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…

The children's parade, the use of national flags and school banners are key features in the celebration of Norwegian Constitution Day. This article provides a historical analysis of the origin of the school banner and its emergence and development into a living and popular tradition from the late-nineteenth century. This article shows how the…

The history of Scandinavian social welfare services is a well-established field of research. Numerous studies have examined the principles and consequences of poor laws and criminal legislation with respect to various social groups, the emergence of child-rescue institutions and their activities. The socio-political function of education…

The Nordic Education Model was an important part of the social democratic welfare state for many years in the second half of the 20th century. Since the millennium, transnational agencies have drawn education from the realm of politics into a global market place by advocating strategies such as efficiency, competition, decentralisation, governing…

This paper first provides a critic of the implementation of compulsory national assessment protocols internationally, and then nationally through a review of the implementation process used for the introduction of National Standards in New Zealand, and National Testing in Norwegian mainstream schools. It then reviews the impact of these two…

The 18 papers of this conference were divided into five topics ranging from literacy to the history of progressive reform to history of education from an international perspective. Part 1 includes: "Isabella Graham and Joanna Bethune's Early American Experiments in Educating Illiterates" (L. Townsend); "The Dilemma of Equivalency:…