Self-efficacy is an important concept for understanding learning and achievement. The concept covers students' self-confidence and their expectations for future performances. Students' learning experiences are crucial for the development of self-efficacy beliefs, which in the next round may affect students' achievements. The present study explores how self-efficacy can be contextualized with information and communication technology in initially 15 countries. A theoretical model is built and tested in each country based on data from the International Computer and Information Literacy Study 2013. The analyses show that students' self-regulation, experience with technology and socioeconomic background explain the variation in their ICT self-efficacy. Further, gender, selfefficacy and socioeconomic background play an important role for understanding students' computer and information literacy. This indicates that ICT self-efficacy is positively related to computer and information literacy when controlled for other student characteristics and background contextual variables. However, the results also reveal a clear distinction between measures of ICT self-efficacy one hand and computer and information literacy on the other. It is therefore necessary to continue elaborating on the differences between what students belief they can do when using ICT and their actual performance with ICT.

My four-year PhD journey has come to an end and made me realize that this would not have been possible without the tremendous support and encouragement from so many people. First, my most sincere gratitude goes to my main supervisor professor, Rolf Vegar Olsen. With a great balance between giving me the freedom and responsibility to shape my projects, and the continued support and guidance to reach my (sometimes far-fetched) goals, this has been an interesting, fun, challenging, and personally and professionally enriching journey. You have always provided academic guidance, and your support, encouragement, and constructive feedback on my work have been extremely valuable to me. I would also like to give my deepest thanks to my co-supervisor, professor Ove Edvard Hatlevik, whom I got halfway through. Your support, valuable comments, and engaging discussions have been immensely important to me. I am also grateful to my second co-supervisor, professor Ola Erstad, who introduced me to the core of the field and has offered his support and useful comments at various stages of my work. My heartfelt thanks go to professor Mark Wilson at the Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley. Thank you so much for supporting my work and generously providing resources and collaborators for all my visits to Berkeley. I feel extremely lucky to have had the chance to work on such a novel assessment and to have been guided by you. I also want to thank David Torres Irribarra for applying for the Peder Saether Center grant with me. Daniel Stansfield, thank you so much for the initial introduction to the technicalities of the assessment software. I am infinitely grateful to my co-author and friend Ronny Scherer. You are indeed a great researcher, but for me also a role model in many ways. Thank you for increasing the quality of my work, for making me sweat and work hard, and for the many great laughs which made all the efforts worth it. Also a huge thanks goes to my co-authors Jo Tondeur, Inger Throndsen, and Perman Gochyeev for the collaboration, motivation, help, and discussions. Your support and generosity have meant a lot to me, and I feel fortunate to have had all of you as co-authors. I need to go a little back in time and thank

Since 2006, the ability to use information and communication technology (ICT) has been included as a key competence in the curriculum in Norway, and specific competence aims are developed for most grades. The aim of this study was to identify students' ability to use ICT according to the competence aims, and to examine factors that can predict students' digital competence. A sample of 1793 students and 125 school leaders from 125 schools was used. The findings show variation in digital competence both between students and between schools. Results from a multilevel analysis showed that higher levels of mastery orientation and self-efficacy (i.e., motivation) and the students' family background (i.e., language integration and the number of books at home) were predictors of students' levels of digital competence. Additionally, when school leaders reported higher levels of culture for professional development among the teachers at school, increased levels of digital competence were found among students. Challenges for schools and teachers to support students' motivation and to emphasize digital inclusion still prevail.

The results indicate that instructional efforts to facilitate self-regulated learning of basic arithmetic skills should address cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational aspects of self-regulation. This is particularly important for low-performing students.

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This article explores changes in teachers' beliefs and practice concerning assessment after participating in a project for improving assessment practices in Norwegian schools. The project was initiated by the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training in 2008, and included a total of 77 schools, more than 600 teachers and a sample of their students. The main idea was to develop formative assessment practices in the classroom in the form of distinct criteria for clarification of how to reach curriculum goals. Furthermore, the project intended to increase students' motivation by using such formative assessment practices. The data presented in this article is from the research evaluation of the project. So far, the main challenge seems to be how to develop assessment criteria and how to use them in practice.

The main purpose of this study was to examine differences in male and female teachers’ beliefs about their math instruction, and the relationship between boys and girls math achievement and teachers’ beliefs. The samples were primary mathematics teachers (N=521) and Year 2 and Year 3 students (N=9980) from 127 schools. A questionnaire was used to examine primary math teachers' goal structure for students, approaches to instruction, and personal teaching efficacy. Students’ math achievement was assessed by national diagnostic math tests. The teachers were generally oriented towards mastery goals and mastery approaches to instruction, and reported high personal teaching efficacy. However, female teachers report somewhat higher levels of mastery goal structure for students and mastery approaches to instruction, while male teachers report a somewhat higher level of performance approaches to instruction. Positive relations between students' math performance and teachers’ mastery orientation, mastery approaches to instruction, and teaching efficacy were also found. These relationships were somewhat stronger for girls than for boys. In conclusion, the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and students’ performance were different for male and female teachers, respectively. In future studies qualitative research methods should be included. Key words: mathematics achievement; primary school; teachers’ beliefs.

This article focuses on computational problems in simple addition and on interventions aimed at ameliorating such problems. TM, an eight-years-and-two-months-old girl with mathematical difficulties was taught a more advanced addition strategy through multicomponent self-regulation training utilizing the self-instructional paradigm. The subject's shift to the new addition strategy on both stimulus problems and generalization problems after training was accompanied by more rapid problem solving and fewer errors. Both the completion time and the error rate continued to improve during a four-weeks follow-up period. During the follow-up period, the subject spontaneously started to use even more advanced addition strategies than the one she had learned during the intervention.