A key responsibility of governments across countries, and a major element of government spending, is the state provision of high-quality education (Blikstad-Balas, Tengberg, & Klette, 2022). Education is argued to increase equity, to eradicate poverty, to drive sustainable development, and enable peace and democracy – and it is a key factor shaping global economic and social development (OECD, 2010, 2016; UNESCO, 2017). The question of how education is provided has become a political and politicized topic that generates debate and contestation (Menter, 2017; Wyse et al., 2017). Though everyone agrees that questions of educational quality and progress are of critical interest there is no shortage of opinions about how teachers should fulfil their important mandate as educators.

The core ambition of the Nordic research center Quality in Nordic Teaching (QUINT, cf. www.uv.uio.no/quint) is to explore what quality in teaching is, and how we could investigate it both generically and in subjects. As such, QUINT contributes to a broader international attempt to conceptualize and capture different aspects of teaching quality (Charalambos & Praetorius, 2020). In the first volume QUINT published, basic principles and pitfalls of researching quality in teaching are elaborated on (Blikstad-Balas, Klette, & Tengberg, 2022). The point of departure is the claim that research in quality teaching should distinguish between generic as well as subject-specific and even domain-specific notions of quality. For example, comparing quality teaching in mathematics and L1 (also known as Language arts) of course differ substantially; similarly, within the L1 subject different domains’ quality criteria, such as teaching literature as compared to teaching language, vary; and even within the same domain, such as literature teaching, variety is found. A second claim is that a multidimensional model for capturing teaching quality that distinguishes between prescribed, experienced and documented dimensions of quality teaching could help us nuance our understanding of quality in teaching (Elf, 2021; Hansen, Elf, Gissel, & Steffensen, 2019).

This symposium presents three studies focusing on quality teaching within a particular subject, L1. As such, we explore quality teaching from a subject-specific/Fachdidaktik perspective (ref. Klette & Vollmer). The three projects apply different research designs that illuminate the multidimensionality of subject-specific quality studies. In the first presentation, Blikstad-Balas presents the research design and findings from the LISA Nordic project emphasizing characteristics of reading practices across Nordic countries. Their findings suggest that practices of reading vary, to some extent, across Nordic countries, and that this has implications for our understanding of ‘quality reading’. In the second presentation, Tina Høegh, Marie Slot & Michael P. Jensen present findings from the Connected Classroom Nordic project focusing the digitalized classroom, materials and devices handled in the classroom and the dialogues supporting the student work, topic and goals. In the third presentation, Hansen and Elf report theory development and findings from a Nordic comparative small-scale intervention project on inquiry-oriented literature teaching, including studies of how a prescribing model of literature teaching  is being translated and transformed, due to local national curricula and historically and culturally embedded quality criteria, in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish contexts.

For discussion we ask whether it is possible to contest narrow discourses on quality teaching often dominating public debates as well as public management. We suggest that L1 research should aim at exploring, documenting and even honoring varieties in quality teaching taking back the notion of quality based on sound empirical research. More broadly, subject-specific/Fachdidaktik research should discuss what the underlying values and norms embedded in research on quality in teaching are, and to what extent this research could be generalized and inform practice and even the policy-oriented domain of quality teaching communicated through programmatic curricula.

Blikstad-Balas, M., Klette, K., & Tengberg, M. (Eds.). (2022). Analysing Teaching Quality: Perspectives, Principles and Pitfalls. Oslo: Oslo University Press. Blikstad-Balas, M., Tengberg, M., & Klette, K. (2022). Why – and How – Should We Measure Instructional Quality? In M. Blikstad-Balas, K. Klette, & M. Tengberg (Eds.), Ways of Analysing Teaching Quality: Potentials and Pitfalls (pp. 9-20). Oslo: Scandinavian University Press. Charalambos, C. Y., & Praetorius, A.-K. (2020). Creating a forum for researching teaching and its quality more synergistically. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 67, 1-8. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2020.100894 Hansen, T. I., Elf, N., Gissel, S. T., & Steffensen, T. (2019). Designing and testing a new concept for inquiry-based literature teaching: Design Principles, development and adaptation of a large-scale intervention study in Denmark. Contribution to a special issue Systematically Designed Literature Classroom Interventions: Design Principles, Development and Implementation, edited by Marloes Schrijvers, Karen Murphy, and Gert Rijlaarsdam. L1 - Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 19. doi:10.17239/L1ESLL-2019.19.04.03