This article reports on a study in which, for five weeks, the English lessons of two classes of 11–12 year olds in Sweden were based on Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox. To promote the learners’ engagement with the text, support understanding, and facilitate incidental vocabulary acquisition, a range of language-focused tasks were designed within the framework of the Storyline approach. In Storyline, a fictive world is created in the classroom. The story develops when learners, working in the same small groups, collaborate on open so-called key questions, which structure the Storyline, introduce happenings and problems, and link with the syllabus. Another characteristic is the integration of practical and theoretical subject content. Learners’ art work and texts are displayed on a frieze, or walls of the classroom, creating a visual record of the developing story. The study also investigated the influence on learning of the book’s illustrations, and the learners’ own drawings. The majority of the learners made gains in vocabulary, as evidenced in pre- and post-tests, writing and speaking tasks. While some learners had never thought about illustrations and drawings as a support, for many, both of these were found to be helpful.

Teaching is today often described as a matter of adjusting to the individual lives of students. Building on the premises of three educational theories, mainly Martin Buber’s concept of‘inclusion’, the article aims to confront this idea and show how pedagogical attitude can be perceived from a relational perspective. A model is constructed in which pedagogical attitude is understood as three different types of teacher-student relationships: a) an asymmetric intersubjective relationship; b) an asymmetric subject-object relationship; and c) an asymmetric object-subject relationship. The article argues that a genuine pedagogical attitude is included in the first type. It is interpreted as a matter of experiencing from the student’s side of the relationship and, at the same time, taking a stand as a pedagogical subject. This interpretation differs from a widespread notion of pedagogical attitude according to which the teacher’s position tends to be diluted.

In this article, the focal point of education is simultaneously defined as: i) the place where the most important educational activity is taking place; and ii) the place where the main interest of educational theory (and educational practice) should be located. The article aims to discuss the idea that the focal point is located somewhere between the teacher and the student. This idea is introduced by references to Gert Biesta’s inter-subjective theory and to some more or less classical conceptions which distinguish between two main aspects of sociality. Further, and as a more specific aim, the article discusses Martin Buber’s contribution to understanding the focal point of education. Buber contributes by emphasising “the interhuman” as a primary dimension in relation to “the social”. From Buber’s perspective, what really matters in education exists in an ontological and relational event. In the last section of the article it is suggested that exploration of the focal point should not stick to just one form of relationship. The interhuman event is, taken by itself, supposed to be primary, but the focal point cannot be fully understood without a penetrative picture of its social context.

This study examines if interdisciplinary teaching can be said to facilitate the learning and use of fractions by Swedish 12-year-old pupils. Home and Consumer Studies is well suited to interdisciplinary teaching, and young people can therefore find it interesting to study maths since the setting is relevant to them. Building on variation theory and a learning study, we examined pupils’ (n18) ability to double fractions greater than ½ when using a recipe. The general results show that what is to be learned benefits if it is presented in different ways, that teachers should not take pupils’ knowledge for granted, and mathematically that it is not necessary to divide something to be able to double it. We argue that the study shows that genuine problems based on pupils’ interest and life world can enhance motivation and, in turn, learning.

Feedback does not always engage students. To better understand why this happens, the present study analysed Grade 2 (7- to 8-year-old) students’ experiences of formative feedback in mathematics to identify aspects with potential importance for student engagement. The researcher processed the students’ experiences with the help of stimulated recall and semi-structured interviews. Most of the students appreciated feedback that focused on the process, instead of simply offering solution methods. However, due to a conflict between teachers and students regarding the social and socio-mathematical norms, some of the students did not understand the purpose while others wanted the teacher to state the solution method. This shows that it is important not only which norms are established, but also that this is done at an early stage. Thus, both teachers and students need to understand and accept the norms, and potentially establish new norms, if the current ones are counterproductive.

The aim of this study is to find out what teachers say their primary focus is when planning to teach an object of learning. The study is carried out in two different cultural contexts, Sweden and Hong Kong, and based on the framework of variation theory, which has a two-fold focus, namely both what teachers do and what students learn at school.

Fifteen semi-structured open-ended interviews were conducted with nine Swedish and six Hong Kong teachers in grades 1 to 6. The analysis generated categories inspired from a phenomenographic research approach, where attention is directed towards respondents’ apprehensions of a phenomenon.

The results showed some clear differences in the way teachers from the two countries talked about how they organise and think about planning, which in turn reveals whether their focus is on students’ understanding or on teacher action. The Swedish teachers’ experienced focus is on activities/methods, and they separate activities and methods from the content, while the Hong Kong teachers have the content in the foreground and do not separate content and act.

There can be several different explanations of the differences identified; such as that a too general theoretical and surface awareness of concepts of learning makes it difficult to reach a detailed level of the object of learning, i.e. what it actually takes for students to learn exactly this phenomenon or ability. The Swedish teachers seem to underestimate what it takes to learn due to a theoretical framework. Another explanation of this difference in focus might be that teachers need support from each other to deepen the reflections about the subject, thus achieving knowledge of what it takes to understand the intended object of learning. The Hong Kong teachers report frequent opportunities to discuss and reflect over subject-related matters.