Aims: There are concerns that lockdown measures taken during the current COVID-19 pandemic lead to a rise in loneliness, especially in vulnerable groups. We explore trends in loneliness before and during the pandemic and differences across population subgroups. Methods: Data were collected via online questionnaires in June 2020 and four to eight months prior in two Norwegian counties ( N=10,740; 54% women; age 19–92 years). Baseline data come from the Norwegian Counties Public Health Survey (participation rate 46%, of which 59% took part in a COVID-19 follow-up study). Results: Overall loneliness was stable or falling during the lockdown. However, some subgroups, single individuals and older women, reported slightly increased loneliness during lockdown. Interestingly, individuals with low social support and high levels of psychological distress and loneliness before the pandemic experienced decreasing loneliness during the pandemic. Conclusions: Although data limitations preclude strong conclusions, our findings suggest that, overall, Norwegians seem to have managed the lockdown without alarming increases in loneliness. It is important to provide support and to continue investigating the psychological impact of the pandemic over time and across regions differentially affected by the pandemic.

This study draws the attention towards the importance of reducing weight discrimination against children for their educational success, as an issue of social justice. We investigate the consequences of early-onset obesity identifying the mediating mechanisms in the relationship between childhood obesity and academic achievement. To do so, we employ the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (kindergarten to fifth grade) in the US (ECLS-K: 2011) and apply a parallel process latent growth model with a combination of quasi-experiments and econometrics. The results of this study suggest that teachers may serve as a significant source of weight bias, especially for girls (B = −0.09, 95% BC CI [−2.37 to −0.46]).

The authors conducted a small‐scale randomized control trial (n = 31 teachers) of Online Content‐Focused Coaching, an intervention consisting of an online workshop followed by multiple cycles of remote video‐based coaching, to support dialogic text discussions. Findings demonstrate the efficacy of Online Content‐Focused Coaching in three different ways. First, the authors’ analyses, after accounting for differential attrition among groups, demonstrate an existence proof for effects of the intervention on both classroom text discussion quality and student achievement. Second, the authors examined and demonstrated an association between the magnitude of changes in discussion quality and the magnitude of achievement gains. Finally, the authors propose and examine evidence to support a theory for how teachers develop adaptive expertise for facilitating dialogic text discussions. Results show that teachers’ use of transitional and some aspirational discussion moves grew from baseline to the end of the workshop, with limited growth in the quality of students’ contributions. Over the coaching phase of the intervention, teachers’ facilitation moves grew substantively, and so did students’ strong contributions. The authors interpret the results to suggest that the workshop was critical for developing teachers’ knowledge of the features of dialogism and that coach‐guided reflection was essential for developing teachers’ expertise at using facilitation moves to elicit student thinking. Findings contribute to a validity argument for the efficacy of Online Content‐Focused Coaching. More importantly, investigating and describing the process of teaching change is the study’s main theoretical contribution.