Around the world student engagement and opportunities to talk has been highlighted as a key aspect of high quality teaching (Cazden 2000, Lemke, 2000, Ingram,2012). Opportunities for students to engage covers both students’ possibilities to participate in meaningful teaching and learning activities as well the possibilities to be listened to and have their opinions considered. For example, OECD (2014) links high quality education to high degree of student engagement and participation – including student active ways of working and equal opportunities (e.g. no tracking/ streaming of the students). Several studies from the Nordic countries (Emanuelsson & Sahlström, 2008; Bergem & Klette, 2010) show how Nordic classrooms provide ample opportunities for students to raise their voices and influence the classroom discourse. However, while student engagement/ classroom discourses might be key features of Nordic classrooms, we also see some interesting differences within and across the Nordic countries. Simola (2007) describes Finnish classrooms as highly individualized and with few opportunities to talk. Klette & Ødegaard, (2015) argue that Norwegian classrooms support student questioning and engagement, however student utterances are often used for the purpose of practical and procedural questions rather than cognitive demanding enquiries. From analyzes of Swedish classrooms, Emanuelsson & Sahlström (2008), use the term “the Price of Participation” (2008) to discuss the relation between cognitive and communicative aspects of classroom learning that includes high degree of the student involvement.

In this symposium we investigate instructional practices with regards to student engagement and dialogues across Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish classrooms.  All papers draw on video recordings from secondary mathematics and/or Language arts classrooms. Across these papers, we discuss:

i)                   possible differences in how and to what degree these classrooms provide opportunities for student engagement and talk, including possible cultural difference and values,

ii)                 how social media, like smartphones, interact with existing communicative and instructional activities, and last but not least

iii)               how the way student engagement is conceptualized and decomposed into specific codes and categories might privilege some aspects of participation while others are ignored.

Paper 1 investigates how uses of smartphones affect interactional participation frameworks in upper secondary classrooms, and specify the impact of new media practices for the social mediation and creation of knowledge in classrooms. Drawing on video data from Finnish and Swedish classrooms, they show how smartphone use seems to enable individual communication and interaction without disturbing the official classroom discourse taking place. Rather than being a challenge to plenary teaching, mobile phones enable and preserve existing instructional practices, the authors argue.

Paper 2 focuses on text-based interaction in lower secondary Language Arts classrooms and investigate the ways in which teachers engage students in meaningful and cognitively challenging discussions about text. By using video data from language arts lessons the authors compare patterns of interaction and the structures of engaging dialogue about texts in respectively Norway and Sweden.

Paper 3 compares student engagement and classroom dialogues in Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian mathematics classrooms. Drawing on video recordings from lower secondary classrooms in these three countries, the authors discuss how potential differences in interaction patterns could reflect distinct instructional practices but also how the coding manual privilege specific approaches to teaching and learning while neglecting others.

Together these papers shed light on dilemmas in comparative classroom analyses at the level of coding and categorization, at the level of subject traditions and learning resources, and at the level of cultures and values. Thus, the imposition of a general framework can be useful but without careful considerations also misrepresent the way in which values and pedagogic practices are pertained and enacted in specific contexts.

Cazden, C. (2000). Classroom Discourse: The Language of Teaching and Learning. Portsmouth: Heineman. Bergem O.K., Klette K.(2010). Mathematical Tasks as Catalysts for Student Talk: Analysing discourse in a Norwegian mathematics classroom. In Y Shimizu, B. Kaur, R. Huang,and David Clark (eds.) Mathematical Tasks in Classrooms Around the World. Sense Publishers, (pp. 35 -62). Emanuelsson, Jonas & Sahlström, Fritjof (2008). The price of participation. Teacher Control versus Student Participation in Classroom Interaction. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 52(2), 205-223. Ingram, J. (2012). Whole class interaction in the mathematics classroom: a conversation analytic approach (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Warwick, UK. Klette, K., Ødegaard, M.(2015). Instructional activities and discourse features in science classrooms: teachers talking and students listening or…? In Klette, K., Bergem, O. K., & Roe, A. (Eds) (2015). Teaching and Learning in Lower Secondary Schools in the Era of PISA and TIMMS. Amsterdam: Springer. Lemke, J. L. (1990). Talking science: Language, learning and values. New York: Ablex. OECD (2014). Education at glance. OECD Indicators.Paris: OECD