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 arrival of guest workers in Denmark from the late 1960s meant new political questions of how to receive their children in school. During the 1970s, the heyday of welfare state reforms, a new area of welfare state politics and policy emerged concerning these children: an education politics of migrant pupils accompanied by knowledge being…

This study provides a critical engagement with the principle of inclusion, as manifest in three international, interdisciplinary master programmes in Denmark. Initially, it is proposed that one focuses on the knowledge practices found in international, interdisciplinary education, asking to what extent these suggest inclusion in the sense that all…

The old myth about the ability and variability of potential in children is a comforting myth, for those who are uneasy with the degree of inequality they see and would rather seek to justify it than confront it. The myth of inherent potential helps some explain to themselves why they are privileged. Extend the myth to believe in inherited ability…

Performance pressure at both the institutional and individual level of secondary education has been identified as a pressure that is acknowledged all over Europe and raises questions about the extent to which agents in lower and upper secondary education interpret assessment in terms of either control or learning, or perhaps both. Drawing on…

In extant research, the concept of student engagement refers to individual behavioural patterns and traits. Recent research indicates that engagement not only should be related to the individual but also should be anchored in the social context. This ethnographic field study of students and teachers in a Danish vocational education and training…

The gross differences in scholastic achievement among public, private government-dependent, and private independent schools in 22 countries are analyzed with Programme for International Student Assessment 2000 data. In a multilevel approach, the authors estimate these sector effects, controlling for sociological characteristics of students and…

To determine whether the equality of educational opportunity increases in proportion to the rapid expansion of a national school system, questionnaire response data from 1957 to 1962 Danish higher education graduates were analyzed. Social inequality was defined as the relationship between social origin and educational potential. Data analysis…

Conducted in Europe during the summer of 1971, the study attempts to show how three nations--Denmark, France, and West Germany--have taken steps to deal with the problems of economic growth in an advanced industrialized society by reconceptualizing the role of adult education. In the first four chapters the components of a new continuing education…

The book presents 13 articles which examine objectives, practices, sociocultural influences, and limitations of folk high schools in Northern Europe and North America from 1800 to the 1970s. Folk high schools are residential education institutions for young adults which are based upon heightening individual consciousness and commitment to a…

Stereotypes about work-bound youth in vocational and comprehensive high schools were examined, using the students' own perceptions of on-going experiences in these two types of schools. Essentially two related stereotypes account for the wide-spread misconception about vocational and comprehensive high schools: (1) Vocational schools are seen as a…

Review of the history of education on the West Indian island of St. Croix from the 18th century to 1917 can contribute insights into the impact of schooling on social change. During this 200 year period, St. Croix changed from a Danish colony dependent upon plantation slavery to a poverty stricken American protectorate peopled by emancipated…