A Nordic comparison of national objectives for reading instruction and teachers' responses about actual reading practice

This article presents a comparison of the Nordic countries’ official objectives for reading and analyses of 1005 Nordic teachers’ responses regarding their reading instruction. The specificity and transparency vary greatly in the objectives, from broad outlines in Norway to more specific and functional goals in Finland. It appears that the Finnish descriptions are more aligned with current empirical research on reading comprehension.
Swedish and Norwegian teachers have the most varied used of both literary and informational text types during a week, whereas Finnish teachers give informational texts a higher priority than literary texts – and the opposite is apparent for Danish teachers. The Finnish and Norwegian teachers prioritise activities that enhance students’ oral reading fluency, which is important for reading comprehension development, to a greater extent than teachers in Denmark and Sweden do. The Nordic teachers in
general appear to prioritise advanced comprehension activities to a lesser extent than teachers in the English-speaking countries do. Furthermore, 138 Northern Lights on TIMSS and PIRLS 2011
Danish teachers put the least emphasis on formative assessments compared to the other Nordic countries.
It is important that national objectives correspond with empirical research on reading instruction and that they are functional and transparent as they set the stage for the actual instruction in class.