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 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…

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.…

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…

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…

By exploring demographic data on teachers through a Bordieusian lens, this study aims to analyse the socio-economic background of primary school teachers in northern Sweden depending on gender and type. The rural area under study follows a national development where the number of primarily female teachers and junior school teachers increased…

This article is concerned with an early phase in the history of educational comparisons in which international exhibitions played a major role as spaces for comparison. It looks at the educational exhibits at the Exposition Universelle in Paris 1900, and more specifically its exhibitions on drawing instruction. By following a central Swedish…

This paper examines the role of school inspection in the early (1861-1910) professionalisation of Swedish elementary school teachers. International research on school inspection has focused on educational reform, but rarely on the role of inspection in teachers' theoretical and practical development. The paper's theoretical assumption is that…

There are many similarities between the Nordic countries of Sweden and Finland, but they have made different decisions regarding their teacher-education policies. This article focuses on how the objectives of teacher education, particularly the vision of the ideal teacher, have changed in Sweden and Finland in the period after the Second World…

This article examines challenges to the classical paradigm of education in Sweden that followed in the wake of state-initiated attempts at school reform in the first decades of the nineteenth century. When the internal disputes of the so-called 'Genius Committee' resulted in a failure to overcome the increasing divide between reformers, a prolific…

This article aims to analyse how the emerging Swedish school system in the early nineteenth century can be understood within the context of a gradual break-up of the estate society and its replacement with a class society in which citizenship was an important foundation. This is done through the discussion of the conceptions of citizenship on two…

Between 1946 and 1956, the Swedish Psychological and Pedagogical Institute (SPPI) organised several summer courses for the purpose of training teachers in intelligence testing. The aim of the courses was to make these teachers the first gatekeepers who would meet and direct the youngest pupils into ordinary classes or into special classes. This…

According to an influential narrative in Swedish educational historiography, the Swedish educational system underwent a drastic change during the 1990s, moving towards a more individualistic and marketised system. Without denying the relevance of this perspective, this article argues that we can trace antecedents to the reforms undertaken in the…

This article investigates the economic aspects of monitorial education in Sweden during the 1820s. In contrast to previous research, which has often emphasised monitorial education as a cheap method of education, this article shows that this was rarely the case. Monitorial education could in fact lead to increased costs, especially during the…

In research on the development of a nineteenth-century "science for the people", initiatives by scientists or people well-trained in science has been emphasised, while the writings, roles and initiatives of elementary teachers are normally just mentioned in passing. In this study the development of nineteenth-century elementary science…