As part of the QUISST project Anders and University of Oslo Associate Professor Nora E. H. Mathé are embarking on a new study that looks at ‘higher order thinking’ in social science classrooms. They will draw upon QUINT’s large data base of video footage from classrooms in the Nordic countries to examine how students engage in higher order thinking and reflection in social science education.
“We’re interested to see what differences there are across and within the Nordic countries” says Anders. “There’s potentially a lot to learn there about how different teaching practices affect the possibility of developing higher level thinking among students.”
The social sciences are a fundamental part of educating active democratic citizens in the Nordic countries, so the quality of how the social sciences are taught in classrooms has important implications for Nordic societies as a whole.
Anders is visiting the QUINT offices in Oslo under the Mobility Grant initiative, and is using the opportunity to meet face to face with other education researchers. Among those researchers is Nora E. H. Mathé who is co-authoring the study on higher level thinking with Anders.
“It’s nice to have Anders physically here with us in Oslo for a couple of weeks” says Nora. “I think the QUISST group have done an excellent job of networking and communicating digitally, but there’s no substitute to being able to speak face-to-face. It lets you share ideas in a more informal way.”
Anders adds that “It’s also helpful for me to be in Norway because there is a wealth of knowledge on school research here. It’s interesting to see how the Department of Teacher Education and School Research operates, and to hear about some of the previous work they’ve done.”
Anders and Nora are presenting their study in a keynote at the Seventh symposium for comparative didactics (Syvende symposium for sammenlignende fagdidaktik) in November and plan to publish a scientific article on the study later.