This report aims to identify and analyze specific Nordic reading results and trends from 2000 to 2009. There is focus on weak readers and gender issues, and there are results from an analysis of two Danish national options; one covers tests of basic reading skills, word decoding and vocabulary knowledge, while the other presents results from analysis of oversampling of students with immigrant background. The publication also gives an overview of the school systems in the Nordic countries with a timeline of politically induced changes from 1990 to 2010 – the years of the PISA assessments. An overview of such changes has never previously been provided. The documented changes are used to form possible explanations for trends in PISA reading results in the respective countries.

The results from PISA 2015 and TIMSS 2015 were published in November and December 2016. All the Nordic countries participated in PISA. Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden participated in TIMSS grade 4 and Norway and Sweden participated in TIMSS grade 8. The Nordic countries have similarities but also differences, which makes it interesting and valuable to carry out analyses in a Nordic perspective. In this report researchers from all the Nordic countries have done in-depth analyses on different policy relevant themes based on the results presented in 2016. The purpose of this report has been to present policy relevant analyses of TIMSS and PISA in a way that is accessible for policy makers on different levels in the Nordic countries, with the aim to contribute to further development in the education area.

How is reading literacy taught in Nordic classrooms, and how is this influenced by the curricula? How can we improve mathematics teaching in Nordic classrooms? What is the relationship between school performance and policy variations? How do teachers’ attitudes, beliefs and practices influence pupils’ learning outcomes? What characterizes the top performing pupils, and how can we stimulate more pupils to perform at the highest levels? These are some of the questions that are discussed in this collection of articles that are based on the results of the IEA studies TIMSS and PIRLS 2011. The articles aim to provide input for policy discussions and further policy development within the Nordic countries. Therefore, the main target groups are educational ministers and policymakers at all levels. These analyses will also provide input to the joint Nordic initiatives on educational development.

The Next Big Thing? Trends Shaping Nordic Innovation is written for people interested in and working with the issues of innovation, economic development, globalisation and climate change, and how these issues impact on companies and industries, and in national or in international settings such as Nordic co-operation or the European Union. The book argues that innovation needs to measured and managed. Innovation needs to be developed as a serious management discipline in order to deliver on the future expectations of investors whether these investors are from private companies or public government agencies. The publication also argues that there is a need to emphasise that research is not the same as innovation, and that we need to distinguish between science and the "scientific method" in order to develop better innovation policies and innovation management techniques. In the final focus chapter on climate change the book states that the Nordic region has a strong position within some of the new energy and environment industries. Yet, in order to keep that position and to stay in the global vanguard of clean technologies and climate industries, it might be necessary for the Nordic countries to experiment with what the authors call "forced innovation". The book is relevant for industry branch organisations, company managers, policy makers, public policy professionals as well as graduate and undergraduate courses in management, innovation, entrepreneurship, globalisation and climate change.

• Is PISA 2012 relevant to mathematics education in Norway and Sweden? • In what ways are the different leadership styles among principals in the Nordic countries related to teachers’ attitudes and behaviours and students achievements? • What are the associations between professional development, job satisfaction and self-efficacy? • Can collegial work and school leader feedback improve teachers’ self-efficacy in Nordic classrooms? • What characterizes high-performing students in mathematics within the Nordic countries? • Are international large-scale educational assessments elephants arriving at the gates of our national educational system? These are some of the questions that are discussed in this collection of articles. The issues are based on the results of the OECD studies PISA and TALIS. The articles aim to provide input for policy discussions and to further policy development within the Nordic countries. Therefore, the main target groups are educational ministers and policymakers at all levels. These analyses will also provide input to the joint Nordic initiatives on educational development.

This book brings together contributions from different scholarly contexts that address a diverse range of focused topics, as well as empirical and conceptual perspectives, on research with international studies. Some chapters focus on technical aspects, exploring opportunities for drawing causal inferences from the data, and investigating biases originating in distributional scale properties. Others are of a more conceptual nature, addressing changes in the relevance of socio-economic indicators across time and countries, examining the exposure of mother-tongue and English instruction on performance and investigating the effects of test construction on gender difference. The discussion takes a much-needed meta-perspective on the usefulness of international large-scale assessments for educational research and allows reflection upon possibilities and opportunities for their improvement. This book was originally published as a special issue of Assessment in Education.

This book explores teaching and learning in lower secondary classrooms in the three PISA domains science, mathematics and reading. Based on extensive video documentation from science, math and reading classrooms in Norwegian secondary schooling, it analyzes how offered and experienced teaching and learning opportunities in these three subject areas support students’ learning. The in-depth investigations of video documentation are combined with analysis of the Norwegian PISA results in order to understand how teaching and learning in science, mathematics and reading can be improved. Recent reviews indicate that instructional practice does make a difference to students learning - and is more important than other factors including students’ socioeconomic background, class size, classroom climate, and teachers’ experience and formal training. This book opens the discussion on a European basis about contemporary challenges in teaching and learning in secondary schooling. Norway as a test bed is particularly interesting due to its long tradition with national curricula, and its unitary and non- streamed structure. Furthermore, ideas of educational progressivism and students’ active ways of working (such as individualized teaching, adapted teaching, inquiry based teaching etc.) have for a long time been actively promoted within Norwegian educational policies. The book draws on analyses that combine expertise in psychometrics and video-based micro genetic classroom studies with expertise in domain-specific instruction (math, science and reading). It feeds the conversation how issues of communication patterns are dealt with and made productive within different instructional formats, and presents possibilities to compare and analyze instructional formats and discursive practices for students’ learning.​