Purpose: This study explores debate seeking and conflict avoidance as dimensions of disagreement orientation, and how factors such as citizenship education and individual background may impact how young people engage in situations with conflicting political perspectives. The aim is to study whether how we facilitate citizenship education may…

Purpose: The aim of the article is to contribute to an overall discussion of how civic education may influence the political efficacy of adolescents, with specific emphasis on social equalisation. We analyse how the inclusion of controversial issues in civic education may contribute towards increased social equalisation in political efficacy.…

This study analyses how "active democratic participation" is conceptualised by sixteen teacher educators from eight institutions of higher education across four Nordic countries and how these conceptualisations are translated into their own teaching. Teacher educators' strong adherence to a liberal discourse on democratic education may…

This paper explores how girls' education developed in Norway and Prussia (and later North Rhine-Westphalia, NRW) during the first and second wave of women's political mobilisation. It analyses how organisations and activists of the women's movement were included in different cross-interest coalitions in education politics. The cases are…

Students' positive experiences in schools positively predicts students' political trust. However, little research has examined how individual students' feelings of exclusion at their schools may relate to students' political trust. Moreover, how does an overall sense of exclusion from the school relate to political trust apart from individual…

This article is concerned with presenting a qualitative study of teachers dealing with undemocratic attitudes in secondary school. The research question was: how do teachers teach when the aim is to remove undemocratic attitudes and prevent the formation of undemocratic attitudes? The research group which was part of the study established…

Purpose: This study aims to examine the unique lived experiences of international graduate students in light of COVID-19 and the recent sociopolitical climate in the USA (e.g. Black Lives Matter movement, protests against anti-Asian hate crimes and gun violence). Design/methodology/approach: The authors used an exploratory qualitative design…

Discussion about political and social issues in school matter for a wide array of democratic skills and competences such as political engagement, participation, and knowledge. However, little research has been done on what impact characteristics of the discussion climate in classrooms can have on young people's engagement with political…

With some degree of regularity, Norwegian authorities revise the curricula across all subjects within primary and lower secondary education, including social studies. In 2019, the most recent revision of this subject was adopted. It was labelled SAF01-04, and came into effect in August 2020. This article aims to identify areas where SAF01-04…

Background: Civic participation is a fundamental element of democracy; therefore, upholding and supporting civic participation, especially among the upcoming generation, is important. Political efficacy -- an individual's understanding of their capacity to participate in civic life -- has been found to exert an important influence on the expected…

During the Nazi occupation of Norway from 1940 to 1945, Norwegian society was exposed to comprehensive Nazification measures. Considered racially equal, it was intended that the "Germanic" Norwegians would be transformed into a National Socialist people's community. With the establishment of the so-called new order on 25 September 1940,…

Upon assuming power for the first time in 1935, the Norwegian Labour Party delivered on its promise of a major schooling reform. The reform raised minimum instruction time in less developed rural areas and boosted the resources available to rural schools, reducing class size and increasing teacher salaries. We document that cohorts more…

The aim of this paper is to advance knowledge about the politics of belonging in Norwegian preschools by exploring how educators describe and consider processes of belonging in their educational practice. In educational research, the dominating focus has been on the sense of belonging and children's emotional bonding to others. Here belonging is…

Norway has been going through numerous changes in its education system. In the last 10 years, Norway has retrained its teachers to obtain master's degrees, redrawn its curricula objectives, and instated national exams for certain subjects. These changes are occurring at a time of intensified globalisation and increased displacement of people. With…

In this article I investigate how corporate Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) providers negotiate their position by contributing to a national ECEC policy development process. I discuss how their political engagement connects to changes in the institutional arrangements of the ECEC sector. The ECEC provider corporations' written responses…