The malleability of students’ perception of key teaching factors within and across Nordic contexts: validating the 7Cs framework

The 7Cs framework measures seven key pedagogical factors (Care, Control, Clarify, Challenge, Captivate, Confer, Consolidate) and is one of the most popular student perception surveys to measure quality in the United States. The framework is originally said to be a valid and reliable indicator of teaching quality across time and contexts, but an increasing number of studies indicate that the factors are not necessarily stable, but malleable according to different contexts. Currently, the framework is extending its reach to Nordic contexts and it is thus important to examine whether the factors are stable across different Nordic Countries. Thus, in this paper, we validate the 7C framework for Nordic contexts and hereby examine if and how they differ across different Nordic contexts. We start by presenting our constructivist stance and the way this stance guides us in the subsequent analysis. The analysis is based on 7C surveys collected in 2020/2021 in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland (N=2,265 upper secondary students). By following well-tested and recognized guidelines and steps for validating educational environment instruments we show that students’ perceptions of the 7C teaching characteristics differ across the Nordic contexts. One factor, the Control factor, is consistent both across the different analyses in this article and previous studies, but all the other factors vary much across contexts. The article thus emphasizes that we must be careful about transferring frameworks developed in certain contexts and using them as indicators of quality in other contexts. In addition to contributing to knowledge about the use of the 7C framework in Nordic contexts, the paper in general contributes to the discussion of how we can and should discuss and examine quality in teaching.