Abstract
Although national education systems are to some degree very stable, we know from earlier country descriptions that the Nordic countries do experience changes, affected by transnational influences. Many educational policy questions are recurrent over time. It is like a shuttle moving between different potential solutions, where international tendencies interact in the move towards new policy directions. One example is how the strong focus on student outcomes is spreading, shifting the focus from classroom processes to individual results. Another example is the changes in the governing system. All Nordic countries have experienced how strong national states were the prerequisite for organising national compulsory public school systems. There have however, parallel to the national responsibility, existed a local municipality responsibility for the organising of schools. The shared responsibility between different society levels has meant that over time the shuttle has shifted between centralisation, decentralisation and recentralisation. In all these changes international trends interact with the national context.
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Notes
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N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872) was a Danish writer, theologist, poet, philosopher, historian, priest, philologist, school philosopher and politician and was the inventor of the folk highschool (folkehøjskole) in Denmark, an exam-free school originally meant for sons and daughters of peasants in order to heighten their cultural upbringing. He gave name to the ‘Grundtvigianism’, a highly influential cultural movement in Denmark. Grundvig’s thoughts about the exam-free school and instruction through the ‘free word’ are part of the independent and private schools’ heritage. As a politician he was part of the constitutional assembly and therefore has influenced the constitution’s § 90 about the parents right to educate their own children.
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Christen Kold (1816–1870).
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Skott, P., Kofod, K.K. (2013). Independent Schools in Different Nordic Contexts: Implications for School Leadership?. In: Moos, L. (eds) Transnational Influences on Values and Practices in Nordic Educational Leadership. Studies in Educational Leadership, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6226-8_7
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