The network Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education (KOSS) brings together three cross-disciplinary educational research groups, rooted in several academic disciplines from Sweden, Finland and England. The research groups ROSE, Research on Subject–specific Education (lead by Professor Christina Olin-Scheller in Karlstad University, Sweden), SSRG, Subject Specialism Research Group (lead by Associate Professor Arthur Chapman at the UCL Institute of Education, London) and HuSoEd, Research Community for Humanities and Social Sciences (lead by Professor Sirpa Tani), seek to understand how educators and education systems can ensure that school-based knowledge building reaches its transformative potential. In our work we draw upon the concepts ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘epistemic quality’ to help us understand the qualities that knowledge building has when it is effective and empowering, and to help us understand how educational processes can build and develop these properties. Our research focuses on the ways in which knowledge itself is transformed as it is re-contextualized at individual, institutional and societal levels. Our long-term goal is to contribute to meeting the needs of future citizens by producing new knowledge about educational processes. This will have the potential to improve education by supporting the development of powerful subject disciplinary knowledge in schools.

KOSS is lead and administered by Karlstad University and is financed 2019-2021 with funding from the Swedish Research Council.

KOSS activities over the years:

KOSS V network meeting – Developing teachers’ powerful professional knowledge

8-9 March 2021, online

Programme available here:

Keynotes:

Professor Clare Brooks (Institute of Education, UCL): Knowledge as a quality conundrum in initial teacher education programmes around the world
Professor Lise Iversen Kulbrandstad (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences): Reinventing subject teaching in Norwegian teacher education: A move towards developing powerful professional knowledge?

KOSS IV network meeting – Researching the Enactment of Powerful Knowledge

6–7 Oct 2020, online

Keynotes:

Associate Professor Larissa McLean Davies (University of Melbourne): Investigating Powerful Literary Knowledge
Professor Ellen Krogh (University of Southern Denmark): Researching Comparative Disciplinary Didactics

KOSS III network meeting – Focus on transformation

4-6 March 2020, Institute of Education, University College London

Keynotes:

Professor Chris Winch (Kings’s College London): Curriculum Design - Understanding Epistemic Ascent
Professor Zongyi Deng (Institute of Education, UCL): Powerful Knowledge, Transformation, Curriculum and Didaktik
Dr. Jim Hordern (Bath University): Recontextualisation and Subject Specialist Teaching

KOSS II network meeting – Focus on epistemic quality

16-18 October 2019, University of Helsinki

Keynotes:

Professor Monique Loquet (Rennes 2 University): Characterising the Epistemic Quality of Knowledge Living in the Classroom as the Basis of Authentic Cultural Practices? The Case of Basketball in Physical Education
Emeritus Professor of Education Brian Hudson (University of Sussex): Epistemic Quality for Equitable Access to Quality Education in School

ECER Conference: Education in an Era of Risk – the Role of Educational Research for the Future

2-6 September 2019, Hamburg

Powerful Knowledge, Epistemic Quality and Knowledge Transformations: An international symposium on subjects, teacher subject knowledge and the transformation of knowledge in classrooms

17 January 2019, UCL Institute of Education, University College London

KOSS I network meeting – Focus on powerful knowledge

15-16 May 2019, Stockholm

NOFA7​ - Nordic Conference on​ Teaching and Learning in Curriculum Subjects

13-15 May 2019, Stockholm

The ROSE and HuSoEd workshop

15-17 October 2018, Tvärminne

ECER Conference: Inclusion and Exclusion, Resources for Educational Research?

3–4 September 2018, Bolzano

NERA: Educational Research: Boundaries, Breaches and Bridges

8-10 March 2018, Oslo

What kind of professional knowledge and professional identity should teacher education offer in relation to high quality subject-specific education?

21–22 February 2018, Apertin

The Role of Disciplines and School Subjects in Teacher Education and Research

18–19 January 2018, University of Helsinki

HuSoEd meets ROSE: Searching for the possible research collaboration between Karlstad University and the University of Helsinki

23–24 October 2017, University of Helsinki

NoFa6 - Nordic Conference on​ Teaching and Learning in Curriculum Subjects

29–31 May 2017, Odense

Research grants:

Swedish Research Council, network grant: Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education (2019-2021)

Hanaholmen (Kulturfonden för Sverige och Finland): Research collaboration between researchers of subject-specific teacher education of the University of Helsinki and Karlstad University, 2018

KOSS III network meeting in London in March 2020. Professor Sirpa Tani and Professor Arto Kallioniemi thanking the hosts.

KOSS I network meeting in Stockholm in May 2019 with Professor Christina Olin-Scheller.

Group photo of the HuSoEd and ROSE meeting in Tvärminne, Finland in October 2018.