Value reflected health education: Competence development among school health nurses

This article examines the impact of a value-reflective approach in health education by demonstrating the nature of professional competence development connected to this approach. It is based on findings from two three-year health educational development projects carried out by school health nurses and researchers at primary schools in Denmark from 2004‑2009. We argue for the importance of reflecting on values in school health nursing in order to navigate between human values and values deriving from medicine. Our studies demonstrate that value clarification, peer observation and reflective spaces at work develop pedagogical competences in health education that improve school children’s’ health.

A tool for learning? An analysis of targets and strategies in Swedish Individual Education Plans

The issue of this study is how assessment in Individual Education Plans (IEPs) is expressed through targets and strategies for future learning, given to pupils in Swedish compulsory school. Drawing on socio-cultural perspectives and using qualitative content analysis as a method, the IEP is viewed as a tool for learning, and two models for analysing the textual aspects of this tool are developed.

The results show that the being aspect – pupils’ personality and behaviour – is involved in target-strategy combinations in various ways. They also indicate difficulties in formulating targets and strategies that are concrete and individual.

The content of the target-strategy types are discussed in relation to the tool-for-learning aspect. An increased focus on learning targets and concrete strategies, and a view of the individual as part of an adaptable learning environment, is suggested in the conclusion.

The unbearable lightness of culture – on a blurred object of knowledge in foreign language pedagogy

Using a curriculum theory approach the aim of this text is to discuss a persistent tradition in foreign language pedagogy to include culture in its objectives, where culture is seen as a self-contained, nationally shared static system of values and norms, i.e. a notion that was once applied in orthodox anthropolgy. This discourse of culture is also expressed and presented as an important object of knowledge in The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, a taxonomy elaborated by the Council of Europe for the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the member states. By contrasting the discourse of culture expressed in The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages with some references to current culture theorizing in sociology and political philosophy, it is argued that the notion of culture in the text from the Council of Europe is lagging far behind its time, leaving not only an obsolete but also blurred and problematic object of knowledge to deal with.

School leadership in today’s Finland: challenges and motivation.

During the past decades, the work of Finnish school leaders has been affected in a profound way due to the decentralisation of the Finnish educational system and ever increasing teacher professionalisation. The purpose of this study is to deepen our understanding of the challenges facing Finnish school leaders in their daily work, and to shed light on the circumstances affecting their work motivation, in a positive as well as a negative way. The empirical material consists of interviews with three strategically selected principals from different educational levels. The material is analysed and interpreted within a narrative three-step model, and the results are discussed with reference to three arenas: the individual arena, the school arena and the societal arena.