In May 2018, a new General Data Protection Regulation (EU Commision, 2018) were passed within the European Union and the European Economic Area. The new rules on data protection mean that people have more control over their personal data and requires those gathering data to be clear about why and how personal data is to be gathered stored and used. Personal data means any information relating to an identifiable person who can be directly or indirectly identified.

The Nordic Centre of Excellence «Quality in Nordic Teaching» (QUINT) is a research project funded by Nordforsk (2018-2023) that will focus on teaching quality in Nordic classrooms (Denmark, Sweden Norway, Finland and Iceland) asking questions like: In what way does teaching make a difference to student learning and engagement across and within school subjects, with and without digital-rich support, in mono- and multi-cultural contexts across the Nordic countries? How can classroom videos be effective tools for teacher training? Does the use of video-technology and other digital systems generate potential for new forms of collaborative research between researchers and practitioners? (see: https://www.nordforsk.org/no/programmer-og-prosjekter/prosjekter/nordic-centre-of-excellence-quality-in-nordic-teaching-quint)

Data collection will be by large and small scale video-studies of classrooms in the Nordic countries at grades 5-7/8-10. Video-technology can provide researchers with rich and comparative data but can also be a threat to the protection of the person.

In this symposium, we will introduce briefly the QUINT project (1), aims and data collection, we will then introduce the experience from research projects (2), (3), that form the backbone of QUINT where video data have already been collected and then describe the experience from groups within the project (4) that have collected data after the new General Data Protection Regulation. By introducing projects that have already collected and analysed video data from Nordic classroom prior and after the new regulations we aim to promote discussion on research with children and young people and possible restrictions due to new personal data protection.

EU Commision. (2018). 2018 reform of EU data protection rules. Retrieved from: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/justice-and-fundamental-rights/data-protection/2018-reform-eu-data-protection-rules_en