Keynotes

Susanne Wiborg

Onsdag 19. september 09.15-10.00

Biography:

Dr Susanne Wiborg is a Reader in Education at the UCL Institute of Education and a member of the LLAKES Centre. She is an Associate Professor II at NTNU, Norway. She is the programme leader of the MA in Comparative Education at UCL. Wiborg specialises in the comparative politics of education and has written extensively on education policy and politics in Europe and Scandinavia. She is the author of Education and Social Integration: Comprehensive Schooling in Europe, Palgrave MacMillan, 2009, and (together with Terry M. Moe, Stanford University) The Comparative Politics of Education: Teacher Unions and Education Systems Around the World, Cambridge University Press, 2017. She has received considerable media coverage in respect of her research in The Guardian, The Times, Financial Times, Newsweek, Prospect, BBC, CNN, etc.

Abstract:

The policy and politics of market-oriented reforms in the Nordic countries, 1980-2017

In this key-note lecture, Dr Susanne Wiborg will discuss the burgeoning literature which seeks to explain the variations of market-oriented education policies in the Nordic countries from 1980 to 2017. Given the profound importance that education has for countries and their citizens, and the inevitable role of politics in shaping education systems in every aspect, there ought to be a lively, well-developed body of comparative political science literature on the topic, exploring how the politics of education actually works and what its various determinants are in different contexts. Traditionally, political scientists have not shown much interest in the field of education, and education researchers have not made much use of the theories and methods of comparative political science. Most education policy research is emerging from policy sociology, which tends to focus on the convergent trends rather than on the causes of the significant differences between countries and regions. However, over recent years there has been a growth of exciting research into the Nordic countries, seeking to explain why Sweden went much further in implementing market-oriented education policies in contrast to, for instance, Finland and Norway. In this presentation, I provide an overview of this new research literature and discuss the explanatory power of the comparative insights it has put forward. I argue that there is still much work to do in order to better understand recent policy developments in education and their underlying determinants, and suggest overlooked factors that may provide an even stronger mid-range theory of the variations of market-oriented reforms in education in the Nordic countries.

Erling Sverdrup Sandmo

Torsdag 20. september 10.45-11.30

Biography:

Erling Sverdrup Sandmo is Professor at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo. In October 2017, he was appointed to build up a new centre for research on and dissemination of maps at the Norwegian National Library. However, he will still be associated with University of Oslo in a 20 % position. Sandmo has published widely on historical topics such as justice, violence and crime, global history, orientalism, music history and historical theory. Recent published books are Tid for historie: En bok om historiske spørsmål [Time for history: A book about historical questions] (2015) and Uhyrlig. Sjømonstre i kart og litteratur 1491-1895 [Monstrous. Sea monsters in map and literature 1491-1895] (2017).

Abstract:

Historical perspectives on teaching - and vice versa: On the changing relationship between the subject and discipline of history

Throughout most of its existence, the writing of history has been intimately connected to didactics. For millennia, its ultimate question was always “What can we learn from the past?” Historical research has been based on the premise that the past is irretrievably lost only since c. 1800, when its overaching aim was shifted from the recognition of exemplarity and present relevance to the understanding of earlier epochs of their own terms. Paradoxically, then, the rise of modern historiography was also the fall of the idea that the past had lessons to give.

However, public uses of the past are still heavily shaped by old ideals of exemplarity. So are the aims of history teaching in Norwegian schools. At the same time, academic humanities – and history as much as any other – appear to be in crisis, not least in terms of social and political relevance. One way forward may seem to be a reorientation towards didactics and a new interest in teaching.

I will explore the changing historical relationship between history in schools and academia with an eye on the future: from a past when history was an aspect of education in general to a time when didactics emerge as a crucial issue of historical theory.