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The Norden Associations (föreningarna Norden) were established in 1919 with the intention of promoting understanding and cooperation between the Nordic countries. The definition of “Norden” was negotiated from the very beginning, and Icelandic and Finnish associations were not established until the 1920s. Promoting understanding and cooperation was very much considered an educational effort, and Norden was imagined within educational efforts sponsored by the associations. In this regard, the associations had predecessors in the Nordic schoolteacher meetings that dated back to the age of Scandinavism in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Norden Associations created special school boards in the 1920s in order to both promote a more Nordic approach in some subjects—mainly language, geography, and history—and to promote cooperation between the countries, with the youth as the catalyst for a more Nordistic future. This article looks into how the Norden Associations imagined a Nordic school, in which a Nordic sentiment was established, and how this imagination related to the reality of the nationalistic school and to ideas of broader international cooperation, between which the “Nordic idea” has always been sandwiched. The article shows how the methods used effectively hindered the imagination of Norden and the “Nordic idea” beyond the scope of cooperation between nations.

This article examines the design of the mathematics curriculum applied in Sweden between 1980 and 1995 and how this design affected student results between two international tests, SIMS1980 and TIMSS1995. During this period, the results in mathematics improved on a general level, but in some topics it did not. The results increased significantly in arithmetic, but very little in algebra. I investigate in what respect the arithmetic and algebra curricula were designed differently. The analysed materials are syllabus, commentary material, tests, and textbooks. The analysis is based on Bernstein’s theory on classification and framing. The main conclusion is that strong framing in the curriculum can be associated with better student results in TIMSS and evidence for a causal relation between these entities is presented. On the basis of my finding, I raise a critical question about the change in governing policy that took place in Sweden between 1975 and 2000.

Around 1970, violence among pupils became conceptualised in a radically new way when the concept of “mobbing” was introduced into the Nordic school debate. The concept was immediately embraced by popular discourse with the result that significant attention and discussion followed. It was also soon picked up by researchers and became further developed within Swedish and Norwegian behavioural science. This article concerns how pupil violence in the form of bullying was understood and theorised in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in Sweden and Norway. It shows how certain political and intellectual conditions, and events, in both national contexts were decisive for the development of bullying theory, eventually leading up to a commercialisation of bullying theory. This development is discussed with the help of the concept “psychology-commercial complex,” derived from Pickstone’s theory of technoscience. publishedVersion

In the 1970s, Sweden and Finland abandoned the system of seminars for folk school teachers and incorporated all teacher education into the system of higher education. The visions behind the new education, as well as the original plans for its structure, were similar in both countries, but the outcomes were different. Finland managed to a greater extent to implement an academic teacher education located at universities, while the Swedish solution was deemed unsatisfactory by many actors, leading to several new reforms in the following decades. This can be explained by the different nature of the conflicts surrounding the reforms in Sweden and Finland. In Finland, the early 1970s was a period of intense left-right polarisation, followed by attempts to depoliticise teacher education. In Sweden, the vision of an academic teacher education met successful resistance from regional actors, resulting in the preservation of much of the old seminar system under the guise of small teacher education colleges.

During the nineteenth century, national systems of mass schooling were established in western Europe. In Denmark, King Frederik VI passed a set of five schools’ laws in 1814: one for the village schools, one for the market town schools, one for Copenhagen, one for the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein and one for Jews, in order to create and regulate a system of mass schooling within his realms. This study aims to analyse the impact of the 1814 School Acts and thereby, the emergence of mass schooling in Denmark in the nineteenth century. Three aspects of the 1814 Acts are analysed in this article: firstly, how a local school administration was established; secondly, how new school buildings were built and thirdly, how a new form of teacher and a new teachers’ education was enacted at different stages across the King’s realm and countries, and with very different consequences.

"From daddy's obedient Henric": Pedagogical perspectives on educational travel of the early 1800s This article analyses educational travel in the early 1800s from the perspective of its educational heritage and praxis. The aim is to develop an understanding of the pedagogical significance of educational travel. The article makes clear how upbringing and education are represented in the framework of travel narratives in pre-industrial landscapes. The argument is based on the influence of the mercantile class on educational travel and the informal effect of these trips on changes in pedagogical thinking. The travel letters of Johan Henrik Munktell from 1828-1830 are used as primary sources. Using Paul Ricoeur’s memory-critical hermeneutics, travel narratives become significant sources for how education is arranged, and immanent pedagogy is a key term. The results demonstrate that the individualisation process works together with forms of crypto-learning, the core of the personal development vision, and society’s long-term memory. The Nordic Journal of Educational History volume 6, no. 2 Special Issue: The Seventh Nordic Conference on the History of Education, edited by Nina Volckmar and Einar Sundsdal.The Seventh Nordic Conference on the History of Education was held in Trondheim, Norway. Bildningsresan som inre och yttre perspektiv på lärande

For many historians of education, the emergence of a modern education system after the mid-nineteenth century was a national and regional process, neatly and carefully closed off within the borders of the nation. However, these accounts have often disregarded the effects of the flows of cross-border ideas and technologies, such as international comparisons, lesson-drawing, policy diffusion and travel, as well as local adaptations and translations of education policy originating elsewhere. The purpose of this article is to shed light on the relations between Swedish education and the international scene when it comes to policy and practice formation. The field of study is the international World´s Fairs of 1862–1904. Looking at what Sweden displayed, and understanding how visitors perceived it, the article raises questions concerning how exhibitions like these worked as mediators of educational ideals. The focus will be on the dissemination of aesthetic ideals, and the article will show that the World’s Fairs were platforms for an aesthetic normativity that had governing effects locally as well as globally.

What were teachers’ allotted farms, and what were they for? This study aims to answer these questions by examining these farms in nineteenth century Sweden, and their role in the expansion of the elementary school system in 1838–1900. Focusing on the allotted farms of the Sundsvall region, this article analyses how these farms provided teachers with fields and meadows, as well as outhouses such as cowsheds, bakehouses and cellars. This article argues that these farms made schooling more affordable for the school districts, primarily in the first two decades after the Elementary School Act of 1842. Allotted farms were often inexpensive to acquire and maintain, not least owing to the agricultural and maintenance work that the teachers carried out, and yielded an annual return that reduced the taxation needed to operate the school districts. This, in turn, facilitated the expansion of schooling.

This article discusses the study of educational theories and ideas. Based on analyses of primarily the Danish scene, positing similarities with the other Nordic countries, we identify and investigate three main and today dominating approaches: a philosophical approach focusing on the content of the ‘great’ thinkers’ ideas, their logical-coherence and/or moral-ethical value; a historical approach centering on individuals and their educational ideas expressed as views in a realistic and contextual story; and a Foucauldian approach which analyzes educational ideas and theories through their place in power-knowledge constellations. On the backcloth of analyses of the ontology and epistemology operating in these approaches we conclude that they all ignore the systematic study of the social context in which ideas and theories are conceived and we argue for a social space and social history approach as a way to fill out this epistemological vacuum.

In this article, we argue that an understanding of the interwar years and the ascent of educational psychology contribute valuable knowledge about the inner workings of modern-day education with regard to the links between society and education in general and the boundary between normality and deviation in particular. The establishment of the educational psychologist’s office at Frederiksberg in Denmark, the introduction of IQ testing, and the related psychological files of students provide an image of a period of measurement in schools during which IQ testing was decisive in decisions to transfer students to the remedial school. The testing and filing were the foremost important technologies of the period. We draw on sources that allow us to view educational psychology and testing in their local, national, and political context. The sources applied are primarily obtained from Frederiksberg City Archive that contains archives from the Educational Psychology Office.

This article examines the demographic and social profile of primary school teachers in Iceland over half a century, beginning with the introduction of mandatory elementary school attendance in 1908, with particular focus on changes between 1930 and 1960. During this period, Iceland developed from a rural to a predominantly urban society where most children attended classes in permanent school buildings, in contrast to the ambulatory schools most common at the outset. It is our hypothesis that these rapid social changes affected the composition of the teaching corpus in many ways, particularly as regards gender and class origin. Analysis shows that in the first half of the period, female teachers were more numerous in the capital of Reykjavík, and their social and educational status was higher than teachers outside the capital. Furthermore, female teachers in Reykjavík were less likely to marry and had longer teaching careers than their male colleagues. On the whole, the share of female teachers increased considerably between 1930 and 1960, by which time it had become easier for women to combine teaching with marriage.

Published version. Source at http://ojs.ub.umu.se/index.php/njedh/article/view/60 Previous research on Norwegian educational reforms after 1814, the year when Norway became a constitutional state, has emphasized the conservatism of the elementary education acts of 1816 and 1827. Contrary to expectations for a constitutional state, these acts did not reflect a concern for fostering politically active citizens. Neither did they follow up the enlightenment idea of teaching secular knowledge to the common people. We raise a new question concerning post-1814 educational legislation in Norway: was there an increased emphasis on national uniformity after 1814? A close reading of the earlier 1739/41 acts and the 1827 act, including the Plan and Instruction from 1834, studies of the debates in the Norwegian Parliament 1815–1827 and the temporary 1816 act on elementary education, show that policy after 1814 emphasised national uniformity more than before. Despite continued local funding of elementary schooling, national policy and legislation promoted uniformity.

”A new form of musical upbringing”: Pretenses of reform pedagogy content in the Siljan schoolIn this article, I describe the Siljan school in Tällberg as a Swedish example of alternative pedagogy. The overall questions relate to the reform pedagogy content of the school and its ability to give Swedish music teaching a new form of musical upbringing. An important issue is how the Siljan school as a model for Swedish reform has been inspired by the reform pedagogy movements in USA and Germany. The analysis is thus based on the Alm couple’s ability to give the school an international character which shines light on Swedish reforms in the greater context of reform pedagogy. With its basis in discursive education of the 1930s, two main questions are discussed: what perspective on musical education can be identified in the personal development ethos of the Siljan school? How can the school’s relation to the reform pedagogy music movement during the start of the 1900s be understood? From a hermeneutic perspective, the article contributes by investigating how the Siljan school can have affected decisions in education politics, Swedish schooling, and Swedish musical life. In summary, the article contributes with new knowledge on a chapter in the history of Swedish music pedagogy.

Progressive Coalitions, (Inter)National Influences and Knowledge Assessments in Swedish Curriculum Reform, ca 1930–1950Insight gained through assessments and international precedents are two strategies typically used to reform national curricula in modern educational systems. The present article illustrates how a progressive movement in Sweden used its participation in the International Examination Inquiry, not as source of ideas or methods, but as an experience of urbanity that lent credence to its proposed solutions to national educational issues. It will be shown how this movement used the IEI to promote and establish a particular institute in Sweden, the Swedish Institute for Educational Psychology (SPPI), an institute that came to re/produce a psychology-laden educational termino-logy directly affecting Swedish curricula for years to come.

Enhancing the Infrastructure of Research on the Nordic Educational Past : The Nordic Journal of Educational History