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Vocational and General students’ Use of English in and out of school (VOGUE)

VOGUE was a research project that followed secondary students over time to investigate their use of English in and out of school - specifically for online gaming, surfing the internet and social media use. Research ethics (GDPR) was also a particular focus, as student data were collected both in school and in the home. VOGUE film: "my GDPR moment".

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Photo: Colourbox

About the project

VOGUE combines large-scale data with case study data among students and teachers in secondary school, aiming to understand why some students read markedly better in English than in Norwegian, and how different languages are used in and outside of school. It relies on quantitative and qualitative data from students and teachers at more than 90 upper secondary schools across Norway.

Research ethics is also a particular focus, as student data are collected both in school and in the home, in line with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Watch these videos, where MA students talk about "my GDPR moment".

What kind of data are used in the VOGUE project?

2020-24: Case study data among students and teachers in lower and upper secondary school, years 8 and 11 (mixed methods: video recorded classroom observation of gaming in school incl. student screen recording, student survey, student language logs, and student and teacher interviews). Publications: Ahmadian & Brevik (2024); Ahmadian, Brevik & Öhrn (2024). PhD thesis: Shilan Ahmadian (2025).
2019-20: Case study data among students and teachers in vocational study programs, years 11 and 12 (mixed methods: video recorded classroom observation, student screen recordings in the classroom and in the home, student survey and language logs, student reading test results in Norwegian and English, student grades in Norwegian and English, student and teacher interviews, teacher survey). Publications: Brevik (2023), Brevik & Buchholtz (2022); Brevik & Holm (2022); Beiler, Brevik & Christiansen (2021); Brevik & Mathé (2021). MA theses: Torheim (2022), Abelvik (2021); Holm (2020); Masvie (2020).
2015-17: Case study data among students and teachers in four upper secondary schools across three Norwegian counties, in vocational and general study programmes, years 11 and 12 (mixed methods: audio recorded classroom observation, student language logs, student and teacher interviews). Publications: Brevik (2016, 2019, 2022). MA theses: Ahmadian (2018); Garvoll (2017), Sagli (2017).
2012-13: Large-scale data among students in 90 upper secondary schools across Norway collected is included in the project. The data were collected in vocational and general study programs, years 11 and 12, in 2012-13 (quantitative: survey data linked to national test results in English and Norwegian). Publications: Brevik (2022); Brevik & Hellekjær (2018). MA theses: Isaksen (2018); Pentrella (2017).

Funding

The VOGUE project was initiated in 2015. It is positioned at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research (ILS) at the University of Oslo. The Research Council of Norway (NRC) is funding a public sector PhD candidate for the VOGUE project (2020-24).

Master students in the VOGUE project

Several Master's (MA) students have written their MA theses related to the VOGUE project. They have played a crucial role in gathering and analysing data among adolescents in and out of school. In the following videos, they talk about their MA projects and their GDPR moments - explaining how they learnt to secure participants' privacy in line with the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

My research project

In this video, four MA students present their MA projects concerning adolescents' use of English in and outside school: Shilan Ahmadian (2018), Katharina Køber Garvoll (2017), Anja Ramfjord Isaksen (2018), and Sturla Sagli (2017). The links are to their MA theses, which are available to everyone as open access publications.

My GDPR moment

In the videos below, nine MA students talk about their GDPR moment - their first hand experiences with how to protect the privacy of teachers and students who participated in the VOGUE research project, in line with the new GDPR requirements. We present these GDPR moments as five steps that were followed before, during and after data collection.

STEP 1 - GDPR Awareness

In the first video, visiting MA student Julia Reich from Germany talks about the importance of teaching students how to prevent research data from falling into the wrong hands.