly be attributable to gender differences in the perception of the disciplinary climate of schools, whereby boys seemed to perceive the classroom disciplinary climate of schools more positively than girls.     

Stress prevention through a time management training intervention: an experimental study

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a short-term time management training programme on perceived control of time and perceived stress. The sample of 177 freshmen was randomly assigned to a time management training (n?=?89) and an active control group (CG) (n?=?88). We expected that an increase in external demands during the first weeks of the semester would lead to more perceived stress in the CG, but not in the time management training group, due to the time management intervention. As hypothesised, perceived stress increased in the CG, but not in the time management training group. Furthermore, perceived control of time increased in the time management training group but remained unchanged in the CG. Even a rather short intervention of 2?h can protect freshmen from an increase in perceived stress at the beginning of the semester.