Enrichment is one way to support highly able students in their mathematical development, a method that aligns with the overall principles of the Swedish school system. This paper aims to elicit students’ perceptions of enrichment. Data was collected in a project where upper secondary students were offered mathematical enrichment tasks in an online environment. Semistructured interviews were conducted with seven students out of seventeen participating. Our results show that participation in the program is interest-driven. The students like to work in their own pace, and the fact that they are not being graded diminishes their performance anxiety. They also want to deepen their existing mathematical knowledge in contrast to proceeding to new topics in mathematics.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of a Swedish nation-wide professional development on participating teachers’ teaching practice and their knowledge, where collegial work, as a central part of the professional development, is taken into account as a factor to influence the outcome. We conducted statistical analyses (linear mixed models) on observational and interview data from a random selection of 105 teachers (grades 1–10/primary and secondary school). The results show effects on several aspects of teacher knowledge and teacher practice. However, the results show no connections between how the teachers have worked collegially and the observed changes in the teacher's knowledge and practice. © 2024 The Authors

This study investigates resource use by upper-secondary mathematics teachers in the context of collaborative planning. A thematic content analysis is conducted on audio-recorded teacher discussions in order to find out what resources are used by the teachers, how they are used, and for what reasons. The findings show that although teachers use a variety of resources to support their instructional enactment as well as instructional design, there is a difference in how they use different resources to support different planning practices. For instructional design, curriculum resources provide support for the mathematical content, while social resources, self-generated documents, and cognitive resources provide support for the design of instructional activities. Authority is given by teachers to curriculum resources, but conflicts of authority emerge in discussions, when teachers’ abilities to exert their agency are not supported by curriculum resources. We discuss the findings in relation to authority and resource use, as well as for established conceptualizations of resources. The findings bear practical implications for the design of curriculum resources.

This presentation reports on a study on upper secondary school students’ opi-nions and views regarding an online enrichment in mathematics. Interviewswere conducted with seven participating students, who express that the enrich-ment deepened their mathematical knowledge, in line with the fact that learn-ing requires challenges. They enjoy to always have a challenge to work on andalso freedom to decide when to work on it, which connects to the description ofmathematically highly able students as autonomous. Several students explicitlypoint out that they like that the work was not graded. Students differed in termsof working alone or with peers. The online enrichment offered mathematicalchallenges for most students, but some would have liked even more difficulttasks. Their involvement differed depending on other school work.

This presentation focuses changes in elements of teaching quality during three parts of a mathematics lesson; start, middle and end. 64 grade 7 lessons were analysed using these partitions, forming a time series that shows decreasing quality for most elements (e.g., Modelling) from start to end of a lesson. Few elements showed an increase of quality (e.g., Intellectual Challenge). The structure of the lessons (whole class at start and individual work during middle and end) may partially account for a possible decrease. Even so, a decrease in quality is not desirable and implications on students’ learning are of concern.

Many countries, including Sweden, teach gifted students in mixed-ability classrooms and teachers often need to differentiate their teaching. Gifted students have specific needs and for the subject technology these needs are described in terms of complexity, autonomy, support and authenticity (CASA-framework, Brink, submitted). How the subject technology can meet these needs is described using the CASA-framework, however, there is a lack of knowledge to what extend the subject actually offers CASA to gifted students.

Therefore, we conducted a content analysis on the three existing educational textbooks for lower secondary school (age 13-15) in Sweden. Krathwohl’s framework (2002) was used to capture the knowledge type and the cognitive processes involved in the text, tasks and other content in the textbook. 

Our preliminary results show that complexity is offered to some extent. Autonomy is addressed occasionally through home-assignments. Support is not made explicit and authenticity is apparent throughout all textbooks. However, tasks result in a school-related product and rarely impact the wider society outside school. At the conference, we will present an overview of our findings and show examples of where and how the textbooks meet gifted students´ needs. 

STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) research emphasises interdisciplinary approaches to developing skills needed for the 21st century. In this paper, we explore three aesthetically rich mathematical activities involving dance and bodily performance (e.g., creative body postures) with 6-year-old students. Supported by an embodied perspective of task design and a Deweyan view of aesthetics, we argue that a high degree of bodily engagement and a high degree of task integration allow space for creativity and imagination that may involve aesthetic dimensions. Specifically, we argue that body postures, bodily rotation, rhythm, and fluency in composite sequences of movement may connect art and mathematics in a way that treats the students as active creators of aesthetic experiences, in contrast to other STEAM approaches that do not consider bodily performance as a way of connecting art and mathematics.

This study explores how assessment is presented in Swedish early years’ steering documents and considers risks for young gifted students in relation to assessment (or lack thereof). Document analysis was undertaken on, firstly, Swedish curriculum documents for the preschool and for the compulsory school, and secondly, mapping materials used in the preschool class with six-year-old children. Results show that assessment is not a term used in Swedish early years curricula. Instead, preschool teachers are asked to evaluate their own practice; preschool class teachers are asked to engage with mapping and only to consider working toward later assessment goals in year 3 of school. A plethora of alternative assessment terms are used in the curriculum without definition. Giftedness is also invisible in the curriculum. However, the mapping materials used with six-year-old students in the subject areas of mathematics and Swedish do encourage teachers to consider children who achieve mastery early. Further, these materials provide supportive questions and activities for teachers to use in exploring further. The specific examples of assessment discourses and the need to consider gifted children are combined in this article to highlight aspects of teacher work that are important for the educational rights of an often-forgotten group of learners.