Danish School Research Articles

Book Review: Muslim Fathers and Mistrusted Masculinity in Danish Schools by Anne Hovgaard Jørgensen

Book Review: <i>Muslim Fathers and Mistrusted Masculinity in Danish Schools</i> by Anne Hovgaard Jørgensen

Is harmonizing to social drinking norms associated with alcohol use in Danish high school students?

Abstract Background Alcohol use is positively linked with perceived drinking norms within the peer group and the social plasticity hypothesis proposes that youth are very good at harmonizing to social norms (social attunement). Youth with high social attunement may adjust their drinking habits to the perceived drinking norms of the peer group to a higher extent potentially leading to a larger impact on personal alcohol use. This study examined if frequency of personal alcohol use was associated with perceived peer approval of drinking and the role of social attunement in Danish high school students aged 15-19 years. Methods An online survey was administered to 2977 first-year students from 16 public high schools in Denmark. Students reported past month alcohol use (drinking days, using TLFB) and perceived approval of alcohol use among peers of their grade. Social attunement was calculated as a sum score of the 11-item Dutch Social Attunement Questionnaire (SAQ) (range: 11-77; α = 0.81). Number of drinking days was analysed as dependent variable, with age, gender, perceived peer approval and SAQ-score as independent variables. Results Older students were more likely to perceive peers to approve drinking (β = 0.25; p = 0.004) and getting drunk (β = 0.22; p = 0.003). More females (83.2%) than males (81.8%; p = 0.003) perceived peers to approve youth getting drunk. Multilevel regressions showed increased drinking days for students perceiving peers to approve of drinking (β = 1.68; p &amp;lt; 0.001) and getting drunk (β = 1.80; p &amp;lt; 0.001). We found interaction between SAQ-score and perceived drinking norms (β=-0.10; p &amp;lt; 0.001) indicating that perceived peer approval had less effect on drinking days for students with high SAQ-score. Conclusions Social attunement explained additional variance in the association between personal alcohol use and perceived drinking norms. Our findings stress the importance of addressing the influence of behavioural adaptation in e.g. school-based health promotion programs. Key messages • Students perceiving peers to approve of youth alcohol use drink more frequent, but the link is weakened when the need to harmonize to perceived drinking norms are high. • Social attunement needs to be considered when examining the link between individual alcohol consumption and perceived drinking norms and should be addressed in e.g. school health programs.

Exploring and crossing boundaries in education – tinkering as an approach to breaching children’s formal and informal learning processes

This article explores the integration of tinkering as an approach to learning and teaching in the context of two Danish public schools. Tinkering, traditionally associated with informal learning, is examined for its potential to widen participation, and align with informal learning processes within a formal educational setting. The study, part of the larger Tech&amp;Play project, investigates the characteristics of tinkering in formal learning settings and examines the roles of children and teachers in tinkering processes. The article introduces the Positioning Wheel, a reflection tool, to understand the roles and positions of children and teachers in experimental learning practices. It combines this with the Facilitation Field Guide developed by the Tinkering Studio to create a pedagogical and didactical framework. The findings indicate that tinkering encourages diverse participation and engagement, particularly in cross-curricular and thematic approaches. However, challenges arise in sustaining the tinkering approach within longer lesson plans and subject-specific contexts. The study suggests that while tinkering enhances motivation and flexibility in formal learning, further experiments are needed to fully explore its potential within the formal education system. The Positioning Wheel proves useful in analyzing the positioning of learners, emphasizing the importance of dynamic roles in pedagogical practices.

Bodies in motion: exploring transformations of students’ embodied practices through middle school years

ABSTRACT This paper explores embodied practices and relations of students’ ‘hexis’, the bodily part of habitus, during middle school years in a Danish state school setting, focusing on how these practices are shaped by classroom dynamics and grade level. Drawing on field notes and vignettes from 12 visits across 3 grade levels in 2 state schools – fifth grade (ages 11–12), seventh grade (ages 13–14), and ninth grade (ages 15–16) – the study reveals distinct patterns of body practices. Fifth graders exhibit a collective hexis in flux, seventh graders express more still and individual practices, and ninth graders demonstrate a complex mix characterised by individual stillness and collective in-flux. Notable gender differences emerge in the incorporation of school norms at seventh and ninth grades, with girls more likely to embody and take advantage of doxic orders of stillness. Highlighting the significant role of institutional and social contexts in shaping students’ embodied practices, this study offers a nuanced understanding of the interplay between body, time, and space in educational settings.

Speaking like a ‘good student’: Norms and deviations in contemporary upper secondary education in Denmark

Abstract Based on a linguistic ethnographic study of student–teacher classroom interactions, this article sheds light on language norms in a contemporary Danish STX school (upper secondary education, also known as gymnasiums). The analysis reveals that neither classrooms with the explicit teaching of an ‘academic register’ nor classrooms where teachers orient towards a youth norm constitute spaces where students have equal access to perform as good students. Even when students can decode and reproduce the language preferred by the teachers, they do not experience an equal opportunity to conform to this. It is argued that performing linguistically as good and competent students is more complex than just adapting to a specific school norm, as the students have to navigate different teacher’s norms as well as peer norms emphasising authenticity.

Playful Dramatizations – Doing German the Nordic Way

Nordic perspectives on playful learning have been defined by values and preconceptions associated with play in schooling. However, playful learning also emerges in specific ways as part of the patterns of relations that form classroom teaching and learning. Patterns can be understood as sociomaterial relationships in practice that create rhythms which become constitutive for specific teaching and learning practices (Sørensen, 2009). In the paper, I identify and trace ways in which specific patterns are created by multiple relationships that enable and hold together playful learning activities. With a focus on patterns of relations, I draw on performative understandings of playful learning which are holistically defined by complex sociomaterial relationships. The paper explores how these patterns enact Nordic ways of doing playful learning that are defined by both specific materialities, moods, and rhythms of doing language learning in secondary schooling. The paper builds on observations and interview data from a project in which teachers and students from three Danish schools experimented with playful learning in the school subjects English and German. In the project, experimentation and didactic development were enabled through action learning processes involving the participating teachers and the researcher. Experiments were scaffolded through use of the platform Drama Studio, where students can create animated stories using avatars in multimodal drama production. The paper focuses on a specific case in which the teaching of German became part of doing hygge as a seasonal mood in the classroom during an unusually long, four-hour German session. In the dynamics of enacting German as hygge, multiple relationships emerged that both held together and transcended the apparently delineated activity of doing German through Drama Studio.

The Open Data Newsroom: A Game Approach for Developing Open Data Competencies in Elementary School

Open Data refers to digital data that is made available to anyone with the legal and technical conditions to be freely used, reused, and redistributed. Although it has emerged as a new common with the potential to increase citizen participation and transparency, current literature suggests the lack of skills for managing data and participating in Open Data processes, as one of the main barriers to achieve these benefits. Integrating Open Data in school education has been recognized as key to fostering a larger community able to participate in Open Data ecosystems. This study showcases the design of a role-playing game grounded in authentic learning principles for the development of Open Data competencies in elementary school. The Open Data Newsroom is a game approach that immerses students in solving a mystery with data. In the game, students play Open Data Journalists engaging in a three-phase authentic process to get, understand and deliver data. The learning goal in the game is that students build open data competencies: data literacy and real-world problem solving. A design-based research methodological approach is applied to develop theory based and practically grounded educational designs. Two interventions in Danish schools have been conducted, each one with the participation of seventeen students in 7th to 9th grade and three teachers. Interventions are aimed at iteratively designing and testing the game. The discussion section elaborates on opportunities for redesigning and systematically developing the game as a learning design for Open Data competencies.

Playing to Collaborate: Using Cooperative Board Games to Experience and Reflect on Collaboration in Upper Secondary Education

There is a growing interest among researchers in using board games for supporting learning in school contexts. Co-op board games is a relatively new and promising type of games, which seems well-suited for improving students’ collaboration skills. In this paper, we explore how two groups of Danish high school students interact when playing two different co-op games, The Mind and Forbidden Island, and how they reflect upon their shared game experiences. The data collection is based on video observations of group interaction and student interviews, which use stimulated video recall. In this way, we are able not only to describe the students’ perceived outcomes of the gaming activities, but also their in-game practices. Our data analysis is informed by microsociological perspectives (Goffman and Collins), which are used to map the group interaction rituals and social norms of the students’ gaming encounters. Based on the data analysis, we identify two analytical themes, which concern the students’ use of verbal and non-verbal communication practices as well as their socialisation processes. The findings suggest that co-op games may be used as a valuable educational tool for qualifying high school students’ collaboration skills as well as strengthening their group relations. The students especially valued playing The Mind, which they tried playing for multiple game rounds. Based on these findings, we discuss recommendations for the further use and study of co-op board games in educational settings.

(In)Credibly Inclusive? A Panel Study on Inclusive Leadership, Leader Credibility, and Inclusive Climate

Cultivating an inclusive climate is an important concern for many public organizations, and it can be approached through various means. Research suggests that by exercising inclusive leadership, public managers may be able to support an inclusive climate. However, we still know little about the extent to which and under what conditions inclusive leadership is effective in promoting an inclusive climate. This study contributes to the existing research by examining the importance of inclusive leadership on inclusive climate utilizing a representative panel of 705 Danish high school teachers. Additionally, the study argues that leader credibility may be an important moderator. Testing the preregistered hypotheses, the study finds support for a statistically significant effect of changes in inclusive leadership on changes in inclusive climate. Contrary to expectations, leader credibility does not appear to moderate the relationship. The study suggests that inclusive leadership is relevant to promote inclusive climates across different contexts.

How do Danish humanities PhD school leaders constitute their roles? Interactions of biography, place and time

Purpose Increasingly governmental policy around PhD education has resulted in greater university oversight of programs and student experience – often through creating central PhD Schools. While student experience is well researched, the experiences of Heads of these units, who are responsible for creating student experience, have been invisible. This exploratory Danish case study begins such a conversation: its purpose to examine the perceptions of five Heads of PhD Humanities Schools, each responsible for steering institutional decisions within Danish PhD policy landscapes. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative approach integrated three distinct analyses: a review of Danish PhD education policies and university procedures, each university’s job specifications for the Heads of the Schools and the Heads’ views on their responsibilities. Findings The Heads differentiated between their own and today’s PhD student experience. They had held prior leadership roles and fully supported institutional regulations. They cared deeply for the students under their charge and were working to achieve personal goals to enhance PhD experience. Their leadership perspective was relational: enhancing individual student learning through engaging with multiple PhD actors (e.g. program leaders) – when possible at a personal level – to improve PhD practices. Originality/value This study contributes an expanded perspective on how PhD School Heads constitute their roles by empirically linking: macro-national policies and institutional regulations and individuals’ biographies to their support of the PhD regimes – with implications for academic leadership generally. The authors argue research into PhD School leadership is essential, as it is such individuals who create the organisational settings that students experience.

41 Creating public value through large-scale schoolwide events: Danish School Olympics in Billund Municipality

41 Creating public value through large-scale schoolwide events: Danish School Olympics in Billund Municipality

“Life values and death” - a qualitative study on spiritual concepts and understandings of young children in Denmark

ABSTRACT In secular societies, the adults’ vocabulary for talking with children about spiritual topics is limited. This negatively affects Danish children’s spiritual development as well as hinder spiritual care and conversations with adults. This study explores the spiritual understandings, needs, and language of Danish children by means of focus group interviews with 6–9-year-old children in elementary schools. Results suggest that Danish children exhibit spiritual thoughts and emotions despite being embedded in a secular culture. The children interact and relate to dilemmas and life values with a spiritual language which they acquire through narratives and dialogue. Conversations with adults seem to be central to setting the spiritual development in motion. In a secular Danish school context, adults should support children’s spiritual development with a pedagogical didactic where spirituality is taught from the perspective of or with the child and use spiritual stories to facilitate dialogues about these.

Enactivism and Digital Learning Platforms

Within the field of education, the concept of active learning building on constructivism has emerged as a dominant framework of the past three decades. This perspective is critical to the objectivist idea that knowledge is something static, as an object to be acquired from the external world. Instead, it states that the learner is responsible for the knowledge construction, and therefore shall become autonomous towards this goal. From an epistemological point of view, despite the important shift of assumptions that this viewpoint has brought to education, constructivism still presents some shortcomings in terms of a change of the instructional paradigm. This paper takes a step forward and explores enactivism, as an alternative philosophical and educational worldview. It presents a theoretical discussion of the enactivist perspective and its differences from objectivism and constructivism. Enactivism proposes a more radical alternative to dualistic and objective approach, as it focuses on the intertwined and multiple interactions between mind, body and the environment. The two main perspectives of enactivism, which we grouped into the categories of “embodied cognition” and “situated cognition”, are present in the field of education. The paper relates them to the two core concepts of reflection and intentionality. Drawing on these theoretical considerations, the paper applies the framework of enaction to a fieldwork research in a Danish school discussing how this concept may provide some new lenses to understand the potential of participatory approaches to the implementation of a digital learning platform. The intervention was organised through two workshops. The first workshop use the technique of the future workshop (Jung &amp; Müller, 1984), which includes a critique phase and a fantasy phase. The second workshop (14 days later) was a design-workshop. This intervention is an example of how to understand enactive modelling, considering the relations between the participants and the environment as a dynamic and emerging relation of autonomy-dependency, a symbiosis. The analysis shows that the implementation takes place into an ecological living system made up of humans, non-humans, things, and societal entities. For the teachers (and more general the humans) to possibly accept, appropriate, act and re-enact such a learning infrastructure, it is of great importance to establish spaces for reflections, which e.g. a future workshop provides, and to support and facilitate (alternative) enactments of some of the more hidden affordances of the digital learning platform.

Navigating egalitarian culture and accountability pressures: shared instructional leadership practices of Danish school leaders

PurposeOur study presents insights from an exploratory qualitative case study conducted in three primary and lower secondary schools in Denmark, a country renowned for its collaborative and egalitarian culture, to unravel the complexities of shared instructional leadership.Design/methodology/approachInterviews with principals, middle leaders, and teachers and document analysis were used to identify themes according to shared and instructional leadership perspectives.FindingsThe study yielded three major findings. First, Danish principals structure schools to prioritize student learning outcomes and distribute responsibility to middle leaders and teachers. Second, reflection among teachers and leaders better prepares them for future demands and obligations. Third, collaboration underpins principals’ vision of reflection and professional development.Practical implicationsThe research team’s reflection on the data collected can be used to build future strategies to address unpredictable student learning progression and poor-performing teachers.Originality/valueTogether, these findings contribute to the broader understanding of shared instructional leadership and demonstrate how principals face external pressure for accountability and how egalitarian culture influences principals’ practices.

Developing theory by engaging in collaborative transformations of educational practice

This article presents a methodological approach to educational psychology research in which researchers engage in collaborative transformations of educational practice while developing theory concerning the societal and scientific relevance of these transformative processes. The theoretical inspiration for this approach stems from German-Scandinavian Critical Psychology, Transformative Activist Stance, and the Change Laboratory Framework — three research traditions with common roots in cultural-historical psychology and activity theory. Empirically, the article is based on a transformative research collaboration between the author and a 2nd grade teacher at a Danish municipal primary school. The aim was to develop an intervention framework to support the development of cultures of care within communities of children, while simultaneously producing theoretical knowledge about the conditions that enable the development of such cultures within the contradictory and dilemma-filled historical and socio-political context of Danish municipally governed schools. Empirical excerpts show how a novel intervention principle emerged as a synthesis of the researcher and the schoolteacher’s respective, seemingly contradictory knowledge contributions. Against a backdrop of historical-institutional analyses, it is argued that this intervention principle represents a novel scope of possibilities for educational professionals struggling to manoeuvre within the various contradictions and common problems inherent to Danish municipally governed schools. In the discussion, it is argued that the transformative approach presented here seems particularly promising for the democratisation of knowledge production. This assertion is supported by a demonstration of how the approach is particularly flexible to continuously integrate critique, contributions, and contestations from co-researchers within educational practice, adults as well as children.

The governance of teachers’ time allocation and data usage through a learning management system: a biopolitical perspective

ABSTRACT This paper examines the intricate relationship between state ambitions and institutional disciplining in the context of managers and teachers’ time allocation and data usage. Using a specific learning management system (LMS) as a case study in Danish public elementary schools and drawing on Foucault’s theory, we examine how governance through the LMS, constituted as disciplinary power and surveillance techniques, shapes time allocation and data usage in schools. Our study is based on an analysis of policy documents and qualitative interviews, identifying discourses about educational ambitions and intentions with the LMS. Our analysis has three perspectives. First, we argue that the Danish state’s educational ambitions are characterized as biopolitics grounded in economic imperatives and the need for a well-educated population. Second, we argue that the enactment of a mandatory LMS in schools manifests as governance to secure state ambitions. Finally, we argue that the disciplinary power and surveillance techniques embedded in the design of the LMS shape teachers’ time allocation and data usage in accordance with state ambitions. Thus, our analysis contributes a theoretical perspective to develop a critical understanding of how state ambitions for governance through digital tools shape possibilities for practice among actors within the educational field.

The Role of Physical Literacy in the Association Between Weather and Physical Activity: A Longitudinal Multilevel Analysis With 951 Children.

Numerous studies showed an effect of weather on physical activity (PA) levels in children. However, no study has yet examined the relevance of personal factors in this relationship. Therefore, this study analyzes (1) whether there are systematic interindividual differences in the extent to which weather affects the PA behavior and (2) whether physical literacy (PL) moderates the weather-PA association in children. A total of 951 children in 12 Danish schools (age 9.76 [1.59]y; 54.3% girls) completed objective PA assessments via accelerometry (moderate to vigorous PA, light PA, and sedentary behavior). Local weather data (precipitation, wind speed, temperature, and sunshine duration) were provided by the Danish Meteorological Institute. Participants' PL was measured employing the Danish version of the Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy-2. The 4116 accelerometer days underwent longitudinal multilevel analyses while considering their nesting into pupils and school classes (n = 51). Fluctuations in all PA indicators were significantly explained by variations in weather conditions, especially precipitation (P ≤ .035). Significant interindividual differences were found for 9 of 12 analytical dimensions, suggesting that weather changes influence PA behavior differently across individuals (especially moderate to vigorous PA, χ2[4] ≥ 11.5, P ≤ .021). However, PL moderated the relationship between weather and PA in only 2 of the 48 analytical constellations. Despite the varying impact of weather on PA across individuals, the present study favors a main effect model in which weather and PL exert independent effects on children's PA. The insufficient support for PL as a moderating factor calls for future studies to test alternative mechanisms in the weather-PA association.

Democratic engagements with negativities in education and public school

In this article, I argue that the neoliberal order and its close link to the notion of educationalisation make education—and public schools more specifically—an instrument for political problem-solving and labour market agendas; this, then, makes it difficult for educators to act like public intellectuals with the freedom to create spaces in which one can think, talk and act in ways that are not framed by dominant and instrumental policy. Inspired by Rancière’s and Mouffe’s political work, psychoanalytical thinking and by means of educational examples that stem from (trans)national policy documents (one from the OECD and two from the Danish Government), I describe and analyse how the neoliberal order, including the notion of educationalisation, frames today’s education and can prevent democratic engagements from being a part of Danish public schools. One of the reasons is the strong focus on producing a productive and skilled labour force that successfully secure national economic growth and deliver what the neoliberal labour market desires. This focus contradicts both educators’ and students’ intellectual freedom on a daily basis, which is (still) regarded as vital to supporting education in general and in public schools in particular. Failure seems inevitable. However, failure can be a success for democracy, meaning that some ‘failures’ must be embraced because they are a condition for a living and flourishing democracy.

Making sense of digital communication between students, parents, teachers and school leaders in Danish state schools

Communication in Danish schools takes place with the aid of digital platforms developed and/or subsidised by the public sector and has done so for more than two decades. Within the same time frame, commercial social media platforms have emerged and become successfully integrated with key communicative practices. In order to understand how these communicative practices come about, we conducted interviews with students (from two different age groups), parents, teachers and school leaders in two primary and lower secondary schools in Denmark. The interviews focus on sense-making processes in digital communication and were analysed using Lomborg’s concept of communicative genres in social media. The analysis yielded four analytical categories through which the meaningfulness of using different digital platforms was assessed: (1) importance, (2) precision, (3) speed and (4) frequency. The findings are discussed in the framework of platformisation as well as the notion of technology paternalism. We argue that critical reflection on the use of commercial platforms in public institutions is needed. When key communicative practices in this arena rely on the services of data broking commercial actors, we risk further normalisation of problematic datafication.

A cross-sectional study of the association between food literacy and dietary intake among Danish adolescents

Food literacy is theorized to be associated with healthy dietary intake. However, empirical knowledge on the association between adolescents’ food literacy and dietary intake is limited. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between food literacy and dietary intake among Danish schoolchildren aged 11–13 years. The study applied a cross-sectional design using baseline data from a cluster-based quasi-experimental controlled study in a sample (n = 377) of Danish school children. Mixed model analyses were performed to investigate the associations between overall food literacy as well as its five competencies (“to know”, “to do”, “to sense”, “to care”, and “to want”) and dietary intake of vegetables, fruit, fish, meat, discretionary foods, and sugar-sweetened beverages. Positive associations were found between overall food literacy (E = 1.493, p = 0.002) as well as the competencies “to know” (E = 1.249, p = 0.027), “to do” (E = 1.236, p = 0.028), “to sense” (E = 1.183, p = 0.029), and “to care” (E = 1.249, p = 0.018) and intake of vegetables. The study also found a positive association between the competency “to want” and intake of fruit (E = 13.50, p = 0.037), “to care” and intake of fish (E = 2.050, p < 0.001), and a negative association between the competency “to want” and intake of meat (E = 0.748, p = 0.003) and sugar-sweetened beverages (E = 0.576, p = 0.0021). No associations were found between overall food literacy or any of its five competencies and intake of discretionary foods. These findings suggest that improving specific aspects of food literacy may have a potential to promote healthier dietary intake, though additional research is needed.