In 2013, a parliamentary majority voted to adopt a reform of the Danish elementary educational system. Longer school days, homework assistance and stronger school management, were intended to counteract social inequality in student performance, improve well-being and increase respect for teaching and teachers. Five years later, an evaluation showed that the goals had not yet been achieved and that less than fifty per cent of schools had implemented all the measures (Børne- og undervisningsministeriet 2020, Folketingstidende 2021). There has yet to be an in-depth study of the historical circumstances surrounding the reform, but several possible explanations have circulated in educational and public debates – from the timing, the conflict with teachers about their working hours, and inclusion of students with mental and/or physical challenges, to financial cuts in the municipalities. The many non-congruent explanations point to the need to develop an understanding of school reforms as complex and lengthy everyday processes rather than merely as political decision-making processes or an issue about failure or success. Stepping back in time and away from contemporary educational politics provides an opportunity to challenge existing explanations, raise new questions, and improve understandings of what makes a reform and its significance to school development. As such, the purpose of this research project is to investigate a specific, but little-explored case within Danish educational history. From the 1940s until the mid-1970s, an extensive and comprehensive reform of not only schools but schooling took place, affecting teacher training, school structure, curriculum, didactics, and classroom culture, as well as school architecture and the educational landscape. There are various explanations as to what drove these developments, ranging from the rise of an industrialized welfare society, the Cold War, and the mobilization of the intelligence reserves to new visions of the importance of education to democracy. A political will to change the school system was institutionalized in legislation, ministerial commissions [Den Blå Betænkning 1960], the establishment of The National School Research Committee [Folkeskolens Forsøgsudvalg/-råd] and hundreds of both small- and large-scale experiments in schools across the country. A segmented school system moved towards a comprehensive system, based on social equality, democratic citizenship and individualising didactics of self-governance. The hierarchical relations between teacher and pupils were (ideally) to be replaced by inclusive, human relations, supported by new and homely school buildings and the abolishment of corporal punishment (Gjerløff et al. 2014; Coninck-Smith et al. 2015). While the educational challenges and historical context were different than today, studying past reforms can teach us about the dynamics and historical embeddedness of such processes and thereby enrich current understandings of the fate of the 2014 reform and contribute to reflections on the future reforms that will undoubtedly follow (Landahl et al. 2021).
As pointed out by Peters and Freeman-Moir (2006), all educational thinking contains a “utopian disposition” and most utopian ideas about the future of societies assign education a key role since they are ‘designs for living’ – edutopias. The aim of this research project is to explore how the desires for a comprehensive school anchored in democratic citizenship unfolded through everyday experimentation. We want to explore how the imaginaries, the dreams and hopes of a ‘better school’, were actualized and how they infiltrated and resonated with educational politics and ideas – or not. Four subprojects will explore how an entanglement of ‘promising spaces’ (Cooper 2014) took form as sites of practical utopianism in relation to school experimentation, teacher training, school architecture and progressive small schools. We plan to investigate reforms on grand scale and small scale e.g. when municipalities abolished the grading in lower secondary classes, decided to experiment with the transition from kindergarten to school, or when a school experimented with dialogue instead of corporal punishment. The project differs from existing Danish research on school reforms. Firstly, by employing a concept of reform that takes the utopian seriously but pushes the political into the background in favour of everyday negotiations, translations and contestations. Secondly, by focusing on an uninterrupted period and paying attention to the complex and often-staggered processes of school development rather than working with a division into decades and a focus on finished results. Thirdly, by encompassing all the elements that together make up the school: teachers, students, parents, buildings, teaching and, not least, the knowledge that circulates between school experiments on many different scales and between the public and private school systems (Coninck-Smith and Appel 2021).
Reforms are a recurrent theme within the history of education. Many scholars have explored reforms in the Nordic countries in a comparative perspective. Differences and oppositions in terms of policymaking, teachers and everyday schooling have guided other studies in understanding the mechanisms of school reform as an explanation of failed implementation processes (Brunsson 2009; Cuban 2013; Nehring 2009). The split between a political system and educational practice has been reformulated as negotiation and translation in recent studies of school reforms (McLaughlin & Ruby 2021), and nuanced and questioned in performative studies, pointing towards theoretically informed ideas of networks, entanglements and assemblages in understanding how reforms help shape the world (Nespor 2002; Staunæs et al. 2019). We intend to stay on this track, while underlining the contingency and complexity of reforming schools. We draw inspiration from international studies of the utopias connected to the school reforms of the 1960s (Burman et al. 2021); from micro-social and micro-historical explorations of how these utopias materialized (McLeod & Rasmussen 2021; McLeod & Wright 2015) and changed – or not – “the grammar of schooling” (Tyack and Cuban 1995); and of how school reforms and experiments have been closely linked to and inspired by contemporary movements, e.g. the women’s movement, youth rebellions, alternative ways of living, and exchanges between private and public school experiments: Apart from Lisa Rosén Rasmussen’s chapter on school experiments after 1970 in volume five of Dansk skolehistorie, (de Coninck-Smith et al. 2015), there has been no attempt to explore previous school reform experiments from an everyday perspective. Contemporaneous lists of experiments from 1950-59 and in 1972 leave the 1960s to be explored. It was during this period that the number of experiments rose from around 80 to 300. The democratic school experiment at Kroggaard School in Odense has been studied by Trine Øland, who has also explored the concept of progressivism, while Ellen Nørgaard has dealt with the indoctrination debate about socialist and Marxist inspired teaching and Per Fibæk Laursen has viewed the period as another ‘didactic revolution’.
The four subprojects on teacher training (SP1) school experimentation (SP2), school architecture (SP3) and the small-schools movement (SP4) will address and discuss the utopian actualizations of the comprehensive school and how they implied imaginary productions and transformations regarding the form and purpose of schooling, teacher autonomy, the school as a caring institution and the ideologies prominent to schooling. The projects ask which attunements and engagements with objects, spaces and human practices were connected with the belief in the possibilities of a better school. Did any of the seeds of unconventional experimentation motivate more profound changes over time, or did they vanish from history – and if so, why?
RQ: What were the utopian imaginaries and actualizations in teacher training during this period, and how did they resonate with school reforms? In 1948, Danish teacher training colleges were granted the right to experimentation. During the next 30 years, teacher training was reformed twice (in 1954 and 1966). Teachers were expected to be less dependent on textbooks and to have better knowledge and more classroom experience before graduating (Coninck-Smith et al. 2015). However, the existence of 29 teacher training colleges challenged the emergence of a unified understanding of the good teacher, and the project will therefore explore how these new demands were translated at two different teacher training colleges: one located in the rural village of Nørre Nissum and with a strong religious orientation; the other in suburban Lyngby/Jonstrup and with a secular orientation. The project will apply a comparative perspective to explore how the imaginaries of the teacher changed – in light of changes concerning the urbanization of the educational landscape, but also of changes in the gender and the social background of teachers and the secularization of society, as well as the close links between democracy and education during the Cold War. The project will explore the development of teaching from a vocation to a profession, with particular focus on the affective and embodied actualisations in the everyday relations between teachers, students and parents. Design and sources: A variety of sources will be used for this study: from sources connected to political reform processes, like Læreruddannelseskommissionen from 1966, to archives at the teaching training colleges and sources left by teachers, such as reports from internships, self-made textbooks, shared diaries [vandrebøger], and photos. If possible, interviews with former teachers will also be included. The project will also draw on articles from educational journals like Dansk seminarieblad, Unge Pædagoger and Dansk pædagogisk Tidsskrift. Output: 1 conference paper, 1 PhD dissertation. The PhD student conducting this project we will have a master’s degree within ethnography or history.
RQ: What were the utopian imaginaries and actualizations in school experiments during this period, and how did they resonate with school reforms? Legislation introduced in 1957 granted the municipalities the right to start experimenting with school subjects and the segmentation of students. In 1958, the Danish Ministry of Education established a committee to promote and oversee school experiments. A myriad of experiments followed, primarily within the framework of individual school subjects, like the teaching of English or German, and the introduction of social sciences, or related to the new concept of comprehensive schooling. Around 1970, greater focus on the importance of experimentation led to massive growth in the number of school experiments, this time mostly concerned with different aspects of the comprehensive school, open-plan architecture and a special focus on the youngest and the oldest students. Experimentation had also moved from individual schools to include all schools within a municipality. The project focuses on the unfolding of experimentation in everyday processes of schooling. It will explore in depth the differences in edutopian imaginaries and actualisations within school experimentation from 1945 to 1975 with particular focus on experiments with the introduction of the democratic and comprehensive school and the changed relationship between teachers, students and parents. The analysis will examine sources of inspiration for developing the experiments, educational materials, and teaching practices (e.g., pedagogical literature and ideas, networks and encounters) and discuss their relations to the experiments and to each other. Political and organizational aspects will likewise be part of the analysis of how interrelated and separate processes and materials weave in and out of the specific school experiments. Design and sources: At the core of the subproject will be in-depth analysis of four school experiments with different elements of comprehensive schooling at Nørre School, Nykøbing Falster 1956-58 and Katrinedal School, København 1950-1958; experiments across whole municipalities Gladsaxe Tilvalgsforsøg 1968-72 and Brovst-projektet 1970-74) focusing on the introduction of various elements of the comprehensive school during this period. The experiments are chosen with consideration for geographical and pedagogical variety. The sources will be the archive of Danmarks Pædagogiske Institut, which coordinated the experiments, the archive of Folkeskolens forsøgsudvalg/råd, teacher reports, educational journals, available photographs and drawings, local newspapers, municipal documents, and focus group interviews with former teachers and pupils. Output: 2 conference papers and two peer-reviewed articles in English. The postdoc conducting this project will have a PhD in education and an ethnography and/or history profile.
RQ: What were the utopian imaginaries and actualizations in educational designs during this period, and how did they resonate with school reforms? The subproject focuses on material aspects of changes to Danish schools through a study of two new buildings that were part of the teacher training colleges of Jonstrup (est. 1791) and Nørre Nissum (est. 1892). The analysis will explore the process from the initial idea, over design, construction and inhabitation, to the building’s everyday use (Grosvenor & Rasmussen 2018). This will involve mapping and qualitative analysis of the formation and involvement of ideas, materials and actors as part of the teacher training colleges. The project will focus on the concrete development and use of the buildings, as well as tracing relevant national and transnational networks and sources of inspiration. Design and sources: The subproject will conduct in-depth studies of two teacher training colleges (Jonstrup and Nørre Nissum). The sources will be the teacher training colleges’ archives, collected public and private materials about the schools, and interviews with former students. Output: 1 conference paper, 1 individually authored article/book chapter, 1 co-authored volume introduction.
RQ: What were the utopian imaginaries and actualizations in the small-schools movement during this period, and how did they resonate with school reforms? The small-schools movement is a product of the cultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s, challenging conventional schooling by their size, the non-hierarchical relationships between parents, students and teachers, their stressing of creativity and individual learning, and their ambition of educating students to become independent and critically minded young people (McLeod 2014). The Danish small-schools movement has not previously been studied. Across four selected small schools, the subproject will identify key characteristics of the movement; discuss which edutopias were present, negotiated and contested in everyday school practices; and highlight knowledge and experiences circulating between the private and the state school sectors. Design and sources: The research will be based on school archives, interviews with former parents, students and teachers, photos and films, educational journals and newsletters. The schools will be chosen in collaboration with Lilleskolernes sammenslutning (The Association of Small Schools). Output: 1 conference paper, 1 individually authored article/book chapter, 1 co-authored volume introduction.
Senior Researcher Christian Larsen (Danish National Archives) and 2 student assistants.
In line with much recent educational history research the aim is to move the historical study of school away from an exclusive focus on the role of policymaking and implementation or pedagogical ideas and key figures in educational change (Braster et al. 2012; Coninck-Smith & Appel 2021; Grosvenor et al. 1999). To explore imaginaries and actualizations involved in the everyday practices of developing and doing school and teacher training, each subproject uses a wide range of empirical sources. (Rasmussen 2021, Coninck-Smith 2017). Affective methodologies addressing how people are moved and what attracts them in their small and large school experiments will guide our creative collection of empirical material (Coninck-Smith & Appel 2021; Burke et al. 2010; Burke & Whyte 2021; Dussel & Priem 2017; Knudsen & Stage 2015; Lawn & Grosvenor 2021; McLeod 2016). Selecting and combining sources requires sensitivity, which will be attuned through present-day visits to schools and other relevant places, encounters with teaching materials and textbooks from the period, and reading a broad range of sources and studies complementary to the empirical material in the individual analyses (Coninck-Smith 2017). Drawing on Maria Tamboukou’s ideas of archival assemblage and the value of creativity and narrative work in the archive (Tamboukou 2014, 2019), the project will involve ongoing efforts and reflection on how to combine the various and often fragmented sources. This will allow us to study the complex and multi-layered affective fluxes and flows in the processes of reforming school on a day-to-day basis but also over time.
The research project will be bridged by monthly meetings across the four subprojects and by a series of four online research dialogues with invited experts and fellow researchers. Transnational research perspectives will be nurtured through a network-based book project. The four members of the advisory board (AB) have agreed to organize one seminar each. Seminars will last 3 hours and held online. The topics for the research dialogues are closely linked to the shared project agenda and key questions. Please see attachment for a list of professional affiliations and letters of commitment: 1) Bits and pieces. Methodological reflections on using and combining affective sources for the writing of contemporary histories Lead Professor Inés Dussel (AB member). 2) Postwar school reforms in the Nordic welfare states: 1968 and beyond. Lead: Associate professor Katharina Sass (AB member). 3) Progressive education and school experiments in the late 20th century. Lead: Professor Julie McLeod (AB member). Utopian imaginaries and articulations and the 1975 reform. Lead: Associate professor Joakim Landahl (AB member). ¨
The transnational perspectives in the project will from the beginning be enhanced by a network-based book: Reforming school from within. Utopian drives, ties and details of educational practices in the late 20th century. Contributors will be the four project participants, AB members and relevant participants from the research dialogues. The work on the edited volume will run throughout the period, ensuring a focus on internal and external collaboration and providing a foundation for the final research seminar. Step 1 (FS 2024): Closed online seminar, contributors to book project only. Step 2 (FS 2025): Symposium ISCHE (International Standing Conference of the History of Education). Step 3 (FS 2026): Book presentation and international research & PhD seminar.
