Linking Instruction and Student Achievement (LISA)

Blikstad-Balas, M. (2018). Skrivediskurser i norskfaget-en analyse av hvordan norsklærere snakker om skriving på åttende trinn. Nordic Journal of Literacy Research, 4(1).

Blikstad-Balas, M., Roe, A., & Klette, K. (2018). Opportunities to Write: An Exploration of Student Writing During Language Arts Lessons in Norwegian Lower Secondary Classrooms. Written Communication, 35(2), 119-154.

Klette, K., Sahlström, F., Blikstad-Balas, M., Luoto, J., Tanner, M., Tengberg, M., ... & Slotte, A. (2018). Justice through participation: student engagement in Nordic classrooms. Education Inquiry, 9(1), 57-77.

Klette, Kirsti & Blikstad-Balas, Marte (2017). Observation manuals as lenses to classroom teaching: Pitfalls and possibilities. European Educational Research Journal.  ISSN 1474-9041.  s 1- 18 . doi:10.1177/1474904117703228

Klette, Kirsti; Blikstad-Balas, Marte & Roe, Astrid (2017). Linking instruction and student achievement : research design for a new generation of classroom studies. Acta Didactica Norge - tidsskrift for fagdidaktisk forsknings- og utviklingsarbeid i Norge.

• Stovner, Roar Bakken; Klette, Kirsti & Nortvedt, Guri-Anne (2021). The instructional situations in which mathematics teachers provide substantive feedback. Educational Studies in Mathematics. ISSN 0013-1954. 108(3), p. 533–551. doi: 10.1007/s10649-021-10065-w. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Feedback provided by mathematics teachers usually addresses procedural skills and, to a much lesser extent, other competencies such as conceptual understanding or engagement in mathematical practices. As most previous literature has studied feedback provided on homework or video prompts, how teachers provide such feedback in the classroom is poorly understood. Here, sixteen lessons taught by five teachers were purposefully sampled from a larger video study (172 lessons) as lessons with high-quality feedback according to a standardized observation instrument. The analysis focused on the instructional situations in which teachers provided feedback. When teachers provided procedural feedback, the situations were orderly and effective. Feedback on conceptual understanding and mathematical practices was provided in situations when students were especially challenged, and entailed a series of complex decisions, thereby placing demands on the teachers to manage both the students’ understanding and behavior. We argue that researchers should focus on how teachers and students negotiate the instructional situation to allow for feedback on conceptual understanding or mathematical practices.

• Stovner, Roar Bakken & Klette, Kirsti (2021). Teacher feedback on procedural skills, conceptual understanding, and mathematical practices: A video study in lower secondary mathematics classrooms. Teaching and Teacher Education : An International Journal of Research and Studies. ISSN 0742-051X. 110. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2021.103593. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Feedback is a prevalent teaching practice in mathematics classrooms, but few studies have documented how mathematics teachers enact feedback in classrooms. We investigated how 47 teachers provided feedback in 172 mathematics lessons in Norwegian lower secondary schools. We analyzed the quality of feedback, the quantity of feedback, and whether the feedback addressed students’ procedural skills, conceptual understanding, or engagement in mathematical practices. Teachers spent large amounts of time providing concrete and specific feedback, most of it addressing procedural skills while conceptual feedback was less common. The study highlights details of feedback relevant for both pre- and inservice mathematics teacher training.

• Magnusson, Camilla Gudmundsdatter (2021). Reading Literacy Practices in Norwegian Lower- Secondary Classrooms: Examining the Patterns of Teacher Questions. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. ISSN 0031-3831. doi: 10.1080/00313831.2020.1869078. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  We know from previous research that teacher questions can influence reading comprehension development; however, we know less about the reading processes that are required of students through the use of questions. The present study examines teacher questions on texts reviewed during whole class reading comprehension instruction across 51 lessons in 26 Norwegian eight-grade language arts classrooms. Through video observations, the study (a) identifies text-dependent vs. otherwise text-related teacher questions, (b) deductively examines frequency patterns of text-dependent questions based on three reading literacy processes: locating information, understanding, and reflecting/ evaluating, and (c) examines the relative time allocated to various question-response literacy interactions arising from text-dependent teacher questions. Findings showed that teachers mostly asked questions that required students to interpret or reflect, while they hardly asked any questions that required students to assess the quality and credibility of texts. Implications for the development of reading literacy proficiency required in today’s society are discussed.

• Magnusson, Camilla G. (2020). Examining the polestar of reading comprehension: one teacher's instruction in one L1 classroom and students' metacognitive knowledge of reading. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature. ISSN 1567-6617. doi: 10.17239/L1ESLL-2020.20.01.18. Show summary

  This qualitative study examines reading comprehension instruction and students’ metacognitive knowledge of reading in one L1 classroom at the lower secondary level. The data comprises four consecutive videotaped lessons from the same class in grades 8, 9 and 10 (N = 12), student group interviews, and an in-depth interview with the teacher. The study investigates a) the prominent features of the reading comprehension instruction in videotaped lessons, b) to what extent and how features of the observed instruction is reflected in students’ perceptions of L1 lessons, and c) students’ metacognitive knowledge of reading, i.e., what strategies they express that they would use to understand complex texts. A key finding is that the observed instruction was mainly dominated by reading comprehension strategies and language skills, which was also reflected in students’ utterances of strategies they would use themselves and emphasized as important instructional elements by the teacher. However, while the students overall expressed metacognitive knowledge of how to approach complex texts independently, they also ex-pressed a lack of variation in the provided instruction. The article discusses instructional practices, instruc-tional variation, and the necessity of reading instruction balancing between fostering basic skills and higher-order thinking at the lower-secondary level.

• Canrinus, Esther Tamara; Klette, Kirsti & Hammerness, Karen (2019). Diversity in coherence: Strengths and opportunities of three programs. Journal of Teacher Education. ISSN 0022-4871. 70(3), p. 192–205. doi: 10.1177/0022487117737305. Full text in Research Archive
• Dalland, Cecilie; Klette, Kirsti & Svenkerud, Sigrun (2019). Video studies and the challenge of selecting time scales. International Journal of Research & Method in Education. ISSN 1743-727X. 43(1), p. 53–66. doi: 10.1080/1743727X.2018.1563062.
• Magnusson, Camilla Gudmundsdatter; Roe, Astrid & Blikstad-Balas, Marte (2018). To What Extent and How Are Reading Comprehension Strategies Part of Language Arts Instruction? A Study of Lower Secondary Classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly. ISSN 0034-0553. doi: 10.1002/rrq.231.
• Klette, Kirsti (2018). A new generation classroom studies. In Osbeck, Christina; Ingerman, Åke & Claesson, Silwa (Ed.), Didactic classroom studies A potential research direction. Nordic Academic Press. ISSN 9789188661456. p. 225–243. doi: 10.21525/kriterium.14.k.
• Klette, Kirsti; Blikstad-Balas, Marte; Luoto, Jennifer Maria; Tanner, Marie; Tengberg, Michael & Slotte, Anna [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2018). Justice through participation: student engagement in Nordic classrooms. Education Inquiry. ISSN 2000-4508. 9(1), p. 57–77. doi: 10.1080/20004508.2018.1428036. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this article, we approach large questions regarding justice and equality in the Nordic classrooms. A substantial body of previous research emphasises the importance of student engagement in teaching and learning. Drawing on video data from Norway, Sweden and Finland, we focus on whole-class teaching, i.e. situations in which the teacher addresses the class from the front of the classroom, to investigate justice trough participation. We have approached our topic through two concerns: student participation in classroom discourse and student engagement as providing access to content. Our findings seem to pose some serious challenges for the Nordic welfare society vision of classrooms as core societal hubs for justice and equality. While whole-class teaching is one of the primary tools available for attempting to achieve justice and equality for all, this interaction format seems to contain inherent constraints that do not support equitable student engagement. Further, the way the Nordic classrooms have responded so far to the massive digitisation in their societies seems to pose serious questions rather than provide comforting answers.

• Klette, Kirsti (2018). Individualism and Collectivism in Nordic Schools - A Comparative Approach. In Witoszek, Nina & Midttun, Atle (Ed.), Sustainable Modernity: The Nordic Model and Beyond. Routledge. ISSN 978-1138718210. p. 59–79. doi: 10.4324/9781315195964-4.
• Klette, Kirsti; Bell, Courtney A.; Dobbelaer, Marjoleine & Visscher, Adrie (2018). Qualities of classroom observation systems. School Effectiveness and School Improvement. ISSN 0924-3453. p. 3–29. doi: 10.1080/09243453.2018.1539014. Full text in Research Archive

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• Stovner, Roar Bakken & Nortvedt, Guri A. (2019). Using video data to research teachers’ feedback practices – a matched comparison approach. Show summary

  Many teaching practices of high research interest occur rarely during normal teaching, such as practices associated with conceptual understanding and higher-order skills in mathematics. Because such practices are scarce, they are hard to study during naturally occurring instruction. This presentation reports on an attempt at analyzing a rarely occurring teaching practice by carefully sampling videos from a large-scale video study. The videos were sampled by using ratings from a standardized observation instrument as sampling criteria. The practice investigated was “responding conceptually to student thinking”. We sampled both teachers proficient in the practice, and comparison teachers. We used this matched comparison sample to find distinguishing features of instruction in classrooms where teachers responding conceptually to student thinking. Results show that teachers responded conceptually when “moments of confusion” arose while working on cognitively demanding tasks; comparison teachers also included demanding tasks in their teaching, but they handled “moments of confusion” differently. We suggest that rarely occurring teaching practices can fruitfully be researched by sampling from existing video-studies using standardized observation instruments. Adding comparison teachers to the analysis allowed cleaner identification of what distinguishes teachers that are adept at the rarely occurring practice. However, this approach demands other (stronger?) reliability and validity assertions than the observation instruments were designed for.

• Luoto, Jennifer Maria (2019). What shapes classroom discourse in the mathematics classrooms? A study of instructional practices, meta-rules and teacher perspectives. Show summary

  This study combines teacher perspectives with observed practices to gain understanding of what shapes student opportunities to participate in classroom discourse in four Finnish lower secondary mathematics classrooms. Opportunities to participate in discourse are analyzed with three different lenses; teachers’ instructional moves, meta-discursive rules, and teacher perspectives. The data consists of video-recordings from a week of instruction in four 9th grade math classroom and teacher interviews. The analyses show how meta-discursive rules of discussion together with instructional moves shape what kind of opportunities students have. Some teacher moves and meta-rules enable participation while other constrain opportunities to participate. The teachers however mostly see student attributes as constraints for participation. Another key finding is that the teachers vary in what they perceive as ‘participation’, and how they engage students in discourse align with their views of participation and student needs. The present study thus problematizes the relationship between teachers’ enacted practice and their perspectives, which previous research often has found to disagree. The study intends to raise awareness among teachers and teacher educators of how instructional practices, meta-discursive rules and teacher perspectives of student talk relate to student opportunities to engage in content related discourse, which may limit or enable learning opportunities.

• Magnusson, Camilla Gudmundsdatter (2019). One teacher’s reading comprehension instruction in one classroom in grade 8, 9 and 10. Show summary

  This qualitative study is a case study of one teacher’s reading comprehension instruction in one language arts classroom at the lower-secondary level. The classroom was selected based on students' gains on the Norwegian National Test in reading, which were significantly higher than the national average. In this classroom, four consecutive language arts lessons have been videotaped at three different points in time, in grade 8, 9 and 10 (n = 12). The study investigates the prominent features of this one teacher’s reading comprehension instruction at the lower secondary level. The study is based on theories of reading comprehension instruction and how it ought to be integrated in classroom settings at the secondary level, in order to enhance students’ reading proficiency. Key findings are that the instruction is heavily targeted towards reading comprehension strategies and language skills training. The observations show that the teacher focuses on explicit strategies instruction for reading comprehension, such as getting an overview of the text before reading, making stops when reading in order to reflect and asking questions about the text, and different ways of summarizing a text. The language skills instruction focuses in particular on multiple exposures of to-be-learned words and building metalinguistic awareness

• Magnusson, Camilla Gudmundsdatter (2019). Reading Comprehension Instruction and Students’ Metacognitive Awareness in One Effective L1 Classroom at the Lower-Secondary Level.
• Luoto, Jennifer Maria (2019). Opportunities For Student Participation In Discourse In Secondary Mathematics Classrooms In A Finnish Context: Teachers’ Perspectives and Instructional Practices.
• Klette, Kirsti (2019). Ethical by Design: Secure, Accessible and Shareable Video Data Experiences from the LISA study . Show summary

  Paper contribution in the invited symposium: Doing research after the new General Data Protection Regulation. How does it affect new research projects?

• Gabrielsen, Ida Lodding & Oksbjerg, Marianne (2019). Læremiddelbruk i litteraturundervisningen – en sammenligning av dansk og norsk grunnskolepraksis.
• Gabrielsen, Ida Lodding (2019). Hvordan og hvorfor leser ungdomsskoleelever skjønnlitteratur på skolen? .
• Klette, Kirsti; Blikstad-Balas, Marte & Roe, Astrid (2019). Observation manuals as lenses into classroom teaching and learning – towards a common language when studying classroom instruction? .
• Klette, Kirsti (2019). Utfordringer i lærerutdanningen i et internasjonalt perspektiv.
• Martin, Christie; Radišić, Jelena; Stovner, Roar Bakken; Blikstad-Balas, Marte & Klette, Kirsti (2019). Exploring the use of mathematics observation tools across contexts - How do these tools shape our understanding of instructional quality when applied in different school settings? . Show summary

  Teaching observation instruments based on research of effective mathematics instruction are increasingly used for teacher evaluations and forms the basis of teacher preparation programs, professional development programs, and student assessments. Because observation instruments now travel across sites, we need research on the cross-cultural validity of these instruments to know how the instruments can be used in other cultures. This study investigates how three mathematics teaching observation instruments from the USA portray the teaching of an algebra lesson in lower secondary school taught by three locally recognized expert teachers from Norway, Finland and the USA respectively. The instruments used were the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP), Mathematics Quality of Instruction (MQI) and the Mathematics Classroom Observation Protocol for Practices (MCOP2). The researchers chose these three instruments based on validity tests and their wide use. The total of three lessons, three researchers’ ratings and three instruments produced 27 observational reports. Audio-recordings of the researchers’ discussions about the rating of the lessons were also made. The data from using the observation instruments, documented conversations, and item level analysis were used to explore how these tools are interpreted, what qualities of teaching the instruments measure across contexts, and what qualities of teaching that were not measured. The three tools were created in the United States and reflect the reforms, standards, and objectives specific to that context. Results from this study indicate the applicability of current instruments to other contexts and shed light on how the instruments construe instructional quality in mathematics.

• Magnusson, Camilla Gudmundsdatter (2019). I hvilken grad og hvordan er leseforståelsesstrategier integrert i norskundervisning på ungdomstrinnet?
• Luoto, Jennifer Maria (2018). What characterizes classroom discourse in Norwegian and Finnish-Swedish secondary mathematics classrooms? .
• Klette, Kirsti (2018). As open as possible, as closed as necessary.
• Blikstad-Balas, Marte; Klette, Kirsti & Roe, Astrid (2015). Å koble elevprestasjoner og undervisning. Bedre Skole. ISSN 0802-183X. 1(1), p. 65–67.

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