Objective This presentation reports on theoretical conceptualization, methodology and findings from the completed large-scale research and development project within a Danish context, Improving the Quality of Danish and Mathematics in Danish Lower-Secondary Education (KiDM)..We reflect on how the KiDM study has informed the ongoing small-scale comparative QUINT project Quality Literature Education (QUALE) and discuss potentials for designing a large-scale comparative project in a Nordic context.. Theoretical framework In the KiDM project’s focus on Danish Language arts, the purpose was to improve the quality of literature teaching.. A multiple intervention research program was designed, which established an initial program theory for improving the quality of literature education based on a phenomenological framework (Hansen, Elf, Gissel, & Steffensen, 2019). The pre-study’s systematic review of 216 studies asserted that students' ability to experience aesthetic texts is limited in classrooms and guided by predominantly instructional goals and analytical tasks. An alternative theory promotes a task-based teaching approach, which scaffolds a rhythmic transaction and balance between the aesthetically and the analytically reflective dimensions. We hypothesize that this approach leads to a deeper understanding of aesthetics texts and students’ development of literary interpretative competencies. Methods ‘KiDM’ involved 27 researchers and professional developers working in collaboration with 175 Danish schools on interventions in both subjects. Interventions are based on an initial ‘program theory’ (Pawson & Tilley, 1997) for improving the quality of disciplinary teaching revised iteratively as the project progressed through pre-studies, pilot studies and RCT studies (measured in a test inspired by Frederking et al. 2012) complemented with qualitative studies. Results Quantitative analyses found that students’ literary interpretative competence increased significantly (SD: 0,2) and that weak students’ reading comprehension increased. Qualitative analyses found that the intervention was perceived as engaging amongst teachers because it challenged their understanding of quality literature education and succeeded in linking curricular ‘prescribed’ quality literary teaching with classroom practice. Also, we found that the study was a dynamo for a majority of students’ engagement, as it challenged prior experiences and understanding of (their) life and self. The KiDM has now been re-contextualized in a comparative Nordic design based on a small-scale multiple-case study (cf. https://www.uv.uio.no/quint/english/projects/quale/). Drawing on Thyge Winther-Jensen’s work on comparative education, among others, this comparative study will explore how students and teachers in Swedish and Norwegian classrooms transform the KiDM tasks and material, and to what extent local contexts co-shape their transformations and understandings.

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