This comparative curricular study examines the educational functions of the Swedish Sámi nomad school curricula before and after a central school reform in the 1960s. Due to the reform, the nomad school, a boarding school system for the Indigenous Sámi people in Sweden, was formed to bring about systemic changes in the education of Sámi children,…

The educational system in nineteenth-century Sweden was, as in many other industrialising states, segregated by social class. Children of the economically and politically marginalised classes were educated in basic primary subjects in the nationwide "Folkskola" (primary schools). From 1868 to the early 1940s, the government issued,…

Within the field of history of education, there is a growing interest in the movement of influential actors and texts that have crossed national borders. One of the main driving forces for influence, knowledge, and innovation is comparison, a tool used within the governing of education in diverse ways and with different intensities, over time, to…

The infant school was a nineteenth-century innovation with British roots that quickly achieved an international reputation. This article contributes to the study of the transnational dissemination of the infant schools by examining the case of Swedish infant schools. Using theoretical concepts from the transnational history of education, this…

The question "What does this have to do with everything else?" refers to ecological thinking. In this article, we use an ecological approach to explore the interrelationships between the incidence of the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, its trajectories and impacts on education. Our emphasis on children and their environment, as specific…

This article explores the role of psychiatry in the sorting of schoolchildren in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden from 1920 to 1950. Whereas the role and rise of educational psychology and IQ-testing in the differentiation processes in schooling have been examined through earlier research, the role of psychiatry in the interprofessional collaboration…

This article investigates Sámi elementary education in early twentieth-century Finland, Norway, and Sweden. The main focus lies on cultural contexts that frame and limit language use. The key analytical concepts are "useful citizen" and "useful citizenship". Through these concepts the article probes the ways in which…

This article discusses the significance of in-kind taxation and payments in kind for the establishment of an elementary school system in Sweden, in the 1840-1870 period. By analysing the funding of teachers' wages, the heating of the school facilities, and school building construction in the 12 rural school districts of the Sundsvall region, this…

This article explores the Histories of Education Summer School Conference for Postgraduate Students, 2010-2015, with regard to its impact on networking and identification with the field of the history of education. It is concluded that the impact of the Summer School is transformative on the social level. The structure in which the Summer School…

This article analyses the teaching of Swedish language lecturers active in Germany during the first half of the twentieth century. It shows the centrality of literature and literary constructions and analyses images of Swedishness and the Swedish nation present in the teaching material of that time in relation to the national image present in…

The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between emotions, power and schooling. Focusing on elementary schools during the second half of the nineteenth century, when education for the masses in Sweden emerged, the article discusses the emotionology of early mass schooling. It is argued that the abolishment of the monitorial method in…

At the world exhibitions of the 1870s Sweden displayed a schoolhouse, with examples of teaching material and student work. How did Sweden ship an entire schoolhouse to these exhibitions? What impact did the schoolhouse have on visitors to the exhibition? The purpose of this article is to shed light on the transnational influences operating between…

Programmes of international educational exchange are not only carried out for educational purposes, but form an important part of modern-day public diplomacy. Through exchange programmes education and research are linked with foreign policy interests, which then in turn should affect the international contacts of universities and research…

This article considers the emergence of classroom wall charts as a teaching technology in Swedish elementary schools in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, using Biblical history teaching as an example. There has been some work done internationally on wall charts as an instructional technology, but few studies have looked at their…

This article examines the vision of the Swedish comprehensive school reform between 1946-1962 as it pertains to the ever-troubling questions of discipline and order in school. Inspired primarily by the work of Michel Foucault and his genealogical perspective, the article problematises the notion that character formation and school discipline…