The educational system in nineteenth-century Sweden was, as in many other industrialising states, segregated by social class. Children of the economically and politically marginalised classes were educated in basic primary subjects in the nationwide "Folkskola" (primary schools). From 1868 to the early 1940s, the government issued,…

Sweden's first Elementary School Act of 1842 stated that every parish was obliged to organise and fund schools to be offered to all children in the parish. Many parishes were poor and had a difficult time funding schools. In some parishes, local industries, such as ironworks, organised, funded, and managed schools for their workers. Even though…

The introduction of elementary schools in Sweden (and elsewhere) in the mid-nineteenth century required the quick hiring of many new teachers, which in turn posed challenges about their financing. This paper analyses school inspectors' reports and teachers' journals to illuminate local strategies to provide affordable teaching in the Uppsala…

In the past few centuries, an accelerating process of legalization and classification have moulded the diverse range of earlier institutions into a limited number of isomorphic organizational forms. Today, institutions of higher education, with their roots in the corporate forms of medieval universities, can also have the legal status of, for…

In Sweden, compulsory school grades determine admission to upper-secondary school. The article maps grading outcomes in compulsory school for 1990-2017, when three different grading scales were used, in terms of students' distribution across grading steps. Statistics of grades for all Swedish grade 9 students (all school subjects) are used.…

Boards in higher education organizations (HEOs) play multiple roles. While they govern, boards are also expected to embed HEOs in society. Indeed, recent higher education reforms in Europe have emphasized the embedding role of HEO boards more than their governing role. But, although these reforms are widespread, we still know little about the ways…

This article explores representations of problems regarding citizenship in changes to the syllabi of social studies and history in Swedish secondary schools between 1970 and 2017. Previous research has shown that the general educational discourse changed from an emphasis on the societal needs of committed citizens to an emphasis on the…

Research about race and racism(s) has helped to explain power relations and differences in education. However, it has been difficult to have a theoretical lens using the concept of race and racism(s) accepted in areas of education, as well as in educational research in Sweden. Issues formulated in terms of race and racism(s) are controversial and…

This article studies a sample of displaced workers during the deep 1990s recession in Sweden and estimates the effect of secondary-level adult education on tertiary-level educational attainment. Plant closures and mass layoffs are used to identify job separations unrelated to individual productivity. Results indicate a large positive effect of…

The infant school was a nineteenth-century innovation with British roots that quickly achieved an international reputation. This article contributes to the study of the transnational dissemination of the infant schools by examining the case of Swedish infant schools. Using theoretical concepts from the transnational history of education, this…

In Sweden and in other parts of Europe, the nature of religious education (RE) and its place in schools is the subject of ongoing discussions. Concepts used in the RE classroom can either open or close classroom conversations. A growing consensus can be observed among researchers that the concept of 'religion' is not sufficient to describe -- and…

COVID-19 required educators and students to rapidly move to online learning. Simultaneously, while navigating the pandemic in lockdown, citizens were exposed to the brutal murder of George Floyd. The increased exposure to online activity and discrimination generated a hyperawareness of the potential link between the two. Our interest was to…

Work-integrated Learning (WIL) seeks to bridge the gap between 'scholastic' training and work. This study explores the ironic fact that the WIL discourse remains formed by the idea of "academia" and the "real world," an idea that in decisive ways creates this gap. A genealogical discourse analysis of how this idea operates in…

This article analyses international large-scale assessments in education from a temporal perspective. The article discusses and compares the different conceptions of time in the early international assessments conducted in the 1960s and 1970s by the IEA with the PISA studies conducted by the OECD from the year 2000 onwards. The paper argues that…

The Swedish educational system is recognized as being highly inclusive. Nevertheless, support in special classes and placing students with intellectual disabilities in special schools have increased after the mid-1990s. The study involves 65 thousand students in seven cohorts (born 1967-2004), participating in the Swedish longitudinal project…