Analyzed Norwegian party platforms from 1945 to 1997 for their content related to education. Findings indicate that the basic ideas of social democratic progessivism have been carried forward, but that there has been a shift to the right emphasizing freedom, competition, different alternatives, and more consideration of the interests of business…

Examined the shift in the educational-research paradigm in Finland as seen in 335 doctoral dissertations. Early in the century, educational history was the dominant topic, but by the 1950s the experimental paradigm took over. By the 1980s, factor analysis was a very common research method. In the 1990s, qualitative analyses account for one-third…

Analyzes didactics as the hard core of Finnish pedagogic discourse and relates changes in the state educational discourse in Finland to recent developments in department-level curricula in teacher education at Finnish universities in the 1980s and 1990s. The tendency in Finland has been toward a decontextualized and nonhistorical science of…

Explores the meeting ground between Christian Socialist and Social Democratic ideas and practices in the development of adult education between 1900 and 1930 in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, focusing on cross-cultural dissemination and reception of Christian Socialism and the influence of the Woodbrooke Settlement in the United Kingdom and…

The article contrasts the development of secondary schools in Sweden, Finland, and Norway at the end of the nineteenth century and shows how secondary school development was affected by political power structure and conflicts involved in the definition of a national identity for each of the three countries. (SB)

The Norwegian Basic School is discussed in light of several concepts of general education: pragmatism (emphasizing either processes or specified skills); knowledge-centered perspective; polytechnical perspective; and radical critique of schooling under capitalism. Egalitarian political forces in Norway during the last century are also reviewed.…

The development and present state of research on the sociology of education in the United States are reviewed, drawing on the literature and on interviews with 10 educational sociologists. To answer the challenges of the field today, sociology needs to go beyond its traditional borders. (SLD)

This article traces the shifting profile of the elementary school teaching profession in Finland over 130 years in relation to changes in the model of citizenship, acknowledging the role of the Scandinavian welfare state. Mass education has assigned teachers a crucial role in the initiation into adulthood. (SLD)