Discussions about books and ways of reading play an important role in the curriculum for the Swedish secondary school system. In an intervention study based on a series of book discussions of an easy reader novel, I investigated the cooperation between a group of Swedish language learners aged 16 to 19, their teacher in the introduction program for newcomers, and the school librarian. Based on my function as a teacher educator, and drawing on the current research in literature didactics, I planned and carried out six discussions where different reading strategies and methods were used. Using the concept of third space (Gutiérrez, 2008; Skerrett, 2010b) and interpersonal space(Cummins, 2000), I discuss the students’cognitive and emotional responses to the story we shared, and reflect upon the way these discussions have developed. Semi-structured interviews with five students, a teacher, and a school librarian constitute the data for this study. The analysis of the data indicates that the leader of the group discussion is instrumental in helping the participants shift between different perspectives, try out new roles, and transgress different boundaries, thereby offering the group different emotional, cognitive and linguistic challenges. 

Research shows that the quality of the teacher-student relationship is crucial to students’ learning and development, especially for students in need of special support. In Scandinavia, the concept of relational competence is increasingly used to define a teacher’s ability to build supportive relationships. In this article, relational competence is discussed in the context of special education. The article investigates how relational competence is described in the curriculum for special education teacher training. Syllabuses (n = 142) at all Swedish universities that have programs in special education (n = 11) are included in the analysis, with a focus on the learning goals (n = 857). Content analysis provides both an overall and a more in-depth picture. The first study shows that there are relatively few learning goals relevant to relational competence. For example, the key concepts “relation,” “participation,” and “empathy” are very rarely used, and “care” and “trust” are completely absent. The second study shows, among other findings, that relevant content mainly concerns the special educator as a qualified interlocutor vis-à-vis colleagues. Hardly any goals include teacher–student or teacher–parent relationships. On the whole, the results indicate that relational competence is a neglected topic in this discourse, and that it has a fairly narrow focus. The implications of this lack are discussed, and suggestions for improvement are added. 

Formative feedback has the potential to support student learning and performance. However, teachers sometimes have difficulties realizing their intentions with formative feedback when responding to students’ questions or solutions. If the actual response provided does not agree with the teacher’s intentions, the formative potential may be diminished or lost. The purpose of this study is therefore to investigate whether teachers themselves are able to identify the correspondence between their stated intentions and their actual response to students. Four teachers participated in the study by responding to the mathematical reasoning performed by twelve students in grades 4-5 (the feedback situations were recorded) and then taking part in stimulated-recall interviews. The results show that the teachers were able to identify certain instances of correspondence, and/or differences, between their intentions and how they acted in the feedback situations. The differences identified by the teachers were justified based on the teachers’ individual beliefs – for instance, the belief that some mathematical methods belong to certain grade levels and should not be taught in advance – or on concerns about how the students would react.

The aim, in this qualitative semi- structured interview study, is to analyze whatmodalities a primary s chool teacher in a multicultural school context stresses when assessing her third grade students’ meaning making in their multimodaltext productions. The study has a socio-cultural perspect ive and the theoreticalpoints and analysis tools are based in the socio semiotic multimodal theories, and in the multiliteracies research. The results show that the teacher on theone hand mainly focuses o n the semiotic resources, image, color and writing, and to some ext ent squares, symbols and speech bubbles in student petitions, but on the other hand her statements points out the complexity of the task formulation gives rise. It proves to be problematic for the teacher to allow stu-dents to freely interpret and independently design their task where she at thesame time intends to make an overall assessment o f how the content is pre-sented. In practice, the teacher more often are focused on assessing abilities that show how thoroughly and carefully the students are documenting thandeveloping the knowledge. It points to the difficulty of reconciling assessment requirements in the context of a multimodal text production. 

This article explores how digital competence is conceptualized in recent revisions in the curriculum for Swedish compulsory school, based on nine-year long schooling from age 7 to 16. Four themes are identified based on a thematic content analysis of the revisions in the subject descriptions: use of digital tools and media, programming, critical awareness and responsibility. The distribution of the thematic revisions differs among the subjects, but the most dominating theme, permeating all the subjects, concerns the tool-oriented use of digital tools and media. This strong dominance of the operational perspective tends to narrow the conceptualization compared to international definitions and frameworks of digital competence.

Since 2018, Swedish teachers are expected to pay particular attention to pupils’ results on national tests when grading. There are, however, still large discrepancies between national test results and teachers’ grades, which differ between schools and subjects. The purpose of this study is to investigate possible reasons behind these differences, from a teacher perspective. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with teachers who teach grade 9, either in physics (n=9) or English (n=12). The interviews have been transcribed and analyzed with thematic content analysis. The most important reason for differences is that the test results are considered misleading by the teachers. Although most reasons for considering the test results as misleading relate to test design, some of the reasons relate to the pupils. The only reason for differences that does not relate to test results being considered misleading, is that some pupils receive instruction at the end of the semester based on their shortcomings identified in the test. Furthermore, since the teachers tend to compare test results and own grades in a 1:1 ratio, they may discard the entire test if it is considered misleading. The fact that test results are presented as a single score or grade, therefore, seems to contribute to teachers not paying particular attention to test results when grading.

This report compares and analyzes a selection of item banks with regard to the proposed purposes of a future item bank for Swedish compulsory school. Several purposes are presented, but the formative purpose, with its potential to support schools and teachers in their efforts to help the students reach the national goals, is seen as the most important. The item bank can realize this purpose by making the goals clearer and more specific. Furthermore, an item bank can aid the students in reaching the national goals by providing high-quality tasks; assessing students’ strengths and weaknesses. An item bank can also contribute to increased agreement between different assessors, with regard to student fulfilment of the national goals, by showing how the national goals can be assessed. This, however, might be restricted to the tasks provided by the item bank. On condition that the proposed item bank includes resources for developing teachers’ assessment competence in a more general way, both formative and summative purposes for classroom assessment can be favoured. That the item bank could indeed have this function is shown by the analysis of international experiences.

Teachers’ assessment and grading of student achievement is often charged for not being reliable. Various suggestions of how to reach higher levels of reliability are advocated in different contexts, and one suggestion is “social moderation”. Social moderation involves teachers working together when assessing and grading student performance. Although the claim is often made that moderation practices lead to higher levels of reliability in teachers’ assessment and grading, such claims often lack scientific support. In this study, a literature review has been carried out in order to gain knowledge about the potential effects that moderation may have and whether these effects may in fact lead to more reliable assessment and grading. The results indicate that moderation practices do have an effect, which may ultimately lead to higher levels of reliability if these practices involve several levels in the assessment process. Moderation is also a process that can be affected by several factors, such as the organization of the moderation meetings and the selection of student performance.