This study examines the reference societies of Norway and Sweden embedded in their education policy documents. We examined 4,260 bibliographic references in 19 white papers and green papers prepared for the 2016/2020 renewal of the Knowledge Promotion Reform in Norway and the 2015/2018 Knowledge Achievement Reform in Sweden. In addition, we…

Seeing that the culture and governance of competition determines relations among social actors, we turn to the concept of referentiality to investigate the institutional order of competition in higher education. Defining referentiality as the description of a model standard for comparison, this study explores how higher education organizations…

Teacher judgments impact on students' academic development, yet studies have revealed only modest judgment accuracy. Identifying biases hampering judgment accuracy is crucial. The present study scrutinized one such bias, namely reference group effects on teacher judgments (i.e., systematic relations between class-average ability and teacher…

Problem- and project-based learning (PBL) has been seen as one of the pedagogical models to bridge the knowledge gab between education and work. This article reports a study of students' preparedness from a systemic PBL university to enter work life. Theoretically, a conceptual understanding of a systemic PBL is presented including four elements:…