In 2017, a new core curriculum was implemented in Norwegian primary and secondary education, replacing the core curriculum from 1997. While the concept of "danning" is present in both curricula, its meaning and use seem to change. The concept of "danning" has a played a significant role in Norwegian society and educational…

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…

Tracing the representation of the 'immigrant others' in Norwegian schoolbooks over the past century, the paper examines their exclusion/inclusion in national curriculum/learning materials. It finds that a shift has occurred in the country's national narratives over time through three distinct phases: once in the 'blind spot', the 'immigrant…

When the purified National Party (NP) came to power in South Africa in 1948, they introduced educational policies based on the ideology of apartheid. At that time 7,183 pupils attended primary education in 110 Lutheran Norwegian mission schools in Zululand and Natal. When the State took over these schools after the passing of the Bantu Education…

This article investigates the composition of the Norwegian lower secondary school curriculum with a special emphasis on pre-vocational education from a contemporary perspective. The data consist of four official national curricula enacted from the 1970s until the present. Despite differences between the curricula, the main structure of school…

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 paper focuses on a generational change taking place in the Polish academic profession: a change in behaviors and attitudes between two groups of academics. One was socialized to academia under the communist regime (1945-1989) and the other entered the profession in the post-1989 transition period. Academics of all age groups are beginning to…

The focus of this article is the development of adult education. As Kjell Rubenson maintains, adult education has gone through three eras of development: the humanistic, the strong economic period and a softer version of the economic period. Based on this model, we examine whether the development of adult education has similarities across…

Norwegian "friluftsliv" or outdoor life is often identified as a "simple way of life" and as exemplary of green life-philosophy and environmental practices. This paper argues that "friluftsliv" must be conceptualized as a complex social phenomenon and an example of long-standing Western discourse linking ideas of…

The theme of the 38th meeting of the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME 38) and the 36th meeting of the North American Chapter of the Psychology of Mathematics Education (PME-NA 36) was "Mathematics Education at the Edge." Academically, the theme provides opportunities to highlight and examine…

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:…

Discusses family school cooperation in Western Europe historically and today. Stresses the importance of cooperation especially at the primary school level. Attributes the swing toward parental involvement in the 1970s to social unrest linked with demands for participatory democracy, new research results revealing family influences on…

These 17 articles on different subjects of the broader theme "lifelong learning" represent the latest results of the discussions of the Vocational Education and Culture Research Network. An introduction (Klaus Harney et al.) provides summaries of the contents. The articles are "The Global and International Discourse of Lifelong…