The study investigates how the recently introduced learning outcomes oriented education policy and new ways of governing are constructed in documents in Norwegian education policy at national central level, at regional level and in schools, and further how this policy and its ways of governing unfold in practices in schools. At school level the project focus on «learning outcomes policies» as potentially practiced in three focal points of assessment, 1) the types of classroom assessment that are in use 2) individual and collective approaches to assessment and 3) practices of grading. These are all areas that have been heavily reformed and more extensively regulated in new ways due to shifts in policy.Theoretically the study build on ideas on public policy instruments related to introduction of LO policies and governing. Further the project connects to practises in schools with theories on meaning making (Coburn 2006) and inscription (Roth & MicGinn 1998). As such the study is about how centrally defined practices of policy and governing and the practices of schools meet over available instruments, techniques and tools in varied meaning making processes.The study seeks to investigate learning outcome as an interactionally constituted phenomenon, by drawing on sociocultural perspective on learning and assessment (Greeno, Collins, & Resnick, 1996).
Through a multi-method design with four interconnected work packages of: WP1) a comprehensive document analysis focusing on national, regional as well as local school level, WP2) an ethnographic study of practices in 3 schools, WP3) observation studies of specifically selected assessment practices and WP4) research synthesis, the study addresses issues under Thematic Priority Area C, providing knowledge about the complex interrelations between new ways and tools for governing that follow from reforms and the practices of practitioners and actors in schools. Priority Area A on outcomes and assessment are also addressed.