Educational research into instructional quality would benefit from macro-and meso-level instructional data -such as achievement data or large-scale student surveys -in relation to

The COVID-19 pandemic forced an unprecedented global shutdown that closed schools for months. In many nations, schools were closed to students, and teachers directed educational activities remotely via digital devices or homeschooling resources. This article explores how these months of homeschooling have affected the physical activity of Norwegian students in Grades 1–10. All Norwegian students are supposed to have at least 60 min of physical activity every day in school. We draw on data from two surveys, one with parents (N = 4,624) and the other with teachers (N = 726), to provide an indication of the daily physical activity students engaged in during the period of homeschooling. An important finding from the teacher survey is that the degree to which schools prioritized physical education among the school subjects varied greatly between schools and teachers. Key findings from the parent survey were that reported time spent on physical activity increased with the age of the students, that many parents expressed concerns about increased sedentary behavior, and that the most active students were those who showed the greatest engagement and effort in schoolwork in general. Our findings raise the questions of whether students were given too much responsibility for their own physical activity during this period and whether teachers should provide their students with more digital workout sessions and instructional videos.

The article presents the literacy achievement of Norwegian minority students, their reading habits, and their enjoyment of reading based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000 study. Aspects of their family background and attitudes towards school are related to literacy achievement results. A comparison between Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Germany shows that the achievement gap between majority and minority students is larger in Denmark and Germany than in Norway and Sweden. A more detailed presentation of the Norwegian reading results shows that 35% of the Norwegian minority students perform at a level indicating that they are able to read in a technical sense, but they are unlikely to be able to use reading as an independent tool in acquiring knowledge and skills. The minority students' responses to questions about socio-economic family background, reading habits, learning strategies and school motivation give a complex picture of their situation in Norwegian schools. The results indicate that there is some potential for equalising differences between minority students and majority students.

The authors examined naturally occurring reading comprehension strategies instruction (RCSI) across four consecutive lessons in 47 Norwegian language arts classrooms at the lower secondary level via video observations (n = 178). Although numerous studies have examined the effectiveness of RCSI for improving reading outcomes, few studies have focused on descriptions of real-world classroom instruction. This study thus provides additional insights into the extent to which and how language arts teachers in lower secondary schools provide RCSI. Further, the study sheds light on additional aspects of reading comprehension instruction to obtain a broader picture of what this instruction encompasses. The authors address these issues by providing an overview of the amount of RCSI used in language arts classrooms, a characterization of provided RCSI, the frequency of salient features of reading comprehension instruction, and an examination of the possible connections between strategy instruction and students' gains on national reading tests. The authors used the Protocol for Language Arts Teacher Observation manual to guide the first step of the analytic process, followed by qualitative content analyses of the provided RCSI and inductive coding of the reading comprehension instruction. The findings revealed limited evidence of explicit RCSI. When provided, the explicit instruction varied as either contextual or decontextual instruction. Several teachers demonstrated strategy knowledge, but in many cases, instruction seemed oriented more toward nontransferable activities than explicit strategy teaching. Mainly, the teachers focused their instruction on text-based discussions and text structure. The authors discuss various reading instructional practices, teachers' repertoire of strategies, and different approaches to explicit strategies instruction. R eading comprehension is considered a key competence in our modern information society, and there are high demands for comprehension of complex texts throughout students' schooling. This is especially the case in secondary school, where students face increasingly diverse and challenging texts in a range of different school subjects. Precisely because reading comprehension is such a crucial and complex endeavor, educational policymakers worldwide have given this topic much attention in recent years (e.g., National

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Research suggests that student development as writers requires a supportive environment in which they receive sustained opportunities to write. However, writing researchers in general know relatively little about the actual writing opportunities embedded in students' language arts lessons and how students' production of texts in class is framed. The present study analyzes 178 video-recorded language arts lessons across 46 secondary classrooms in Norway based on the Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observation. Specifically, we assess how often and in what situations students get an opportunity to engage in writing or are explicitly encouraged to write. We found that some writing assignments are short and fragmented, especially when students are merely recopying information from teachers' materials. However, our analysis also provides detailed insight into how some teachers facilitate sustained, genre-focused, and processoriented writing opportunities. These are powerful examples of successful writing instruction, and they suggest that when Norwegian language arts

In this article, we approach large questions regarding justice and equality in the Nordic classrooms. A substantial body of previous research emphasises the importance of student engagement in teaching and learning. Drawing on video data from Norway, Sweden and Finland, we focus on whole-class teaching, i.e. situations in which the teacher addresses the class from the front of the classroom, to investigate justice trough participation. We have approached our topic through two concerns: student participation in classroom discourse and student engagement as providing access to content. Our findings seem to pose some serious challenges for the Nordic welfare society vision of classrooms as core societal hubs for justice and equality. While whole-class teaching is one of the primary tools available for attempting to achieve justice and equality for all, this interaction format seems to contain inherent constraints that do not support equitable student engagement. Further, the way the Nordic classrooms have responded so far to the massive digitisation in their societies seems to pose serious questions rather than provide comforting answers. KEYWORDS student engagement and participation; classroom discourse; access to content CONTACT Marte Blikstad-Balas

PISA 2018 viser at de langsiktige trendene for norske leseresultater er stabile. I dette kapitlet ser vi norske elevers lesekompetanse i lys av nordiske og internasjonale trender. Vi finner at Norge er et av landene som har hatt stabil utvikling i hele perioden, mens det internasjonale gjennomsnittet-også for de 26 OECD-landene som deltok i PISA 2000-har hatt en negativ utvikling. I kapitlet ser vi i tillegg på hvilke endringer målingen av lesing i PISA og leseopplaeringen i Norge har gjennomgått i den samme perioden.