Norway is an example of early basic schooling for all in a country where urbanization was slow. Only in the second half of 20C the majority of the population have been living in urban or semi-urban areas. Models of schooling and teaching and pedagogy have thus have had this long lasting rural patterns as a social as well as institutional and intellectual basis. 

In earlier historical research on the development of common basic schooling and reform pedagogy in Norway it have been relevant to distinguish between small scale and large scale reform pedagogy (Jarning 2009). The scale related educational ideal types were characterized on the one hand by the small avant-garde experiments in close connection with intellectual critique and publishing of educational utopias. Large scale reform pedagogies on the other hand was connected to pedagogic reform in public schooling with emphasis of professional realist change.

In this paper investigations of interrelated changes in scales of basic schooling and institutional and professional pedagogic profile are furthered and the contemporary development of basic schooling after1950 is analyzed. This half century include two phases of centralization and reform of basic schooling – the decades from 1950 to 1970 and the years after 1990.

Correspondence to:

Harald Jarning, Professor in education, Oslo University College.

Pedagogisk utviklingssenter, Høgskolen i Oslo, Postboks 4 St. Olavs plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway.

E-mail: Harald.Jarning@hio.no

References will include: Cuban, L (1993) How teachers taught. New York and London: Teachers College Press Jarning, H. (1993) Mellom statsmakt og sosialiseringsmakt, in K. Jordheim (red.): Skolen 1993-1994. Notodden 1993. Jarning, H.(2009) Reform Pedagogy as National Innovation System, in Paedagogica historica, Vol. 45, Nos. 4–5, 2009. Jarning, H. (2010) Bokskole for alle, in Bedre Skole 2010/4. http://old.utdanningsforbundet.no/upload/Bedre%20Skole/BS_nr_4_10/4482-bedreSkole-0410-web_Jarning.pdf Kvalsund, R. (2009). Centralized decentralization or decentralized centralization? A review of newer Norwegian research on schools and their communities. International Journal of Educational Research 48 (2009), 89–99. Telhaug, A.O.(2003): Grunnskolen som nasjonsbygger. Oslo:Abstrakt