UNDER CONSTRUCTION!
Dr. Halla Holmarsdottir
Associate Professor
Høgskolen i Oslo, Avdeling for Lærerutdanning,
Pilestredet 40, Oslo (office T422)
e-mail: Halla.Bjork.Holmarsdottir@lu.hio.no
Telephone: 22 45 21 69
Fax:
TEACHING
Associate Professor in Multicultural and International Education at the Faculty
of Education,
Courses taught:
- Introduction to Multicultural
and International Education
- Epistemology and
Research Methods
- Human Rights, Language and
Education
- International Education
and Development
Guest Lecturer University of the Western Cape
Lectures held:
- Reflections of classroom
research
- Researching language in
education
I am currently the project leader of a NUFU
(Nasjonalt program for utvikling, forskning
og utdanning) funded project entitled Gender Equality, Education and Poverty (GEEP).
The project addresses key issues in relation to gender equality, equity,
education and poverty in Southern Sudan and South Africa, in particular
capacity building within research in the universities in the South. This
project not only addresses and compares the key issues around gender equality,
equity, education and poverty in post-conflict contexts in South Africa and
Southern Sudan, but provides a critical analysis of how global aspirations to
advance gender equality and equity are understood. This involves who
participates in implementation; what are the meanings of gender, which
schooling and global relations are negotiated; what constraints are experienced
and overcome; and what concerns about global obligations emerge? A key focus is
how global policy initiatives are interpreted and acted upon in local contexts
I am also currently working on a capacity building project within
the higher education sector in south Sudan. In addition to, among other things,
developing a joint Masters program together with colleagues from Upper Nile University in Malakal, Sudan, the
project also involves a research component on education and development with a
focus on gender and culture in post-conflict Sudan.
My particular focus has been on the Xhosa speaking
population in
Currently I am
also working towards developing a new model within the field of language and
education based on the majority populations in “developing” contexts that are
required to learn through the medium of a foreign language (often an
ex-colonial language). In achieving this I pursue the answers to two questions
in particular in my investigations:
1. What
educational approaches best serve language majority children in Africa or
language minority children in parts of
2. What
policies, programs and circumstances encourage or contribute to
majority/minority language maintenance?
The areas of
specialization in which I have worked include gender and education, education
of minority groups, language planning, language policy and practice;
multilingualism, multilingual education and multi-literacy; and the ethnography
of communication through the use of ethnographic classroom studies.
Academic qualifications
2005 Dr. Polit. degree from the Institute for
Educational Research, University of Oslo, Norway
Area of
specialization Education and Development (Policy and Planning in developing
countries)
2000 M. Phil. in Comparative and International
Education
Area of
specialization Education and Development
1997 B.A. Educational Research (Pedagogy)
Area of
focus Comparative Education in the Nordic Countries
Professional activities
- American
Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL)
(2002-present)
- Comparative
and International Education Society (CIES).
(2000-present)
- Comparative Education
Society Europe (CESE)
(2005-present)
- Comparative
Research Programme on Poverty (CROP)
(2004-present)
- Network
for Research and Evaluation on Education and Development (NETREED) (founding
member from 2001-present).
- Norsk forening for utviklingsforskning (NFU)
(2004-present)
- Nordic
Comparative and International Education Society (NOCIES) (2005-present)
- Executive
board member of the World
Council of Comparative Educational Societies.
- Chair
for the Language Issues Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Comparative
and International Education Society (CIES) (2003-2008).
- Languages
and Education in
2006-2009 Norwegian University Cooperation Programme
for Capacity Development in Sudan (NUCOOP) , co-project leader.
2006-2009 UNESCO liaison for the World Council of
Comparative Educational Societies
2006- Member of
the research team “Education and Inclusion: A comparative look at the North and
the South”
located at the institute for Special Needs Education
at the Faculty of Education, University of
2001-2006 Member of research team for the Languages of
Instruction in
(LOITASA).
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Brock-Utne, Birgit and
Holmarsdottir, Halla B. (2003a). Language policies and practices in
Brock-Utne, Birgit and Holmarsdottir,
Halla B. (2003b). Language Policies and Practices in Africa – some preliminary
results from a research project in
Brock-Utne, Birgit and
Holmarsdottir, Halla B. (2001b). The effects of the choice of English as medium
of instruction on the state of the African languages in
Holmarsdottir, Halla
(2008). Time for a paradigm shift? A critical look at theories dealing with
language-in-education for
Holmarsdottir, Halla
(2007). Implementing a new Language-in-Education Policy: A look at the coping
strategies among teachers in three South African primary schools. Curriculum
and Teaching. 22 (1). 5-24.
Holmarsdottir, Halla
(2007). Language
alternation as a coping strategy among teachers in South African classrooms. In Birgit Brock-Utne,
Zubeida Desai and Martha Qorro (eds.). Focusing on Fresh Data on the Language
of instruction Debate in
Holmarsdottir, Halla
(2006). A Tale of Two Countries: Language Policy and Practice in
Holmarsdottir, Halla B.
(2005). From Policy to Practice: A study of the Implementation of the
Language-in-Education Policy (LiEP) in three South African Primary Schools. PhD
dissertation.
Holmarsdottir, Halla B.
(2004). In search of an appropriate theory. In Birgit Brock-Utne, Zubeida Desai
and Martha Qorro (eds.): Researching Language of Instruction in
Holmarsdottir, Halla B.
(2003a). Literacy in Two Languages? Implementing language policy in a
post-colonial context. In Greta Gudmundsdottir (ed.). Disseminating and Using
Research Results from the South. Report from the NETREED Conference 2003.
Report No.
3.
Holmarsdottir, Halla B.
(2002a). Implementing language policy in South African primary schools. UWC
Papers in Education vol. 2. 37-49.
Holmarsdottir, Halla B.
(2002c). Multilingualism in
Holmarsdottir, Halla
(2001a). Language policies and their affects on lesser used languages in the
global community. International Review of Education. Vol. 47 (3-4).
379-394.
BOOK REVIEWS
2006. Book Review of
Judy Kalman - Discovering Literacy: Access Routes to Written Culture for a
group of Women in
2006. Book Review of
Alan Rogers – Urban Literacy: Communication, Identity and Learning in
Development Contexts.