This open access book presents original research on effective and equitable teacher practice in mathematics and science education across Nordic countries. It focuses on three key aspects of teacher practice: what teachers teach, how teachers teach, and how teachers assess their students.
To provide a comprehensive understanding of teacher practice, data from the IEA’s Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) from 2011 to 2019 was analyzed. TIMSS provides large-scale and representative data, allowing an in-depth investigation of the relations between teachers, their practices, and student outcomes. The findings highlight the changes in teacher practice over time and the extent to which such changes explain the differences in student outcomes. This research also contributes to understanding how the relationships between teacher practice and student outcomes vary across different student groups (i.e., gender, socioeconomic status, and language background).
The empirical evidence presented not only adds a significant layer to the academic discourse but also offers practical implications. These insights are crucial in facilitating educational policymaking and classroom practices aimed at improving student outcomes and closing gaps in educational inequality.
Nani Teig is an associate professor at the University of Oslo, Norway. Her research focuses on inquiry-based teaching, scientific reasoning, teaching quality, and academic resilience. She integrates multilevel analyses using data from videos, surveys, assessments, and computer log files. Nani has received several awards and fellowships, including the Global Education Award, Bruce H. Choppin Dissertation Award, Young CAS Fellow, and UNESCO GEM Fellow.
Trude Nilsen is a research professor at the University of Oslo. She is a leader of the research group LEA (Large-scale Educational Assessment) in her department, and a leader of several large research projects. She also is and has been, engaged as an international external expert for IEA’s TIMSS and for OECD’s TALIS. She has received several awards, amongst others the IEA Bruce H. Choppin Memorial Award.
Her research is within the fields of educational effectiveness and international large-scale assessments, with a focus on teaching quality, educational equality, school climate, and applied methodology including causal inferences.
Kajsa Yang Hansen’s research concerns educational quality and equity from a comparative perspective. She tackles these issues by investigating students’ social, motivational, and cognitive factors in the contexts of their schools, changing societies and education systems. Dr. Yang Hansen also has an interest in analytical techniques for large-scale survey data, e.g., multi-level analysis, Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) and second-generation SEM.
