Our guiding thesis in this article is that the recent burgeoning discussion of differentiation in the context of education has to do with critiques of the globalization theories that have been popular since 1990. In doing so, however, these critically motivated discussions run the risk of overlooking the historical roots of differentiation, which…

The educational mission of most western schools today includes the nurturing of children's sexual upbringing, which many scholars see as a way of controlling their sexuality and forming them into "sexual citizens." This article examines how official Swedish school guidelines and textbooks have mediated sexuality norms through education…

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…

Relating to world culture theory, this article aimed to discern similarities and differences between the South Korean national curriculum (1981, 2015) and the Swedish national curriculum (1980, 2018) and a set of complementary documents, both more broadly and with special emphasis on middle school level mathematics education. The findings suggest…

This article addresses the ways in which Swedish history textbooks for upper secondary schools published between 1994 and 2011 deal with the most recent past. The textbooks are chronologically organized and follow history into the textbook authors' time, and each new edition of the textbooks includes the latest developments. The article inquires…

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 relationship between technical development and education is a reciprocal one, where education always stands in relation to those skills, competencies, and techniques that are anticipated as necessary in a technological future. At the same time, skills and competencies are also necessary to drive innovation and technical development for the…

The nation-state remains fundamental to our understanding of nineteenth-century schooling, which is commonly referred to in terms of national school systems or national education systems. While nineteenth-century school systems were often national in scope and promoted with the purpose of creating nationally minded citizens, this article examines…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to investigate attempts to safeguard classical humanism in secondary schools by appealing to a cultural-historical link with Antiquity, voiced in the face of educational reforms in Sweden between 1865 and 1971. Design/methodology/approach: By focusing on the content of the pedagogical journal…

In the 1960s, people across the West started imagining that they were in a societal transition. Crucially, in these future-oriented discussions, social class was often transformed into educational attainment as the main dividing line. These future studies garnered attention across the political spectrum, including the Swedish Conservative Party.…

We seek to consider the use of Pierre Bourdieu's 'cultural capital' within Swedish sociology of education focusing on the adoption of the term and asking how the 'cultural capital' is related to the specific context in Sweden. Here we consider the historical context and disciplinary route through which the concept travelled. The Swedish…

This article seeks to introduce a new historical explanation as to why left-wing working-class women engaged in liberal, middle-class organisations during the first wave of feminism. The article specifically deals with middle-class associations and clubs that had educational purposes. Instead of focusing on the larger explanatory scheme of the…

Starting in the late nineteenth century, the teaching profession became increasingly feminized. This article examines the results of this process, exploring the working and living conditions of rural female primary school teachers with a focus on the experiences of loneliness, harassment, and violence that they suffered in early twentieth-century…

The 19th century saw the rise of mass schooling. School acts were published, increasing number of teachers were trained and hired, and children increasingly attended schools. This development was strongest in Europe and North America, with schooling in the USA, France and Prussia leading the way. While this development with its national and…

The aim of this article is to explore how Swedish principals experienced the decentralisation and re-centralisation reforms and how they affected principals' autonomy and decision-making capacity. Data were obtained from three surveys of Swedish principals, carried out in 2005, 2012 and 2019. The results show that principals experienced a high…