Educational texts include materials such as curricula, archives, documents, and media debates on the content of education. Learning materials are approached in a broad sense, including both printed and digital materials. Learning materials are important sources or data to study what has been considered as important knowledge and which values that have been regarded as important to pass on to future generations. They thus provide an entrance into the relationships between schools and society – both in the present and the past.
We emphasize various forms of text-theoretical and historical approaches to the study of learning materials and other educational texts. The research group is also interested in studies of how learning materials are used in the daily practices of schools, which we have worked on, among other things, in the project LærUng (2022–25). As part of the project, we have published læremiddel.no.
The group includes researchers with diverse academic backgrounds such as history/social sciences, pedagogy, English, Norwegian, linguistics, literary studies, text studies, and religious studies. We draw on a variety of theories, such as discourse analysis, phenomenology, cognitive metaphor theory, literacy research, multimodality, narratology, pragmatics, reception theory, rhetorics, semiotics, systemic functional linguistics, and text linguistics. Additionally, we use qualitative methods such as interviews and observation, particularly when studying how learning materials are used.
Projects
Learning materials and learning resources in lower secondary classrooms (LærUng 2022–25). The project’s goal was to develop an interdisciplinary learning material didactics for the teacher education for lower secondary school. The project was funded by the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir). It takes as its starting point a complex and evolving learning material landscape, and the need for competence regarding different types of learning materials and how they are and can be used in classroom teaching. The project has been developed in close collaboration with Børresen and Kjøsterud schools in Drammen Municipality.
Some results from the LærUng project
- Textbook: Læremiddelkunnskap (Learning material knowledge) (Universitetsforlaget, 2025)
- Online resource: læremiddel.no – about learning materials and didactics
- Article: Teachers’ judgement, learning materials and curriculum (IARTEM e-journal, 2023)
Anthologies
In recent years, the research group has played a central role in the creation of anthologies, to which several members have contributed:
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Exploring Textbooks and Cultural Change in Nordic Education 1536–2020 (Brill, 2021) |
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New perspectives on educational resources: Learning material beyond the traditional classroom (Routledge, 2023) |
| [Forthcoming on Peter Lang 2026] | Diversity in learning materials: Interpretations of thematization and representation in textbooks, learning materials and educational practices. |
