From a Nordic and British perspective, the history of education is a vibrant field of knowledge production. It invites scholars from the humanities and social sciences to investigate the continuities and changes in education over time, as well as "Bildung," nurturing, learning, and teaching. By underlining the breadth of the history of…

In 2014, the Danish school system celebrated its 200-year anniversary with a five-volume publication entitled "Dansk skolehistorie gennem 500 år" (500 years of Danish school history). As editors-in-chief, we took our inspiration from the cultural turn within history more generally and the search for the black box of schooling among…

The history of education is, and can be, many things. In this article, I argue that the history of education in the Nordic countries is marked by three phases, based on its institutional setting. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the history of education was written by schoolmen for schoolmen. In the post-war era, the…

The history of subjects is often told analysing notions of knowledge in historical reforms, policies, curricula, and textbooks. In this article, we analyse student papers from 1968, focusing on their responses to the topic 'Social distinctions and prejudices in Denmark'. The students present a number of concepts and categories of social…

This article explores new nationalisms as part of the conflicting political interactions constituting the post-Cold war governance arrangements in higher education. Drawing on policy documents, archival sources and interviews and against the backdrop of a historical perspective on the university and the EU's role as an education actor, the article…

Globally, the issue of research impact has grown as governments articulate policies around research as a contributor to economic and societal development, often through an econometric justification. This has triggered much discussion amongst humanities scholars in public formally-reasoned peer-reviewed texts that are rarely empirically-based. This…

The arrival of guest workers in Denmark from the late 1960s meant new political questions of how to receive their children in school. During the 1970s, the heyday of welfare state reforms, a new area of welfare state politics and policy emerged concerning these children: an education politics of migrant pupils accompanied by knowledge being…

This conceptual research analyses the historical development of the German concept of "Bildung" to the Danish "dannelse." The starting point is J.G. Fichte's 1808 "Addresses to the German Nation," in which "Bildung" is analyzed as a key concept. The paper illustrates the influence Fichte had on N.F.S.…

Focusing on the school corridor, this article explores the coming into being of Danish school space through shifting architectural designs, teaching practices, and volumes and organisations of pupils' bodies. The analysis shows a transformation of the corridor itself: from primarily being a disciplining and potentially dangerous space for moving…

This article addresses schoolteachers' spatial work in the process of inhabiting and using a new school building. The study focuses on a historical case of a Danish open-plan school built in the early 1970s and shows how the teachers' spatial work engages with questions of the organisation of bodies, sound, furniture and teaching aids. The article…

Purpose: The purpose of the article is to examine knowledge about successful principalship and discuss the methodology that has emerged throughout the history of the International Successful School Principals Project (ISSPP) and their implications for future progress. Design/methodology/approach: Historical analysis is used as a strategy for…

This paper aims to contribute to the literature relating to the way in which numerical data in IT systems were and are used to govern the development of primary education as data provide the government with the opportunity to 'see' the system of education in a new way. Economic growth in the Western world after World War II was linked to…

The purpose of this paper is to examine how adult education institutions have developed in close connection with the Danish welfare state and how structural reforms since the 1990s have changed the institutional structure and impacted accessibility. This involves analyses of the main functions linked to the different types of adult education…

School autonomy with accountability (SAWA) reforms have developed in diverse forms in Northern Europe. Following processes of decentralization to the municipal and school levels, quality assurance and inspection became key to the test-based accountability agendas of Denmark and England respectively. With an abductive approach, we explore the…

In which ways do curricula recognize existential questions of compulsory school students, and what direction is given regarding how to address them? By asking these two questions, this study analyses syllabi for the school subject of religion education and its equivalents in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, and in the two German regions of Bavaria and…