This paper addresses the publication of results from national tests in primary and lower secondary schools by Norwegian national authorities. Test results must be made available to the public, and are published in an aggregated format at school, municipal, county and national levels on a public website. These aggregated test results are meant to provide information on school quality for local government, as well as for school development. However, how the data are presented influences their usability, and this is further affected by the fact that many municipalities and the majority of schools are quite small. Hence, in many instances the information that can be retrieved from aggregated test results at school or municipal level are of little or no value to the users. When presenting the aggregated data to the public, the government should clearly state that the data might not be useful for small schools or small municipalities with regard to analysing their own performance and for quality enhancement.
Children and young people are often labelled the “digital generation”, naturally equipped with the skills to reap the benefits of digitised education, working life and communication through social media now and in the future. However, this age group’s use of information and communication technology (ICT) is not uniform, nor are the outcomes of their adaption to ICT. Shaped by their social environment and socioeconomic conditions, the potential benefits of children’s and young people’s ICT use may vary greatly, contributing to increased inequalities that exacerbate vulnerability for some while promoting health and well-being for others. This paper presents a protocol for conceptualising, systematically identifying and synthesising the literature on which conditions contribute to children and young people being negatively or positively impacted by their use of ICT. Here, children and young people are seen as social actors in four domains of their everyday lives illustrated through the digital ecosystem: family, leisure, education and civic participation. This protocol’s overview of the actors’ navigation within and across the different domains and potential for studying the interactions between the different spheres of the ecosystem may advance the understanding of both the risks and benefits facing children and young people in their digital lives.
This study identifies key mechanisms in youth clubs for fostering well-being among vulnerable youths. We develop a framework to conceptualize prerequisites of well-being in youth, namely having a safe place to be, positive relations with others and possibilities for growth. This conceptualization maintains insights from psychological elements of well-being while bringing psychosocial theory of identity in youth into a sociological orientation. Understanding youth as a dynamic and situated phase expands the investigation of both well-being and youth clubs from merely revolving around ‘risk’ and ‘protection’. Based on interviews with youth workers and participants in youth clubs in Norway, the article describes how ‘hanging out’ in adult supervised but otherwise unstructured spaces provide youths with safety, belonging and a gradual sense of mastery. As such, the club may function as an institutionalized safe space and gives time, a ‘moratorium’, offering vulnerable youths shelter from adult responsibilities and the acceleration of societal demands.
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