Learning leadership: becoming an outdoor leader

Recent leadership research has demonstrated a need for better understanding the process of becominga leader because it might be qualitatively different to being a leader. If so, there is likely to be a need for pedagogies designed deliberately to support first-time outdoor leadership experiences and any such pedagogies must be informed by the needs of first-time leaders. Becoming a leader in outdoor educational settings involves moving from the relative equality of being one participant among several in a group to a position of some influence in the group. This paper draws on empirical data from in-depth semi-structured interviews with adult outdoor education (friluftsliv) students in Norway to explore factors influencing initial leadership experiences in a formal educational setting. We found that becoming an outdoor leader involves transformations that can be complicated by the educational setting. We discuss implications for pedagogical approaches to outdoor leadership development in formal education settings.     

Narrow identity resources for future students: the 21st century skills movement encounters the Norwegian education policy context

21st century skills is a global network of corporate and governmental influences that promotes competences suited to fit the future knowledge economy. Through a discourse analysis of an influential Official Norwegian Report, ‘The School of the Future. Renewal of Subjects and Competences’ (NOU 2015:8), this paper explores how ideas of 21st century skills are translated into the Norwegian education policy context. Firstly, the paper analyses the context-specific reasons for receptiveness by investigating discursive warrants. Secondly, the paper identifies how the policy document constructs a set of preferred subject positions that constitute an image of an ideal student. Thirdly, the paper investigates the discursive framing of these subject positions. We find that the policy document constructs an image of an ideal student who is creative, responsible, cooperative, engaged, self-regulated and in complete control of herself, her learning and her future. This image draws on more pronounced neo-liberal discourses, but also well-established discourses in the Norwegian context, such as social democratic progressivism. This intertwining of discourses shows how traits of homogeneity related to global ideas, as well as heterogeneity related to the Norwegian policy context, are both visible in the Norwegian translation of 21st century skills.     

Missed opportunities: the IEA’s study of civic education and civic education in post‐communist countries

This article argues that the opportunity in Phase I of the IEA’s Civic Education Study to include the new democracies’ experiences of citizenship education have not been sufficiently exploited. ‘Borrowing’ citizenship education from abroad and citizenship education for ‘civil society’ have been chosen as examples of problems in the new democracies which have not been exploited. The final section focuses on the question of why new and recurring problems in citizenship education, which occurred in post‐communist Europe, have not been identified, described or analysed in the IEA’s publication New paradigms and new recurring paradoxes in education for citizenship: an international comparison. The paper also points to some of the circumstances that seem to have had an impact on which problems were analysed in the study and which problems were largely ignored.     

When are poor reading skills a threat to educational achievement?

The cut-off levels of insufficient literacyskills used in national and internationalliteracy studies have not been validated. Thus,it remains uncertain whether adult poor readersare handicapped by insufficient reading skillsin everyday life, i.e. in job-related oreducational activities. The primary purpose ofthe study was to identify a minimum level belowwhich insufficient reading skills proved ahandicap to adults in their educational efforts. One hundred and eighty-nine adults in formal adult education participated in the study. The adults' reading comprehension, decoding skills, primarylanguage, level of exam, student and teacherratings of the adults' reading skills, and theadults' exam grades for courses in formal adulteducation were obtained. Exam grades below themean were taken as documentation of educationalfailure. Adults in the lowest 10thpercentile in reading skills only managed toobtain exam grades below the mean in coursesplacing heavy demands on their reading skills,indicating that poor reading skills were infact a threat to the adults' educationalachievements. Possible causes of insufficientreading skills were further examined. Adults inthe lowest 10th percentile suffered fromvery poor decoding skills. Even though a largervariation was seen in the exam grades foradults in the 10–25th percentile, theytoo, were handicapped by poor readingcomprehension. The decoding skills andsocio-economic data of these adults indicatedthat improved reading skills might increasetheir chances of getting an education.