Graphic: Linnea flowers

Project: Evidence in subject didactics and cognitive science in the preschool class and compulsory school

Basic skills in reading writing and mathematics are essential for lifelong learning. It is therefore important that teachers have access to evidence based instructional methods. It is also important to know whether these can be generalized to Swedish schools. In this project we map all Nordic intervention studies in the preschool class and compulsory school and match them with high quality international systematic reviews.

Project information

Project title
Evidence in subject didactics and cognitive science in the preschool class and compulsory school: A mapping of Nordic intervention studies
Project leader
Robert Walldén
Other project members
Thomas Nordström, Viktor Kaldo, Natalie Hyltse, Linda Fälth, Camilla Nilvius, Hanna Palmér, Andreas Eckert, Linnaeus University
Participating institutions
Linnaeus University
Funder
The Board of Teacher Education, NLU, Strategic initiative 2026–2027.
Project duration
1 January 2026 – 31 December 2027
Subject
Psychology, education, subject didactics (Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences)
Research groups
Evidence for Learning and Didactics (ELD; website forthcoming), Research in Inclusion, Democracy and Equity (RIDE), Literacy and Teaching, Mathematics Education

More about the project

For an instructional approach (e.g., phonics) to be evidence based the scientific literature must have been carefully compiled in a systematic review. Several studies with large numbers of participants are required to achieve high precision in estimating how effective the instructional approach is.

The studies must be of high quality with a design that can evaluate the effect of the instructional approach. This usually means intervention studies in which individual students, teachers, groups, or classes are randomized or matched to an intervention or control group.

The studies must also have low risk of bias which means that factors that could distort the results can be ruled out such as high attrition or selective reporting. The studies must also have low heterogeneity so that it is meaningful to synthesize them and so that apples and pears are not mixed. It is also important that publication bias (the tendency to only publish statistically significant results) have biased the estimates.

Finally, the studies must have high directnes, meaning that they clearly match the research question of interest. Here the PICO framework is used which stands for Population Intervention Comparison and Outcome. When assessing the directness from a Swedish perspective, it is common that uncertainty arises regarding the population.

Can studies conducted mainly in anglophone countries really be generalized to a Swedish context? Our premise is that studies conducted in the Nordic region can be generalized to Swedish schools to a high degree. We therefore aim to create a database of all intervention studies carried out in compulsory schools in the Nordic countries over the past ten years and to assess their quality. We will then match these Nordic intervention studies with existing high quality systematic reviews.

The project is part of the research in the research groups Evidence for Learning and Didactics (ELD; website forthcoming), Research in Inclusion, Democracy and Equity (RIDE), Literacy and Teaching, and Mathematics Education.

Staff