The main aims of this research project were to provide an overview of the compulsory school practices in Iceland at the beginning of the 21st century, focusing on the trend towards individualised learning, and to reveal if and how official policies were reflected in school practices.

 The focus on individualised learning has been prominent in national curricula and other policy documents in recent decades in Iceland (Ministry of Education, 1999, 2006), even though its meaning is far from clear. This concept has been defined in a number of ways using different terms, such as individualised learning, personalized learning, student-centred instruction or differentiated instruction (teaching / learning) (Keefe and Jenkins, 2000; Sigurðardóttir, 2007; Sigurgeirsson, 2005; Tomlinson, 2014).

This view of individualised learning has in Iceland, as elsewhere in Europe for example, implied a focus on adapting teaching and learning to different individual needs, increasing students’ responsibility for their learning and their active participation in the classroom and the school (Hargreaves, 2004, 2006; Tomlinson, 2014).The term has also been related to concepts such as student empowerment and student voices (Fielding, 2006; Harvey & Burrows, 1992; Hargreaves, 2004; Rudduck, 2003) and democratic education (Dewey, 2016/2014). Learning is viewed as a social process based on student co-operation (Hannafin, Land & Oliver, 2012; Roseth, Johnson and Johnson, 2008), co-construction (Hargreaves, 2006) and team-teaching (Buckley, 2000).

The research project was organised within a framework based on an evaluation tool for schools´ progress towards individualised and cooperative learning, published by the Reykjavík Department of Education in 2005 (Reykjavíkurborg, 2005; Óskarsdóttir, 2014a), and consisted of six strands:

• Internal structures: school-based planning and management
• Learning environment: buildings, classrooms and general equipment
• Attitudes: views of students, teachers, administrators and parents towards teaching and learning
• Teaching strategies and classroom practices
• Students’ activities and responsibilities
• Parental involvement and school community relations

Two additional components where added, one focusing on the development of information technology and the other on the status of teaching and learning in the art and crafts subjects, as well as physical education.

 The research questions addressed in this paper are the following:

1. What are teaching and learning practices like in Icelandic compulsory schools at the beginning of the 21st century? That is, how do they reflect attitudes, the learning environment, internal structures, teaching methods, students’ activities and responsibilities, and parental involvement?
2. How are the policies of state and local authorities reflected in school practices, and to what extent have predictions made in recent decades regarding school development materialised?

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