The use of pupil’s work-plans in Norwegian elementary school is a contemporary educational formation that should be considered in a historical and cultural context. Work-plans is a wide-spread phenomenon which is used in several European countries. How the work-plans are used and thought of at the micro-level (schools, classrooms and teacher-practice) and the possible policy and the theoretical ideas surrounding them, is an interesting study.

This paper is based on my contention that today’s use of work-plans in Norwegian classrooms  mirrors another use, reflection and theorizing than work-plans in the more radical days of  the 70’s and throughout the 80’s and 90’s. It is also my notion that the use of work-plans is a phenomenon that is teacher-initiated and spread at micro-level, symbolizing the way dominant educations policy discourses are being contested and struggled over, and how policy is received, perceived and used by different social actors.

As a backdrop, we have historical studies showing that policy and discourses have changed the last 30-40 years. The 1970’s, as an example, are often presented as the radical era in the Norwegian compulsory school system. The hierarchical and traditional methods of teaching gave way to teamwork and pupil centered methods, establishing the pupil as subject (Telhaug et al. 2006) and individualization as a key word. On the micro-level, with inspiration from USA and UK, Norway got its first “open schools”, schools which had focus on classrooms as learning environments with specific activities relegated to areas in the classroom/school and project work with multi-disciplinary content. One of the tools for making these activity-oriented, and for the pupils, self-regulated methods work, was having the pupils set up their own individual work-plan, monitored and supervised by the teacher. On the other hand, a lot of, if not most of, the elementary schools/classrooms continued traditional classroom teaching.

Work-plans found their further use in the 80’s, merging with a concern about a school for all and adapted education through the new curriculum of 1987.

The 90’s brought the concept responsibility of one’s own learning and a new curriculum (1994/1997) putting emphasize on cooperation, theme- and project organized work – which fitted well with work-plans.

In the new millennium, national tests, PISA, a new concern for social inequality and learning results, and, eventually, a new curriculum in 2006 (Kunnskapsløftet) have led to a critique of the use of individual work-plans (e.g. Klette 2007, 2008, Bergem 2008).

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