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…

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…

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…

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…

For more than 40 years, health and physical education (HPE) academics in universities and teacher education colleges have drawn attention to issues of social justice specific to the context of PE and advocated for teachers in fields, gymnasiums and other physical activity spaces to do a better job of promoting more equitable outcomes for all…

Political reforms of the 1990s ushered in sweeping socio-economic changes in the Nordic countries, including radical changes in their vocational education and training systems. However, the reforms led to a school-based vocational education and training system with a strong orientation towards higher education in Sweden, and a hybrid system with a…

Citizenship education played a crucial role in the 19th century transition from royal sovereignty to democracy in the Nordic region, with folk high schools (FHS) playing an important role. While established to empower the people ("folk") for active participation in society, the contemporary folk high schools have reoriented from their…

Throughout history educational leaders have looked to other countries and have attempted to learn by borrowing useful examples to implement in their own educational systems. As recent comparative policy research shows, processes of policy lending and borrowing have their own socio-historically defined dynamics. In this paper, the authors approach…

This article examines the long-run effect of higher education, measured in average years of tertiary schooling, on the level and growth rate of national per capita income. It uses an improved dataset on educational attainments which not only reduces measurement error but also overcomes data comparability issues and allows us to estimate the…

This book offers an original contribution to the area of international research on comparative education policies and the influence of transnational agencies on national school policy and reform. With a focus on grasping what "the Nordic model" or "the Nordic dimension" means in school and educational policy, the book explores…

This book identifies the cultural and moral foundations of country-specific educational governance and school leadership and presents the principles of justice and the diversity of common goods that guide leadership practices in schools. It contributes to an existing research field that studies diversity and ethical leadership in schools. The…

This article introduces a collection of papers comprising the special issue, "Competing interests: Parents, Schools and Nation States." Drawing on the seven papers in the collection, and situating them in recent developments in the sociological field, the article discusses globally shifting relations between families, schools and the…

This article investigates Sámi elementary education in early twentieth-century Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The main focus lies on cultural contexts that frame and limit language use. The key analytical concepts are "useful citizen" and "useful citizenship". Through these concepts the article probes the ways in which…

This article explores the role of psychiatry in the sorting of schoolchildren in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden from 1920 to 1950. Whereas the role and rise of educational psychology and IQ-testing in the differentiation processes in schooling have been examined through earlier research, the role of psychiatry in the interprofessional collaboration…

The design of vocational didactics has to meet special requirements. Six core assumptions are identified: outcome orientation, cultural-historical embedding, horizontal structure, vertical structure, temporal structure, and the changing nature of work. Different approaches and discussions from school-based systems (Spain and Sweden) and dual…