Abstract

The Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) have a strong image of being welfare states with social justice and cohesion high on their agendas. Nordic education has a high degree of access and low degree of segregation in international comparison. However, neoliberal features of privatization, commercialization, competition, and choice increasingly permeate Nordic education policies and practices. This session presents research on some of the contradictions in Nordic educational policy, practice, and curriculum, and aims to critically explore how justice and equality of and in education are challenged and in part acquire new meanings in the context of globalized Nordic countries in the early 2000s.

Session Summary

The beginning of the twenty-first century has witnessed a global strong sense of disorientation and conflicts about the purpose of education. In the so-called knowledge economy, the central underlying values of education have been challenged and transformed, as education as a social common good to large extent has been replaced by education as an economic and private good (Gunter & Apple, 2016). The five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden) still have a strong image of being universal welfare states with social justice and cohesion prominent on their agendas, reflected in the national curricula, and high levels of taxation and reallocation as a central political means (Esping Andersen, 1996). Nordic education has a high degree of access and a low degree of segregation in international comparison, and the Nordic countries enjoy a reputation of fairness in education and other welfare aspects. The marked neoliberal features of privatization, commercialization, competition, and choice that increasingly permeate Nordic education policies, albeit to varying extent, are less known outside this region (Blossing et al., 2014; Lundahl, 2016). Yet these conflicting political purposes and practices of education perhaps become tangible in these countries.

Adopting international outlooks and comparisons, this session aims at critically analyzing how justice and equality in education are challenged and to some extent take on new meanings in the context of the globalized Nordic countries in the early 2000s.A critical evaluation of policies and curricula is particularly salient as it questions the widespread view of equality about the Nordic countries.

The session is composed by members of a Nordic Center of Excellence Justice through Education in the Nordic Countries, funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers (http://blogs.helsinki.fi/just-ed/). It consists of four papers, each of which deals with a crucial aspect of equality and justice in the changing policy context. The first paper discusses the local enactment of clashing educational marketization and equality policies in Sweden, the Nordic country having gone furthest in a neoliberal direction. The second paper addresses educational policies and practices on sexualities in the Nordic area, focusing on Finland and Iceland. The third paper highlights how policies in math and science education in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are part of the shift from education for democracy to education for the economy in the Nordic countries. In the fourth and final paper, the author focuses on how therapeutic governance increasingly characterizes Finnish youth policies and individualizes societal problems by reducing them to personality characteristics.

Note the authors are from three of the countries as required, but one of the papers also presents data from the remaining Nordic countries, i.e. five independent countries.

Blossing, U., Imsen, G., & Moos, L. (Eds.) (2014). The Nordic Education Model. ‘A School for All’ Encounters Neo-Liberal Policy. Dordrecht: Springer. Esping Andersen, G. (1996). The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gunter, H. M., Hall, D., & Apple, M. W. (Eds.). (2016). Corporate Elites and the Reform of Public Education. Bristol: Polity Press. Lundahl, L. (2016). Equality, inclusion and marketization of Nordic education: Introductory notes. Research in Comparative and International Education, 11(1), 3–12.