Sweden has established itself as a global leader in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), integrating sustainability principles across all levels of education. The national curriculum for compulsory and higher education emphasizes key ESD competencies, including systems thinking, critical evaluation, future-oriented decision-making, collaboration, ethical awareness, and sustainable action. Sustainability is embedded across subjects and is reflected in the general approach of schools and society, with the three dimensions of sustainable development—environment, economy, and society—woven into educational practices. This is achieved through interdisciplinary curriculum integration, active student participation in sustainability projects, global and local perspectives, and continuous teacher professional development. Swedish schools have autonomy in implementing ESD, allowing educators to integrate sustainability in diverse ways. However, while initiatives such as the Whole School Approach and the Eco-School model have helped foster sustainability competencies, challenges remain. Reports indicate that ESD implementation is inconsistent, with many schools not fully utilizing the extensive support materials provided by the Swedish National Agency for Education and other stakeholders. Additionally, some ESD approaches may inadvertently reinforce gender disparities, with boys demonstrating lower engagement in sustainability topics. Despite Sweden’s strong policy framework and student-led movements such as Fridays for Future, many young Swedes do not view sustainability as a viable career pathway. This disconnect highlights the need for stronger links between sustainability education and future professional opportunities, ensuring that sustainability is not only an academic priority but a long-term societal commitment.

Technological enhancement of teaching and learning of mathematics has been an expanding topic of research. A considerable body of research explores the potential of technologies in teaching and learning mathematics, however, a review of the literature shows that there is little research on how students use these digital tools to solve mathematical tasks. This study follows students’ use of a digital tool (Desmos) when working with quadratic functions. The study analyses data collected from 28 Year 11 students from a school in Sweden focussing on the students’ usage of Desmos as they solved multiple tasks. Students worked in pairs, and their discussions were video-recorded and analysed using a content analysis framework. The analysis reveals four categories of approach; solve algebraically and verify with Desmos, solve with Desmos and verify algebraically, integrated method, where students use the tool differently for different problem-solving questions, and lastly using Desmos as an aide, a category including students that used Desmos to solve tasks completely after failed algebraic attempts. Our findings can thus be of great value in assisting teachers in recognising these differences and provide opportunities for students to explore the use of digital tools in enhancing both their learning experience and performance.

 Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) emphasizes student-centered approaches that foster critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, and engagement through real-world challenges, preparing students for professional engineering careers. However, the motivational processes underpinning these outcomes have not been systematically explored. This scoping review aimed to identify and synthesize the effects of CBL on student motivation in higher engineering education, guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s protocol. The protocol involved defining the research questions, selecting relevant studies, extracting and analyzing data, and collating and reporting findings. This scoping review examined literature from seven scientific engineering education databases published between 2015 and 2024, resulting in a final selection of 18 articles. The review identified several thematic areas—CBL’s effects on students’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the enjoyment and engagement of real-world challenges application, the role of interdisciplinary collaboration and teamworking, the implications of real-world problem-solving for professional identity formation, and the teachers’ role. The review also revealed the predominance of quantitative methodologies, including instruments such as the SRQ-A and MUSIC® model, in evaluating CBL’s impact on motivation, while qualitative approaches, particularly those grounded in Self-Determination Theory, are notably underrepresented. This methodological disparity constrains a comprehensive understanding of students’ learning experiences and the contextual dynamics shaping motivation within CBL frameworks. These findings highlight the critical elements influencing student motivation in CBL contexts and provide insights into effective strategies for its implementation in higher engineering education.

 Challenge-Based Learning (CBL) emphasizes student-centered approaches that foster critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, and engagement through real-world challenges, preparing students for professional engineering careers. However, the motivational processes underpinning these outcomes have not been systematically explored. This scoping review aimed to identify and synthesize the effects of CBL on student motivation in higher engineering education, guided by Arksey and O’Malley’s protocol. The protocol involved defining the research questions, selecting relevant studies, extracting and analyzing data, and collating and reporting findings. This scoping review examined literature from seven scientific engineering education databases published between 2015 and 2024, resulting in a final selection of 18 articles. The review identified several thematic areas—CBL’s effects on students’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the enjoyment and engagement of real-world challenges application, the role of interdisciplinary collaboration and teamworking, the implications of real-world problem-solving for professional identity formation, and the teachers’ role. The review also revealed the predominance of quantitative methodologies, including instruments such as the SRQ-A and MUSIC® model, in evaluating CBL’s impact on motivation, while qualitative approaches, particularly those grounded in Self-Determination Theory, are notably underrepresented. This methodological disparity constrains a comprehensive understanding of students’ learning experiences and the contextual dynamics shaping motivation within CBL frameworks. These findings highlight the critical elements influencing student motivation in CBL contexts and provide insights into effective strategies for its implementation in higher engineering education.

Technology advancements in education have fuelled worldwide digital technology agendas, providing students with skills necessary for success in the twenty-first century, including digital literacy and the ability to communicate effectively, think critically, work effectively in teams, and generate original ideas. With just about 7 years left, achieving SDG4 has become the hallmark of many educational systems. Objective 4.7 calls for opportunities to ensure all learners acquire the knowledge and skills to promote sustainable development. Adapting different technological tools has become prominent in our quest for maximizing meaningful student engagement and active participation in the teaching-learning process. This chapter provides a position orientation of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in mathematics education with cognizance of its benefits, challenges, and opportunities. We begin with a position on CAI’s meaning, objectives, features, and mode of delivery. Theoretically, we discuss some technology integration frameworks used in a CAI environment and contribute to the debate on using CAI in mathematics. Through a review of meta-analysis studies, we offer evidence of the positive effect of CAI on students’ mathematics learning outcomes.

There exists a plethora of studies that have related pupils’ spatial ability to their academic achievement and problem-solving skills, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. However, little is known about how spatial ability could be presented in a national curriculum. To increase the awareness and intention to develop pupils' spatial ability within the national curriculum, the compulsory curriculum document from the Swedish National Agency for Education which details all subject syllabi is examined and analysed using a content analysis method. The results show that two major dimensions could be used to locate the potential spatial ability development within the curriculum. The first is a visual dimension, which manifests as three different visual components: graphical, pictorial, and manufactured. The second is an epistemic dimension, which describes how pupils' different types of spatial knowledge can be nurtured, and inductively described as conceptual, procedural, and spatial citizenship knowledge. A three-by-three matrix framework is created based on the above dimensions and components. Policymakers and educators in Sweden, as well as in other countries, may draw insights from the framework created by this study and adapt it to educational practice, particularly in the realm of developing students' spatial ability through curriculum design and classroom instruction.

The collaboration between teachers, researchers, and educators has proven essential inadvancing teacher professional development and improving pupils’ outcomes. This study inves-tigates the effect of co-creating instructional materials and lesson plans on pupils’ mathematicsproblem-solving skills by employing the principles of co-creation and design-based research (DBR)to collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data, providing a comprehensive understandingof the outcomes. A sample of 530 pupils from six primary schools was used, and data were collectedusing problem assessment sheets for primary 1, 2, and 3 pupils. The assessment tools measuredpupils’ problem-solving understanding and competencies across numbers and algebra, measurementand geometry, and data strands. Descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were applied. Thefindings revealed that pupils’ performance improved across all three strands due to the co-creationprocess, with the most significant improvements observed among female pupils and those from ruralschools. The factorial ANOVA results showed a significant interaction effect between class level andschool location in the geometry and measurement and data strands, with F (2, 518) = 15.15, p < 0.001,and F (2, 518) = 12.28, p < 0.001, respectively. However, the interaction effect of the three independentvariables on pupils’ performance in the numbers and algebra strand, F (2, 518) = 1.073, p = 0.342, wasnot significant. The study concludes that co-creation between teachers, researchers, and educatorsholds substantial potential for enhancing the teaching and learning of problem solving in schoolsand provides an excellent opportunity for teachers, educators, and researchers to harness their skillsand competencies to improve mathematics teaching and learning.

With the rise of the knowledge society, international conflict has become increasingly concerned with information and intellectual property – highlighting the growing importance of knowledge as a tool to serve purposes ranging from maintaining colonial links or political ties to facilitating peace and promoting trade. For academia, this has placed issues of internationalization firmly in the spotlight of internal and external stakeholders.

Throughout this process, internationalization has been conceptualized differently across higher education institutions and contexts, with institutions integrating different international and intercultural dimensions into the purpose and functions of education. Internationalization ofcurriculum, research, and service continue to be some of the fundamental factors in higher education where best practices are adopted and contextualized into different educational systems for efficiency and increase in productivity. After several decades of implementation of varying internationalization practices and policies, there is no question that it has transformed higher education across different borders. A plethora of studies have examined how internationalization has built on local, national, and regional policies and practices to harness, complement, and harmonize local activities in institutions.

Recent developments have, however, upset the status quo and formed the basis of new directions for both the utilization of academia in international relations and the use of internationalization as a tool for academic development. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a shift in patterns of mobility and digitalization, whose long-term effects are still an open question, and geopolitical instability has brought concepts such as responsible internationalization into the forefront of political and academic discourse. Another recent development is the rise of neo-nationalism, driven by autocratic regimes with anti-immigrant policies and economic protectionism.

With the road ahead for the internationalization of academia being uncertain, it becomes even more important to understand where the road has led so far. To understand where we are going, we must know where we came from. The APIKS survey, which was carried out in 2018 before the massive upheavals of the pandemic and heightened international conflict came into full swing, provides the ideal material for this purpose. Therefore, this study uses data from the survey to examine how internationalization has contextualized higher education curricula, research, services, and professional development programs across different countries. The study employs a comparative research design to conduct single and cross-case analyses of how the concept of internationalization has been contextualized. Using descriptive and inferential statistics such as ANOVA and multiple regression, the study's results will provide insights into how internationalization is integrated across borders, contexts, and disciplines to help provide a holistic picture of the situation. The results will also help develop a conceptual framework for understanding the perceived strategies of integrating internationalization across different contexts and open further avenues to explore how these differences could help support effective, efficient integration of internationalization.

Spatial ability has been demonstrated to be a significant predictor of students’ achieve- ment in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education. While several stud- ies have focused on offering supplementary or isolated spatial training interventions, this study focuses on spatial ability development through embedded interventions within tech- nology curricula. Specifically, document analysis is adopted in this study to identify the potential areas for spatial ability development within the Swedish compulsory Technology and Craft curricula. A framework consisting of two dimensions has been established by a qualitative coding approach. The first dimension, termed the “visual dimension”, encom- passes graphical, property, and manufactured components, reflecting the spatial nature of the information that students engage with. The second dimension, termed the “epistemic dimension”, comprises conceptual and procedural knowledge, representing the types of knowledge students acquire. The framework allows educators to identify potential areas for developing spatial ability within technology curricula. Additionally, it is envisioned that this framework could increase awareness of how to spatialise curriculum and pedago- gies among various stakeholders, including policymakers and teacher trainers. 

This study examines the effect of using Desmos on students’ performance in learning functions. An embedded mixed methods design was applied and involved 98 students from an upper secondary school in Sweden. Students’ assessments (pre- and post-test) and opinion polls were the two main data collection instruments. The results show that both groups (experimental and control) experienced a significant improvement in their post-test scores. However, the experimental group had a statistically significant improvement in comparison with that of the control group across the five constructs used in this study. The qualitative data revealed that the majority of the students ascribed a positive effect of the use of Desmos on their general understanding of function concepts, their ability to analyze functions and check their answers through visualization, which are difficult when working using paper and pencil.