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Despite the avowed aims of the Icelandic legislation to provide family-centred and inclusive services, families raising disabled children commonly express their experiences of fragmented services provided more on the terms of the service providers than the users. This article is based on data derived from an on-going qualitative multi case-research in three municipalities in Iceland. The aims of the paper are 1) to identify the main contradictions that explain tensions and dilemmas within the service system as experienced by the parents, and 2) to suggest potential solutions for improving practices in accordance with family-centred inclusive policy and enhanced user participation. The cultural-historical activity theory was applied as an analytical framework. Three activities central to the wellbeing of the children and their families were identified as the unit of analysis, and contradictions within the activities were located and classified by following the expansive learning theory. Based on our findings we propose Edwards's three 'gardening tools' of relational practices as innovative and appropriate concepts for the necessary changes needed. By utilising these tools, the disabled children and their families are brought to the forefront and the professionals enhance their expertise in partnership with all stakeholders.

The chapter describes research on the development of teaching and learning in a distance teacher education programme in Iceland. The focus is on challenges that school-based student teachers faced in learning to become online students and the way in which their experience of teaching in schools contributed to the development of teaching and learning in the programme. Cultural-historical activity theory was used for analysing the development of individuals and activity systems as a dialectical process. The expansive learning theory directed the contradiction analysis to reveal tensions and challenges in the development of practice within the programme, as well as future developmental possibilities. Data includes interviews with school-based student teachers and observation of face-to-face sessions, as well as transcriptions of online courses. Results indicate that a combination of non-traditional student groups and new online tools called for changed practice in teacher education and that a new model of teaching and learning is emerging. In order to develop this model, schools and the teacher education faculty need to look at the education of student teachers as a shared responsibility and negotiate acceptable arrangements for the institutions involved.

This study of the creation of a new upper secondary school in a small community in Iceland focuses on the way in which networking and collaboration across school boundaries contributed to a new form for school practice. The aim is to understand the value of school-community interaction in creating a new school and to understand how the collaboration has expanded both the activities of the school and the local community. A cultural-historical approach is used to analyse how contradictions in practice act as catalysts for development. Data were generated over a three-year period mainly through ethnographic methods. The expansive learning theory (Engeström, 1987, 2010) provided methods for identifying problems and contradictions and focussing on the way in which they were being addressed in the development of the school. The interplay of conceptual and material tools was fundamental in dealing with the contradictions. The principal's clear conceptual vision on the role of education for individuals and society supported by the ideology of the national curriculum facilitated the process of creating and developing the school. Digital applications and the Internet served as material tools for implementing and coordinating the new school. Networking across traditional boundaries widened the object of school learning and made school practice responsive to societal changes. To conclude: Transcending traditional boundaries through schoolcommunity collaboration have promoted a qualitative transformation in school learning.

In this study, we take up L. S. Vygotsky’s challenge to study learning and development in terms of categories, irreducible units that preserve the characteristics of the whole (society). One such category (unit) is experiencing [pereživanie], a process that integrates over the relation of person and environment. Using a case study from Iceland, we theorize the process of “becoming as a teacher-in-a-village school” in terms of experiencing [pereživanie]. The case describes a stage of development in the life of a person who becomes a teacher and then experiences a developmental trajectory very different from his previous life as a fisherman. This is an aspect of  teacher education that  is hardly (if ever) described in the teacher education literature which tend to be concerned with events after a person has entered a professional program or after a person has begun teaching. We discuss the implications of taking experiencing [pereživanie] as the developmental unit for theory and the practice of teacher education and development.