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EDUCATION
INQUIRY
Volume 2, No. 1, March 2011
CONTENT
Editorial
THEMATIC SECTION: HISTORY TEXTBOOK RESEARCH AND REVISION
Stuart Foster Dominant Traditions in International Textbook Research and Revision
Romain Faure Connections in the History of Textbook Revision, 1947–1952
Thomas Nygren UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden,
c. 1960-2002
Henrik Åström Elmersjö The Meaning and Use of “Europe” in Swedish History Textbooks, 1910–2008
Janne Holmén Nation-Building in Kenyan Secondary School Textbooks
Erik Sjöberg The Past in Peril – Greek History Textbook Controversy and the Macedonian Crisis
OPEN SECTION
Elisabet Malmström Beyond the word, within the sign: Inquiry into pre-school children’s handmade
pictures about schooling
Ingrid Helleve & Marit Ulvik Is individual mentoring the only answer
Majid N. Al-Amri Getting Beyond Conversation Analysis
Ulf Blossing & Sigrun K. Ertesvåg An individual learning belief and its impact on schools’
improvement work
Umeå School of Education
Umeå University
Sweden

EDUCATION INQUIRY
Education Inquiry is an international on-line, peer-reviewed journal with free access in the field of
Educational Sciences and Teacher Education. It publishes original empirical and theoretical studies
from a wide variety of academic disciplines. As the name of the journal suggests, one of its aims is
to challenge established conventions and taken-for-granted perceptions within these fields.
Education Inquiry is looking for lucid and significant contributions to the understanding of
contextual, social, organizational and individual factors affecting teaching and learning, the links between
these aspects, the nature and processes of education and training as well as research in and
on Teacher Education and Teacher Education policy. This includes research ranging from pre-school
education to higher education, and research on formal and informal settings. Education Inquiry
welcomes cross-disciplinary contributions and innovative perspectives. Of particularly interest are
studies that take as their starting point, education practice and subject teaching or didactics.
Education Inquiry welcomes research from a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches,
and invites studies that make the nature and use of educational research the subject of inquiry.
Comparative and country-specific studies are also welcome.
Education Inquiry readers include educators, researchers, teachers and policy makers in various
cultural contexts.
Every issue of Education Inquiry publishes peer-reviewed articles in one, two or three different
sections. Open section: Articles sent in by authors as part of regular journal submissions and published
after a blind review process. Thematic section: Articles reflecting the theme of a conference or
workshop and published after a blind review process. Invited section: Articles by researchers invited
by Education Inquiry to shed light on a specific theme or for a specific purpose and published after
a review process.
Education Inquiry is a continuation of the Journal of Research in Teacher Education, which is
available in printed copies as well as electronic versions and free access at http://www.use.umu.se/
forskning/publikationer/lof/
Editor
Professor Per-Olof Erixon, Umeå University, Sweden
Receiving Editor
Assistant Professor Linda Rönnberg, Umeå University, Sweden
The editorial board
Professor Marie Brennan, School of Education, UniSA, Australia
Professor Bernard Cornu, Directeur de la Formation – CNED, Directeur de CNED-EIFAD, France
Professor David Hamilton, Umeå University, Sweden
Professor Brian Hudson, University of Dundee, UK
Professor Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Professor Martin Lawn, University of Edinburgh, UK
Assistant Professor Eva Lindgren, Umeå University, Sweden
Assistant Professor Linda Rönnberg, Umeå University, Sweden
Professor Kirk Sullivan, Umeå University, Sweden
Professor Gaby Weiner, University of Edinburgh, UK
Professor Pavel Zgaga, University of Ljubliana, Slovenia
Language Editor
Murray Bales, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Guidelines for Submitting Articles
See Education Inquiry’s homepage: http://www.use.umu.se/english/research/educationinquiry
Send Manuscripts to: EducationInquiry.Editor@adm.umu.se
©2011 The Authors. ISSN online 2000-4508

Editorial
Per-Olof Erixon, Editor
Every issue of Education Inquiry publishes peer-reviewed articles in one, two or
three different sections. In our Open section, articles are sent in by authors as part
of regular journal submissions and published after a blind review process. In our
Thematic section, articles may reflect the theme of a conference or workshop and are
published after a blind review process. We also have an Invited section with articles
by researchers invited by Education Inquiry to shed light on a specific theme or for
a specific purpose and they are also published after a review process. This issue of
Education Inquiry contains both a Thematic section and an Open section, bringing
a total of 10 articles.
Thematic section
The Thematic section is entitled “History Textbook Research and Revision”, contains
five articles and is edited by Professor Daniel Lindmark, Umeå University, Sweden
and Dr Stuart Foster, a Reader at the Institute of Education, University of London,
England.
In “Dominant Traditions in International Textbook Research and Revision”, Foster
establishes the framework of the thematic section by examining the field of textbook
research, which he finds very limited. He identifies two categories or “traditions”
that are often interrelated and overlapping, which he calls conciliatory tradition and
critical tradition.
In “Connections in the History of Textbook Revision, 1947-1952”, Romain Faure
focuses on connections between textbook revision forums between 1947 and 1952 and
examines the interrelations between the textbook activities of UNESCO, the World
Movement of Trade Unions, the international historian conferences in Speyer and
two Franco-German co-operation projects.
In “UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden,
c. 1960-2002”, Thomas Nygren compares the international recommendations for
history education issued by UNESCO and the Council of Europe with the construing
of history in national guidelines, teachers’ perceptions and the results of students’
work in History in Sweden.
In “The Meaning and Use of ‘Europe’ in Swedish History textbooks, 1910-2008”,
Henrik Åström Elmersjö explores the different meanings of “Europe” in Swedish
history textbooks over the course of the 20th century.
In “Nation-Building in Kenyan Secondary School Textbooks”, Janne Holmén
investigates how issues of national, Pan-African and tribal identities are handled in
Kenyan upper secondary school textbooks for History and Government.
1

Per-Olof Erixon
Finally in this Thematic section, in “The Past in Peril -Greek History Textbook Controversy
and the Macedonian Crisis, Erik Sjöberg study the conflict between Greece
and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the name and historical heritage
of Macedonia, which in the early 1990s erupted in a diplomatic and political crisis.
Open section
In “Beyond the word, within the sign: Inquiry into pre-school children’s handmade
pictures about schooling”, Elisabet Malmström reports reflections on a study addressing
the role of a handmade picture in understanding pre-school children’s ideas
about their future school context.
In “Is individual mentoring the only answer, Ingrid Helleve and Marit Ulvik
investigate how the needs of novice teachers correspond to the aims of the national
project and the future plans of Norwegian policymakers.
In “Getting Beyond Conversation Analysis: Critical and Pedagogical Implications
for the TESOL/Bilingual Curriculum for Diverse Learners in the Age of Globalisation”,
Majid N. Al-Amr, links the field of conversation analysis and the field of TESOL/
bilingual education for diverse learners.
Finally in this open section, in “An individual learning belief and its impact on
schools’ improvement work-– An Individual versus a Social Learning Perspective”
Ulf Blossing and Sigrun K. Ertesvåg argue that a social learning understanding of
school improvement based on the Community of Practice theory and its application
may provide schools with a theoretical understanding which enables the successful
implementation of school improvement.
2

THEMATIC
SECTION
HISTORY TEXTBOOK RESEARCH AND REVISION
Stuart Foster & Daniel Lindmark (Eds.)
Stuart Foster is a Reader in Education and Head of the Department of Arts and
Humanities at the Institute of Education (IOE), University of London. He is also Director
of the IOE’s Holocaust Education Development Programme. He has particular expertise
in history education and in international textbook research. Co-authored with Keith
Crawford, his most recent book is War, Nation, Memory: International Perspectives on
World War II in School History Textbooks (2008). Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
E-mail: s.foster@ioe.ac.uk
Daniel Lindmark is a Professor of History and Education at Umeå University, Sweden,
and an Associate Professor (docent) of Church History at Åbo Akademi University,
Finland. Having published in educational history, religious history and Saami history,
he has a growing interest in history didactics. He is directing the Umeå History and
Education Group and the research project “History Beyond Borders: The International
History Textbook Revision, 1919–2009”.
E-mail: daniel.lindmark@historia.umu.se
3

Education Inquiry
Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2011, pp.5–20
EDU.
INQ.
Dominant Traditions in
International Textbook
Research and Revision
Stuart Foster*
History textbooks have been a ubiquitous feature of educational practice in schools
systems across the world for many centuries. Textbooks, however, do not stand as
neutral entities espousing agreed or accepted “historical truths”. To the contrary,
textbooks appear as powerful cultural artefacts because they contain the ideas,
values, and knowledge that influential elements in society expect students to know
and embrace. As Apple (1993: 46) rightly acknowledges, “Textbooks are…conceived,
designed and authored by real people with real interests” and as a result the selection
of textbook knowledge is an intensely political activity often leading to tension,
controversy and acrimonious debates in the struggle to define “what knowledge is
of most worth”. 1 Traditionally history education is regarded as the vehicle through
which nations seek to disseminate and reinforce narratives that define conceptions of
nationhood and national identity. Contained within history textbooks, therefore, are
narratives and stories that nations choose to tell about themselves, their people, and
their relationships with other nations. As a consequence, to study and interrogate the
content of history textbooks and how they are authored, published, and employed is
an illuminating and vitally important educational enterprise.
The study of history textbooks is, however, a highly complex and challenging
undertaking, particularly in comparative and international perspective. For, as a
number of critics have demonstrated, the production, selection, deployment, and
status of history textbooks differs considerably in different countries (Hein and
Selden 2000; Nicholls, 2006; Pingel 2010; Vickers and Jones 2005). 2 For example,
in many nations they are used to “cover” stipulated historical topics, to respond to
curriculum needs, and to address the requirements of standardized tests. In other
locations they are used more as a support mechanism and as a source of information
for teachers, students, and parents. By contrast in some less than typical contexts
they are used critically exemplifying one narrative account of a particular historical
perspective among many. Understanding the impact of textbook content on student
knowledge is further complicated when consideration is given to the possibility
*Institute of Education, University of London. E-mail:s.foster@ioe.ac.uk
©Author. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.5–20
5

Stuart Foster
that what is “in” the textbook may not be taught and, even if it is taught, it may not
be understood by students in the way desired by national governments, textbook
authors, and teachers. Consequently, it erroneous to assume that textbook content
directly mirrors what teachers teach, or, more importantly, what students learn
(Apple and Christian-Smith 1991). The many ways in which students and teachers
understand, negotiate, and transform their personal understandings of textual material
is a complex process and rarely is textbook content simply accepted, absorbed,
and then regurgitated by learners (see, for example, Apple, 1991; Barthes, 1976;
Foster and Crawford, 2006a; Porat, 2004).
Despite these important cautions and considerations and despite the rapid advance
of educational technologies, textbooks remain a major factor in determining
how students learn history (Anyon, 1978; Anyon, 1979; Apple & Christian-Smith,
1991; Foster 1999; Marsden, 2001). Unfortunately, however, notwithstanding the
importance of the enterprise, relative to educational research in general, the field
of textbook research is extremely limited. Marsden, for example, has referred to
the “black hole of textbook research in England” and lamented that in a ten-year
period from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, only three articles related to textbook
research were published in a sample of twelve leading British educational journals
(Marsden, 2001: 57). In a similar vein, U.S. professor of education, O.L. Davis, Jr.,
reflected that “the general paucity of research about textbooks constitutes an extremely
serious, not just an unfortunate, dimension of studies about school curricula”
(Davis, 2006: xiv). However, whilst it is true that the field of textbook research is
not extensive, as illustrated in the special edition of this journal, a number of key
individuals and agencies have focused on this important area for generations – the
example of the work of the Georg Eckert Institute stands out in this regard. In many
respects, therefore, the articles in this collection make a prominent contribution
to this growing and important field of scholarship. Given the significant role that
Nordic countries traditionally have played in the field of textbook revision and
research it is perhaps fitting that the origins of this collection derive from an international
workshop held in Sweden at Umeå University in May 2010. Entitled,
“Researching History Textbooks and International Textbook Revision”, the seminar
brought together a number of educators, graduate students and leading academics
to discuss a broad range of scholarship which included: the historiography of
textbook research, methodological and pedagogical approaches, history textbook
“wars”, and the relationship between national identity and textbook research and
revision. Orchestrated and organised by Professor Daniel Lindmark and closely affiliated
with the “History Beyond Borders” project conducted in co-operation with
the Georg Eckert Institute, 3 the seminar and the associated papers offered in this
journal serve as informative and insightful examples of key areas of study in the
field of textbook research and revision.
6

Dominant Traditions in International Textbook Research and Revision
The field of textbook research and revision
In broad terms it may be argued that historically textbook research and revision has
typically fallen into two categories or “traditions” which are often interrelated and
overlapping. The first “tradition” includes attempts by representatives of different
nations to negotiate, through collaborative textbook studies and projects, how the
past is presented. Often facilitated by international organisations this “tradition” in
international history textbook research might be termed the conciliatory tradition.
The second “tradition” is more generally associated with specific, critical and analytical
textbook research often conducted by independent academics or institutions. These
studies typically focus on specific aspects of portrayals in history textbooks and form
what usefully may be termed the critical tradition. In the sections that follow a brief
overview of these two “traditions” is offered before attention is turned to the ways in
which these traditions are both maintained and critiqued by emerging scholarship.
Conciliatory Tradition
The principal aim of those who subscribe to the conciliatory tradition is to counter
aggressive nationalism and to ensure that school textbooks offer a more “objective”,
sensitive and thoughtful appreciation of how the past is depicted. In particular, the
conciliatory tradition is underpinned by the desire to bring together educators, historians
and authors from different nations to analyse history textbooks and ensure
that they are produced so that they (a) are underpinned by common historical understandings
of the past and (b) are more sensitive to the histories of other nations.
As detailed in several of the articles in this journal, these concerted attempts to
ensure that school textbooks provide a means to promote greater understanding and
mutual respect have historically been driven by major transnational and international
organisations such as the League of Nations, the United Nations Educational Scientific
and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), and the Council of Europe. For example, in the
post World War I era “the International Committee on Intellectual Co-Operation”, a
key body within the League of Nations, suggested that all national commissions initiate
“a reciprocal comparative analysis of textbooks in order to revise texts that were
biased and flawed and which would thus help to avoid essential misunderstandings
of other countries in the future” (Pingel 2010: 9). Similarly, in an attempt to promote
the salutary role that history educators and textbook authors could play in improving
international understanding, in 1932 “the International Committee” passed a resolution
to develop a model for international consultation on textbooks. As a result, a
series of ongoing activities including conferences, symposia, lectures and workshops
were established to encourage open dialogue between teachers, curriculum planners
and academics from different nations.
In a similar vein, in the years following World War II major international agencies
such as UNESCO were responsible for a range of bilateral and multilateral initiatives,
research projects, and international conferences specifically aimed at bringing scholars
7

Stuart Foster
and textbook authors together to improve how textbooks were written and employed
(Luntinen, 1989; Marsden, 2001; Nicholls, 2006; Pingel, 2010, Slater, 1995; Stobart,
1999). Since its inception in 1949, the Council of Europe has also played a central role
in promoting textbook revision and research. For example, between 1953 and 1958 the
Council of Europe organised six prominent international conferences during which
almost half of the 2000 history textbooks used in schools across fifteen European
countries were examined by a range of educators and education specialists (Stobart,
1999). In subsequent decades the Council of Europe orchestrated a significant number
of “Pan-European initiatives” for teachers and scholars of history, “as well as publishing
guidebooks aimed at assisting textbook authors to avoid ‘bias and prejudice’ in
their work” (Nicholls, 2006: 8). Since the 1990s attention to inter-European textbook
projects have both proliferated and geographically expanded to include central, eastern,
and southern Europe and the Balkans. In keeping with the conciliatory tradition
the ultimate aim of these projects is to “harmonise the teaching of historical relations
between neighbouring countries, normalise contentious histories, and bring about a
rapprochement among former enemies” (Soysal, 2006: 118).
One of the most important international institutions in this area of textbook
research and development is the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook
Research (GEI), situated in Braunschweig, Germany (www.gei.de). Formed in 1951 by
the historian Georg Eckert, the Institute has contributed significantly to reconciliation
and peace education by organising a series of bi-lateral and multilateral textbooks
conferences for representatives of former enemy states. In this context important
landmarks in the history of the organisation include the 1951 “Franco-German Agreement
on Controversial Issues in European History”, the 1975 “Recommendations
for History and Geography Textbooks in the Federal Republic of Germany and the
People’s Republic of Poland”, and the agreements reached by German and Israeli
scholars, in 1985, on the “German-Israeli Textbook Recommendations”. Today the
GEI works in direct co-operation with UNESCO, the Council of Europe and other
transnational organisations and is widely recognised as a world centre in the field of
comparative textbook analysis and research. Major projects completed in recent years
include a study of Textbook Controversies in South Asia (2004–2008), the Israeli-
Palestinian Textbook Project (2002–2009), and a groundbreaking “Project for the
Co-ordination of Textbook Research, Development and Comparison in South-East
Europe” (2000–2009).
Academics at the Georg Eckert Institute recognise that producing a textbook that
respects historical conventions, allows alternative interpretations, and is accepted as
legitimate by neighbouring nations, is a hugely complex and challenging enterprise.
Underpinning the work of the GEI, therefore, is the desire to provide a forum for
scholars and historians from different nations to share understandings and misunderstandings.
In this respect it conducts extremely important and beneficent work and
shares some of the broader educational goals of the educational arm of the Council of
8

Dominant Traditions in International Textbook Research and Revision
Europe. Indeed, in 1985, the Georg Eckert Institute was awarded the UNESCO Prize for
Peace Education. Significantly, therefore, although the GEI has recently reconsidered
its strategic mission to incorporate new approaches to textbook research, it remains
apparent that the Institute’s core activity remains consistent with the conciliatory
tradition of textbook revision and research. 4
The Critical Tradition
The second broad category of research consists of a range of scholarship produced
by academics or researchers typically based at independent universities or institutions
across the world. For the most part these individuals do not explicitly seek to
work with others to achieve commonalities in textbook writing across nations, but
rather take a more critical and independent perspective on the content of history
textbooks, nationally and internationally. The aim of this research is to analyse critically
the perspectives, discourse, and content of textbooks in order to raise important
questions about how historical knowledge is controlled and influenced by dominant
socio-cultural and ideological forces. Scholarship within the critical tradition reveals
the diverse and complex nature of the field. In broad terms, however, researchers are
interested in exploring fundamental questions that include:
• Who selects school textbook knowledge and what are the ideological, economic
and intellectual relationships between these different interest groups
• Whose voices are heard in textbooks Whose knowledge is included Which
group(s) receive(s) the most sustained attention Whose story is being told
• How and in what ways do cultural, political, geographical, and historical
perspectives influence how particular national versions of the past are told
In response to these key questions it may be argued that two principal areas of enquiry
dominate. The first critically examines portrayals of race, ethnicity, class, gender and
disability in history textbooks. The second examines more closely the relationship
between ideology, national identity and history textbook content.
In relation to the first of these areas of enquiry, a key area of focus in national and
international textbook research is centred on the way in which the histories of different
social groups are portrayed. Particular attention is often given to analysing which
groups are included and, perhaps more importantly, typically excluded in historical
textbook narratives. In this vein a growing body of scholarship has critically examined
portrayals of race, ethnicity, class, gender and disability in history textbooks.
For example, as part of a broader collection of scholarly articles edited by Apple and
Christian-Smith and entitled The Politics of the Textbook (1991), Sleeter and Grant
(1991) systematically examined portrayals of “race, class, gender and disability” in
US textbooks. Employing critical theory as a lens to explore the complex ways in
which textbooks achieve legitimacy and dominance in educational settings, Sleeter
9

Stuart Foster
and Grant argued that narrow and selective interpretations of what constituted ‘legitimate’
and ‘worthwhile’ knowledge was underpinned by a powerful, reactionary,
and deep-seated quest for social control. The work of Sleeter and Grant epitomised
the approaches adopted by many other adherents to the critical tradition. In a related
fashion, chapter seven of James Loewen’s provocative book, Lies My Teacher Told
Me: Everything your American history textbooks got wrong, exposed the absence
of any serious attention to issues related to social class, social stratification and social
inequality in US history textbooks. First published in 1995, Loewen’s book caused a
stir in US educational and political circles. Fundamentally, Loewen argued that US
textbooks provided “an embarrassing amalgam of bland optimism, blind patriotism
and misinformation pure and simple” (Loewen, 1995: 374). Dedicated to “all American
history teachers who teach against their textbooks” (vi), Loewen’s book critically
exposed the inadequacies of 12 of the best-selling US history textbooks. In particular,
he harshly criticised US history textbooks for their misleading and unacceptable
representations of Native Americans and African Americans.
Loewen’s attention to the marginalisation of certain groups in history textbooks is,
of course, part of a long-standing theme in the tradition of critical textbook research.
Indeed, the challenge of how textbooks should portray immigrant and ethnic groups
in the unfolding narrative of national history is one of the burning issues faced by
textbook authors across the globe. This issue is particularly acute in nations with high
immigrant populations, because it exposes the underlying tension between diversity
and cohesiveness in such societies. For example, there is, on the one hand, a desire
to espouse multiple histories within a single nation and, on the other, the urge to
promote a shared national story for reasons of social cohesion and collective identity.
Not surprisingly, therefore, issues related to portrayals of immigrant and ethnic
groups in history textbooks has inspired a rich array of national and international
scholarship (e.g., Garcia 1993; Janjetovic, 2001; Ohliger, 2005).
Another area of enquiry that falls within the critical tradition incorporates studies
related to the relationship between gender and textbook knowledge. In the past four
decades, for example, a small but growing body of literature has emerged in the USA
and the UK in this regard. For example, based on a survey of literature written in the
early 1970s, Trecker (1971) and Zimet (1976) exposed the limited attention given to
women in history textbooks on both sides of the Atlantic. These findings were amplified
by those of Adams (1983), Davies (1986) and Cairns and Inglis (1989) who separately
argued that textbooks routinely belittled or ignored women’s experience in history.
Davies, for example, concluded that women were largely reduced to “subservient and
passive roles” and “the value of work, the contribution made to domestic economies,
the economic and political functions that women performed” were “blatantly disregarded
by textbooks” (Davies, 1986: 20).
Increased attention to social history and gender equality in subsequent decades did,
according to some researchers, ensure that history textbooks generally were written
10

Dominant Traditions in International Textbook Research and Revision
with more sensitivity to gender-neutral language (Bourdillon, 1994) and, despite some
limitations, more “opportunities for the inclusion of the history and experiences of
women” were included in the history curriculum (Osler, 1995: 234). Nevertheless, criticisms
remained. Osler, for example, noted that textbooks were commonly authored
by males and dominated by the exploits of men while “narrow aspects of women’s
experience [e.g., as carers, as monarchs, or in domestic roles] still predominated in
a large proportion of cases” (Osler, 1995: 227). Osler also found that textbook narratives
underrepresented the role of women while photographs of men outnumbered
those of women by at least 26 to 1. Similarly, in the United States, Commeyras and
Alvermann’s (1996) study of three world history textbooks exposed the many failings
of recent publications with regard to gender balance. Their feminist analysis of the
content and language of world history textbooks demonstrated the ways in which
texts continued to “perpetuate biases and influence students’ interpretations of, and
attitudes toward, women in general” (Commeyras and Alvermann, 1996: 33). Above
all, the authors demonstrated how subtleties of language and unstated assumptions
continued to “legitimate a patriarchal view of world history” and “typically undervalued
and obfuscated the role of women in history” (Commeyras and Alvermann, 1996: 33).
These studies, carried out on both sides of the Atlantic, are symptomatic of others
within the critical tradition. They reveal certain common practices that continue to
affect the way in which women’s history is portrayed in history textbooks and broadly
they demonstrate that, despite some improvements, textbooks continue to portray a
past controlled and dominated by men.
The second area of enquiry within the critical tradition examines more closely the
relationship between ideology, national identity and the content of history textbooks.
Research into this area of enquiry is increasing and more commonly the subject of
a range of educational journals (e.g., Crawford, 2004; Foster, 1999; Janmaat, 2006;
Marsden, 2000; Vural and Ozuyanik, 2008). In addition to this growing collection of
academic articles, in recent years a range of books has emerged which looks closely at
the relationship between textbooks, curricula and national identity. Two examples of
prominent publications in this area written in the English language are The Nation,
Europe and the World: textbooks and curricula in transition (2005), co-edited by
Schissler and Soysal, and Censoring History: History, citizenship and memory in
Japan, Germany and the United States (2000), co-edited by Hein and Selden. The
former, edited by two prominent European scholars, examines differing and contested
representations of Europe and the world. Incorporating perspectives from France,
Germany, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Spain and Russia, the book examines current and
shifting perspectives on history curricula and national identity. The second publication
specifically focuses its 300-page contribution on textbook representations in
Japan, Germany and the USA. More recently Crawford and Foster have co-edited
and co-authored two books exploring the ways in which different nations convey
selected histories to young people. The first book, What Shall We Tell the Children
11

Stuart Foster
International perspectives on school history textbooks (2006), includes a range of
perspectives from Europe, North America, South Africa, the Middle East, and South
and East Asia. The second book, War, Nation, Memory: international perspectives
on World War II in school history textbooks (2007), presents a ten-chapter critical
analysis of how the Second World War is variously portrayed to school children in
nations across the globe, including England, the USA, France, Germany, Japan and
China.
Specifically examining the relationship between history education and national
consciousness, History Education and National identity in East Asia (2005), coedited
by Vickers and Jones, has made another significant contribution to the field.
In this book the geographic focus shifts to China, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Japan
and Hong Kong. In so doing the contributors offer one of the few comparative
studies of the politics of history textbooks and history curricula across East Asia.
A further addition to the field is School History Textbooks Across Cultures: International
debates and perspectives (2006). Edited by Nicholls, this eight-chapter
book undertakes a critical analysis of contemporary history textbooks in the USA,
Italy, Japan, Germany, Russia, England and France. More recently, jointly edited
by Alayan, Dhouib and Rohde, Education Reforms in the Middle East (2010), offers
rich insights into the role of the textbook in the Middle East and North Africa.
In particular the book critically explores the complex issue of identity and history
textbooks.
As these publications show, in countries across the world textbooks remain potent
vehicles to render a particular, “official”, version of the nation’s past to young
people. Nations rarely tell “the truth” about themselves, rather in history classroom
and in history textbooks students often encounter narratives that dominant groups
choose to select and remember as representations of the national story. Of course,
selecting a national past also involves a de-selection process. Choosing to highlight
and emphasise certain dimensions of the nation’s history while other aspects remain
absent inevitably produces conflict as history is re-made by competing interest groups
each seeking a dominant voice in constructing what counts as popular memory. This
process is by its very nature ongoing and subject to negotiation and interpretation in
order to comply with emergent contemporary issues and the wishes of ascendant and
powerful interest groups. One outcome is that the history taught to children often is
a watered-down, partial, sometimes distorted, and sometimes a fictional view of the
national past based upon cultural, ideological and political selection. As Crawford
and I have written:
In some nation states history teaching is used openly and unashamedly to promote specific
ideologies and sets of political ideas. In other countries, under the guise of patriotism, the
history of a nation served up for student consumption is what its leaders decide it is to be.
In states which consider their existence to be under threat, or in states which are struggling
to create an identity, or in those which are re-inventing themselves following a period of
12

Dominant Traditions in International Textbook Research and Revision
colonial rule, teaching a nationalistic and mono-cultural form of history can prove to be the
cement which binds people together. In its worst form the manufacture and teaching of such
an official past can create, sponsor, maintain and justify xenophobic hatred, racism and the
obscenity of ethnic cleansing (Foster and Crawford, 2006: 6–7).
In addition, in seeking to establish and to maintain a physical, political and cultural
sense of belonging, nations place great store in articulating what has traditionally
bound them together and what makes them different from their neighbours. Accordingly,
a central and recurrent theme in critical textbook scholarship has been analysis
of the “self” and “the other” in history textbooks. Research has shown that in many
nations history textbooks are often used as one of the instruments to forge a shared
sense of national identity by marginalising, or in extreme cases, demonising those
groups not considered part of the constructed national narrative. In the People’s Republic
of China, for example, the desire to assert a common identity has stimulated
two developments. First, as Vickers (2006) has illustrated, despite the existence
of complex and disputed “minority nationalities,” central authorities in the statecontrolled
Chinese education system use history education as a vehicle to reinforce
the ‘One China’ message – an intensely state-centred and homogenising vision of
Chinese national identity. Thus, in order to convey to young people a distinctively
celebratory nationalist narrative, the histories of Tibet, Mongolia, Taiwan and Hong
Kong have been repeatedly distorted in textbook accounts in order to reinforce a
nationalist vision of a united China.
Second, in an effort to consolidate and secure the Chinese sense of a unified “we”
and “us” (the “self”), history textbooks enthusiastically vilify Japan as the nation’s
traditional enemy (the “other”). A key feature of this “vilification” is the concentrated
focus on an emotive issue in China’s past, “the Nanjing Massacre” (1937), a genocidal
war crime committed by the invading Japanese army (Foster and Crawford, 2007).
Long standing attention to the “Nanjing Massacre” in Chinese history classrooms
aptly illustrates how - by demonising the Japanese - textbooks play an important
role in presenting specific images of “the self” and “the other” to construct a shared
national history and consciousness. The practice of presenting a common national
identity while disparaging foreigners or “outsiders” is, of course, not particular to
China. Indeed, critical research that looks at representations of the self and other
have revealed a range of similar examples in other educational systems throughout
the world (e.g., Cajani, 2008; Challand, 2009; Janmaat, 2007).
The authors of all the publications outlined above offer a broad range of perspectives,
issues and approaches to textbook research and history textbook knowledge.
However, a feature of most of these works is the insistence that throughout the world
textbooks are seen as powerful instruments with which to present a particular version
of the nation’s past. At the heart of all critical research is the fundamental realisation
that all textbooks offer a selected version of the past. No book offers neutral knowledge.
No textbook offers content that is objective and value-free. The authors of his-
13

Stuart Foster
tory textbooks deliberately include some information and exclude others. Very often
these choices are made for ideological reasons and typically they reflect the values,
beliefs, and attitudes of powerful groups with long traditions of dominance in society.
As a result, therefore, textbooks have long been a major site for the construction and
contestation of national, regional, and international identities and are, understandably,
the constant subject of critical study by international scholars.
Continuing the research traditions
Academics and educators who have contributed to both the conciliatory and critical
traditions have done so with worthy and notable cause. Essentially, both of these
“traditions” share the common overarching purpose of critiquing textbooks in
order to improve the ways in which young people appreciate and understand the
past. Undoubtedly, therefore, textbook studies that provide intelligent and illuminating
insight into the field of textbook research and revision and its important
relationship to classroom practice are invaluable. In this vein the five articles that
follow offer different but important windows into this vital and expanding area of
scholarship. The first article, written by Romain Faure explores the interactions
and interrelations between the textbook revision activities of UNESCO, the World
Movement of Trade-Unions, the international historian conferences in Speyer and
two Franco-German cooperation projects in the period between 1947 and 1952.
Rather than focus on the activities of textbook revision agencies in isolation, Faure’s
contribution examines the ways in which, and the extent to which, the work of these
organisations was connected and interwoven. Faure also shows how, during this
vital post-war period of intensive activity, the field of textbook revision -- in keeping
with the conciliatory tradition -- was broadly concerned with the promotion of
greater international understanding and mutual respect among peoples. By paying
attention to the goals and activities of each organisation, the roles played by key
actors (e.g., Édouard Bruley, Georg Eckert) and the common context in which their
work was undertaken, Faure skilfully demonstrates how these key revision forums
often were interconnected, interrelated and to some extent constituted a coherently
organised transnational field.
The activities and influence of such key transnational organisations as the
Council of Europe and UNESCO in the field of textbook revision is also a focus
of the work of Thomas Nygren. In his article Nygren thoughtfully examines the
relationship between the guidelines of these two international organisations and
history education in Sweden between 1960 and 2002. In overview, by closely mapping
the guidelines, policies and recommendations of UNESCO and the Council
of Europe across four decades, Nygren undertakes the bold and ambitious goal of
examining the extent to which they appear to have influenced or correlated with
trends in history education in Sweden. To examine the Swedish context the study
uses Goodlad’s (1979) distinctions between “formal”, “perceived” and “experien-
14

Dominant Traditions in International Textbook Research and Revision
tial” curriculum as a theoretical lens. Of note, by drawing on an analysis of history
syllabi in Sweden from 1960s onwards (the “formal curriculum”), interviews with
experienced history teachers and debates in leading history education journals (the
“perceived curriculum”), and examination of the contents of 145 individual history
projects undertaken between 1969 and 2002 (the “experiential curriculum”),
Nygren demonstrates a close relationship between international guidelines and
history education practice in Sweden. Broadly, the author concludes that, from the
1960s onwards, in line with the “conciliatory” goals of UNESCO and the Council
of Europe, the teaching of history in Sweden increasingly became concerned with
promoting greater international understanding, “unity in diversity,” and a respect
for human rights and democracy.
The context of history education in Sweden remains the focus for the third
article in this collection. Attention, however, shifts from the influence of major
international and transnational organisations on Swedish education to an examination
of the ways in which conceptions of “Europe” changed in history textbooks
published between 1910 and 2008. In his qualitative and quantitative analysis of
the content of ten leading Swedish history textbooks published during this period,
Henrik Åström Elmersjö intelligently demonstrates how the concept of Europe
has shifted its meaning over time. He also reveals how reference and attention to
Europe in Swedish textbooks significantly increased during the latter part of the
twentieth century. This is not to say that national history is ignored in textbooks
published in the past forty years but, rather that their contents appear more likely
to emphasise Europe’s impact on Sweden than Sweden’s impact on Europe. Fundamentally,
therefore, Åström Elmersjö argues that as the twentieth century has
progressed, consistent with the concomitant “Europeanisation” of Swedish historical
identity, the emphasis in textbook content shifts from a focus on national history
to one more inclined towards presenting Europe as an entity with an increasingly
common culture, economy, political context and history. At the heart of Åström
Elmersjö’s intriguing study is the critical recognition that established or perceived
identities (national or transnational) are not fixed identities. Instead they appear
as conscious social constructions (or “myths” as Elmersjö contends) often subject
to change, negotiation, controversy and division.
The last two articles in this collection further extend the important and critical
examination of how history education often is used to promote certain ideological
and cultural agendas. In this respect Janne Holmén’s article provides rich insights
into how national, Pan-African and tribal identities are presented in upper secondary
school textbooks in Kenya. Holmén’s study is particularly informative because it
represents one of the few critical analyses of the content of African history textbooks
(outside of South Africa) in the field. An important dimension of the article is an
exploration of the acute difficulty of promoting “national unity” as the official goal
of Kenyan education in an ethnically fragmented country without a common pre-
15

Stuart Foster
colonial history. Drawing on the work of Anderson (1983) and Smith (1986, 1981) to
develop his argument, Holmén shows how a prominent upper secondary textbook
(The Evolving World) presents a “nation building narrative” by variously attending
to selected aspects of Kenyan history post independence, opposition to the legacies
of colonial rule and, more broadly, to the common and unifying features of Pan-
Africanism. Holmén concludes his analysis with the provocative and ironic claim that
although national unity is the stated goal of education in Kenya, enough evidence
exists to suggest that school textbooks may do more to strengthen tribal identities
than to promote a national one.
By focusing on the “Macedonian Crisis” and events in Greece, the final article in
this collection critically illuminates how competing efforts to control representations
of the past erupted into impassioned and ugly “history wars” in recent decades. In
setting the historical context for the current “history wars”, the author, Erik Sjöberg,
carefully notes that because Greek history textbooks are state controlled and thereby
heavily influenced by prevailing ideological forces, vehement debate and controversy
over textbook content has increasingly become common since the 1980s. As, Sjöberg
demonstrates, in general clashes over history education occurred between those who,
on the one hand, wished to preserve a conservative, ethnocentric and traditional narrative
of the state. And, those, who on the other hand, advocated a less rigid, more
transnational, and interpretive approach to the past. In a vein similar to experiences
in other countries, battles over school history often became more intense when attempts
were allegedly made to separate history education from the promotion of
traditional national narratives. In the dispute of Macedonia, Sjöberg demonstrates
how individuals and academics prominent in Greek society perceived the nation to
be imperilled by external forces and the shifting tide of events. He also uses Gieryn’s
concept of “boundary work” to illustrate how critics and commentators variously
reacted to and interpreted the ongoing crisis.
Above all, the events portrayed in the article illustrate how passionate debates over
history textbooks and history education reflect broader and ongoing fractures in contemporary
society. History matters. It matters because history typically is expected to
define deep-seated identities in the present. In this context burning questions remain,
including who owns history Who is entitled to shape, control and talk with legitimacy
about it And, who should prescribe and determine what history young people should
study at school The difficulty of answering these complex and challenging questions
explains why controversies over public representations of history will continue to
emerge and re-emerge in the cultural landscape of nations across the world.
As I am sure the reader of the articles in this collection will discover, each one
makes a distinctive contribution to the field. The articles also advance our knowledge
and understanding of the traditions that underpin textbook research and revision.
Fundamentally, they help us to appreciate more clearly both the history that has hitherto
been promoted in schools in different contexts and the role that school textbooks
16

Dominant Traditions in International Textbook Research and Revision
have played in this process. As important, however, these studies also provide us with
broader perspectives on the present and future and help us address vital questions
such as: what kind of history should be promoted in schools And, what should be
the function of the school history textbook in pursuing these aims
17

Stuart Foster
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Hein, L. and Selden, M. (eds.) (2000) Censoring History: History, Citizenship and Memory in
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Crawford (eds.) What Shall We Tell the Children International Perspectives on School History
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Trecker, J.L. (1971) Women in US History Textbooks. Social Education 35, 249–61.
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Kong in Mainland History Textbooks. In S.J. Foster and K.A. Crawford (eds.) What Shall We
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Endnotes
1
The phrase often is attributed to British philosopher and sociologist, Herbert Spencer (1859).
2
These differences are graphically illustrated in Foster and Crawford (2006), which outlines
how textbooks enjoy different authority and status in various nations in East Asia, Europe, the
Middle East, Africa, the USA, and South Asia.
3
The research project “History Beyond Borders: The International History Textbook Revision,
1919–2009” is funded by the Swedish Research Council and directed by Professor Daniel
Lindmark, Umeå University, Sweden. The continental branch of the project is co-ordinated by
Professor Eckhardt Fuchs at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research,
Braunschweig, Germany.
4
Although it is argued that the “core” activity of the Institute remains within the conciliatory
tradition, it is, of course, important to recognise that many scholars associated with the GEI
also contribute to the critical tradition of textbook research.
20

Education Inquiry
Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2011, pp.21–35
EDU.
INQ.
Connections in the History of
Textbook Revision, 1947–1952 1
Romain Faure*
Abstract
In this article, I focus on connections between textbook revision forums between 1947 and 1952. I
examine the interrelations between the textbook activities of UNESCO, the World Movement of Trade
Unions, the international historian conferences in Speyer and two Franco-German co-operation
projects. I thus try to understand how these interrelations impacted on the development of each of
these forums and on textbook revision in general. I argue that the revision projects were not just
embedded within a diplomatic and institutional framework but also in a set of relations that closely
linked them, irrespective of their institutional and ideological foundations. Further, I propose to
conceive of textbook revision not as an entirely fragmented mosaic of bilateral and multilateral
projects, but as a more or less coherent transnational field.
Keywords: textbook revision, transnational history, international organisations, history teaching,
transnational networks
The historiography of international textbook revision in Europe is in its early stages. 2
The few studies addressing this field since the early 1960s – Schröder (1961) may be
seen as the first academic work on the topic – constitute a highly diverse research
landscape in which many aspects are illuminated to a certain extent and others not
at all. While some scholarly essays do delve into the history of the German-Polish
(e.g. Ruchniewicz, 2005; Strobel, 2005) and Franco-German (e.g. Riemenschneider,
2000a, 2000b; Bendick, 2003) textbook commissions, several international textbook
talks have yet to be researched. Attempts to overview this only recent historical
research reveal that it generally tends to focus on isolated projects of textbook
talks. In most cases, they address the history of a certain bilateral commission or
the textbook work of an individual organisation, such as UNESCO or the Council of
Europe (Luntinen, 1988, 1989; Stobart, 1999). There are good and understandable
reasons why historians focus on individual commissions or organisations. Each set
of textbook talks is unique in many ways and can thus be compared with others only
to a limited extent. It is essential that a bilateral textbook commission be embedded
within a specific, widely defined diplomatic framework, and this framework usually
exerts a strong influence on the commission itself. Strobel (2005) has shown, for
instance, that the history of the German-Polish textbook talks can to a considerable
* University of Braunschweig, Georg-Eckert-Institute for International Textbook Research.
E-mail: faure@gei.de
©Author. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.21–35
21

Romain Faure
degree only be explained with reference to the history of the relationship between
the two countries – from the West German Ostpolitik to the so-called “expulsion”
of the German population from Poland at the end of World War II. The multilateral
textbook projects funded by specific organisations are also considerably influenced
by the identities of these various institutions. It is hardly surprising that the Council
of Europe’s projects pursue different areas of focus to those of UNESCO’s projects.
While European history takes a prime position in the Council of Europe’s textbook
work (e.g. Cajani, 2010), world history plays the decisive role in projects under the
auspices of the United Nations. It is not only the identities of these institutions but
also their internal developments that can have notable effects on their work. According
to Pertti Luntinen (1988:344-345), the end of the first comprehensive UNESCO
revision project came about upon the Soviet Union joining UNESCO in 1954. Reaching
agreements on crucial basic principles of history textbook revision had become
almost impossible with this new and powerful member state. The Soviet Union held
a view of history that was barely reconcilable with the Western approach that had
hitherto enjoyed a dominant position within the organisation.
While such case studies are certainly indispensable, it could also be claimed that
they consistently follow a similar point of focus and thus fail to analyse the connections
between the various European revision projects. In this article, I take these connections
into consideration by focusing on the 1947–1952 period. In this short time period,
significant parts of the course were set towards resuming and continuing international
textbook work after the brutal interruption brought about by World War II. While at the
beginning of 1947 only the Norden associations had resumed their textbook activities,
at the end of 1952 at least 27 commissions were active or evolving (UNESCO, 1953).
Taking connections into consideration requires the simultaneous analysis of the different
revision forums. I therefore address the history of five projects:
1. UNESCO – clearly the most prominent actor in international textbook talks
after World War II. This intergovernmental organisation possessed a highly
diverse revision programme ranging from unilateral textbook analysis at state
level through supporting bilateral projects to organising large multilateral
conferences.
2. The Département Professionnel International de l’Enseignement (International
Occupational Department for Education) of the Fédération Syndicale
Mondiale (World Movement of Trade Unions). As a civilian institution it
sought to organise multilateral dialogue and to encourage bilateral talks.
3. The so-called international historian conferences that took place at Speyer.
These were organised by the French military occupation government in
Germany and constituted a European forum in which experts debated such
topics so as to improve history education.
22

Connections in the History of Textbook Revision, 1947–1952
4. The Franco-German textbook talks, which evolved early in the 1950s and were
convened by national societies, the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Lehrer
(Consortium of German Teachers) and the Société des Professeurs d’Histoire
Géographie (French Society of History and Geography Teachers).
5. A further Franco-German textbook commission, which evolved in the early
1950s. It was organised by the German Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft
(Trade Union Education and Science) and the French Fédération
de l’Éducation Nationale (National Education Federation), which were both
trade unions.
In the following analysis, I focus on the interrelations between these forums and
investigate the extent to which their interaction influenced their development. In so
doing, I hope to contribute to a better understanding of how international textbook
revision was resumed after 1945. I argue that the revision projects were not just embedded
within a diplomatic and institutional framework but also in a set of relations
that closely linked them, irrespective of their institutional and ideological foundations.
I initially address the 1947–1950 period and then the 1950–1952 period.
Resuming Textbook Revision, 1947–1950
The idea of international textbook revision dates back to the end of the 19th century.
The first concrete activities took place in the interwar period, particularly under the
umbrella of the League of Nations. Despite the sudden and cruel interruption of World
War II, demands for textbook revision emerged very soon after 1945. Even during the
war, the concept of textbook revision had not completely vanished and had been debated
during the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME), the predecessor
of UNESCO (Lutinen, 1988:388-339). Nevertheless, activities at the European level
did not evolve until between 1947 and 1950, particularly in three separate forums:
UNESCO, the World Movement of Trade Unions and the international conference
of historians at Speyer. 3 The prevailing concepts of textbook revision underpinning
these forums were only somewhat similar. In many ways it was more a case of three
ideologically dissonant centres of the newly resumed international textbook work.
They seem to have largely developed independently of each other since connections
between revision projects were relatively casual at the end of the 1940s, even if they
were growing.
The Development of Three Ideological Centres of International
Textbook Revision
UNESCO
History textbook revision was one of the primary goals of UNESCO, an organisation
founded in 1946. It paid a great deal of attention to this area, especially during its first
few years. The topic was debated on the occasion of its first general conference, and
23

Romain Faure
several so-called “programmes” were approved and passed (UNESCO, 1949a:59-69).
Yet the organisation’s commitment in matters of textbook revision cannot be reduced
to these programmes, which were intentionally very broad in their coverage. Pivotal
debates on textbook revision were instead entrusted to expert seminars and consulting
sessions. New points of focus were often established by the organisation’s textbook
work as a result. The following five features can be said to characterise UNESCO’s
textbook work during the 1947–1950 period.
First, textbook revision was part of a wider area of the organisation’s work: that
of education. UNESCO was one of the most important centres for the international
debate on education models and procedures during the post-war era. In 1947 experts
from all over the world were invited to a six-week seminar at Sèvres, near Paris, in
order to discuss the relationship between education and international understanding.
The recommendations of this conference contained sections relevant to history
didactics and thus also history textbook revision. The aim of teaching was defined
not only as knowledge acquisition but also as the shaping of behaviour and skills.
School education, especially the “social sciences” (including history), was supposed
to convey the message, for instance, that “all persons should be respected and appreciated
despite differences in nationality, race, religion, economic or social status,
sex or ability” and that “the peoples of the world have much in common”. 4 As far as
skills were concerned, pupils were to be taught how maps, tables and images were
to be understood and employed, how varying points of view could be identified and
factually and objectively assessed, even if they differed from one’s own viewpoint. 5 As
Howard Wilson, chairman of the Sèvres seminar, put it during an expert meeting on
history teaching: “one of the basic purposes of history teaching [is] the development
of a series of skills which [are] partly intellectual and partly skills of group life.” 6 At
this time, the question of history education and textbook improvement for UNESCO
was thus associated with didactic considerations.
Second, textbook revision was therefore by no means the responsibility of historians
alone. Rather, it was an interdisciplinary project. Education specialists from
all fields were to participate. Even the first programme UNESCO created stipulated
that “textbook analysis is no easy and simple matter; it must involve the closest cooperation
of scholars, educators, and psychologists, who understand the implications
of materials presented to pupils” (UNESCO, 1949a:60). Specialists such as historians
were thus to work in collaboration with educationists and psychologists.
Third, another feature was the frame of reference expressly designated by UNESCO
for history education and history textbooks. All publications emphasised that world
history should be allocated a primary and even a dominant position in the classroom
alongside national and local history. This did not have purely pedagogical reasons; this
concern was clearly politically motivated, particularly in the early years of UNESCO’s
work. Textbook revision, as part of the organisation’s education programme, was to
serve “the development in the pupils of an attitude of mind favourable to international
24

Connections in the History of Textbook Revision, 1947–1952
understanding, which will make them conscious of the ties which unite the peoples of
the world, and ready to accept the obligation which an interdependent world imposes”
(UNESCO, 1949b:3). With this in mind, conceptions of world history were repeatedly
subjected to debate at the various UNESCO seminars and consultation sessions. The
horrors of international conflicts such as those most recently witnessed were by no
means to be suppressed in favour of a softened narrative. However, history lessons
were also to emphasise the value of co-operation between peoples and nations.
Fourth, UNESCO’s conception of textbook work is further reflected in the revision
methodology the organisation presented in its Model Plan for The Analysis
and Improvement of Textbooks and Teaching Materials as Aids to International
Understanding, published in 1949 (UNESCO, 1949a:69-91). The revision aspired to
in this booklet was not only to benefit history but also the textbooks of all humanities
subjects in school, and ideally included analysing related syllabi (UNESCO, 1949a:75).
The material analysis that formed the basis of the revision recommendations was not
to be a general study but rather to focus on a specific topic (such as the portrayal of
international co-operation in the textbooks).
Fifth, the last conceptual aspect involved the organisation’s view of intergovernmental
cultural agreements as a particularly suitable framework for textbook work
(UNESCO, 1949a:118-119, 133-134). This view was probably mainly inherited from the
inter-war period of textbook revision. After 1918 the Institut International de Coopération
Intellectuelle had gone to particular trouble to encourage such agreements.
Even if this conception was expressly not intended to exclude other ideas, and was
merely to be seen as a recommendation, it differed from those involving the World
Movement of Trade Unions and the Speyer historians. Compared to the UNESCO
programme, the latter two forums possessed far less comprehensive textbook revision
ideas.
The Fédération Syndicale Mondiale
The textbook work by the Fédération Syndicale Mondiale (FSM), which up until the
beginning of 1949 was conducted by its Département Professionnel International
de l’Enseignement (DPIE), is most unsatisfactorily documented. Yet the few journal
articles I have been able to evaluate on the subject do allow for a partial overview of
the proceedings. This work originated in a journey through Germany embarked upon
by a delegation of the Fédération de l’Éducation Nationale, a French trade union
federation, in the summer of 1947. The result was a report on the education situation
in the country. It was presented at a conference of the FSM in Brussels in August
1947 and met with a certain amount of interest. It was therefore agreed that German
textbooks would be examined within the context of international co-operation. To
examine German textbooks, a textbook commission was appointed, consisting of
experts from Belgium, Czechoslovakia and France. The work was carried out from
1947-1948 under the leadership of Emile Hombourger, a French teacher. 7 It must
25

Romain Faure
be emphasised that the analysis addressed all school subjects. Textbooks from the
subjects of history, geography and civic education were therefore taken into account
alongside those for literary studies, languages, chemistry, physics, mathematics and
biology. This method corresponded to a specific conception of textbook revision based
merely on a general textbook examination, conducted not by renowned specialists
but by teachers.
Although it was planned that the analysis of German textbooks would be the first
step in the work, the reality proved different. From the outset it had been the goal of
the DPIE to examine and revise textbooks from as many different countries as possible.
This result was never achieved, however. At the end of the 1940s, the World Movement
of Trade Unions underwent dramatic changes as a result of the division of the world
into the East and West. The movement’s splitting between the Fédération Internationale
Syndicale de l’Enseignement (FISE) and the Confédération Mondiale de la
Profession Enseignante (CMOPE) considerably compromised its textbook activity.
The International Historian Conferences at Speyer
The four meetings of historians convened at Speyer between August 1948 and June
1950 constitute the third forum of international textbook work. They were organised
by the Direction de l’éducation publique of the French military occupation in
Germany and involved historians from France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland and
Austria (Defrance, 2009). Here, a number of historical questions were discussed
in detail, including the textbooks issue. The debate never reached a compromise
that might have been regarded later as a kind of “Speyer doctrine for textbook revision”.
No recommendations were agreed upon. The matter was highly sensitive
and opinions were divided in many respects. Nevertheless, the general orientation
of the discussion clearly deviated in at least one aspect from the views on textbook
revision held by UNESCO and the DPIE-FSM. In Speyer, Europe and the “West”
were seen as the relevant frames of reference for textbook work. During the fourth
conference, the French teacher Joseph Hours even discussed the possibility of writing
and editing a European history textbook. According to him, this was a perfectly
desirable project (Hours, 1950). As was the case with UNESCO, this focus was not
free of political motives. The new history education was to support the development
of a political Europe, which was regarded as protection from the outside world (e.g.
Rassow, 1950).
It is also worth stressing that the Speyer meetings de facto concerned professional
historians and history teachers. Thus, unlike the UNESCO approach, which sought
to include educational experts in textbook work and unlike the FSM, which insisted
on the role of teachers’ associations, textbook revision was seen in Speyer as a matter
solely for history specialists.
To sum up, the conceptions advocated by the UNESCO, FSM and Speyer meetings
at the end of the 1940s set clearly different courses for international textbook revision,
26

Connections in the History of Textbook Revision, 1947–1952
even if these directions were by no means entirely irreconcilable. One of the reasons
for those differences probably lies in the fact that the three forums appeared and
developed almost independently of each other. Yet, I would now like to show that the
connections between them were enhanced towards the end of the 1947–1950 period.
Increasing Connections
At the time international textbook activities were being resumed, conditions for
communicating in Europe were poor. Exploring the possible interaction within and
between different textbook revision projects, we should bear in mind that the circulation
of ideas and people across national frontiers was dramatically hindered by the
material consequences of the war. Setting up an international conference in 1947
was already a great achievement. For example, about the UNESCO Seminar held in
Sèvres in 1947 Howard Wilson noted that:
The Seminar shared with […] UNESCO itself […] certain handicaps imposed by material
shortages and dislocations of post-war society. There were not enough typewriters or
mimeographing machines; paper was scarce, transportation slow, secretarial help difficult
to obtain, telephone service inadequate. 8
Not surprisingly therefore, connections between the forums were still quite weak between
1947 and 1950. For example, in August 1948, when the historians assembled in
Speyer decided to create an international commission to examine German textbooks,
they seemed to be ignoring the work carried out by the committee of representatives
of teachers’ associations under the umbrella of the DPIE-FSM (Grégoire et al.,
1948:270-271). Although both groups had similar goals, no trace of consultation or
co-ordination can be found.
Nevertheless, the networking of different projects seems to have increased at the
very end of the 1940s. This was first and foremost due to the fact that textbook revision
had become – at least for a few years – institutionally established within UNESCO. In
April 1948, the organisation appointed the American Richard Perdew as its delegate
for textbook revision. One of his first tasks was to build a network of revision activists
so as to facilitate international textbook activities. Another important goal comprised
the development of UNESCO into a clearing house for revision projects (Unesco,
1949a:134). Perdew was assisted by a small staff, which also specifically dedicated
its work to textbook revision activities and thus ensured that this work was carried
out efficiently. As it appears in the Handbook released in 1949, the organisation
knew about the commission of the DPIE-FSM and the Speyer meetings (UNESCO,
1949a:44-46). Perdew even attended the third Speyer conference and, during the
fourth one, made a speech about UNESCO’s work on history teaching. Moreover, the
work of the UN agency became well known as a result of the publication. Until 1950,
the organisation released articles in its review as well as three booklets dealing with
international textbook work (Unesco, 1949a & 1949b; Vigander, 1950). Yet the con-
27

Romain Faure
nections were not close enough for mutual influence to become obvious. This would
change in the subsequent three years.
Networking Revision Forums, 1950–1952
Between 1950 and 1952, European textbook revision underwent significant changes.
Two of the three multilateral forums discussed above more or less disappeared.
The Speyer meetings ceased after the fourth conference held in June 1950, and the
textbook activities of the FSM remained durably restricted by the splitting of the
global trade union movement at the end of the 1940s. On the other hand, the number
of bilateral commissions in Europe was booming, a process that was largely due to
UNESCO activism. Moreover, connections between revision projects increased so
rapidly that most of them became closely interwoven. UNESCO continued to act as
an effective clearing house, and a network of individuals involved in international
textbook talks emerged. In the following, I try to illuminate this process of projects
interweaving by focusing on UNESCO as well as on the two forums of Franco-German
textbook co-operation.
The Franco-German Dialogue at the Crossroads of Influences
The Dialogue between the AGDL and SPHG
As early as during the inter-war period, French and German teachers had set up cooperation
in the matter of bilateral textbook improvement. This dialogue led to the
establishment of common recommendations in 1935 which, however, were never
published in Germany. The fact that this bilateral co-operation was resumed is closely
linked to the growing networking of revision actors at the end of the 1940s. During
the third Speyer meeting, Georg Eckert from the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher
Lehrerverbände (AGDL) met, in the presence of UNESCO representative Richard
Perdew, the head of the Société des Professeurs d’Histoire-Géographie (SPHG), Édouard
Bruley, and they both decided to co-operate. Less than two months after this
encounter, the SPHG officially proposed a co-operative project to the AGDL, which the
latter accepted. The first meeting was held in August 1950 in Freiburg-im-Breisgau,
a German university town next to the French border. Consultations were then set up
in Paris and Mainz in 1951 and in Tübingen in 1952, which were to continue until
the mid-1960s. In the first three years, the collaboration took two directions. On one
hand, a bilateral commission resumed negotiations on the recommendations that
French and German historians had adopted during the inter-war period. In 1952,
a revised text was released in both countries. 9 On the other hand, both associations
exchanged history textbooks so as to mutually analyse them. This examination was
limited to the treatment in the partner’s books of the own country’s history and of
Franco-German relations. From the Mainz meeting onwards, this analysis was completed
by lectures given by scholars on specific historical topics. Such lectures were
28

Connections in the History of Textbook Revision, 1947–1952
to inspire debate between French and German historians and aimed to establish a
common view of historical events. They became increasingly dominant during the
subsequent consultations.
It appears from the joint recommendations that the co-operation between the
AGDL and the SPHG was able to rely on a tradition of Franco-German textbook
dialogue. Yet it was also closely linked to the recent discussions that had taken place
both within the Speyer meetings and UNESCO. First, several members of the AGDL-
SPHG textbook commission had also attended one or more of the Speyer meetings
between 1948 and 1950. On the French side, this was the case for Édouard Bruley,
Jacques Droz, Joseph Hours and Jean Sigmann; on the German side, for Georg Eckert
and Helmut Krausnick. Moreover, the connection to Speyer was an ideological one.
To a certain extent, members of the AGDL-SPHG group conceived their dialogue not
solely as Franco-German but as European. For example, they decided to give a new
name to the common recommendations that had first been achieved in the interwar
period. In 1935, they had been published in France as a Binding declaration of
assembled French and German history teachers on textbooks’ detoxification. 10 In
1952, they were released in Germany under the title Franco-German Agreement on
contested questions of European history. At their Tübingen meeting in August 1952,
they addressed a topic in which Franco-German and European histories were closely
intertwined. Scholars were to discuss great European peace treaties from Verdun
843 to Versailles 1919. In a way, each of these treaties – Verdun and Versailles, the
Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, Vienna 1815 or the Congress of Berlin from 1878 – was
related to the common history of both nations, but they also clearly had a European
dimension. The result of the consultations was a Franco-German view on European
history teaching.
UNESCO also left its mark on the Franco-German dialogue. In this case too,
individual interweaving between the forums probably played an important role. In
August 1950, Édouard Bruley and Georg Eckert attended both the first AGDL-SPHG
meeting in Freiburg and a UNESCO seminar on textbook revision. Bruley was also
a member of the commission organising the following UNESCO textbook revision
seminar in Sèvres one year later. Moreover, the UN agency delegated a member
of its staff, René Ochs, to most of the Franco-German meetings. Not surprisingly,
UNESCO’s view of history teaching thus had an impact on the bilateral collaboration.
Following the organisation’s recommendations, the bilateral commission stressed
the history of international co-operation and peace movements. At the Tübingen
meeting, it came as something of a surprise that a less prominent peace treaty was
addressed. A discussion on the “Peace Conference of The Hague in 1899 and the
early attempts of international organisations” was announced by the programme.
Compared to the other conferences such as Verdun 843, Westphalia 1648, Vienna
1815, Berlin 1878 and Versailles 1918, The Hague 1899 was a much less traditional
topic of historical research at the time. Its insertion in the programme should prob-
29

Romain Faure
ably be interpreted as a mark of UNESCO’s influence. We can also find traces of this
influence in the revised common recommendation. In 1952, the French and German
historians added a short subsection that stressed international co-operation: “[…]
II. It is necessary that textbooks indicate the existence in the XVIIIth century of a
movement of ideas in favour of peace organisation (Leibniz, abbot of Saint-Pierre,
Kant…)” 11 . UNESCO’s recommendations on history teaching thus clearly infused
the Franco-German dialogue.
The Dialogue between the GEW and FEN
In reaction to the specific direction taken by the Franco-German dialogue, a second
bilateral commission was set up in 1951. It was composed of delegates from both
German and French teachers’ trade unions: the Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft
(GEW) on one hand and the Fédération de l’Éducation nationale (FEN) on
the other. As the French introduction report puts it, this commission clearly distanced
itself from Speyer, UNESCO and the AGDL-SPHG consultations:
Our initiative in favour of a comparison of German and French textbooks is very different from
the studies carried out by national UNESCO-commissions at the history teaching seminars of
Brussels (1950) and Sèvres (1951). It is different from the analysis of manuscripts or potential
re-edition of history textbooks begun in Speyer (Palatinate) by a small group of historians
and professors of diverse nationalities under the auspices of the military government of the
French occupation zone. Through its methods and its spirit, it relies on the tradition of our
trade-union organisations; our effort is not limited to the examination of delicate and contested
questions but it addresses the analysis of textbooks in all disciplines. We think that
reading books, geography or language textbooks as well as history textbooks can reveal the
biased dimension of teaching. There are no unimportant details, even in a science textbook. 12
As the text clearly implies, the GEW-FEN co-operation emerged in a context in which
connections between forums also played a decisive role. On both the German and the
French side there were participants who knew the work of UNESCO, the Speyer meetings
and the AGDL-SPHG commission very well. In this case, however, connections to
these projects led to demarcation. Instead, the positive model of textbook co-operation
lay in the experiences of international teachers’ associations and the FSM. At least on
the French side, the network of individuals that had already been major actors in the
DPIE-FSM textbook work also came into play in the GEW-FEN co-operation. In particular,
Emile Hombourger, who had directed the DPIE-FSM examination committee for
German textbooks, participated in the new project. The work of the new bilateral commission
explicitly relied on the tradition of international textbook activities conducted
by trade unions. It was carried out by school teachers and not by university professors.
It considered all school subjects and did not allot a privileged place to history. In 1952
and 1953, French and German teachers analysed their partner’s textbooks in history,
geography, languages and the sciences, and contacted several textbook authors and
editors so as to permit a revision of the coming new editions.
30

UNESCO and its Experts
Connections in the History of Textbook Revision, 1947–1952
The short period of 1950–1952 was also very important for UNESCO’s textbook
revision activities. The organisation played a decisive role in the development of
international textbook dialogue by significantly contributing to the creation and/
or resumption of bilateral commissions. It kept promoting the networking of different
projects so that revision forums became ever more connected. As a result, it
can be said that the organisation was the major actor of the boom in revision in the
early 1950s. Yet, as we will see, this boom also had important repercussions for the
organisation’s work.
In Brussels in 1950 and in Sèvres near Paris in 1951, UNESCO set up two multilateral
conferences specifically to address history textbook revision. The Brussels
seminar in particular turned out to be a great success. Over the course of six weeks,
scholars, teachers and civil servants from all over the world discussed common topics
related to history teaching. Many of them left the conference convinced of the
potential of textbook revision (Lousse, 1952). Nine bilateral textbook commissions
were set up concerning Germany, the USA, Sweden, France, Belgium, Switzerland,
Norway, Austria and the Netherlands. The Scandinavian textbook work carried out
by the Norden associations and the fairly new Franco-German AGDL-SPHG dialogue
served as models for the constitution of new commissions. Both collaborations were
presented in detail during the seminar by Haakon Vigander on one hand, and by
Georg Eckert and Édouard Bruley on the other (UNESCO, 1950:14).
In both Brussels and Sèvres, the participants contributed to developments in UN-
ESCO’s approach to revision. They stressed it was a matter for experts and not for
politicians. One of the 1950 seminar’s recommendations stated: “whenever possible,
private initiative should be given preference over governmental action. Member states
should sanction the results obtained rather than direct the discussions and negotiations
themselves”. 13 This recommendation clearly aimed at protecting international
textbook dialogue from political interference. In so doing, the seminar participants
also took a critical position on UNESCO’s programme, which had hitherto allocated
a significant role to governments and states.
Even more far-reaching developments concerned the disciplinary conception of
textbook revision. As we have seen, UNESCO had attached great importance to educational
issues related to history textbooks. Such issues were, for example, included
in the programme of the Brussels seminar, which had partly been drafted by J. A.
Lauwerys, a professor of comparative studies in education in London. Yet the profile
of the consultants UNESCO appointed on issues related to textbook revision changed
alongside the development of revision projects. The new advisors of the organisation
were now people like Georg Eckert and Édouard Bruley, who were members of national
history teachers’ associations and who participated in bilateral textbook dialogues
(UNESCO, 1953:43-45). The role of historians in UNESCO therefore grew rapidly
at the beginning of the 1950s, while that of psychologists and education specialists
31

Romain Faure
decreased. This appears very clearly in a report on textbook revision the organisation
published in 1952. The sticking point of revision was no longer related to didactical
consideration. It had nothing to do with the shaping of behaviour and skills. As the
author of the report put it, “the fundamental problem underlying the whole process
of improving textbooks [is] that of bringing them up to date with the latest results of
modern research” (UNESCO, 1953:41). De facto, in a short period of time, textbook
revision had largely become a matter for history specialists and was not the interdisciplinary
project that UNESCO had initially been promoting.
Between 1950 and 1952, connections between the forums increased rapidly, becoming
closely interwoven. As it appears with people like Georg Eckert and Édouard
Bruley, who were involved in numerous projects, a small community of revision
activists emerged beyond institutional borders. This community largely contributed
to stabilising the European textbook dialogue. In 1954, UNESCO abruptly ceased its
provision of financial and organisational support for revision. Given the pivotal role
the organisation had played up until this point, this decision could have seriously jeopardised
the continuation of textbook revision. Yet the community of “revisors” carried
its work forward. Édouard Bruley, Georg Eckert and their colleagues now served as
advisors to the Council of Europe, which organised its first meeting on textbook revision
in 1953 and committed itself consistently to this field until the end of the 1950s.
Conclusion: The Transnational Field of Textbook Revision
In this article, I have tried to explore the crossings and inter-crossings between five forums
of textbook revision over a fairly short period of time. It appears that the amount
of interaction between these forums particularly grew at the beginning of the 1950s,
with the result that projects became closely interwoven, be it in terms of co-operation
and positive influence – between UNESCO, Speyer and the AGDL-SPHG commission
or between the FSM and the GEW-FEN commission – or in terms of competition,
such as in the case of the Franco-German textbook dialogue. This connection-building
mainly resulted from the actions of UNESCO and from the development of individual
networks beyond institutions and projects. It therefore seems that conceptions of
textbook revision were not strictly linked to specific institutions, but that they could
move from one forum of international textbook revision to another. Consequently, it
was better to not systematically oppose revision forums merely on the basis of their
institutional characteristics. For example, a bilateral dialogue set up by civilian organisations
might have shared a similar approach to revision work with a multilateral
project supported by a military government or an international organisation.
In my view, research on connections can contribute to a better understanding of
the history of international textbook revision on at least two levels. First, when focusing
on a single forum of revision, it seems essential to take its environment into
consideration. This environment clearly includes institutional and diplomatic elements
but it also consists of the set of revision projects related to the forum in ques-
32

Connections in the History of Textbook Revision, 1947–1952
tion. In the case of UNESCO, for example, one would be mistaken in believing that
its textbook revision work was exclusively determined by states, even though it is an
intergovernmental organisation. External experts appointed by the organisation were
also major actors. Their advice was taken seriously because they were in a position
to share experiences and know-how they had gained in other revision forums. As a
consequence, UNESCO’s revision activities were influenced by other textbook talks.
Second, focusing on connections can lead to a change of scale in the historical
analysis of textbook revision and, as a consequence, to new questions. If we no longer
concentrate on one forum but on all of them, as well as on the links between them,
then we will be able to conceive of textbook revision no longer as a fragmented mosaic
of bilateral or multilateral projects but as a more or less coherent transnational field,
resulting from co-operation, competition and transfers between revision forums. We
may then ask how the very idea of textbook revision was shaped into that complex
transnational field. Yet this question calls for further research.
Romain Faure studied History and Sociology in Toulouse, Paris and Berlin. He is now a research
fellow at the Georg-Eckert-Institut for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig (Germany).
He participates in the German-Swedish project History Beyond Borders: The International History
Textbook Revision, 1919–2009 and is writing a PhD thesis on European networks of history
textbook revision between 1945 and 1989.
E-mail: faure@gei.de
33

Romain Faure
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Endnotes
1
This research is part of the research project History Beyond Borders: The International History
Textbook Revision, 1919–2009 funded by the Swedish Research Council and directed by
Professor Daniel Lindmark, Umeå University, Sweden. A first draft of this paper was presented
at the international workshop “Researching History Textbooks and International Textbook
Revision” held at Umeå in May 2010. I would like to thank all the participants of this workshop
for their interesting and helpful feedback. I also wish to thank Wendy Anne Kopisch for translating
and correcting this text as well as Jessica Cohen for her suggestions and great support.
2
By “textbook revision” I solely mean history textbook revision in this contribution.
3
Two other forums were also important: the German-English textbook talks, which came into
being in 1949, and the Scandinavian revision, carried out by the Norden associations.
4
Social Studies Teaching and National Understanding, by Leonard Kennworthy, UNESCO Archives,
Sem. Sec I/12, 27 August 1947, p. 32.
5
Social Studies…, Unesco Archives, Sem. Sec I/12, 27 August 1947, p. 33.
6
Meeting of Experts on the Teaching of History Held at UNESCO House, from 12 to 16 December
1949, UNESCO Archives, ED/Conf. 7, p. 13.
7
A report was published in L’Université syndicaliste, No. 47, 25 November 1948 und No. 48, 15
December 1948.
8
Seminar for Education in International Understanding, Report Submitted by Howard E.
Wilson, Director of the Seminar, to the Director-General of UNESCO, 15 October 1947, UN-
ESCO Archives, Sem./25/ED, p. 2.
9
“Les Entretiens Franco-Allemands, Mai-Octobre 1951.” In Deutschland – Frankreich – Europa:
Die deutsch-französische Verständigung und der Geschichtsunterricht. Baden-Baden,
1953, pp. 15-34.
10
“Probleme der deutsch-französischen Geschichtsschreibung.” In Internationales Jahrbuch
für Geschichts unterricht, 1951/1952, pp. 44-64.
11
“Les Entretiens Franco-Allemands, Mai-Octobre 1951”, in: Deutschland – Frankreich – Europa:
Die deutsch-französische Verständigung und der Geschichtsunterricht, Baden-Baden,
1953, p. 16.
12
Deutschland und Frankreich im Spiegel ihrer Schulbücher, Braunschweig, 1954, pp. 11-12.
13
Meeting of Experts on the Improvement of Textbooks, 23 to 26 October 1950, UNESCO Archives,
ED/Conf. TB/1, p.1.
35

Education Inquiry
Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2011, pp.37–60
EDU.
INQ.
UNESCO and Council of Europe
Guidelines, and History Education in
Sweden, c. 1960-2002 1
Thomas Nygren*
Abstract
In this study, international recommendations for history education issued by UNESCO and the
Council of Europe are compared with the construing of history in national guidelines, teachers’
perceptions and the results of students’ work in history in Sweden. The study shows how history
education from the 1960s onwards could be critical and oriented towards minorities in a global
world, clearly in line with the recommendations of UNESCO. International understanding, unity
in diversity and safeguarding the local heritage in many ways became part of students’ historical
consciousness.
Keywords: history teaching, international guidelines, teachers, students, historical consciousness
Introduction
After the Second World War, history teaching was considered both a contributing
factor to the war and part of a future solution. In order to build a better world, with
greater understanding between and among nations, UNESCO and the Council of
Europe launched reform programmes directed at the teaching of history. UNESCO’s
and the Council of Europe’s recommendations, which were initially primarily concerned
with counteracting nationalism and militarism, developed in due course
into encompassing more and more areas in which history teaching was thought to
contribute to influencing students’ views of the world and thereby to shape a better
future (Low-Beer, 1997; Pingel, 1999; Lindmark, 2008).
The present study aimed to investigate how the subject of history was formulated
internationally from the 1960s until 2002, and to compare the international intentions
with how the subject was formulated and understood in national guidelines and
by teachers and students in Sweden.
Inspired by previous research and theories, I have called the international level of
curricula “ideological curricula”, the national level “formal curricula”, the teachers
level “perceived curricula” and the student level “experiential curricula” (Goodlad,
1979). I examined each level chronologically and in relation to each other on the ba-
*Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University, Sweden.
E-mail: thomas@nygren.nu
©Author. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.37–60
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Thomas Nygren
sis of international recommendations. In the study implementation was treated as a
complex undertaking, with both interpretations and transferences in interaction with
preconceptions and the surrounding world (Goodlad, 1979; Westbury, 2008). Since
students’ views of the past, present and future were central in the recommendations of
UNESCO and the Council of Europe, I analysed the relationship between the ideological
curricula and students’ historical consciousness, as expressed in individual history
projects written by upper secondary students. As a theoretical point of departure, I
considered students’ historical consciousness in terms of their interpretations of the
past, present and future, based on experiences and expectations influenced by history
both within and outside of school (Jensen, 1997; Koselleck, 2004; Rüsen, 2004;
Barton, 2008).
The recommendations of UNESCO and the Council of Europe were analysed
chronologically. The focus was on the international intentions from the 1960s and
earlier material was noted as a background to the international and national developments
after 1960. The formal Swedish guidelines were thereafter scrutinised during
periods of reform, primarily in 1965, 1981 and 1994 when the history syllabuses were
rewritten. Inspectors’ reports covering the period from 1969 to 1982 were also treated
as part of the formal curricula. The perceived curricula were studied as they were
expressed in debates in the history teachers’ journals Historielärarnas förenings
årsskrift (HLFÅ; The Annual Report of the Association of History Teachers) and Aktuellt
för historieläraren (AFHL; New Information for History Teachers) along with
the life stories of six very experienced teachers, who each have more than 30 years’
professional experience: Axel, Bengt, Cecilia, Dag, Elisabeth and Folke (pseudonyms).
I conducted semi-structured interviews that provided narratives from practice and
thereby insights into how a few history teachers have perceived the developments in
history education (Goodson and Sikes, 2001; Plummer, 2005; Nygren, 2009). The experiential
curricula were analysed by studying upper secondary students’ (18-19-yearolds)
subject choices for their individual history projects and, in a more elaborate way,
by scrutinising 145 individual projects. The purpose of these week-long individual
projects, introduced in 1928, was to train students to work independently and offer
opportunities to deepen their knowledge of their chosen subject area and discipline.
Despite some variation in pedagogical emphasis in the curriculum after periods of
reform, the form and orientation of these projects were retained from 1928 until 2002
(SFS, 1928:412; SÖ, 1965; SÖ, 1986). In other words, what students supervised by
teachers chose to write about in history facilitates the making of comparisons over
time. I consciously gathered statistics from different parts of Sweden and different
sized cities in order to avoid being too strongly influenced by local school cultures
and individual teachers. 2 The titles were categorised on the basis of the international
intentions emphasising more world, European and local history. Only titles with a clear
geographical orientation were used in the statistics. Other phenomena underlined
internationally, such as racism, minorities and women, were also counted. Since this
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UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960-2002
was not a complete national investigation, and the actual content of these individual
projects could not be analysed, I used the statistics to indicate orientations over time.
Individual projects in history are usually not saved, but through a national search of
school libraries and contacts with school archives and teachers I was able to collect
145 papers written by students between 1969 and 2002. The individual projects were
conducted in four different schools, in different parts of the country and supervised
by at least 11 different supervisors. Most papers come from Vasaskolan in Gävle and
do not comprise any representative selection. 3 Yet the existing individual projects
do have different geographical orientations and stretch over the national reforms of
history teaching in 1965, 1981 and 1994 (see Table 1).
Table 1: Geographical orientation of individual history projects, 1969–20024
1969-1983 1984-1996 1997-2002 Total
World History 20 24 9 53
European History 8 15 6 29
National History 9 11 1 21
Local History 3 32 7 42
Total 40 82 23 145
Sources: Katedralskolan in Lund, Linnéskolan in Hässleholm, Södra Latin in Stockholm and Vasaskolan in Gävle.
The essays should be considered as examples of how some students completed their
individual projects, with different orientations, at different periods of time. Examining
what students actually wrote on the basis of their historical consciousness in
the individual history projects provides an opportunity to analyse how a number of
students experienced history in the light of international intentions.
The fact that the subject of history has been a focus of international reforms has
previously been described in research on both UNESCO and the Council of Europe
(Schüddekopf, 1967; Buergenthal and Torney, 1976; Luntinen, 1988, 1989; Low-Beer,
1997; Pingel, 1999; Stobart, 1999; Droit, 2005; Gasanabo, 2006; Stenou, 2007). Although
this work has made a substantial contribution to the field, it potentially has
several weaknesses stemming from efforts to improve practice, the fact that the research
has been financed by the organisation it has scrutinised and that it has often focused
on textbooks. Significantly, although links between international and local levels have
previously been noted (Duedahl, 2007; Nygren, 2011), hitherto there has been no independent
investigation of teachers’ and students’ conceptions of history teaching in
relation to the international intentions, from the 1960s into the 21st century.
The Ideological Curricula
After the end of the Second World War, both UNESCO and the Council of Europe asserted
that as a subject, a more international, peaceful, cultural and contemporary history
could create greater understanding between peoples and countries, locally and globally
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Thomas Nygren
(UNESCO, 1949; Burley and Dance, 1960). In their guidelines, UNESCO and the Council
of Europe expressed a wish to create through the teaching of history international
citizens immune to propaganda who would safeguard peace, human rights, pluralism
and cultural heritage. As a consequence, three prominent orientations emerged which
asserted that history teaching should: 1) become more international; 2) include critical
perspectives and minorities; and 3) safeguard the cultural heritage through local history.
UNESCO’s recommendations had a more global perspective, while the Council
of Europe highlighted Europe. UNESCO prioritised the value of a global universal
history a History of Mankind, whereas the Council of Europe emphasised “the idea
of Europe”. The dividing line between UNESCO’s universalism and the Council of
Europe’s regionalism remained in the recommendations for history teaching during
the whole period studied. In the context of European education, through intensive
work from the 1980s onwards the Council of Europe’s line has largely prevailed over
UNESCO’s (Council of Europe, 1983, 1989, 1996, 2001). This was particularly evident
when, after the Balkan war, UNESCO’s Director-General Fredrico Mayor proclaimed:
We must see through the smoke of current events to the broader horizon beyond. But first
of all, we must dispel the darkness of yesterday and promote the idea of a Europe of regions,
a Europe of a unity in diversity, made up of an interlinking and interdependence of regions,
a spirit of global solidarity (UNESCO, 1999:7).
In this quote the Council of Europe’s regionalism, with “the Idea of Europe”, was
something the leader of UNESCO also advocated: first Europe, then the world.
During the 1960s, UNESCO sharpened its criticism of colonialism 5 while the Council
of Europe wanted to also assert the positive sides of colonialism. As late as 1967, a
book from the Council of Europe argued:
[…] we must put on the credit side (as opposed to the evils of the colonial system which of
course must not be minimized) the real benefits which accrued from it, and which were moral
and intellectual as well as material. Without underestimating the past history of colonized
peoples, it is certain that their contact with peoples of more rapid material development has
proved beneficial to most of them (Bruley, 1967:122).
UNESCO stressed instead that education should contribute to “the struggle against
colonialism and neo-colonialism in all their forms and expressions and against all
forms of racism, fascism and apartheid and other ideologies that encourage hate between
nations or races” (UNESCO, 1975). During the 1980s, the Council of Europe
also started to problematise the colonial heritage; endeavouring to avoid chauvinism
and Euro-centrism, the Council admonished people for glossing over the concept of
“discoveries”. Education should not lead to feelings of superiority because of race or
culture (Council of Europe, 1984). This was considered especially important in view of
the fact that more and more schools in Western Europe were becoming multicultural
(Council of Europe, 1984).
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UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960-2002
“Unity in diversity” became increasingly emphasised by both UNESCO and the Council
of Europe. From the start, UNESCO had a more universal perspective (UNESCO,
1947), whereas the Council of Europe mainly focused on Europe and its need for unity
in the face of its multiplicity of ethnic groups (Council of Europe, 1949). Within both
organisations, multiculturalism initially concerned understanding between countries
and peoples, but later also included cultural identity within states and questions of
democracy (UNESCO, 1975; Council of Europe, 1983, 1997; Stenou, 2004; Droit,
2005). From the 1980s onwards young people were to be prepared for life in a multicultural
society (Council of Europe, 1985a), and to understand how unity in diversity
and dialogue among civilisations favours Europe and mankind in general (Council of
Europe, 1996; UNESCO, 1995, 2002; Boel, 2004).
Although in 1958 the Council of Europe claimed that women were a forgotten
“minority”, it was not before the 1990s that women’s history was clearly noted in the
Council’s recommendations (Council of Europe, 1996). It seems that within UNESCO
questions of equality were long subordinate to efforts to counter nationalism and
racism (Amrith and Sluga, 2008), but from the mid-1980s onwards women’s role in
history and society was increasingly acknowledged (UNESCO, 1985, 1995).
History teaching was also to pay ever more attention to local cultural heritage recognising
its importance for preserving the past and building a sense of identification and
unity. After the Second World War, when nationalism was fiercely criticised, UNESCO
and the Council of Europe saw no conflict between local history and international
understanding. On the contrary, it was argued that teaching could sensibly begin with
local history and then expand into Europe and the world (UNESCO, 1951; Bruley and
Dance, 1960). After UNESCO’s work with world heritage initiatives, recommendations
were made in which the importance of local history for preserving cultural heritage
was emphasised; this was followed by similar recommendations from the Council of
Europe (UNESCO, 1977; Council of Europe, 1985b).
The Formal Curricula
According to the national syllabus in post-war Sweden, history teaching should
emphasise objective facts and tolerance and also underpin knowledge of history
from political, economic, social and cultural perspectives (SÖ, 1956). International
understanding was introduced as a concept in the national Swedish history syllabus,
clearly influenced by international intentions in the post-war era (SÖ, 1956; Nygren,
2011). Swedish history syllabuses from 1960 to the 1980s thus were more and more
in line with UNESCO’s design for a universal history that fostered international understanding.
Accordingly, the 1981 syllabus stated the following:
Teaching should have a global perspective, regardless of whether it involves older or more contemporary
history. This means that non-European history should be included and non-European
cultures studied on the basis of their own pre-requisites. One minimal demand should be that
every student acquires deeper knowledge of at least one non-European culture (SÖ, 1981:10).
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Thomas Nygren
The Swedish national syllabus adopted no direct position regarding world history or
European history, but advised that national, Nordic and European history be “fitted
into the global” at the same time as the global perspective should not be allowed to
“obscure the European” (SÖ, 1981:11). The “Idea of Europe” existed as a concept in
the syllabus from 1965 and the desire to strive for a European identity and European
co-operation in the shadow of Great Power politics was noted in 1981. As of 1994, when
the grading system became more goal-related, 6 Europe acquired a more central role.
In the hastily produced national syllabus, European history took on a more dominant
position (SKOLFS, 1994:10). UNESCO’s recommendation regarding “International
Understanding” was treated as a question of basic values rather than a question
for the subject of history specifically (Läroplanskommittén, 1994). The Swedish
national curriculum and syllabus moved more in line with the recommendations of
the Council of Europe. Global history received less attention in the history syllabus
of the 1990s, even though UNESCO’s recommendation from 1974 was reprinted in
1994 (Skolverket, 1994).
To a certain extent, critical perspectives on power relations in the world penetrated
the Swedish history syllabuses from the 1960s onwards. For example, the role of race
theories in colonialism and issues surrounding the accommodation of ethnic minorities
in national narratives were proclaimed as suitable themes for more intensive study
in the 1965 syllabus (SÖ, 1965). However, the sharp post-colonial criticism which
was expressed in UNESCO’s publications did not become established in the syllabus.
The Swedish formulations were more cautious and, although they did assert the need
for a discussion of the relations between the centre and periphery, men and women,
majorities and minorities, they did not provide any condemnation of colonialism and
neo-colonialism. Power relations between men and women and the positive contributions
of immigrants in Sweden were included in the 1981 syllabus (SÖ, 1981). In
1994, the value of historical consciousness, understanding of one’s contemporary
world and skills such as source criticism were foregrounded. In addition, the value
of seeing different groups’ views of history – for example, those of women, different
social classes and cultures – was underlined. According to the national syllabus for
history produced in the 1990s, from a broad formulation of goals the teacher should
reinforce students’ cultural understanding of “their own and others’ identity”.
An inter-cultural point of view, where similarities and differences between different cultures
are highlighted, can further tolerance and broad-mindedness. At the same time, the dynamics
and possibilities offered by inter-cultural encounters are made clear (SKOLFS, 1994:10:85).
Thus culture was about both one’s own identity and the encounter with others, in accord
with a multi-cultural perspective that had previously been conveyed internationally
and by ethnologists in Sweden (UNESCO, 1975; Council of Europe, 1983; Dahllöf
and Dahllöf, 1982). Further, teaching should create a “feeling for a shared cultural
heritage and also critically examine our patterns of civilisation, and be aware that it
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UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960-2002
has been and is still possible to change prevailing conditions” (SKOLFS, 1994:10:85).
The so-called shared cultural heritage was clearly linked to national and Western
narratives (Nordgren, 2006).
As early as the 1930s, in Sweden local history subjects were recommended for individual
history projects (SÖ, 1935). As part of the preservation of local cultural heritage,
local history subjects were emphasised in the Swedish national syllabuses as suitable
for individual projects and study visits (SÖ, 1956; SÖ, 1981). School inspectors declared
in 1973 that “We are pleased to say that we have encountered more local history in
the teaching than before” (SÖ, 1973-74). In 1978, it was positively acknowledged by
inspectors that local history and genealogy often had a problem-based and laboratory
form (SÖ, 1977-78). By studying local history students could, according to the
syllabus of 1981, obtain a “broadened understanding for the past and the problems
of the present” and the possibility to “place one’s own home town in relation to the
rest of the world” (SÖ, 1981:11). Local history was not included in the syllabus from
1994, but remarkably in 2000 genealogy was introduced as a grading criterion for
the advanced history course in upper secondary schools (SKOLFS, 2000:60). Due
to the Swedish goal-related grading system, there were good opportunities to teach
about local cultural heritage – which was recommended internationally, even though
it was not specifically mentioned in the syllabus.
The Perceived Curricula
From 1960 until 1984, debates about teaching in the journals for history teachers
(HLFÅ and AFHL) largely concentrated on the international history that was promoted
by international organisations. There was a great deal of accord around the
need for more culture-oriented and global history, even if some critics claimed that
national and Nordic history had been marginalised in history teaching, from “fiftyfifty”
to a 10% to 90% ratio (HLFÅ, 1969-70:96). In the mid-1980s, non-European
history became far less prominent in the history teaching debates, which became
increasingly theoretically didactic. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the
Swedish application to join the EU in 1991, the new Europe and European identity
moved towards the centre of discussion (HLFÅ, 1991-92, 1994-95). Even if more
global currents existed, the debate was pervaded by the Council of Europe’s and Euroclio’s
desire to “encourage European awareness through the teaching of history”
(HFLÅ, 1994-95:28). The work of the Council of Europe regarding history teaching
was acknowledged – but not UNESCO’s declaration in 1995 concerning education
for peace, human rights and democracy (UNESCO, 1995).
The teachers I interviewed, who went through their teacher-training in the 1950s
and 1960s, all attested to the fact that Swedish history was the major focus of study
during their time at school and even at university. European history was studied
primarily on the upper secondary level and beyond. They all agreed there was a lack
of non-European history. Axel described how at upper secondary school there were
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Thomas Nygren
“certain international points of view, but anything other than a European view of history
was exceedingly rare, if it occurred at all”. When history outside of Europe was
considered it involved a Euro-centric perspective – discoveries and colonialism. Dag
concurred that there was a dearth of non-European history in his university education:
“Non-European history, Africa and China’s – and that, all that amounted to nothing.
[…] When I graduated from university my knowledge of China’s early history was
non-existent.” Cecilia lamented the lack of chronological surveys of epochs from an
international perspective in history textbooks, and as a result she constructed her own
to help students see differences and similarities in developments in different parts of
the world. The lack of knowledge of non-European history was noted during the 1960s
and 1970s by both the association of history teachers and the national school board
(SÖ, 1974-75). The teachers interviewed in this study described how their teaching
concentrated on European history, but Swedish and global development was also taken
up. Bengt and the team of teachers at his school based their instruction on Swedish
chronology, whereas the others said their teaching revolved around European epochs.
Dag, Elisabeth, Cecilia and Folke described a strategic orientation, which I have
called “social scientific history”. In their teaching they used history to explain contemporary
problems and developments in society by making global comparisons
and seeking general patterns (Nygren, 2009). This was an orientation that did not
primarily focus on international cultural encounters, but had a clear international
problematising orientation in line with the intentions of UNESCO and the Council of
Europe. The historical overview was, according to the teachers, necessary for students
to be able to make comparisons and to see historical connections and the structures
that created society and current problems in the world. State governments and current
world politics were to be highlighted in order to encourage students to analyse
their contemporary world.
During the 1960s and even more so in the 1970s the history of minorities and
women was foregrounded in teachers’ discussions; several historical articles in HFLÅ
represented a “history from below”. Sweden as a land of immigrants was emphasised
in the debate, a direct influence from the Council of Europe (HFLÅ, 1981-82). A more
ethnological perspective focusing on human behaviour and traditions was added to a
view of culture as primarily art and literature. In the debate during the 1980s, there
were proposals to create a separate subject for culture studies (Dahllöf and Dahllöf,
1982). History teachers, however, countered that internationalisation, immigration
studies and local history were already parts of the subject of history and could provide
a multicultural, ethnological perspective (HFLÅ, 1984-85). Women’s history as part
of the subject was a feature of debates in 1975 and taken up later in recommendations
from the National Board of Education (HFLÅ, 1975; HLFÅ, 1981-82).
Axel described how he took the opportunity to study ethnology and how this as
well as other aspects of higher education such as women’s history and the history of
mentalities heavily influenced his ideas about history teaching. New perspectives were
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UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960-2002
introduced in which “Sweden’s era of Great Power became the era of soldier-widows”,
as he put it. A “multi-perspective” teaching strategy where different points of view
and interpretations of history were central, e.g. focused on gender, cultural and social
perspectives along with source criticism and the history of mentalities (Nygren, 2009).
In the debates about teaching, a local historical perspective was considered to
provide a solid personal anchorage in the world and a good point of departure for
humanistic approaches to engagement in the world at large (AFHL, 1970). A rise of
interest in local history from the 1960s was described as a consequence of the “Dig
Where You Stand” movement 7 and of fewer restrictions in the syllabus (HLFÅ, 1982-
83). Yet UNESCO was not referred to, nor were the recommendations of the Council
of Europe.
One of the interviewed teachers, Bengt, related how every year in his teaching he
had taken his students on a local history walk in order to make history “alive” and
to give the students a feeling for their cultural heritage and to make their immediate
historical surroundings palpable to them. He emphasised local history and narratives
of national and world historical developments – a teaching strategy I have called “narrative
history” (Nygren, 2009). On closer scrutiny, it appeared that Bengt supervised
a large number of individual projects in local history, but he also supervised manifold
essays with both global and regional orientations. His students wrote about kings
and power politics, and also about minority groups and popular culture. Students
of teachers oriented towards social science and multiple perspectives show a similar
wealth and variety of subjects – but fewer concerning local history.
The Experiential Curricula
There has been a clear shift in subject choices for students’ individual projects since
1950, when 34% concerned Swedish history, 27% European history, and 14% world
history (see Figure 1). By 1969 interest in Swedish history had dropped to 14%, work
dealing with European history had increased to 31%, while project subjects relating
to world history had risen dramatically – to 32%. This indicates that in an ever more
globalised world, students’ and teachers’ interest in and knowledge of non-European
history made history teaching increasingly internationally-oriented.
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Thomas Nygren
Figure 1: Individual projects and essays in history with clear geographical orientations
Sources: National Archives of Sweden, City and Municipal Archives, School Archives
Analysis of the titles of students’ individual history projects revealed that the increased
regard for non-European history was followed by greater interest in marginalised
groups. In comparison to titles about men and prominent kings from Sweden’s era
of Great Power (Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII), racism, marginalised ethnic
groups and women came more in focus from the 1960s onwards (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Orientations in titles towards more marginalised groups and phenomena
45%
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
1930-1931 1938-1939 1949-1950 1968-1969 1981-1982 1991-1992 2001-2002
Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII 16% 12% 9% 4% 1% 0% 0%
Racism and anti-racism 0% 0% 0% 7% 4% 8% 8%
Minorities 0% 0% 0% 1% 5% 8% 6%
Women's names and rights' 4% 4% 5% 1% 3% 4% 12%
Male names 40% 38% 37% 23% 12% 7% 12%
Sources: National Archives of Sweden, City and Municipal Archives, School Archives
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UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960-2002
For example, from 1969 onwards more attention was paid to racism and its problems,
not least in the USA, South Africa and Nazi Germany. The history of the American civil
rights movement was discussed in a number of students’ works I have scrutinised – it
was claimed that “the issue of blacks is the most difficult to solve minority problem
in the US” (Hedström, 1970:1). In their scrutiny of economic and political explanations
of racial conflicts, students’ expressed antipathy to historical and contemporary
discrimination. In 1969, one student wrote that “Dominating whites in the Southern
states today show attitudes and behaviour towards negroes that are despicable from
many points of view” (Bergstedt, 1969:5). The following year, another student stated
that, considering the blacks’ miserable social situation, one must accept “the demand
for ‘Black Power’”; more power and influence for black people was wholly in accord
with the “rules of a democratic society” (Ullström, 1970:12). In 1992, from a more
psychological perspective, one student claimed that the continued conflicts between
blacks and whites were an effect of people’s fear of the unknown and of a racist world
view and also an effect of exploitation and the violent exercise of power. Even though
the problem of race was illuminated from several perspectives and it was asserted that
many white people fought against both slavery and racism, the student concluded
that the situation of black people in the USA is a disgrace, shaming all whites. “I have
learned in what terrible ways ‘we whites’ have suppressed and humiliated blacks.
And although ‘human feelings’ such as fear lie behind this treatment, we cannot be
excused!” (Lamm, 1992:36). According to this student, historical discrimination could
excuse and prompt future violence between blacks and whites.
Students’ work on African history described colonialism and Africa’s current situation
both critically and uncritically. The stance calling for more power for the black
majority and against European involvement in African countries was clear in several
essays, but not all. Students criticised racism in South Africa, referring to both the
UN and human rights in 1971 and in 1987. Nelson Mandela was depicted as a “born
leader” (Ovaska, 1971:14) and the ANC held hope for “a free Africa in the future”
(Holmberg and Lööf, 1987:11).
Students repudiated anti-Semitism, condemned the Holocaust and stressed the
importance of keeping them in our memory. Referring to the persecution of Jews, it
was stated that “All forms of racism are dangerous. We must fight against racist elements
in society and all people are obliged to participate actively in the democratic
process” (Nordmark, 1991:18).
The history of power politics came into play in essays on Vietnam, Cuba, China,
Palestine and Afghanistan. Students expressed revolutionary ideas, concern for world
peace and also condemnation of the horrors of war. Referring to the suffering in Vietnam,
students criticised the involvement of France and the USA in Indochina and the absence
of “moral courage” amongst decision-makers (Helldahl, 1998:56). Some students
described the Second World War as a political drama, while others mainly depicted its
horrors. There was no discernable romanticising of war in these students’ work.
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Thomas Nygren
In their essays from the 1970s and onwards, some students advocated liberation from
Western influence: for example, China, “exploited by colonists” could only be understood
through “Mao’s little red book” – China should follow its own lights (Andersson,
1971:1-6). Regarding the history of Latin America, students wrote about devastating
encounters between the advanced Indian cultures and Western European conquerors,
who introduced slavery and an ethnically-classed society. In line with theories
of dependence, Latin America’s need for liberation from imperialism was stressed.
After 1989, however, China was sharply criticised when “the government opened fire
against its own people” (Petterson, 1992:13). After the turmoil on Tiananmen Square,
particularism was abandoned in favour of an approach emphasising development in
line with Western values.
Students paid growing attention to Native American cultures and other minorities
such as Aborigines, the Romany people and Sami (see Figure 2). South American
pre-colonial cultures were described as advanced civilisations – especially the Maya
because of their knowledge of science, and the Inca for their developed organisation
and creative culture. By studying the history and traditions of the Romany people,
one student claimed a greater understanding of their culture: “It feels as if I have
another attitude towards the Romany now, a more positive one. When I see them in
town now, I feel a sort of solidarity.” A feeling and understanding that can help “history
not to be repeated” (Olsson, 1991:2). Students emphasised people’s equal value
and “one’s right to be different” (Jarnulf, 1988:37) in many ways.
Women’s history featured more and more frequently in the titles (see Figure 2)
and even when dealing with non-European history. Women’s vulnerability was noted:
how women were affected by war, oppression, poverty and prostitution. However,
students also discussed women’s importance – how they assumed responsibility for
Lesotho’s survival and the significance of the women’s movement for the functioning
of Colombia’s democracy. In accord with international recommendations regarding
the need to pay heed to women and exposed groups, and to reinforce unity in diversity,
a clear tendency emerged in students’ works in history to become more oriented to
minority groups and problems of racism until 1992. In opposition to the internationally
increased efforts to promote multi-cultural understanding, the number of students
who wrote about minorities decreased somewhat between 1992 and 2002. This was
perhaps influenced by the fact that minorities became less distinctively emphasised
in the national syllabus for history in 1994.
Subjects in European history attracted between 20% and 30% of the topics studied
by students in the post-war era (see Figure 1). In their choice of individual projects,
there seems to be no direct change regarding students’ interest in writing about European
history after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In percentage terms, the number of
individual projects in history focused on European history decreased to below 20%
in 1982, 1992 and 2002, which was contrary to the increased efforts in the 1990s of
the Council of Europe and the revised national syllabus in Sweden.
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UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960-2002
The choices of subject suggest that students wrote about European political, economic,
social and cultural history. The Second World War was the subject of a number of
students’ individual projects. 8 The role of Germany in World War II was dealt with in
several individual projects during the 1970s and 1980s in terms of power politics and
military history without the peaceful focus emphasised by UNESCO and the Council
of Europe, but also without romanticising war. The war was also treated ideologically
when Nazism was heavily criticised. The above-mentioned focus on the persecution
of the Jews became more evident during the 1990s and even more so in 2002 (after
the national “Living History” campaign).
Students wrote about the Russian revolution at the end of the 1960s and beginning
of the 1970s as a success and a tragedy. One student claimed that “the proletarian
revolution has won, slavery is abolished!” Marxist-Leninism points in the right direction,
whereas “the bourgeoisie have developed their own science which distorts the
world” (Strid, 1971). On the contrary, other students stated that after the revolution
“the Russian democracy was crushed” (Eriksson, 1971:21) and that “Lenin’s rule was
one of cliques, not a proletarian dictatorship, as they would have it, but a dictatorship
of a handful of politicians” (Gammelgård, 1973:19). The actions of the Soviet Union
in Czechoslovakia were criticised as “disgraceful” (Andersson, 1969:1); later, during
the 1990s, Stalin’s purges were compared to “Hitler’s extermination of the Jews”
(Jansson, 1992:3). Leaders in communist countries, like Mao and Lenin, could, at
least in the late 1960s and early 1970s, be portrayed as great leaders of the people. Yet
the contrary was also evident in students’ individual projects, with condemnations of
their politics from the late 1960s onwards.
Even if many essays dealt with war and conflicts, they did not glorify them; instead,
the war hero was Raoul Wallenberg. UNESCO’s criticism of Nazism and fascism also
pervaded several students’ essays. The value of human rights as expressed in the
Council of Europe and UNESCO’s recommendations was asserted in work on such
separate topics as Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc), Estonia and Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF;
Red Army Faction). In the light of human rights the treatment of Jeanne d’Arc was
criticised (Eineborg, 1990), as well as the serfdom of Estonian peasants in the 18th
century (Giselsson, 1996). Further, the treatment of imprisoned terrorists in West
Germany made human rights an issue for discussion (Eliasson, 1994).
Italy did indeed foster Fascism, according to the students, but several also underlined
Italy’s role in European cultural heritage. Roman Britain was described as the
first step towards linking the British Isles with Europe and “forming them into what
they are today” (Andersson, 1991:20). Drawing from Estonia’s history, in 1996 one
student claimed “European co-operation” as “necessary for favourable development”
(Giselsson, 1996: 29).
Students described everyday life in Europe during Antiquity and the Middle Ages
with a peaceful focus on mixed populations, sharing common joys and pains. Through
co-operation and cultural encounters, marvellous works of culture such as Stonehenge
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Thomas Nygren
could be built. More socially-oriented students presented ordinary women as active
subjects. A less ordinary woman, Jeanne d’Arc, was described as a “most remarkable
and strong woman” (Eineborg, 1990:26).
During the inter-war period, a number of Swedish students wrote about local history,
and after the war some students also began to investigate their own genealogy.
Later, in 1982 and 1992, many wrote about the history of their family and local
community (see Figure 1). Subjects and interest shifted from year to year and even
between schools, but overall interest in local history remained solid (cf. Hansson,
2010). When general interest in history decreased (Larsson, 2001), the number of
individual projects in local history peaked in 1982. In local history subjects relating
to social history were frequent, but there were also descriptions of palaces and
fortresses, locally prominent or great men (and sometimes also women) and the
relationship between local communities and major (national/international) political
conflicts.
The local histories written by students in the essays I examined promulgated some
of the values that UNESCO and the Council of Europe wished to encourage through
studying local history. The students’ descriptions of both small and large communities
and places and city districts conveyed a relatively peaceful economic and social
existence. The importance of preserving local cultural heritage (which was included
in the international intentions) was expressed by several students, but so too were
critiques against modernisation and descriptions of how immigration had turned
the community into “something of a melting pot” (Öhlund, 1970: 21). There were
romanticised pictures of the local past, with many superlatives being used to convey
the charm of the community, and even hopes that its “old quarters be preserved long
after my time” (Norell, 1991:28). One essay concerning conflicts between Swedes,
“snapphanar” (guerrillas fighting for the Danes against Sweden), and Danes, concluded
that “I am glad I am Swedish!” (Storm, 1995: 29). This might indicate that local history
does not necessarily promote good relations between neighbouring countries
and the universalism advocated by UNESCO.
Romanticising, factual, critical and relativistic points of view were all represented
in students’ writing about local history. The critical essays addressed industrial communities’
class conflicts and the exclusive culture of local theatres. The old industrial
community of Mackmyra was studied in 1987 from an economic and critical perspective,
but in 1994 life stories from the place were studied to give “a series of pictures
and impressions of how life was for several neighbours in Mackmyra” (Jagell, 1993:
2). From 1986 onwards, students used interviews as social historical testimonies.
In addition, genealogical research seems to have made history social and personal.
A genealogical study of the hardship of settlers in 19th century northern Sweden
described how the family “after one generation ended up in poverty and misery”
(Åhrlin, 1996:20).
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UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960-2002
Links between the local and the global were clear when students examined the
development of local production and commerce and when they studied religious
movements and different views of the penal system. In an increasingly global world,
several students articulated an appreciation of the peace and security of local communities
and of their cultural heritage. The value of safeguarding the heritage was
clearly stated in a number of individual projects examined, wholly in line with the
intentions of UNESCO and the Council of Europe. However, in clear contrast to these
international intentions, examples of local patriotism sceptical of foreign influences
could also be found.
Concluding discussion
The subject of history as a lesson for the future, to encourage understanding of the
unknown and the preservation of one’s heritage has been promulgated internationally,
in national curricula and syllabuses by teachers and in students’ essays. Oriented
towards both global and local history, students have had the present as the point of
departure in their study of history. Contemporary conflicts, documentary and feature
films and their local historical milieus have awakened students’ interest in investigating
the past. I found that a number of students in their individual history projects started
out from a genealogical perspective, went on to construct a genetic narrative and, in
several cases, they ended with statements about the present and the future (cf. Karlsson,
2003; Ammert, 2008). However, not all students explicitly related their history
projects to the present and the future. A number of students wrote about historical
phenomena in an analytical way, starting and ending in the past.
Other students revealed social scientific orientations, where the past was used
to explain and analyse the present. Using parallels and connections, they examined
patterns and made statements about the future – for instance, proposing conceivable
solutions to conflicts. Some students also had an expressed desire to learn from the
past in order to make a better world. A value-based reformism that was close to the
ideal Sven Södring Jensen (1978) termed “critically constructive”; much in line with
the normative international intentions, according to which students should be critical
and shape a better world.
The analysis of students’ individual history projects shows that already in the
1960s and 1970s students expressed value judgements concerning the past: against
discrimination and racism and for human rights and democracy. This was done with
an emotional emphasis that was far from the scientific-rational conception that Tomas
Englund (1986) described, whereby objectivity was depicted as neutrality. For
students, working with history could kindle historical consciousness in a meeting with
the “other” and unknown (cf. Jensen, 1997). Reflections around students’ own identity
vis-à-vis the past came up in several essays dealing with global and local history. The
repudiation of things that happened in the past and feelings of guilt and shame were
expressed. Students related that they had learned from history – something clearly
51

Thomas Nygren
recommended by both UNESCO and the Council of Europe in the ideological curricula.
Even if it involves lip service – students writing what they thought their teachers
wanted – it is evident that history in the experiential curricula may be formulated as
a contribution to international understanding and express values and principles for
the future regarding, for instance, peace and solidarity with marginalised groups. It is
also evident that, in other instances, history was dealt with by students unreflectively,
in a way that has most likely not influenced their historical consciousness.
The global perspective in students’ work, together with critical thinking, was wholly
in accord with UNESCO’s recommendations dealing with criticism of colonialism and
with encounters with unknown or unfamiliar cultures. Even if the Council of Europe
initially wished to tone down the damage caused by colonialism, several students
from the 1970s onwards traced injustices in the world to colonial exploitation. Their
criticism can perhaps be partly explained by the left-wing currents in Europe after
1968. Positive images of Mao and Lenin might also be seen as part of these currents.
The student description of China’s particular need for communism highlights an inbuilt
problem in international understanding. Understanding the other, but at the
same time legitimising totalitarian rule.
Despite the Council of Europe’s active efforts and impact on the formal national
syllabus, it would seem that their concentration on Europe was overshadowed by
more globally-inclined history. In the experiential curricula, world history dominated
even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Sweden’s entry into the European Union.
That said, students’ choices of subject and how they treated their subjects suggest
that the critical and democratic concern for human rights that the Council of Europe,
like UNESCO, held to be crucial, was addressed. Women and minorities occupied a
more pivotal place and several students expressed attitudes in line with values of international
understanding and a “unity in diversity”. Several different points of view,
not least those of exposed and previously marginalised groups, most likely contributed
to increased multiculturalism in history teaching – perhaps a greater degree of “unity
in diversity”. As one student put it in her study of the Romany people: “We are all of
the same family, the human family, and should not think so many ‘they are them and
we are we’ thoughts” (Olsson, 1991:2). In contrast to UNESCO’s and the Council of
Europe’s intentions, I also found that some students could perceive discrimination
as an excuse for violence. For instance, frustration over historical injustices could
lead to the conclusion that African Americans should fight for Black power. Violence
and war were otherwise often described in terms of terrible suffering, in complete
agreement with the ideological curricula. Nationalism and militarism seem to have
been marginalised by the students, even if war was not always condemned. Men in
power were often bypassed in favour of active women and more social and critical
perspectives. In the scrutinised individual projects, romanticising narratives were
few and far between, and even if Mao, Lenin, Napoleon and Alexander the Great
could be described as great leaders, it was Raoul Wallenberg, Nelson Mandela and
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UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960-2002
Mahatma Ghandi who were described as heroes in the experiential curricula. Ghandi
was seen as a contemporary and future model: “In the universal debate, his struggle
against racism, colonialism, violence and the exploitation of nature and humankind
is still relevant” (Eriksson, 1993: 5). However, after a new formal curriculum in 1994
it seems as if minorities received less attention in Sweden in spite of the increased
international emphasis on “unity in diversity”.
Concern for local heritage created values that UNESCO and the Council of Europe
strived for. Students expressed an appreciation for their local environment and a
desire to preserve their local heritage. Family stories and those of the locality, which
were examined through the interviews, gave rise to reflections about the students’
own identity and even, in several cases, to connections with the past. In contrast to
the intentions of UNESCO and the Council of Europe, romantic descriptions of local
history could also hold negative attitudes to immigrants and neighbouring countries.
Not all students embraced mutual understanding and multiculturalism in their
studies of history, but it seems as if history teaching in Sweden in many ways went
hand in hand with international intentions promoting internationalism, diversity
and heritage. The post-colonial criticism and global history emphasised by UNESCO
was prominent in the students’ work in history, despite the influence the Council of
Europe had on other levels of curricula from the 1990s. The results of the study indicate
that the normative perspectives on history found in UNESCO and the Council
of Europe were also evident in other levels of the curriculum and, most importantly,
in the orientations of students’ interests in history and in students’ judgements of
the past, present and the future.
Thomas Nygren is a doctoral student of History Didactics at Umeå University. He is also a practicing
upper secondary school teacher in history and social science. His research focuses on international
intentions and Swedish history education 1927-2002, within the research project “History Beyond
Borders: The International History Textbook Revision, 1919–2009”.
E-mail: thomas@nygren.nu
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Thomas Nygren
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UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960-2002
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Gotland Municipal Archives, Säveskolan, Final Grades, Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural
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Individual Projects in History
Andersson, L. (1971) Kina [China]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
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UNESCO and Council of Europe Guidelines, and History Education in Sweden, c. 1960-2002
Andersson, S. (1991) Et penitus toto divisos orer brittanos. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Bergstedt, I. (1969) Negerfrågan i Förenta Staterna [The Negro-Issue in the United States]. Gävle:
Vasaskolan.
Eineborg, K. (1990) Jeanne D’Arc: Häxa eller helgon [Jeanne d’Arc: Witch or Saint]. Gävle:
Vasaskolan.
Eliasson, J. (1994) RAF [Red Army Faction]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Eriksson, M. (1971) De ryska revolutionenrna 1917 [The Russian Revolutions in 1917]. Gävle:
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Eriksson, S. (1993) Mahatma Ghandi. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Gammelgård, C. (1973) Ryska revolutionen återgiven i Gävles dagstidningar våren/hösten 1917
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Giselsson, J. (1996) Estlands historia: Från 1200-talet fram till våra dagar [The History of Estonia:
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Hedström, C. (1970) Det svarta USA [The Black USA]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Helldahl, H.-H. (1998)Vietnamkriget [The War in Vietnam]. S Hässleholm: Linneskolan.
Holmberg M. and Lööf, P. (1987) Sydafrika [South Africa]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Jagell, K. (1993) Mackmyra bruk – bruksbor berättar: En dokumentation av åtta människors tid
vid Mackmyra Bruk [Mackmyra Village – Stories from Villagers: A Documentation of Eight
Persons’ Years in the Village]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Jansson, F. (1992) Stalin. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Jarnulf, P. (1988) Nordamerikanska inbördeskriget [The North-American Civil War]. Gävle:
Vasaskolan.
Lamm, T. (1992) Svart frigörelsekamp i USA [Black Fight for Freedom in the USA]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Nordmark, K. (1991) Judeförföljelsen i Europa 1933–1945 [The Persecution of Jews in Europe
1933–1945]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Norell, L. (1991) Gysinge bruk [The Village of Gysinge]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Olsson, M. (1991) Zigenare [Gypsies]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Ovaska, R. (1971) Sydafrika förr och nu [South Africa in the Past and Present]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Petterson, M. (1992) Händelserna på himmelska fridens torg 1989 [The Actions at Tiananmen
Square 1989]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Rönnberg, M. (1990) Raoul Wallenberg: Hjälten som försvann [Raoul Wallenberg: The Hero
Who Disappeared]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Strid, L. (1971) En studie av Trotskij och Trotskismen [A Study of Trotsky and Trotskyism]. Gävle:
Vasaskolan.
Storm, M. (1995) Snapphanar. Hässleholm: Linneskolan.
Ullström, L. (1970) Negrernas historia och nuvarande situation i USA [The History of the Negroes
and Their Present Situation in the USA]. Gävle: Vasaskolan.
Åhrlin, J. (1996) Tvärselet: Ett nybygges historia [Tvärselet: The History of a Settlement]. Gävle:
Vasaskolan.
Öhlund, R. (1970) Forsbacka: Bruket som överlevde [Forsbacka: The Village that Survived]. Gävle:
Vasaskolan.
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Journals
Aktuellt för historieläraren (AFHL) [New Information for History Teachers], 1968-1977.
Historielärarnas förenings årsskrift (HLFÅ) [The Annual Report of the Association of History
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In A. Sandén (ed.) Se människan: Demografi, rätt och hälsa: En vänbok till Jan
Sundin, 43–55. Linköping: Linköpings universitet.
Low-Beer., A. (1997) The Council of Europe and School History. Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
Luntinen, P. (1988) School History Textbook Revision by and under the Auspices of UNESCO, part
I. Internationale Schulbuchforschung 10, 337-348.
Luntinen, P. (1989) School History Textbook Revision by and under the Auspices of UNESCO, part
II. Internationale Schulbuchforschung 11, 39-48.
Nordgren, K. (2006) Vems är historien Historia som medvetande, kultur och handling i det mångkulturella
Sverige. Umeå: Umeå universitet.
Nygren, T. (2009) Erfarna lärares historiedidaktiska insikter och undervisningsstrategier. Umeå:
Umeå Universitet.
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Nygren, T. (2011) International Reformation of Swedish History Education 1927-1961: The Complexity
of Implementing International Understanding. Journal of World History 22:2.
Pingel, F. (1999) UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision. Hannover:
Hahn.
Plummer, K. (2005) Documents of Life: An Invitation to a Critical Humanism. SAGE: London.
Schüddekopf, O.-E. (1967) History Teaching and History Textbook Revision. Strasbourg: Council
of Europe.
Stobart, M. (1989) Fifty Years of European Co-operation on History Textbooks: The Role and Contribution
of the Council of Europe. Internationale Schulbuchforschung 21, 147-161.
Rüsen, J. (2004) Berättande och förnuft: Historieteoretiska texter. Gothenburg: Daidalos.
Stenou, K. (2007) UNESCO and the Question of Cultural Diversity. Paris: UNESCO.
Westbury, I. (2008) Making Curricula: Why do States Make Curricula, and How In M. Connelly,
(ed.) The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction, 45-65. Los Angeles: SAGE.
Endnotes
1
This article presents results from the research project “History Beyond Borders: The International
History Textbook Revision, 1919–2009,” funded by the Swedish Research Council and
directed by Daniel Lindmark. I am most grateful for all the help and support from teachers,
administrators, archivists and librarians; and also for the support and comments from my colleagues:
in the project, the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at
Umeå University, and Vasaskolan Gävle. Special thanks go to the editors and Bengt Schüllerqvist
for thorough readings and comments.
2
1,680 titles produced between 1931 and 2002 have been examined. In 1931, 258 titles were registered
from all upper secondary schools in Sweden; in 1939, 193 titles, 1950, 149 titles. In 1931,
297 students out of a total of 2,175 (14%) wrote on history; in 1939, 290 out of 6,263 (5%) and
in 1950, 416 out of 6,705 (6%). I also examined titles of individual projects in history in Boden,
Umeå, Gotland, Gävle, Karlstad, Visby, Vänersborg, Ystad, Stockholm and Gothenburg written
by students studying in the social science, natural science and humanist programmes in 1969
and 1982, and in the social science and natural science programmes in 1992 and 2002. In 1969,
278 out of 1,303 (22%) individual projects were written on history at the schools investigated
and in the programmes listed; in 1982, 184 out of 1,038 (18%), in 1992, 333 out of 1,086 (31%)
and in 2002, 285 out of 1,395 (20%). National Archives, Stockholm, F IIda; City and Municipal
Archives; School Archives.
3
Vasaskolan’s head teacher in history (until 1973) participated in international conferences, debates,
and supervised students in many and varied individual projects, some of which have
been preserved, so the link with international intentions might have been stronger than in other
schools.
4
The time period starts three years after the reforms since individual projects were written in the
third year in upper secondary school. In 1968 no individual projects were written in Sweden.
5
The general conferences of UNESCO in 1960, 1962, 1964, 1966 and 1968 criticised racism and
colonialism.
6
The goal-related curriculum was to be focused on what should be achieved in every course, with
a greater freedom of content and methodology than before. The grading should relate to goals
of knowledge focusing on processes rather than facts.
7
Groups of amateur historians investigating their own local history.
8
Students’ writing dealing with the Second World War landed in a grey zone between world
history and European history. I have categorised these essays as world history and, even when
excluding them, world history dominates students’ chosen subject areas after 1969.
60

Education Inquiry
Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2011, pp.61–78
EDU.
INQ.
The Meaning and Use of “Europe”
in Swedish History Textbooks,
1910–2008
Henrik Åström Elmersjö*
Abstract
This article explores the different meanings of “Europe” in Swedish history textbooks over the course
of the 20th century. Utilising the concept of myth, this textbook analysis looks at how the older history
of Europe, and Sweden in relation to Europe, had changed by the end of the century. In particular,
it examines the way in which Europe as a historically coherent entity is becoming attached to the
idea of European economic, cultural and political co-operation in the wake of the Second World
War. By using both quantitative and qualitative methods the study reveals that Europe as a concept
has altered its meaning over time. Further, the study shows that the amount of text on Europe as
an entity altogether increased in Swedish history textbooks in the latter part of the 20th century.
Keywords: history textbooks, Sweden, Europe, identity, myth
Introduction
Conceptions of European identity have attracted more attention in Sweden in recent
years (see, for example, Broberg et al., 2007; Axelsson, 2009; Lindqvist Hotz, 2009).
At the heart of the issue is a vibrant debate about what it means to be European.
Since the word “European” has varied in meaning over time this question has often
been difficult to assess (Johansson, 1992:48; Delanty 1995; af Malmberg and Stråth,
2002; Gardell, 2009:20-42; Karlsson, 2010:38-40). However, history is, and has
been, a subject which creates and supports identity and this study aims to show how
“Europe” and “Europeanness” have been depicted in Swedish history textbooks since
the beginning of the 20th century.
It is commonly argued that Swedish history education promoted nationalistic
sentiment in the first half of the 20th century; that a Nordic identity was coupled
with this sentiment in the years following the First World War and that European
co-operation after the Second World War encouraged education initiatives that
promoted European identity in most European countries (Andolf 1972; Luntinen,
1989; Stobart, 1999; Pingel, 2000; Soysal and Schissler, 2005). However, little research
exists into how these later changes were incorporated in history education.
In particular, not much is known about how European identities were constructed
*Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University, Sweden.
E-mail: henrik.elmersjo@historia.umu.se
©Author. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.61–78
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Henrik Åström Elmersjö
in Swedish history education and the extent to which they were incorporated into
history textbooks.
The questions this article seeks to answer include: What does “Europe” and “European”
connote in Swedish textbooks produced over the course of the 20th century
To what extent is Europe a marker of identity In what ways have constructions of
Europe changed over time, especially in relation to the political European projects in
the wake of the Second World War How might this change be explained
Europe, Textbooks and Swedishness
The question of Europe as a marker of identity in textbooks in different countries has
received a degree of scholarly attention in recent decades. However, in this research
there is often a troublesome normative aspect that advocates how Europe, or other
overarching identities, should be depicted in order to promote understanding and
cultural co-operation (Stobart, 1999:148; Pingel, 2000:111; Stradling, 2001:25–33;
Janmaat, 2006:368). Other researchers have made it clear that such aspects are problematic
and they therefore attempt to deconstruct the different meanings of Europe
over time (Pilbrow, 2005; Pereya and Luzón, 2005). Further, some researchers simply
plainly state that political history with an ideological agenda is a field for politicians
and not historians (Axelsson, 2009).
A potentially more comprehensive approach is offered by the historian Challand
(2009) who compares the idea of Europe, and of “the other,” in history textbooks in
three different countries (France, Germany and Italy) between 1950 and 2005. The
study concludes that Europe was constructed with different “others” over time, and
that the 1990s appeared as the decade when the supranational narrative of Europe
became most prominent (Challand, 2009:82–87).
Swedish identity coupled with a European identity has also been elaborated upon
and previous research has determined that Swedish identity is linked with Europe. At
the same time, researchers identified a demarcation in which Sweden (and the rest of
Scandinavia) was depicted as an old, natural and self-sufficient entity, whereas Europe
(the states of Europe) is new and artificial (Trädgårdh, 2000; Stråth, 2002; Østergård,
2006). Some research also points to a newer European identity that is evident in the
emergent ideas of a Swedish Europeanness that flourished in the debate on Swedish
membership in the European Union (Axelsson, 2006).
Several scholars have identified a mythology of Europe in the wake of European
political and economic integration (Stråth, 2000; Stråth, 2005; Larat, 2005, Axelsson,
2009, Challand, 2009). This is, of course, the same kind of “creation” that the
“imagined community” of the nations could be argued to be built upon (Anderson,
1983). Historian Stråth identifies a teleological European historiography which
revolves around the Schuman Plan. 1 In this historiography, there is a considerable
amount of mythological subject matter. One is the myth of a “free Europe” as a conglomerate
of fully-fledged welfare states. A second focuses on European co-operation
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The Meaning and Use of “Europe” in Swedish History Textbooks, 1910–2008
itself, starting with the attempt to settle the issues between France and Germany,
and developing, in a teleological sense, into the order of integration and a common
European identity (Stråth, 2005:267; Larat, 2005:273). There is, of course, also a
more far-reaching myth of the old European nations that these new myths inexorably
compete with (Geary, 2003).
The more “official” politics of European identity in the European Union have been
explored by the anthropologist Shore (2000). By investigating the discourse of Europe
in the information on European culture and integration, put forward by EU policy
professionals, one of his conclusions is that the political idea of European history is a
3,000 year long “moral success story: a gradual ‘coming together’ in the shape of the
European Community.” Two of the major contributors to this story are the history of
the spread of Christianity across Europe and the French Revolution (Shore, 2000:57).
The Danish historian Knudsen (2006) has identified three different narrationmodels
of European history. The first is attached to the nation-states and is essentially
the history of the nations in Europe. The second model is tied to the idea of a
European civilisation focused on either Ancient Greece or the French Revolution. The
third is the history of a united Western Europe and could be considered a merger of
the former two (i.e. the history of the co-operation of nation-states due to a common
political culture) (Knudsen, 2006:110–111).
This historiography, or mythology, will be the starting point of this article. The
intention is to examine the extent to which any of these mythological features of European
civilisation are traceable in Swedish textbooks for upper secondary school 2
before 1950, and to determine how they changed in the context of the two World Wars,
the Council of Europe’s ideas of European integration in the 1950s and 1960s, the
disintegration of the USSR and Swedish membership of the European Union in 1995.
However, with the concept of “myth” in mind, the article will explore an earlier
history – not the history of the European Union, but the history of Europe as a whole.
In this regard, critical questions include: Is there a tendency to push back European
identity in time Is European political identity from the second part of the 20th century
made historically perennial This is arguably one of the key aspects of myth; by
making the present dictate the conditions of the past, the past becomes mythologised
in the sense that the depiction of a historical event does not say as much about the
context in which it happened as it does about the time in which it is written (see Smith,
1999:95; Bentley, 2005:51; Stråth, 2005:257).
Methods and Sources
Saying something about what kind of history pupils were taught 100 years ago is difficult.
It is perhaps even more difficult to say anything about what they learned. It is,
of course, not certain that the ideas put forward in curricula and textbooks are actually
what pupils learn in the classrooms today, and the same goes for classrooms in the
past (Apple, 1992:10; Nygren, 2011). Even so, this study only considered textbooks
63

Henrik Åström Elmersjö
and syllabi as source material because, even if we do not know if the intentions of
these texts in fact governed discussions in the classrooms, it still offers a window into
those classrooms and provides legitimate insights into history education in previous
generations.
The study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods, utilising close
textual analysis and some simpler quantitative measures (i.e., word-count) on some
of the most widely used textbooks in Swedish upper secondary schools. The purpose
of the quantitative approach was to establish a measurement of how use of the word
“Europe” changed in the textbooks during the 20th century. The purpose of the qualitative
approach was to establish the meaning of the concept of “Europe”. In this respect,
the textbooks were approached with the intent of showing the meaning of “Europe”
through a reading of the texts where words, virtues and meanings associated with the
concept of “Europe” were at the centre of the analysis. Especially concepts associated
with “Europe”, in direct contrast to other concepts associated with “the other” (i.e.,
the world outside Europe), were of interest in the analysis (see Said, 1978:1–28). In
the words of Stråth, “Positive definitions are dependent on negative ones and vice
versa, concepts such as ‘class’, ‘Islam’, or ‘Europe’ are established through distinction.
They are politically constructed” (Stråth, 2005:261).
The textbooks analysed represent a range of key textbooks used at different periods
in the 20th century. Each textbook was produced in direct relation to existing curricula
and history syllabi. Ten textbooks 3 for upper secondary school were studied.
The selection of books to study was governed by a desire to analyse those textbooks
that reached proportionately high numbers of pupils in any given period. However, the
selection was also conditioned by a desire to analyse “new” books, (i.e., when they first
came out on the market or were extensively rewritten). This meant that some books
were analysed in their first edition even though it was not until, for example, the fifth
edition that it was considered the most widely used book in Swedish upper secondary
schools (Andolf, 1972:126). 4 Until the beginning of the 1960s, the history course for
upper secondary school was divided into Nordic (mostly Swedish) and general history
(Ander, 1966:20). General history basically focused on broad developments in those
parts of the world considered important at the time, with “all of history” held together
in one narrative. Generally, the military and political history of Europe was at the
centre of the subject; as was the military and political history of Scandinavia, with a
special focus on Sweden, the centre of Nordic history. Textbooks issued in the latter
part of the 20th century covered both the general aspects of history, as well as Nordic
and Swedish history. The textbooks studied in this article are presented in Table 1.
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The Meaning and Use of “Europe” in Swedish History Textbooks, 1910–2008
Table 1: Upper Secondary History Textbooks under Study
Authors (year) Edition Type of History Time Covered
Pallin–Boëthius (1910) 6th (1st in 1878) General ~1500–1910
Falk (1922) 1st General ~1500–1919
Jacobson–Söderlund (1941) 4th (1st in 1933) General ~3500BC–1939
Bäcklin–Holmberg–Lendin–
Valentin (1955)
Bäcklin–Holmberg–Lendin–
Valentin (1962)
Tham–Kumlien–Lindberg
(1966–1967)
Graninger–Tägil (1973a,
b and c)
Bergström–Löwgren–
Almgren (1983)
Sandberg–Karlsson–Molin–
Ohlander (1996)
Nyström–Nyström–
Nyström (2008)
2nd (1st in 1954) General ~3500BC–1954
1st (based on the
1954 edition)
Swedish, Nordic, General
~3500BC–1960
1st (2 volumes) Swedish, Nordic, General ~1000–1965
1st (3 volumes) Swedish, Nordic, General ~1200–1973
1st Swedish, Nordic, General ~3500BC–1980
1st Swedish, Nordic, General ~3500BC–1995
1st (based on
a 2001 edition)
Swedish, Nordic, General
~3500BC–2005
For full bibliographical information, see the References below.
The different textbook authors were not considered actors in this study. For the
purpose of this analysis textbooks were representative of their individual eras and
not representative of different individual actors (e.g., authors or publishing houses).
This could of course be considered a weakness of the study. However, the aim is not
to see which actors held which views or how individuals influenced the history being
taught, but to recognise the ideas of Europe that pupils encountered in the textbooks
of different times.
The Swedish curricula for upper secondary school and the associated syllabi for
history as a school subject changed a number of times during the 20th century. With
regard to the textbooks under examination here, each textbook was written to correlate
to a specific syllabus. Even if the syllabus for the school subject of history changed
many times during the 20th century, only the syllabi which are of importance for the
textbooks under study here were considered in this analysis.
Political Calls for a European Perspective
One of the questions addressed in this article is the extent to which possible changes in
textbook portrayals of European and Swedish identity correlate with changing political
ideas of Sweden and Europe during the course of the 20th century. A detailed analysis
of key political ideas is beyond the focus of this article; however, it is instructive to
explore some central developments in the construction of political identity during
the second part of the 20th century.
65

Henrik Åström Elmersjö
Already in 1953, the Council of Europe wanted to see more elaboration of European
perspectives in textbooks and history teaching within the member states (Stobart,
1999:147–161; Pingel, 2000:11; Nygren, 2011). Discussions on Swedish membership of
the European Community have, since the end of the Second World War, been catalysts
for discussions on European and Swedish identity (Westberg, 2003).
“Swedishness” as a non-European identity was a contested idea in the 1960s and
was part of a bigger ideological debate on Swedish neutrality and the mixed economy.
The political debates on Europe and the history of Sweden as a European country are
very much connected to debates on the European Union and its predecessors (e.g. the
European Coal and Steel Community, the European Economic Community and the
European Atomic Energy Community) (Westberg, 2003:156; Axelsson, 2006). While
the debates on EU membership were not identity-driven in any substantial way in
the years before 1960, they were very much driven by identity in the late 1960s, the
1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Westberg (2003:314) argues that it was through a change in
the political parties’ ideas on the European identity as well as the need for influence
that the membership application was approved in 1991.
The Idea of Europe in Curricula and Syllabi, 1909–2000
In 1909 history was one of the most important school subjects in upper secondary
school. Mathematics was the only subject in which all students studied for more
hours. For the “classical students”, Latin was naturally given greater attention and
at the Natural Science Program, Physics involved more hours. 5 The strong position
of history in school was to change during the course of the 20th century with history
becoming more and more marginalised. Indeed, history ended the century as a subject
with one of the smallest time allocations in the curriculum. 6 The subject also changed
in a chronological perspective from an emphasis on modern history (1500–contemporary
times) in the syllabus of 1909 to “all of history” (i.e. from the Neolithic Age to
the present day) in the syllabus of 2000 7 (SFS 1909:20–21; Gy2000:69 8 ).
Nothing substantial is said about conceptions of Europe in the syllabi for the school
subject of history until 1956 (AfS, 1956:288). Before this, history was divided into two
parts: Nordic and General History. From the different themes in the syllabi between
1956 and 1981, it is obvious that Europe (and Sweden) featured at the centre of the
subject, especially since it was emphasised that the focus should also go beyond Europe
(AfS, 1956:288; AfS, 1961:546; Lgy65:183; Lgy70:293; Lgy70(81):10). The study of
“the European Idea” was introduced in the mid-1960s (Lgy65:181). Significantly, in
the 1981 syllabus it was suggested that a global perspective must not overshadow a
European perspective and emphasis should be given to the idea that European nations
are not only geographically but also culturally, politically and economically affiliated
(Lgy70(81):11). Europe is also briefly mentioned in the syllabus from 1995 (correlating
to the curricula of 1994), but only as a possible identity marker beside local, regional,
national, Nordic and other non-geographic identities (GyVux1994:39–40). 9
66

The Meaning and Use of “Europe” in Swedish History Textbooks, 1910–2008
In an overview, more nationally inclined history education existed before the Second
World War. However, this changed in the post-war era when a European perspective
seemed especially strong in the syllabi of the 1960s and 1980s, with a more global
perspective apparent in the 1970s and 1990s.
A Simple Quantification of the “Europeanness” of Textbook
Content
A quantitative study on the presence of the words “Europa” (Europe), “europeisk”
(European), and all inflections of these words (for example, “Östeuropeisk”: Eastern
European), in the selected textbooks was undertaken with a specific focus on those pages
of text devoted to general history (i.e. neither Swedish nor Nordic history) of the period
from the French Revolution in 1789 to the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The time frame
was chosen because the events covered in the textbooks were common across all the
books analysed. Of note, in the analysis no evaluation of what “Europe” means, (e.g.,
if it is a marker of a geographical area or a marker of identity) was investigated. It is
important to keep in mind that almost all subject matter on general history, at least until
the 1970s, was concentrated on the geographical area we call Europe. The texts are not
always about Europe though, but about England, France, Germany, Spain and so on.
The total word count was estimated by counting the pages of narrative (disregarding
pictures and boxes), the lines on each page and the average number of words per line.
Then the specific words “Europe” or “European” were counted and the ratio between
the total number of words and the number of times “Europe” was mentioned was
established. The result is mapped out in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The Ratio of the Word “Europe” out of the Total Textual Space (measured in parts
per million) and the Total Number of Words in Parts of Some Swedish History Textbooks
(1910–2008) Covering General Political History of the Period between 1789 and 1815
67

Henrik Åström Elmersjö
This figure shows two distinct trends; the number of words describing the general
political history of the period between the French Revolution and the end of the Napoleonic
Wars has decreased, while use of the words “Europe” and “European” has
increased over the past 100 years. Without overstating this finding, the 1960s could
be considered a turning point, coinciding with the time when identity-driven debates
focused on Sweden’s move towards European integration were increasingly salient.
Considering the textbooks from before and after 1960 as different groups, the average
ratio of the words “Europe” and “European” rose from 2.1 to 4.4 per thousand
in the latter half of the 20th century. The total amount of textual space devoted to
general political history between 1789 and 1815 is considerably smaller after 1960 and
that of course could be a factor in the ratio being higher since it saves space to use a
geographical marker that covers more ground (for example, by writing “Western European
countries” instead of naming each individual country). However, the textbook
produced in 1973 has more words covering this section of history than the textbook
from 1955, but with a 50 percent higher ratio of the word “Europe”. Moreover, use of
the geographical marker “Europe” instead of naming countries still leaves the reader
with the perception of Europe as an established and united entity.
These findings might show that Europe as an entity has changed in the amount
of space devoted to it in Swedish history teaching, but it says nothing about which
values, virtues and problems are made connected to the concept of Europe and Europeanness.
To say anything about what it meant to be European in the textbooks,
we have to make an effort to understand the concept as it is described. Combining
the two methods gives a picture of what it meant to be European and to what extent
it was a significant or marginalised identity.
The Idea of 17 th and 18 th Century Europe Portrayed in the
History Textbooks
To be able to follow changes in the meaning of Europe over time, one specific historical
episode which will potentially shed light on the idea of “Europeanness” in the
textbooks is examined in this study. In the tradition of “the other” as a marker of “we”
(see Said, 1978:1–28) the episode chosen is the Europeanisation project of Tsar Peter
around 1700. This event has been used to establish the Swedish view of Russia in
former textbook research (Holmén, 2006). Here, it will show how textbooks convey
Europe as they have to elaborate on what Tsar Peter did to make his country more
European. This episode is elaborated upon in all textbooks except the one published
in the 1970s. In this book there are a few lines mentioning the ideas of Tsar Peter
(Graninger and Tägil, 1973a:232, 303), but only with regard to the Russian projects
in Asia; besides this, there is a brief conclusion that the war against Russia ended the
period of Swedish grandness. In this book other parts of history – within the time frame
of 1500–1789 – will be investigated in order to establish the idea of Europe conveyed.
The earlier textbooks (i.e. those published before 1950) describe the Europeani-
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The Meaning and Use of “Europe” in Swedish History Textbooks, 1910–2008
sation project in a very extensive manner. Many of these texts are concerned with
Peter’s personal attributes. The texts are identity-driven, but in a nationalistic sense
with Swedish King Charles XII as the adversary of the “ignorant Russians” and their
“evil Tsar.” The difference between Europe and Russia is the “cultivation” of Europe
versus the “barbarism” and “weakness” of Russia (Pallin and Boëthius, 1910:114;
Falk, 1922:129–131; Jacobson and Söderlund, 1941:226). There is also, in all these
textbooks, but perhaps mostly in Jacobson and Söderlund (1941), a very Swedish
sense of Europe. It is Sweden that is the centre of what is European and also the
sole bearer of the defence against the “barbaric” Russians (Jacobson and Söderlund,
1941:226). It is the nation – with some of its identity within the Western European
sphere – that is the main figure, while Europe is described in a positive manner because
it is affected to some degree by the virtues of the nation. In other words, the
positive image of Europe is a consequence of a nationalistic history where the nation
is seen as part of Europe.
In Bäcklin, Holmberg, Lendin and Valentin (1955) the Europeanisation of Russia
is described as a project that was only a meek attempt to civilise the Russians. “The
Tsar, himself a crude barbarian with features of insanity, lacked a sense of Western
European culture in a deeper sense. Human dignity, legal rights and individuality were
unknown concepts to him” (Bäcklin et al., 1955:200). This is a shift in the description
of what Europe was and what Russia was not. Instead of expressing the cultivation of
Europe, it is human rights issues that correspond to European sentiment and what
ultimately makes Russia a non-European country.
Graninger and Tägil (1973a) depict some other aspects of Europe in the chapter on
the 17th century. There is a thread of change in European culture that runs through
the chapter. The change is characterised by the differentiation of European culture
as a consequence of the Renaissance (Graninger and Tägil, 1973a:191). Since this is
not put up against anything else (like Russia, Asia or Africa), it is very difficult to say
anything about the idea of Europe other than the basic vision of individuality described
in this differentiation. Still, there is a very vivid description of the connections between
Antiquity and the Renaissance and the European heritage deriving from Rome and
Greece (Graninger and Tägil, 1973a:102–107). Perhaps the very global perspective
that is evident in this textbook – and also in the syllabus for the 1970s – makes it
difficult to express a typical “other”, and therefore the “we” is also clouded.
The idea of Europe is not very explicit in Bergström et al. (1983). However, beyond
the demarcation between Eastern and Western Europe, the textbook’s depiction of
Tsar Peter’s modernisation project conveys a picture of Europe as a society containing
somewhat free, centralised, semi-industrialised societies with highly skilled labourers.
In contrast, Russia appears as an agricultural state with a strong nobility and Church,
and therefore not free. The presence of serfdom in Russia, and its implications for
freedom (comparable to slavery), is also made explicit in contrast to Europe (Bergström
et al., 1983:146–147).
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Henrik Åström Elmersjö
In Sandberg, Karlsson, Molin and Ohlander (1996:233) there is an interesting reference
to the older Swedish idea of the Russians: “It took until the 18 th century until
Russia experienced the same progress as Western and Northern Europe went through
during the 16 th century. Even if the Russians were not more ‘arrogant, deceitful and
barbaric’ than other peoples it is probably a fact that the Russians were about 200
years behind in development.” According to this textbook, it is mostly geographical
matters that can explain this situation. Because of its geographical location, Russia
developed alongside Southern and Eastern Europe and not Western Europe. Following
this line of argument, it was through moving the capital further west that Russia
managed to become more European. However, it is also apparent here that Russia
failed, at least in some sense, to become a Western European country, and this is
considered a consequence of the negligence of human rights and the existence of
serfdom in Russian society (Sandberg et al., 1996:238).
In Nyström, Nyström and Nyström (2008), some of the earlier textbooks’ ideas
of Europe are again found: the idea of craftsmanship, and a regular army (which in
the earlier textbooks were part of the evidence of Europe’s cultivation). However,
serfdom in Russia is also mentioned as a major marker of difference between Russia
and Europe (Nyström et al. 2008:112).
None of the textbooks makes a lucid remark on any religious matters that makes
Europe a specific entity in comparison to Russia, with a small exception in the textbooks
from 1955 and 1996. In part, this is probably because the religious demarcation
in the textbooks before the 1970s is drawn between Christianity (the West) and Islam
(the East), even if the pejorative slurs are less frequent in the later books (Pallin and
Boëthius, 1910:76, 262; Falk, 1922:79; Jacobson and Söderlund, 1941:143; Bäcklin
et al., 1955:123–124). In the later textbooks the subject of Islam and Europe is more
or less avoided, but the distinction reappears in a more tolerant form in Nyström et
al. (2008:111). Table 1 attempts to illustrate the similarities and differences in definitions
over time.
Table 2: The Meaning of “Europe” and the Depiction of “the Other” in Swedish History
Textbooks’ Descriptions of the 18th Century
Meanings of Europe
Description of “the other”
Pallin-Boëthius (1910) Cultivated, Occident Barbaric, Orient
Falk (1922)
Cultivated, Occident
Centralisation
Reactionary
Jacobson-Söderlund (1941) Swedish, Occident Barbaric, Despotic, Lawless
Bäcklin-Holmberg…(1955)
Human dignity, Legal Rights,
Individuality
Tham-Kumlien… (1967) Occident Orient
Barbaric, Conservative,
Orthodox
Graninger-Tägil (1973a) Individuality Not explicit
Bergström-Löwgren…(1983) Semi-Industrial, Centralised, Free Agricultural, Slavery
Sandberg… (1996) Free, Legal Rights Slavery
Nyström… (2008) Free Slavery, Reactionary
70

The Meaning and Use of “Europe” in Swedish History Textbooks, 1910–2008
Note that the content of the textbooks produced by Bäcklin et al. in 1955 and 1962 is
identical, therefore only one of them was analysed in this section. The major change
in the conception of Europe between the first and the second half of the 20th century
is the abandonment of the cultivated idea of Europe. If there is a line of development
in the idea conveyed, the starting point in the first half of the century is distinctive
notions of European cultivation vs. Russian barbarism, which changes into European
liberalism/freedom vs. Russia’s conservatism/slavery in the second half of the 20th
century. The distinction between the orient and the occident is most evident in textbooks
from the beginning of the century, but previous research on other textbooks
has argued that it reappears in the 1980s and 1990s (see Kamali, 2006:82–93).
The Idea of Contemporary Europe as a Historical Feature
Those pupils reading school history textbooks in 1910 would arguably be left with
the notion that European civilisation is both the past and the future. For instance,
European superiority is evident in the description of the colonisation of Africa. The
Europeans are bold and have, as Christians, the right to superiority, while non-European
rulers of Africa are considered “dreadful, slave-owners” (Pallin and Boëthius,
1910:255–256). The very last part of the concluding chapter of this book is a summary
of the cultural field in the period between 1789 and 1910. The main character of this
last chapter is “Europe” and “Europeans”. As for occurrences in everyday life within
Europe, almost everything is said to be moving towards a better world which includes:
an emphasis on the value of human life, religious life (especially the missionaries in
the colonies), public education, the war industry (that can produce weapons to end
wars more quickly) and free trade (Pallin and Boëthius, 1910:267).
Falk (1922) concludes his textbook by portraying (Western) Europe in opposition
to Russia and heralding democracy as a particular European trait. Further, the
colonies of the European states, Russia and Turkey seem to be considered “others”
(Falk, 1922:310–314). Of note, the positive idea of Europe does not appear to have
been broken by the events of the Great War which had ended only a few years before
the textbook was published.
When describing the period between 1919 and 1939, Jacobson and Söderlund
(1941) divided their last chapter into two parts. The first part describes “the victorious
democracies” and the second describes “the totalitarian states”. Notions of European
co-operation are almost invisible in the text as the individual states are made the
main characters of the chapter. The principal theme is the division of Europe and not
only the obvious divide between the democracies and the totalitarian states, but also
between France and England (which is the name used for Great Britain). The League
of Nations is mentioned as a failed (American) project which was almost entirely
devoted to peacekeeping (Jacobson and Söderlund, 1941:376–387).
European co-operation in the wake of the Second World War is described in Bäcklin
et al. (1955) as a political effort. Further, the textbook also claims that European
71

Henrik Åström Elmersjö
political co-operation has a long history, but readers are not familiarised with this
alleged history of co-operation. However, European co-operation is not described
as a complete success since it is also underlined that problems with integrating the
European states arose as the member states of the Council of Europe did not want to
concede any part of their sovereignty. Moreover, the Schuman Plan’s dividing features
are also stressed by describing the idea of productivity stimulation as a weapon against
communism – and therefore against the Eastern parts of Europe. The Schuman Plan’s
Western European quality is thereby made obvious (Bäcklin et al., 1955:390). These
features are elaborated upon even more in the textbook from 1973. Co-operation in
Western Europe is not seen as a project for Europe in this textbook, but as a beneficial
project for some European countries, i.e., the six countries that had been occupied
and allegedly suffered the most during the Second World War: Belgium, France, Italy,
Luxemburg, the Netherlands and West Germany. Britain had not been occupied and
the Iberian Peninsula and the Eastern parts of Europe are not included in the European
discussion (Graninger and Tägil, 1973c:316–317). With regard to representations
of the Nordic countries vis-à-vis Europe, textbook portrayals suggest that they
remain at the margins of Europe “positioned beside the rest of Europe” (Graninger
and Tägil, 1973c:317). The motives for different countries entering into the European
partnership of the EEC are explained by national, economic rationales. A European
identity is not mentioned, but only how different countries that entered the European
partnership gained, economically, from the co-operation with other European states
(Graninger and Tägil, 1973c:319–325). Economic policy is also the main explanatory
feature of European integration in Bergström et al. (1983). The identity of Europe as
a cause for the European people, or any connections to a Europeanness, is similarly
not evident (Bergström et al., 1983:441).
After Sweden joined the European integration project of the European Union in
the mid-1990s, the conceptions of Europe changed somewhat. It still does not seem
to be a matter of identity, but the reasons for joining in the co-operation are not
mentioned in Sandberg et al. (1996). Instead, joining the European Union seems to
be such a natural step that the textbook narrative elaborates upon the reasons not
to join previously. To be a part of Europe seems to be a given and it therefore needs
to be explained what has held Sweden and Finland (which also joined the European
Union in 1995) back. The reason given for this delay in joining the Union is the idea
of neutrality which is conveyed as an obsolete argument when the Cold War was over
(Sandberg et al., 1996:557).
There is still a divide between Western and Eastern Europe in the textbook published
in 2008. Eastern Europe is described as a conglomerate of states that have
problems in building a democracy, even if some countries are considered more
successful. The most evident break of the narrative of Europe is perhaps between
the 2008 textbook and those which preceded it. The European Union is seen as the
manifestation of a dream. As the book emphasises, “When the Eastern Bloc fell, the
72

The Meaning and Use of “Europe” in Swedish History Textbooks, 1910–2008
idea of a unified Europe gained momentum and vitality: the whole continent could
now merge together” (Nyström et al., 2008:343). The teleological myth of Europe is
also evident in the description of the European Union where the ideas in the Schuman
Plan are seen as the embryo of a unified Europe (Nyström et al., 2008:342–344).
This could be considered a new feature in the post-war era, particularly as European
co-operation had only been described in economic terms before, or been seen as a
sentimental dream in the inter-war period; a dream which had no history prior to the
First World War (Tham et al., 1967:557–559; Bergström et al., 1983:387).
The Process of Europeanising Swedish Pupils
The analysis of 10 history textbooks published at different times during the 20th
century revealed a change in the frequency of the words “Europe” and “European”,
as well as a change in the meaning of those words. The subject matter on Europe increased
and the idea of Europe and the identification with Europe on a political level
changed during the course of the 20th century. Considering the different narration
models discussed by Knudsen, the narrative on Europe seems to have shifted from the
story of nation-states and European civilisation into a story which also incorporates
the story of a common political culture. The Orient as “the other” is also an evident
feature of the textbooks, especially the earlier ones conveying Europe as a Western,
civilised and cultured part of the world. After 1960, when the meaning of Europe
shifts from cultivated to liberal and free, it is downplayed more, but even if it is not
called “The Orient” the antithesis of Europe is still to the East.
There is no evidence that Europe has been seen as “the other” in relation to “we
– the Swedes”, but there is a vivid shift in the idea of Europe where it has played a
more prominent role in the identity construction of Swedish pupils. At the beginning
of the 20th century there was a clearer image of what was good and what was bad in
an unproblematic history with the nation as the central protagonist. This changed
into a more complicated view from the 1960s/1970s and onwards, where different
perspectives were featured in history education. This is not exclusive to developments
in Sweden as this shift has also been shown in the history education in other countries
(see, for example, FitzGerald, 1979 for developments in the USA and Janmaat, 2006
for developments in Ireland and the Ukraine). The more complicated overall view of
history could help explain the changes seen in the idea of Europe in Swedish history
textbooks, but as this change also coincides with a shift in the political debate on
Europe and the political idea of “creating” Europeans it makes it difficult to wholly
accept such an easy explanation.
It seems that the shift in the depiction of Europe and European identity is more
complex and that at least part of the explanation lies in the political project of the
Council of Europe and its ideas of how the European community is to be drawn together.
The fact that these ideas were implemented in the Swedish curricula has also
been recently demonstrated (Nygren, 2011). The Europeanisation of Swedish histori-
73

Henrik Åström Elmersjö
cal identity seems, in this respect, to be a political project. The major changes in the
conception of Europe is not that it has gone from bad to good, but this study does –
to some degree – support the claim that the perspective has gone from the Swedish
impact on Europe to Europe’s impact on Sweden. By not only looking at the ideas of
Europe in contemporary times this study shows that the meaning of historical events
also shifts as the political climate for Swedish Europeanness changes. This is especially
evident in the textbooks published after 1995 (Sandberg et al., 1996; Nyström et al.,
2008). It was also evident in some of the other textbooks published after the Second
World War where European co-operation was strongly emphasised and was said to
have had a “long history”. However, in some of the textbooks published in the decades
between 1945 and 1995 Sweden and the other Nordic countries were still considered
as standing beside Europe in many respects.
The contemporary situation in Europe and in the Swedish debate on Europe is
quite clear in the last chapters of the textbooks, but the influence of contemporary
history can also make it difficult to compare the development of ideas over time. It
was of course difficult to see Europe as an arena of co-operation during World War
II, and it was perhaps easy to do so in the 1990s. Even so, this shows that the European
identity is not perennial in itself and the Swedish textbooks’ association with
Europe – or the lack thereof – is not at all perennial. The ideas of Europe conveyed
in some of the textbooks after 1950 show strong connections to the European ideal
of co-operation in the sense of the Schuman Plan. This is particularly evident after
1995 when Sweden became a member state of the European Union. The textbooks
from the first part of the century show a more chauvinistic idea of the culture of Europe,
with less emphasis on politics and economics. Therefore, it is safe to say that
the mythologisation of “the European” and “Europe” is, to some extent, a feature of
all textbooks produced since the beginning of the 20th century. In particular, this
development appears to have deepened in more recent decades when the teleological
myth of Europe as an entity and European co-operation has continued to be robustly
conveyed to school children across Sweden.
Henrik Åström Elmersjö is a doctoral student of History Didactics, at Umeå University, Sweden.
He is engaged in the research project “History Beyond Borders: The International Textbook History
Revision, 1919–2009”. His dissertation project concerns the history textbook revision conducted
by the Norden Associations in the 20th century, with a primary focus on the interaction between
different nationally defined historical cultures. He has also been engaged in the European textbook
project “EurViews”.
E-mail: henrik.elmersjo@historia.umu.se
74

The Meaning and Use of “Europe” in Swedish History Textbooks, 1910–2008
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Endnotes
1
The 1950 declaration of a supranational organisation in Europe, named after the French Foreign
Minister Robert Schuman.
2
The Swedish school system changed on several occasions during the 20th century and this
cannot be fully explained here. “Upper secondary school” means approximately the ninth to
twelfth school years with the typical pupils being aged 16 to 19.
3
Graninger and Tägil, 1973 a, b, and c are considered one textbook, as are Tham et al., 1966 and
1967, since they are different volumes in the same series of textbooks.
4
For later years it was not possible to obtain accurate circulation numbers so the books produced
in 1973, 1983 and 1996 were chosen because several editions were published following
initial publication. In two cases a later edition was chosen (1910 and 1941); this was due to
the fact that the first edition was too old and/or a second writer was engaged to update the
textbook. The textbook from 1955 is the second edition, with the first edition having been published
in 1954, but is considered equal by the authors. The same authors’ textbook from 1962
is the extended version with Swedish/Nordic history incorporated. The textbook of 2008 was
based on an older book (published in its first edition in 2001) and made especially for a new
syllabus (which was put on hold by the new government in 2006, a somewhat similar syllabus
will be implemented in autumn 2011).
5
For several years the Swedish upper secondary school was divided into two programmes: the
Classical Programme (latinlinjen), which focused on classical languages, and the Natural Science
Programme (reallinjen).
6
Only two of the 17 programmes that students could choose from had History as a mandatory
subject. These two programmes were chosen by about 48 percent of the students. However,
over 95 percent of the population in an age group chose to study at upper secondary school at
the end of the 20th century as opposed to less than 5 percent at the beginning of the century
(Richardson, 2005).
7
However, since curriculum time also changed it is plausible that the time spent on the earlier
parts of history was still more extensive in the early parts of the 20th century (see Larsson,
2001:45–50).
8
For the meaning of the abbreviations in the references in this section, see References: Curricula
and Syllabi. All references in this section are official documents issued by the governing
body of the upper secondary school.
9
According to a proposal for a new syllabus, to be put into use in autumn 2011, European cooperation
after 1945 is, in itself, an important area of subject matter to study. The European
subdivision of eras is also to be used in the chronological overview. Most of the syllabus is
focused on knowledge regarding how history is used to create identities and on the concept of
historical consciousness (Gy2011).
78

Education Inquiry
Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2011, pp.79–91
EDU.
INQ.
Nation-Building in Kenyan
Secondary School Textbooks
Janne Holmén*
Abstract
This article examines how issues of national, Pan-African and tribal identities are handled in Kenyan
upper secondary school textbooks for History and Government. Kenya is a multi-ethnic country
without a common pre-colonial history. As a result, the historical record does not easily provide
a common narrative with which to unify the nation. To compensate for the absence of a national
narrative textbooks propagate and advance particular themes and national ideologies such as “African
socialism”, “Harambee” and “Nyayoism”. Although unable to present a national narrative as a
unifying factor, at the Pan-African level Kenyan textbooks stress the common African experience of
European colonialism. Significantly, African nationalism is seen as unifying and liberating, whereas
European nationalism is described as aggressive and oppressive. However, while the Kenyan textbooks
describe the nation as in need of being constructed the tribes are taken for granted, despite
research indicating that tribal identities themselves are often recent constructions. As a consequence,
although national unity is stated as the primary goal of Kenyan History and Government education,
school textbooks ironically do more to strengthen tribal identity than national identity.
Keywords: nation building, Kenya, textbook research, history education, civil education
Introduction
Education and school textbooks have been one of the modern state’s most important
vehicles for the spread of national ideology (Woolf, 1996:27f.). Accordingly, the role
of nationalism in European and North American textbooks was thoroughly studied
early on (e.g. Carlgren & Söderberg, 1928; Walworth, 1938). In the climate of
internationalism and anti-war sentiments following the First World War, research
was initiated in order to come to terms with the excessive nationalism in European
textbooks (Vigander, 1961). Recent textbook research has indicated that traditional
national narratives have been challenged by globalisation, decolonisation and, in
the case of Europe, the emerging construction of a European identity (Schiessler &
Nuhoglu Soysal, 2005).
By now, textbooks from most areas of the globe have been investigated. For example,
China was the focus of textbook research as far back as 1933 (Tsang, 1933),
and in recent decades an increased amount of research into Middle Eastern, Asian
and Latin American nationalism in textbooks has been conducted (see, for example,
Podeh, 2000; Mizobe, 1997; Nava, 2006). Despite this proliferation of research there
*Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University College, Sweden. E-mail: janne.holmen@yahoo.se
©Author. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.79–91
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is, however, still a lack of research on the African continent. In addition, almost all
existing research into African school textbooks has focused on South Africa (see, for
example Auerbach, 1965; Siebörger, 2000). Woolman (2001) has, in a comparison
of curriculum reforms in Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria and Kenya since independence,
investigated the strategies of educationalists aiming at nation-building in a multicultural
environment. However, he does not focus on the content of the textbooks but
on the structure of the education system. According to Woolman, it was important
to reform the educational structures from the colonial era since they functioned to
maintain elitism and dependency upon the colonial powers.
The lack of research on nationalism in African textbooks is probably partly a result
of the fact that African states are difficult to fit into the standard model of nation-states.
It may be argued that it is difficult to find states anywhere in the world where the
population shares a common history, language and culture, but African nations offer
more extreme exceptions as they are often heavily ethnically fragmented constructions
of recent European imperialism. Strengthened national identities are but one possible
avenue of future development since tribal and Pan-African identities appear to offer
equally viable and relevant alternatives. Certainly, if we want to more fully understand
phenomena such as nationalism and the role of education in nation-building, it is
richly informative to focus on the extreme circumstances of Africa, where nationalism
is under pressure from other potent, collective identities. Indeed, the extent to which
the relative weakness of national identity in Africa makes the educational system’s
role in nation-building even more crucial than in other countries is an area worthy
of close investigation. This article will therefore investigate how the Kenyan textbook
series The Evolving World (2004-2005), intended for History and Government studies
in secondary school, handles sub-national, tribal and Pan-African identity. It is
intended as a pilot study for a larger comparative research project including Kenyan,
Tanzanian and Ethiopian school textbooks. Nevertheless, this small-scale study offers
new insights into how national identity is constructed in school textbooks in an
important African country.
Nationalism and the Goals of Kenyan Education
The most renowned theorists of nationalism, Anderson and Smith, have developed
competing theories of how national identity arises. Anderson (1983) emphasises the
nations’ constructed nature, regarding them as products of intentional political attempts
at nation-building. According to Anderson, whose primary area of study is Southeast
Asia, the decisive factor behind the rise of nationalism in former colonies is the existence
of a local bureaucracy that can move freely within the colony, but is barred from a
career outside it. Smith (1986) believes that nation-building requires the pre-existence
of a core “ethnie” who share a common denomination, a myth of origin, a common history,
a distinct common culture, a territory and a sense of solidarity. Some critics have
argued that Smith’s model is not applicable to Africa, where a central ethnie does not
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Nation-Building in Kenyan Secondary School Textbooks
exist in most states (Palmberg, 2009). However, Smith frequently refers to the continent
in his writings such as when he explains the distinction between “full” and “depleted”
ethnies. The first category is represented by Ethiopia, rich in myths and history, while
depleted ethnies like Kenya and Tanzania lack traditions of a common ancestry. Since,
in the case of these countries, ethnicity could not form the basis of national unity, they
have attempted nation-building through the creation of one-party states, which Smith
describes as a form of political religion (Smith, 1986:11).
No political unit comparable to present-day Kenya existed before the advent of
British colonial power. Kenya is a country inhabited by numerous tribes, with none of
them constituting more than a minority of the population. The largest ethnic group, the
Kikuyu, making up 22% of the country’s population, has been the most politically and
economically dominant group after the country’s independence in 1963. In The Evolving
World they are named “Agikuyu”, but here I will use the term “Kikuyu” which, although
less linguistically correct, is more commonly used. Smith (1986:148) describes them
as the core ethnie around which the Kenyan nation is formed – although earlier in the
same book he states that Kenya was a depleted ethnie. Yet several scholars have claimed
that, like many other tribes in Kenya, the Kikuyu did not have a strong group consciousness
before the Europeans identified them as a group during the colonial period; until
then they could best be described as a language group (Breuilly, 2005; Gicau, 1999).
As with most African states, Kenya can be described as a territorial nation where
nationality is defined by the territory and not by ethnic origin. According to Smith,
civic education is potentially the most significant feature of territorial nationalism. “If
ethnic cleavages are to be eroded … this can be done only by a pronounced emphasis on
inculcating social mores in a spirit of civic equality and fraternity” (Smith 1991:118f.).
Civic education might be seen as an updated equivalent to the “political religion of the
one party state” that Smith referred to in 1986; in the early 1990s multi-party systems
were introduced all over the world in former one-party states, including Kenya.
Smith’s words about the importance of civic education in unifying multiethnic
states are almost echoed in the National Goals of Education described on page one of
a Kenyan teachers’ guide (Maina, Oboka and Makong’o, 2004), where goal number
one is “National unity”:
Education in Kenya must foster a sense of nationhood and promote national unity. Much
as Kenyans belong to different ethnic groups, races and religions, their differences should
not divide them. They must live and interact in peace and harmony. Education is an avenue
through which conflicts can be removed.
The National Goals of Education leave no doubt that nation-building and citizenship
are formulated as the primary goal of Kenyan History and Government education.
Countries that have adopted what Smith would call “political religions” prefer to use
the word “philosophy”; the term religion would probably be resisted by established
religions. Authorities in the multi-ethnic states of Southeast Asia have made ambitious
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attempts to create unity through the use of national philosophies. The Indonesian
philosophy, “Pancasila”, formulated in 1945 by Sukarno, includes principles of belief
in one God, humanity, unity, democracy (preferably through consensus) and social
justice. As universal as the principles seem, “Pancasila” was said to be firmly rooted
in traditional Indonesian philosophy, which was even more strongly emphasised during
the presidency of Suharto (Darmaputera, 1988 & Purdy, 1984). Anderson (2006)
notes that “Pancasila” was originally a set of Buddhist principles referred to in one
of the oldest preserved Javanese texts, written in a language incomprehensible to
most Indonesians today. After experiencing ethnic riots in 1969, Malaysia adopted
the ideology “Rukun Negara” which was very similar in content to “Pancasila”. Both
ideologies are compulsory at school; the “Rukun Negara” is even written in the back
of school exercise books (Jenkins, 2008:69).
One might argue that in the case of multi-ethnic countries with “depleted ethnies”
like Kenya, Smith’s interpretation of the nation-building process is very similar to
Anderson’s, emphasising the constructed nature of the nation. It might be the inability
of Smith’s general theory – the ethnie as the foundation of nation building
– to explain African nationalism that has forced him to develop more particularistic
explanations. Thus, this article can be said to rest upon Anderson’s basic theoretical
supposition – that nations are recently constructed imagined communities – but it
also draws heavily on Smith’s analytical tools.
Smith’s writings offer two complimentary, or even competing, suggestions of which
route nation-building in Kenya might take: either through the formation of a national
identity around the historical and cultural heritage of the Kikuyu ethnie, or by the way
of civic education/political religion. Further, theories of identity distinguish between
two processes of identity formation: an external one that emphasises the difference
between the own group and “the others”, for example through the commemoration
of wars against arch enemies, and one that focuses on the internal creation of myths
and symbols (Barth, 1969; Smith, 1986). Of course, these processes do not only work
on a national level, as more local (e.g. tribal) and regional (e.g. Pan-African) identities
can be shaped through the same means.
The central focus of this article is to explore more fully which strategy Kenyan
secondary school textbooks follow in their construction of national identity: is the
emphasis placed more on a common heritage or on the creation of a political religion
The article also examines the extent and ways in which textbooks contribute to external
and internal formations of tribal, national and Pan-African identities.
Sources and Method
The Evolving World is published by the East African branch of Oxford University
Press. Kenyan textbooks for secondary school are designed to prepare students for
the KCSE (Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education) examinations, taken after four
years of secondary education at an age of 18-19 years. At the end of each textbook, test
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papers are provided with questions and correct answers. The test questions encourage
students to compile lists, for example: “State three reasons that led the Lozi to
collaborate with the British” (TEW 3, 2004:224).1 Accordingly, to make the students
excel with these kinds of questions large parts of the textbooks are lists of causes and
effects. The importance of the KCSE exams, which are decisive in selecting students
for universities, ensures that education is fairly uniform across the country, regardless
of teachers’ sentiments and which textbooks are used. As a consequence of the
uniformity, even a small study like this focusing on a single series of textbooks can
provide a useful picture of education in Kenyan secondary schools. A survey of the
competing textbook series published by East African Educational Publishers (EAEP)
indicates that they are very similar in structure and content. The textbooks analysed
in this article are from the series The Evolving Word, and are intended for forms
three and four (ages 17-19). Textbooks intended for form one and two were surveyed,
but none of the themes selected for closer analysis are treated there. Therefore, those
books are not included in this study.
The availability of textbooks was a determining factor in selecting the sources of
investigation for this study but, since The Evolving World and EAEP’s series together
dominates the market for secondary school textbooks in the Kenyan education system,
the study gives a robust picture of the textbook situation in most schools. There is,
however, a small number of Kenyan private secondary schools that follow the traditional
British education system and an even smaller number which follow the US
system. The extent to which Kenyan nation-building is taught in schools with foreign
education systems is worthy of investigation, but it is outside the scope of this article.
After reading the textbooks the central theories of national identity presented in
the previous chapter were employed to decide which themes constitute the textbooks’
most important material for the formation of identities. As a result, the following
six themes were selected for a closer qualitative analysis: (1) “nationalism”; (2) “responses
to colonialism”; (3) “Pan-Africanism”; (4) “the Mau Mau movement”; (5)
“nation-building in Kenya after independence” and (6) “national philosophies”. The
names of the themes are descriptive titles constructed for the purpose of the study.
Nevertheless, they are remarkably similar or identical to the terminology used by the
authors of the textbooks.
Analysis and Findings
(1) Nationalism
African nationalism is described as a reaction to the exploitation and oppression of
European colonialism. On African grounds, nationalism is seen as a purely positive,
liberating phenomenon. It is defined as “… the desire for independence and selfdetermination
among a group of people” (TEW 3, 2004:133). The authors frequently
use the term “African nationalism”. Since it is described as a reaction to a common
foreign oppressor, European colonialism, it functions as a unifying concept on a
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Janne Holmén
continental level. In the account of European history nationalism is, however, listed
as one of the causes of the two World Wars and of European colonialism in Africa
(TEW 4, 2005:5, 23, 33). Thus, The Evolving World clearly distinguishes between
good, liberating and unifying African nationalism and bad, aggressive and oppressive
European nationalism.
(2) Responses to Colonialism
The Evolving World puts an emphasis on the strategies by which African and Kenyan
tribes responded to European imperialism. These are divided into “resistance”,
“collaboration” and “mixed reactions”, with examples given of tribes following one or
the other. In Kenya, the Nandi, the Agiriama, the Bukusu and the Somali exemplify
resistance, while the Masai and the Wanga exemplify collaboration. The Akamba,
the Kikuyu and the Luo are used as examples of mixed reactions. The textbooks also
mentioned that some of the collaborating Kikuyu amassed great wealth (TEW 3,
2004:37-51).
However, the subject of collaboration and the extent to which some ethnic groups
have benefited from it is highly contentious. For example, following the Kenyan presidential
elections in December 2007 ethnic violence led to the death of approximately
1,000 people, and many of the victims were wealthy Kikuyu who owned estates on
land previously controlled by other tribes like the Nandi.
(3) Pan-Africanism
Pan-Africanism is described as “… a movement that aims at the unity of all peoples of
African descent all over the world”. According to the textbook, African co-operation
was triggered by European exploitation. In some passages, Pan-Africanism is almost
equated with nationalism, such as when Pan-Africanism is said to have been reactivated
by the strengthening of nationalism on the continent during World War II.
However, “national interests” are mentioned in the list of challenges encountered
by the Organisation of African Unity. The disintegration in 1977 of the East African
Community, comprising Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, is also partly seen as a result
of different national interests and pride. The organisation was reborn in 2001 (TEW
4, 2005:86, 95, 113). Since the publication of the 2005 textbook Rwanda and Burundi
has joined the EAC, and the organisation aims to establish a federation with a single
currency. Significantly, further development of the East African Community might
provide educationalists and textbook writers with the dilemma of promoting an East
African identity in addition to national and Pan-African identities.
(4) The Mau Mau Movement
In the 1952‐1959 period British colonial authorities in Kenya came under pressure
from a popular uprising, the Mau Mau rebellion. Most of the fighters came from the
Kikuyu population. According to Gicau (1999:24), Kenyan history writing has treated
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the Mau Mau uprising as either inspired by Marxism or intended to uphold the Kikuyu
hegemony. The official myth has described the popular Mau Mau movement as
disruptive since only the modern and Westernised elite was believed to be able to lead
in nation-building. In opposition to this view, the writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o wanted
to put a focus on the people and on African traditions (Gicau, 1999:24).
In The Evolving World Ngugi’s views appear to have triumphed. The Mau Mau
movement is described as a popular uprising against the injustices of the colonial
government: “The Mau Mau fighters ... resorted to violence to eradicate colonialism,
which subjected Africans to all manner of humiliation”. Although it was crushed, it is
said to have accelerated the march to independence. One of the causes of the uprising
is said to have been the European missionaries’ condemnation of African cultural
practices, such as female circumcision: “The female circumcision controversy in central
Kenya was one of the factors that aroused deep hostility. Africans were ready to uphold
their cultural values at any cost”. The circumcision controversy is also mentioned as
a cause of female participation in the independence struggle and as a cause of the
formation of independent schools and churches (TEW 3, 2004:102f, 110-116, 123ff).
The textbook’s emphasis on female circumcision might be explained by the fact
that Jomo Kenyatta and other politicians in opposition to the collaborators within
the Kikuyu took advantage of the controversy. According to Breuilly (2005:186),
Kenyatta subsequently fitted female circumcision into a highly developed theory of
Kikuyu cultural nationalism.
(5) Nation-Building in Kenya after Independence
The growth of urban centres in Kenya affected people’s identities in a number of ways.
The textbooks divide these impacts into the categories “negative” and “positive”. On
the positive side, the textbooks emphasise the effects of contacts between people of
different ethnic roots, which “... helped water down the differences and prejudices
between Kenyan communities, and instilled in them a sense of ‘nationhood’”. Somewhat
paradoxically, the adaptation of cultural ideas and practices from other ethnic
groups is placed on the negative side. As one textbook declared, this urban culture
“... prompted the erosion of African traditions and morals as the Africans imitated
western cultural practices” (TEW 3, 2004:83f).
The chapters about Kenyan leaders (Jomo Kenyatta, Tom Mboya and Daniel Arap
Moi) from the governing party KANU includes subchapters like “Kenyatta and nationbuilding”.
Long-time opposition leader Oginga Odinga is described as a nationalist
in the first paragraph in the chapter dedicated to him. The fifth politician mentioned,
Ronald Ngala, is said to have favoured a system of autonomous provinces to avoid
dominance by the largest tribes Kikuyu and Luo. In the summary of the section about
Kenyan leaders, all five of them are described as nationalists who worked tirelessly
for the development of Kenya. The leaders mentioned mirror the ethnic composition
of Kenya; that they are all said to have been hardworking nationalists is probably
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intended to enhance national cohesion. However, the result of their work does not
escape criticism in the textbook. The reign of the first two presidents is said to have
included challenges like “… corruption, poverty, the demand for pluralism, authoritarianism,
political assassinations and human rights violations, making their regimes
unpopular” (TEW 3, 2004:155-173). This openness in discussing the problems challenging
present-day Kenya permeates the whole textbook series.
(6) National Philosophies
In The Evolving World, a clear nation-building effort can be discerned in the presentation
of the national philosophies: “African socialism”, “Harambee” and “Nyayoism”.
African socialism was, according to the textbook, coined by KANU in 1963 and was
defined as “an African political, economic system that is positively African, not being
imported from any country or being a blueprint of any foreign ideology but capable
of incorporating useful and compatible techniques from whatever source”. The objectives
of “African socialism” are economic progress and equal distribution as well as
the enhancement of human and political rights. “African socialism” is communal in
nature and, according to the textbook, not based on class struggle. It is described as
being “… flexible to ideas that enhance its features without necessarily being purely
Marxist or capitalist”. What makes it different from Marxism is the emphasis on
mutual social responsibility, drawn from the African practice of the extended family
and communal responsibility. The textbook states that it has “… encouraged unity and
peaceful coexistence among Kenyan communities” as well as promoted “… a sense of
service and patriotism to the nation” (TEW 4, 2005:128ff).
In the textbook “Harambee” is said to be a Swahili slogan meaning “pulling together”.
It is, however, not stated that some scholars argue that the word is derived
from Hindu railway workers who were praising the goddess Ambee while pulling
heavy loads. According to Kenyan media, this “pagan” etymology has recently caused
conservative Christians to question the appropriateness of the slogan (Warah 2008).
“Harambee” is described in the textbook as voluntary contributions to development
projects by way of money, labour or material; in Kenyatta’s words, this meant “…
‘African’ socialism in practice’”. The authors list a large number of positive effects of
“Harambee”, including the promotion of unity among Kenyans since peoples from
different communities have met to contribute towards a worthy cause. However, the
textbook does mention that the “Harambee spirit” has been undermined and abused
and that greedy individuals have used it for personal gain (TEW 4, 2005:132ff).
“Nyayoism” was adopted at the beginning of Daniel Arap Moi’s presidency in 1978.
It is derived from the Swahili word ‘Nyayo’ (‘footsteps’). Moi declared that he intended
to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors. The textbook cites Moi’s description of
the philosophy: “It is a pragmatic philosophy which crystallises and articulates what
has always been African, indigenous and formative in our societies … not foreign but it
is rooted in African past, but new in its trans-tribal application…” (TEW 4, 2005:136).
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Nation-Building in Kenyan Secondary School Textbooks
Also cited is the president’s claim that the pillars of “Nyayoism”: peace, love and unity,
are not vague philosophies but practical foundations of countrywide development.
According to the textbook, “Nyayoism” evolved from three sources, with first being
“African socialism”. The Christian religion was the second source and, according to
the textbook, “Moi, a Christian, believed that through the virtue of love, the people of
Kenya would build the nation and work against all forms of disunity”. The third source
was Moi’s long political career which had made him realise that nation-building required
love: “…Nyayoism is a philosophy of active nationalism for nation-building. It is
the spirit which makes people answer to the harambee call…” (TEW 4, 2005:136-137).
The textbook notes that, despite Moi’s appeals for peace, love and unity, his era was
rocked by corruption and ethnic clashes. It also states that “Nyayoism” guided Moi
in the first 10 years of his 24-year rule, but that his government gradually adopted
measures that appeared to antagonise the philosophy. Some of the philosophy’s
shortcomings are also attributed to the difficulties in applying peace, love and unity;
since people attach different things to these concepts they are difficult to monitor and
evaluate (TEW 4, 2005:136-141).
In the textbook’s summary of the philosophies’ impact they are credited with a
number of social and economic improvements, but also with the promotion of nationbuilding,
nationalism and patriotism. The ambivalent view on European cultural
influence is also seen here. As The Evolving World explicitly states, “The philosophies
have promoted African cultures, since they are drawn from African traditions. They
encourage the borrowing of relevant cultural values. However, Kenya is in a cultural
crisis, as the youth continues to adopt Western cultures” (TEW 4, 2005 p.139-141).
Apparently, the youth and the authors of the textbook have different views of which
cultural borrowings should be considered relevant.
The textbook also lists some shortcomings of the national philosophies, but attributes
them to a lack of commitment, negative reception from the citizens and corruption.
“It can be argued that if properly applied, [the philosophies] would provide
solutions to the problems that have hampered Kenya’s development since independence”
(TEW 4, 2005:141). It is not primarily the philosophies that are criticised, but
the decision-makers who have failed to live up to the principles and spirit of African
socialism, Harambee and Nyayoism.
Conclusions
In The Evolving World, an historical narrative is presented which play an important
role in building Pan-African identity by referring to the common African experience
of European colonialism. History does not provide Kenya with a narrative that can
unify the entire nation, as the textbook’s division of tribal responses to British colonialism
into collaboration and resistance illustrates. Unlike in many other former
colonies, the Kenyan “war of liberation”, the Mau Mau movement, has had a divisive
rather than a unifying potential. However, this study indicates that a more positive
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Janne Holmén
picture of the Mau Mau is gaining a foothold in present-day school textbooks. Smith’s
theory that the Kikuyu tribe constitutes an ethnie around which the Kenyan nation
is constructed is not supported by the analysis.
Europeans are definitely “the others” in the Kenyan textbooks’ attempt to create a
national identity; but the colonial experience is shared with other African countries
and it is primarily used for the formation of a Pan-African identity. Sometimes Pan-
Africanism is equated with nationalism. Nationalism is described as a positive, liberating
phenomenon in Africa, but is seen as a cause of wars and imperialism in Europe.
The textbooks’ attitudes to cultural borrowings are highly ambivalent. The loss of
traditional values and adoption of Western culture is seen as a threat, but the content
of traditional culture is seldom elaborated upon. The traditions mentioned in
the books are those that European missionaries tried to abolish and which therefore
became symbols in the fight against colonialism, the most important of which was the
controversy over female circumcision. This means it is the traditions most disliked by
the Europeans that are highlighted, rather than those most valued by the indigenous
communities. However, the textbook writers do not propagate the continuation of, for
example, female circumcision today; it is left unclear which particular African traditions
they consider vital for the future and want to preserve from Western influence.
The national philosophies attempt to compensate for the lack of a common Kenyan
history and culture by stating that the very act of working together is an old, indigenous
African tradition. The supposed communality of the traditional African local
society is, via the philosophies, expanded to a national level. It is interesting to note
that other multi-ethnic states like Malaysia and Indonesia are propagating similar
philosophies in their schools; civic education does indeed seem to be of great importance
for territorial nationalism. One of its main functions is the spread of national
philosophies, which constitute what Smith describes as political religion. This is in line
with Anderson’s view that nations are recently constructed “imagined communities”.
Although increasing attempts have been made in Europe to remove nationalist
material from school textbooks in order to promote peace between nations (Schüddekopf
1967:154), it is clear that in an African context, where the main ethnic divisions
are found on a sub-national level, nationalism is promoted in textbooks as a means to
achieve peace and unity between tribal groups. The textbooks reflect this by describing
nationalism as a positive and desirable phenomenon in Africa, but highly negative in
Europe. The only negative account of nationalism among African states concerns the
East African Community, which is said to have been hampered by national interests.
While the Kenyan textbooks describe the nation as in need of being constructed
the tribes are taken for granted, despite research indicating that tribal identities
themselves are often recent constructions. As a consequence, although national unity
is stated as the primary goal of Kenyan History and Government education, school
textbooks ironically do more to strengthen tribal identity than national identity.
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Textbooks with Abbreviations
Kiruthu, F., Kapiyo, J., and Kimori, W. (2004) The Evolving World: A History and Government
Course. Form 3. Nairobi: Oxford University Press. (TEW 3, 2004)
Kiruthu, F., Kapiyo, J., and Kimori, W. (2005) The Evolving World: A History and Government
Course. Form 4. Nairobi: Oxford University Press. (TEW 4, 2005)
Janne Holmén is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University
College. He is currently participating in a research project about local history writing and local
identity on islands in the Baltic Sea. Holmén wrote his doctoral thesis Political Textbooks at the
Department of History, Uppsala University. In his thesis, Holmén investigated how the different
foreign policies of Norway, Sweden and Finland during the Cold War affected how school textbooks
portrayed the Soviet Union and the USA.
E-mail: janne.holmen@yahoo.se
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Janne Holmén
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Walworth, A. (1938) School Histories at War: A Study of the Treatment of our Wars in the Secondary
School History Books of the United States and in Those of its Former Enemies. Boston:
Harvard University Press.
Woolf, S. J. (1996) Nationalism in Europe 1815 to the Present: A Reader. London: Routledge.
Woolman, D.C. (2001) Educational Reconstruction and Post-colonial Curriculum Development: A
Comparative Study of Four African Countries. International Education Journal Vol. 2, No. 5,
27-46.
Endnotes
1
TEW 3, 2004:224 refers to the title of the book, The Evolving World, used in Form 3, and the
date of publication and page number. Full references are listed at the end of the article.
91

Education Inquiry
Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2011, pp.93–107
EDU.
INQ.
The Past in Peril
Greek History Textbook Controversy and the
Macedonian Crisis
Erik Sjöberg*
Abstract
The conflict between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia over the name and
historical heritage of Macedonia, which in the early 1990s erupted in a diplomatic and political
crisis, can in part be analysed as a “history war”. In this article, the Macedonian conflict’s roots in
and impact on debates concerning the contents of history education in Greece, at the time of the
crisis, are examined, along with the conditions of textbook production against the backdrop of the
political conditions which gave rise to revision. Using samples from Greek press and educational
journals, professional and identity political interests are analysed as boundary-work, brought about
by the need for various advocates of “national values” in history education to demarcate themselves
from extreme nationalism, in the name of science and patriotic duty.
Keywords: history wars, textbook revision, textbook controversy, boundary-work
History is impartial. And it is not pedagogically correct nor nationally desirable to load
teaching with emotion or ideological colouring (Voros, 1994:7).
In recent decades Greece has experienced a number of history textbook controversies
– the most recent and widely publicised in 2006-2007 – which in several cases have
resulted in textbooks, whose contents have been considered as undermining national
identity, being withdrawn from circulation by the authorities following pressure from
various interest groups (Repoussi, 2007; Kokkinos and Gatsotis, 2008; Liakos, 2009).
Although several researchers have made reference to these non-state actors involved
in educational debate and the process of textbook revision, Greek textbook research
has tended to centre on content analysis of the textbooks themselves (Koulouri and
Venturas, 1994). The elements in focus are usually the national ideology reproduced
in the books, the cultivation of stereotypes, the structure and underlying norms of the
official narrative and the space assigned to certain events or perspectives (Hamilakis,
2003). A main conclusion of this research is that history teaching in Greece is traditionally
dominated by an ethnocentric approach, aimed at imbuing a national consciousness
in the minds of the pupils (e.g. Frangoudaki and Dragona, 1997; Avdela, 2000;
Kokkinos and Gatsotis, 2008), and that the textbooks which have caused controversy
*Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. E-mail: erik.sjoberg@historia.umu.se
©Author. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.93–107
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Erik Sjöberg
and been withdrawn, were taken out of circulation because they deviated from the
national norm – for example, by introducing non-ethnocentric perspectives to the
teaching of history – or presented controversial historical issues associated with the
national past in a “heretic” way (e.g. Kokkinos and Gatsotis, 2008).
In this article, I aim to step outside of the textbook and instead discuss how the
debate on history education in Greece has been shaped in conjunction with a larger
political crisis, in which the nation was perceived to be threatened, and the interests
involved. The historical setting of this study is the “culture war” between Greece and
the recently independent Republic of Macedonia over the name “Macedonia” and the
historical symbols and heritage associated with it. 1 The period in focus is the most
intense phase of the still unresolved conflict, 1991-1995, years of a both foreign and
domestic political crisis when Greek diplomacy was engaged in an attempt to block
international recognition of the new neighbouring state. The official Greek position
was that there could be no other Macedonia than the northern Greek region with the
same name and that the neighbouring state’s use of this very name constituted the
theft of Greece’s national past, perhaps even with the annexation of parts of the Greek
province of Macedonia as the ultimate goal.
However, the Macedonian conflict cannot solely be understood as a controversy
between two nation-states laying claims to a historical and cultural heritage. Since the
onset of the diplomatic conflict coincided with a period of domestic political crisis in
Greece, the perceived external threat against the nation proved instrumental in the
ongoing quest for setting the agenda of societal debate. “Greece is […] the history,
cultural inheritance and varied richness of our people”, local politician and commentator
Nikolaos Martis argued in 1983 in an attempt to sound the alarm regarding the
perceived threat from nation-building in Yugoslav Macedonia. “And if someone is
intriguing against it, every Greek no matter where he stands has a duty to defend it.
[…] This is a task especially for our educators” (Martis, 1984:115-16). An important
aspect of this struggle was thus to set the agenda of educational debate by attempting
to exert an influence on the contents and overall orientation of the history curriculum,
in its capacity as a repository for the national values and knowledge of the national
past perceived to be in peril.
In the study, I examine the conditions of textbook production against the backdrop
of the political developments which contributed to the need for revision, and discuss
analytical approaches to the study of educational debate and some of the interests
at stake in them – professional as well as identity political. The material referred to
involves samples from mainstream press and educational journals from the period
in question and, in some cases, sources that have been cited and discussed by other
researchers. 2
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The Past in Peril. Greek History Textbook Controversy and the Macedonian Crisis
Background: Textbook Revision and Controversy in Greece
In order to understand the responses to the Macedonian crisis and the calls for the
promotion of values perceived to be national, one needs to set them in the context
of educational politics and the general conditions of history textbook production in
Greece. As historian Susanne Popp has noted, different schoolbook admission procedures
play an important role in the making of the history textbook controversies known
as history wars, and partly explains why these controversies are a recurring phenomenon
in some national contexts but not in others. Using an illustrative comparison
between Japan and Germany – both countries with troublesome national histories
and thus potential for controversy – she observes that while the highly centralised
character of Japanese schoolbook production and distribution promotes public focus
on and scrutiny of the authorisation of new textbooks every fourth year and thereby
“create […] favorable conditions for angry public debate, in part orchestrated by the
mass media”, the German system, where textbooks are authorised on the regional
level of federal states in very heterogeneous educational environments, “does not
help to attract public attention” (Popp, 2009:113-14). The result of the complexity of
these uncoordinated procedures is that textbook controversies (on a national level)
are less likely to occur in the German context than in the centralised Japanese one.
The conditions in Greece support the validity of this observation. History textbook
production and distribution were brought under the auspices of the state-run publishing
organ OESV (later renamed OEDV) 3 in 1937, in a period of authoritarian rule
(the Metaxas dictatorship), and have remained so up until today (Papagiannidou,
1993; Hamilakis, 2003; Repoussi, 2007). The guidelines and instructions regarding
contents are provided by another state organ, since 1985 known as the Pedagogical
Institute, which appoints the authors employed in the writing of textbooks (http://
www.pi-schools.gr/pi_history/). The Pedagogical Institute answers in turn to the
Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs which reserves itself the right to scrutinise
and, if deemed necessary, to make changes in the textbooks produced. Consequently,
the contents of history textbooks have ultimately depended on the political camp in
office at the time of their conception. This helps explain why controversies over history
education, textbook contents and public memory have been increasingly common in
Greek public debate since the 1980s.
The downfall of the military regime in 1974, the process of the transition to a
parliamentary democracy and the political rehabilitation of the previously banished
Left, the vanquished party of the Greek civil war, brought about the need for textbook
revision. When, for the first time ever, a party that explicitly claimed a socialist
identity – Andreas Papandreou’s PASOK – came to power after the 1981 elections,
a series of changes was introduced in the field of education. Since one of PASOK’s
aims was to rehabilitate the wartime (left-wing) National Resistance, to which the
ruling party claimed an ideological affinity, and include it in the official national narrative
(Liakos, 2004:370; Bontila, 2008; Rori, 2008), new history textbooks were
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Erik Sjöberg
launched in order to replace those in use during the preceding decades of right-wing
political hegemony.
However, not all textbooks were written in service of this political ambition to revise
the image of the recent national past since there also was a more general spirit of
change, reflecting international intellectual and methodological trends in the teaching
of history. In 1984 a new history textbook, written by the renowned Greek-Canadian
historian Lefteris Stavrianos, a leading champion of the teaching of global history, was
introduced in the history class of upper secondary school (Stavrianos, 1984). It was
an attempt at a non-ethnocentric approach to the teaching of history by emphasising
global developments (such as the agrarian, industrial and technological revolutions),
instead of the political history of the Greek nation that had traditionally been in focus.
Stavrianos’ textbook became the target of fierce attacks in public debate by Christian
organisations which accused it of atheism due to its Darwinian evolutionary biology
and Marxist approaches, as well as by other conservative groups and a number of
parliament deputies. The textbook was criticised for attempting to undermine “the
foundations of Greek civilization” (Mavroskoufis, 1997, cited in Hamilakis 2003:43;
Bougatsos, 1992:57-63). Nevertheless, the book remained in use until 1989, when the
Pedagogical Institute decided to have it withdrawn and replaced by an older textbook.
Yet Stavrianos’ book was not the only one to be withdrawn from schools at the
time. In 1990, the Pedagogical Institute decided to remove another history textbook
from the curriculum on the grounds it was marred by inaccuracies and ideological
bias, and that it placed too little emphasis on Greek history. A book on historical
methodology from 1983 intended for upper secondary school shared the same fate
in 1991 (Kokkinos and Gatsotis 2008).
Within a short span of time, 1989-1991, three history textbooks resulting from
PASOK’s textbook revision in the early 1980s had been withdrawn from use in public
schools on the basis that their contents were incomprehensible, unpatriotic or even
damaging to the pupils’ national sentiment. This development should be seen within
the context of the domestic political situation near the end of the 1980s. In 1989, the
PASOK government that had been in office since the beginning of the decade collapsed
in the wake of major corruption scandals and, after inconclusive elections, was replaced
by a coalition government of conservatives and an alliance of communists and other
far-left parties. One of the first actions this coalition took was the mass destruction
of the security police files on suspected leftists that had been on record since the civil
war (Liakos, 2004:351). This gesture of conciliation and overcoming of past grievances
(through the erasure of their tangible traces), which seemed to stress the importance
of national unity, can also be interpreted as a clear indication for educators as to what
type of history ought be emphasised in history teaching.
After 1990, when the conservatives were able to form a government of their own,
demands to promote national values in history education emerged with increasing
frequency in public debate. This trend has been manifest in mainstream media as
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The Past in Peril. Greek History Textbook Controversy and the Macedonian Crisis
well as in educational journals. The events of the preceding three years, commentator
Kyriakos Plisis wrote in 1992, had shown that neither “laboratory ideologies” nor common
economic interests proved to be as cohesive forces as the nation and the values
it represented. Plisis expressed his regret that the reaction against the dictatorship
in the 1970s had led to a marginalisation of these values, as embodied by knowledge
of the nation and its past. The process of European unification in the wake of the
Maastricht treaty made the reintroduction of this knowledge even more appropriate,
he argued, since “[w]ithout national identity, no country can correctly play its
role in this multinational union”; therefore, “in order to become proper Europeans,
we must first become proper Greeks”. The way to accomplish this was to safeguard
and protect the traditions and the history that constituted the national identity from
foreign influence (Plisis, 1992).
The coming of the Macedonian crisis added a dimension of urgency and threat
to the debate on the contents of history education. International initiatives aimed
at the recognition of the Republic of Macedonia were seen by some commentators
as directly linked to and caused by the educational reforms of the 1980s, with their
perceived damaging effects to the historical and national consciousness of pupils and
the preparedness to cope with the external “threat” (Toulomakos, 1992; Stergiou,
1992a). The authorities’ short-term response to these calls was the announcement
that new teaching materials were to be issued as part of the government’s effort to
inform teachers, pupils and their parents about the Macedonian question. One textbook
exclusively dedicated to Macedonia was to be distributed for immediate use in
public schools, while another textbook covering the Macedonian question as well as
a number of other “national issues” and intended for use in upper secondary school
was to be prepared in the following year (Stergiou, 1992b). The debate concerning
these textbooks will be subjected to scrutiny in what follows.
Who Has the Right to Speak about and on Behalf of History
Guarding the Boundaries of Science in the Debate
Early in 1992, Minister of Education Giorgos Souflias a conservative announced the
publication of a special textbook aimed at informing pupils on the historical roots
of the present crisis in a “valid, objective and scientific” manner (Souflias in Bastias
and Christopoulos, 1992:5). The textbook, Macedonia: History and Politics, was the
work of scholars employed at the Society for Macedonian Studies and had earlier been
distributed abroad by the Society’s diaspora branch. It presented the history of Greek
Macedonia in a linear narrative, from antiquity to the present, with an emphasis on
evidence proving Hellenic presence through the ages. It was received by mainstream
media in a generally positive manner as a commendable but long overdue initiative
(Kathimerini, 22/04/1992; Stergiou, 1992b). Exceptions are found in left-wing press
which described the initiative as reminiscent of similar initiatives made by the junta,
also pointing to inconsistencies in the views presented regarding the naming of the
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Erik Sjöberg
Slavs in the Macedonian region (Kostopoulos, Trimis and Psarris, 06/02/1992).
However, what is of concern in this presentation is the critique voiced from a different
point of view, the one traditionally associated with right-wing nationalism.
In an article in the conservative Estia, the textbook came under attack by Dimitris
Michalopoulos, an assistant professor of history, who accused it of reproducing Bulgarian
propaganda rather than serving the national interest and “historical truth”, with
the approval of the party in office (Michalopoulos, 1992a). Michalopoulos pointed to
contradictions in the logic of the textbook’s narrative and choice of historical “facts”.
According to him, it left pupils with the impression that the Bulgarians – in his view
the eternal enemies of the Greeks and the real instigators behind the Macedonian
conflict – had held legitimate territorial claims to Macedonia in the early 20th century
and that the region is Greek only due to the ethnic cleansing and persecution of
Bulgarian populations. The inconsistencies of the textbook – the very same that had
been pointed out by left-wing journalists, but interpreted in a diametrically opposite
manner – were presented by Michalopoulos as a deliberate violation of truth, the
first time that enemy propaganda was voiced in a Greek schoolbook. In an attempt
to identify the instigator of the textbook, Michalopoulos pointed to similarities with a
“vulgarized, simplified sort of study” written in English by historian Evangelos Kofos,
the Foreign Affairs Department’s expert on Balkan affairs. 4 Considered by many the
established authority on the Macedonian question in Greek post-war historiography,
Kofos was accused of undermining Greek national claims to the Macedonian historical
heritage, thus paving way for national enemies who questioned the Greekness of
Macedonia. In a postscript, Michalopoulos expressed his dismay with the Ministry of
Education whose officials had received his remarks on the textbook with “frosty – if
not hostile – indifference” (Michalopoulos, 1992b).
Michalopoulos continued to launch his attacks against the textbook on Macedonia
in letters to the editors and in newspapers to which he was a regular contributor. A
response to the accusation was published by Giorgos Babiniotis, the president of the
Pedagogical Institute and himself a known advocate of the confrontational official
policy in the Macedonian name issue (Babiniotis, 1992). Babiniotis did not so much
address the issue of editorial choices behind which historical facts and circumstances
or perspectives should be emphasised, which had been the core of Michalopoulos’
argumentation. He instead expressed his regrets and concerns that an attempt “of
national significance” at informing both pupils and teachers on the Macedonian
question had met with reactions that were “extremist” and “dangerous” from a colleague
like Michalopoulos. Babiniotis asked why the Pedagogical Institute, “which
has thrown itself into a difficult struggle for the substantial assistance of education”
with new textbooks and programmes of further training for educators, should have
to preoccupy itself with “fantasies”. Therefore, he stated that he saw no reason to
engage in a discussion that had no meaning, and urged all who wished to introduce
better teaching materials in schools to consider the goals that “we have put forward
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The Past in Peril. Greek History Textbook Controversy and the Macedonian Crisis
as Pedagogical Institute: to inform the pupils seriously and sensitize them nationally.
Not to fanaticize them” (Babiniotis, 1992).
Babiniotis’ rhetorical strategy, in which serious and nationally desirable knowledge
is juxtaposed against extremist and fanatic misrepresentation of knowledge, can be
analysed as a form of boundary-work. The theoretical concept of boundary-work was
coined by the sociologist of science Thomas F. Gieryn. Like other human activities,
in Gieryn’s view science is the result of social processes and something whose contents
are subject to constant negotiation and change. This is not to be understood as
a perception of knowledge as fabricated, i.e. inherently “false”, but as dependant on
the social and cultural contexts in which it acquires meaning and authority as true
(Gieryn, 1995: 440, 1999). Boundary-work is the concept Gieryn employs to describe
the discourses by which selected qualities are attributed to “scientists, scientific
methods, and scientific claims for the purpose of drawing a rhetorical boundary between
science and some less authoritative residual non-science” (Gieryn, 1999:4-5).
He argues that this rhetorical drawing (and re-drawing) of boundaries is especially
manifest in “public science”, i.e. the venue “in which scientists describe science for
the public and its authorities, sometimes hoping to enlarge the material and symbolical
resources of scientists or to defend professional autonomy” (Gieryn, 1983:782).
The professional ambitions of the different scientists engaged in the quest for these
resources, for example public funding, lead to clashes of interests which may express
themselves in what Gieryn refers to as “credibility contests”, i.e. strategic struggles
over the legitimacy of a certain view or claim to expertise. It is in these contests that
boundary-work becomes an important resource for the purpose of establishing epistemic
authority. While Gieryn specifically studies boundary-work in the context of
the natural sciences, I find the concept to be also applicable to the humanities and
social sciences since their respective scholarly communities operate under similar
conditions in the public arena.
Gieryn identifies three types of boundary-work that are employed in these credibility
contests, depending on the situation: a) expulsion, which characterises contests
between rival authorities when each claims to be scientific and seeks to have the other
expelled and exposed as pseudoscientific; b) expansion, which is used when rival
epistemic authorities attempt to monopolise jurisdictional control over a disputed
ontological domain; and c) protection of autonomy, which is a strategy of demarcation
that is employed when professional autonomy is deemed to be threatened by
powers outside of the scientific community, for example legislators and policymakers
who encroach upon or exploit scientists’ epistemic authority for their own purposes
(Gieryn, 1999:5-17).
Babiniotis’ intervention in the debate can thus be read as an example of both
expulsion and protection of (in this case the Pedagogical Institute’s) autonomy. The
need for such boundary-work was obviously present in the debate since it attracted
a number of individuals with claims to expertise on nationally desirable knowledge.
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Erik Sjöberg
Michalopoulos’ articles were not isolated examples of criticism against the textbooks
and attempts at setting the education agenda. Some of these attempts were direct attacks
against and calls for the dismantling of the Pedagogical Institute. Thus another
commentator, Ioannis Toulomakos, a professor of classical philology and ancient
history, used what he portrayed as the “failure” to teach national – especially ancient
Macedonian – history properly as an argument in favour of his own demand for the
creation of a new national council for education. This should be composed of scientifically
and pedagogically competent, internationally recognised scholars who would be
in charge of quality control and the approval of history textbooks (Toulomakos, 1992).
The ongoing diplomatic crisis, to which Toulomakos explicitly referred in his article,
thus created favourable conditions for expansion, in Gieryn’s sense. Arguably, this
brought about the need for vigilance and defence against domestic “intruders” in the
institutions concerned with history education, in much the same manner as national
history had to be “protected” from the alleged forgers of history and extremists in the
new neighbouring state across the Greek-Yugoslav border. Concerns regarding the
boundaries between an education which emphasised national values, understood as
something positive and desirable, and that of evil nationalism sometimes emerged
in the educational journals of the period. The previously mentioned educational
commentator Kyriakos Plisis thus distinguished between ethnocentric “nationalistic
education” that had been predominant until quite recently and “national education”
that ought to be given from then on. He clarified that he did not make a plea
for nationalism of the sort that “blind[s] the citizens and lead[s] them to fanaticism
and intolerance”, but rather a humble sort of love for the fatherland, its past and its
traditions (Plisis, 1992).
Gieryn’s concept of boundary-work is suited to the study of history wars, as I have
sought to demonstrate with reference to the educational debate during the Macedonian
crisis since this debate, and textbook controversies in general, largely concerns
questions of legitimacy and epistemic authority, where conflicting views are played
out in public media.
Which History Is to Be Taught Conflicting Demands in
History Education
The question of who is the most appropriate expert on and spokesperson for national
history is connected to the second theme of the analysis, namely what kind of history
is to be taught at school. In 1995, a group of what was said to be concerned citizens
called “Initiative for the restitution of ancient history at upper secondary school” sent
a letter of protest to the Minister of Education. The authors claimed that the history
curriculum suffered from a disproportionate amount of modern history that came at
the expense of ancient history. In their view, the latter was in danger of being abolished
in history education, with potentially damaging repercussions for the pupils’
historical consciousness and national identity, and consequently for the nation itself.
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The Past in Peril. Greek History Textbook Controversy and the Macedonian Crisis
Thus, the demand for the restitution of ancient Greek history was explicitly linked to
the discourse on the threat against national security that the conflict over the name
Macedonia had produced. The authors of the letter argued that:
[…] in an era of spiritual, national and moral crisis, the knowledge of our classical civilisation,
which addresses both the soul and the emotion is an immediate need. […] Our youth
finds it impossible to be convinced and convince others of the rightfulness of our national
issues, since, with the abolition of ancient history, pupils are not taught issues of immense
importance, such as the Greekness of Ancient Macedonia […], the civilising of western
Europeans through the Greek colonisation, the awakening of the people of Asia through
the policy of Alexander the Great and his successors, the importance of the Greek victory
in the Greek-Persian wars etc. (cited in Mavroskoufis, 1997:313-314; translated and cited
in Hamilakis, 2003:43)
The letter from the group was passed on to the Pedagogical Institute which, after
discussing it and accepting its arguments, decided to write a new textbook specifically
covering “the cultural contribution of Hellenism” to world history, from antiquity
to the Renaissance, and intended for use in the first year of upper secondary school
(Asimomytis et al., 1997). Archaeologist Yannis Hamilakis has set the trend towards a
greater emphasis on antiquity and archaeological artifacts in history education against
the background of the conflict between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia (Hamilakis, 2003). Undoubtedly, the prestige that classical studies and
archaeology enjoy in Greece was further boosted by spectacular excavation finds made
at Vergina in Greek Macedonia in the late 1970s. Among these finds was a golden
crest decorated by a star, which eventually became one of most contested symbols in
the Macedonian conflict due to the display of it in the flag of the neighbouring state.
The “theft” of this symbol stressed the national importance of archaeology. Writing
in 1989, Evangelos Kofos had remarked that “Greek Government financial assistance
to archaeologists, traditionally meagre, has become suddenly generous”, something
which could be attributed to the challenge posed by nation-building in Yugoslav
Macedonia (Kofos, 1990:131).
However, the one-sided focus on the representation of antiquity in school textbooks
in Hamilakis’ analysis has the result that no attention is paid to other demands made
in the same time period for textbook revision. Such demands were also advanced
within the framework of the Macedonian conflict, but with what at least appears
as diametrically opposite views concerning what type of national history should be
taught. The interest group’s fear concerning the future of ancient history in public
schools and society might be seen in the context of the growing criticism, expressed
in the public debate, against the dominant focus on antiquity. Below I will dwell upon
a sample of this critique which is of significance here because it specifically addresses
the question of nationally desirable history education.
In June 1993, a petition signed by 111 scholars and intellectuals of Greek descent
working at universities abroad and in diaspora associations in North America and
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Erik Sjöberg
Western Europe was published in a Greek weekly magazine. The petition called for
the teaching of modern and contemporary history in Greek schools as well as the
abandonment of the dominant line of arguments in the name conflict (Hatzigeorgiou
et al., 1993). The scholars were part of a network devoted to the promotion of
Greek interests – chiefly in the context of the Macedonian name dispute – and prided
themselves for having organised protest rallies as well as having responded to various
articles of “anti-Greek” content in foreign media. However, they had concluded that
the attempts to inform members of the Greek diaspora, and by extension non-Greeks,
of the historical roots of the Macedonian question and other contemporary problems
Greece was facing, were severely hampered by the lack of basic knowledge of modern
Greek history. The cause of this ignorance, the petitioners argued, was to be found
within the education system of Greece which, allegedly, in secondary education assigned
no time at all to the teaching of Greek history of the 19th and 20th centuries
due to the “politically charged events of this period”, i.e. the Civil War and other
taboos. This had had the effect that Greek citizens, in Greece as well as abroad, were
unable to see contemporary problems in their proper historical setting and thus unable
to find the right arguments in disputes with “those who injure Greece either out
of ignorance […] or out of designs”. Regardless of the eventual outcome of the name
dispute, the diaspora activists argued, the “Macedonian problem” along with other
issues concerning national security would continue to haunt Greece for many years,
and it was therefore of the utmost importance that the young be educated about the
historical causes of the present challenges to the nation. For these reasons, the 111
petitioners proposed the immediate implementation of a history course in secondary
schools, exclusively oriented to historical developments in Greece (and by extension,
the Balkans, Europe and the rest of the world) between 1830 (the year of national
independence) and 1974 (the year of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and the transition
to a democracy in Greece). Special emphasis was to be put on the history and problems
of the borderlands – Macedonia and Thrace – but also of the Pontian Greeks, Cyprus
and the Greek diaspora. This presumably modern approach to history, although highly
ethnocentric in its scope, was also justified through references to a future convergence
of European history educations, predicted to be the outcome of the rapidly growing
EC cooperation. Since history education in Western countries tended to focus on the
20th century, according to the petitioners it would be counterproductive to Greek
national interests not to teach Greek adolescents the modern history of their country.
The petition was a critique of the perceived dominance of classical history in
school curricula, which was pointed out as one of the main reasons for the failure to
successfully communicate the official Greek standpoint in the Macedonian conflict
home and abroad. But it also contained another discernible dimension, which in my
view can be connected to identity politics. The Macedonian conflict coincided in time
with attempts to assert more profound political rights for the diaspora and involve
its organisations as consultant bodies in the Greek state’s policymaking, expressed
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The Past in Peril. Greek History Textbook Controversy and the Macedonian Crisis
in proposals for parliamentary representation (Danforth, 1995:90). The timing of
this process with the outbreak of the diplomatic conflict suggests the relevance of
the diaspora’s cultural and political ambitions in the analysis of the “history war” in
educational debate. Due to late 19th and 20th century migration, the Greek diaspora
has, arguably, no place in a history discourse that only sees to ancient glories, even
though the Hellenistic world that arose from Alexander’s campaigns could be construed
as a predecessor, venerable by the virtue of its distant location in time, to the
contemporary transnational community of Greeks. A reorientation of the discourse on
national history towards the modern era, however, would make it possible to highlight
the narratives of suffering and forced exile around which especially Pontian Greek
identity, in Greece as well as overseas, increasingly tended to be woven toward the
end of the 20th century. 5 As Robin Cohen has argued, all scholars preoccupied with
the study of diasporas “recognize that the victim tradition” – i.e. the notion of victimhood
through exposure to a traumatic historical event as the main cause of a certain
group’s dispersal from an original homeland – “is at the heart of any definition of the
concept” (Cohen, 1996:513) Nevertheless, as Cohen continues, the concept of diaspora
has in contemporary parlance come to encompass a multitude of other meanings
and historical, social and economic circumstances that create diasporas around the
world, for example trade or labour migration (Cohen, 1996:513-17). Regardless of the
varying causes behind the emergence of the present-day Greek diaspora, the notion
of victimhood and the prestige attributed to it provided a powerful incentive for framing
a historical narrative which paid particular attention to more recent events that
Greek expatriates around the world could relate to. It might have been this potential
the petitioners had perceived as in danger of being lost, as long as school curricula
and the argumentation for the official Greek position remained fixed on antiquity.
It seems as if this demand was also met. In the 1999-2000 academic year, a new
textbook on contemporary “national issues” and their historical roots was introduced
in upper secondary school. Entitled Issues of History, it included chapters covering
the Macedonian question, Greek-Albanian and Greek-Turkish relations in the 20th
century, the Cyprus conflict, the Greek diaspora, and Greece and the European Union.
A subsequent edition of this textbook added a new chapter on the history of Pontian
Hellenism, written by a leading advocate of Pontian Greek memory-political demands
(Nystazopoulou-Pelekidou et al., 2002). However, the impact of this particular textbook
in history education should be regarded as limited since it has only appeared
in an optional history course that few pupils bother to choose (Karakatsani, 2002).
Concluding Remarks
Recent research suggests that the controversies seen around the world since 1990
over history education ought to be analysed as “battles in the same war which is being
waged in different parts of the world”, thereby calling for a global approach to
the study of them (Repoussi 2009:75-76). Scholars such as Repoussi (2009), Nash,
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Erik Sjöberg
Crabtree and Dunn (1998), Macintyre and Clark (2004) have identified common
aspects in these “history wars” in different countries. They argue that the conflicts
are rooted in movements for conservative restoration, discernible from the 1980s
onwards, which can be understood as “essentially a backlash movement to the gains of
the sixties”, in the field of education (Repoussi, 2009:76). The principal combatants of
these controversies are thus advocates of nationalism and a restoration of traditional
values in, among other things, history education, on one hand and, on the other, advocates
of what is sometimes referred to as progressive education. As demonstrated
throughout this article, there is much that suggests that the Macedonian conflict can
be analysed in this larger context; however, the approach to the study of these controversies
outlined by these researchers entails the risk of analysing them in terms of
binary oppositions. As Susanne Popp has argued, each case of textbook controversy
or “history war” must be recognised as having many causes, from which follows that
it must be studied in the context of national and international comparison (Popp,
2009:120). In this article, I have briefly addressed some elements of the complexity
of the Greek history wars, with an emphasis on a particular aspect of the war over
the past. This aspect can be described as the needs of various advocates of “national
values” in history education to demarcate themselves in the name of science, reason
and patriotic duty from a nationalism considered too extreme. Embedded in this is
the clash of different “nationalist” agendas, or rather professional and/or identity
political agendas framed in the discourse of nationalism, within the same national
context. These interests have been discussed with reference to Gieryn’s concept of
boundary-work, which I hope will also be of use in a more elaborate study and analysis
of the issues touched upon in this article.
Erik Sjöberg is a doctoral student of History at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and
Religious Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. His research focuses on the use of history, history wars,
memory politics, nationalism and ethno-political mobilisation in a Greek and transnational context.
E-mail: erik.sjoberg@historia.umu.se
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to Greek Roots and Values], Oikonomikos Tachydromos 6/2 1992, 3-7, 84.
Stergiou, D. (1992b) Kάλλιο αργά παρά ποτέ για συναγερμó [Better Late than Never for a Rally],
Oikonomikos Tachydromos 6/2 1992, 6.
Toulomakos, I. (1992) Eγχειρίδια ιστορίας που σπιλώνουν τη Δημοκρατία, καταργούν τους
’Ελληνες και υμνούν τις καταλήψεις [History Textbooks Which Tarnish the Democracy, Suppress
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Voros, F. K. (1994) O ελληνισμóς στο σύγχρονο κóσμο: H ενημέρωση των μαθητών σε κάποια
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The Past in Peril. Greek History Textbook Controversy and the Macedonian Crisis
Endnotes
1
The term “culture war” was applied to the Macedonian name controversy by the anthropologist
Loring Danforth (1995).
2
The impact of the Macedonian conflict on Greek history textbooks produced in the 1990s has
been briefly described by Despina Karakatsani, who nevertheless does not put it in the context
of educational debate nor textbook controversies rooted in domestic political concerns.
Karakatsani, 2002; also see Hamilakis, 2003:50-51.
3
Organismós Ekdóseos Scholikón Vivlíon, the Organisation for the Publication of Schoolbooks;
later Organismós Ekdóseos Didaktikón Vivlíon, the Organisation for the Publication of Textbooks.
4
The study that Michalopoulos referred to is Kofos (1990); originally published in European
History Quarterly 19 (1989).
5
The Pontian Greeks descend from the Black Sea region (Pontos), in present-day northeast Turkey,
from which they were deported in 1923. In the late 1980s an identity-political movement
emerged which called for recognition of the events that led to their expulsion as constituting
genocide, aimed at the extinction of Pontian Greeks. A day of remembrance of this Pontian
genocide was decided upon at the congress of Pontian Greek diaspora organisations in 1992.
This day of commemoration, it was argued by a leading advocate of this cause, would give
the benefit of a common historical memory and ritual that would serve to strengthen a sense
of a Pontian Greek identity in Greece as well as in the diaspora (Charalambidis and Fotiadis,
2003:13).
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108

OPEN
SECTION

110

Education Inquiry
Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2011, pp.111–126
EDU.
INQ.
Beyond the word, within the sign:
Inquiry into pre-school children’s
handmade pictures about schooling
Elisabet Malmström*
Abstract
This article reports reflections on a study addressing the role of a handmade picture in understanding
pre-school children’s ideas about their future school context. How is it possible to handle communication
by pictures dealt with in the framework of a general theory of signs to signify inquiry
The underlying aim of the study and related report are to deepen educational insights into drawing
as communication, co-operation and discovery with meaning. This purpose will contribute to a
deeper understanding of the role of picture breakdown and a semiotic modal-specific qualifying
conversation within integrative pedagogy. Interviews, picture explication as well as the children’s
and teachers’ comments are my empirical resources. The result features the children’s style and
orientation to sign-mindedness, the pictures’ composition, and children’s discovery of the object
with meaning and at the end a considered “figure of thought” from reconstruction the sign with a
semio-cognitive potential.
Keywords: socio-semiotics, mediation, learning, pre-school context
Introduction and Purpose
Attending to the development of a child’s pictorial competence is not often done in
the same way a pre-school cares for linguistic competence. Therefore, exploring the
picture as a “language of action” and a socio-cultural force is an area of interest. Today,
we are not out to learn by heart like in old times, but society has instead led us to use
“texts” to support co-operation and communication for learning, while children need
to learn methods to discover meaning in texts of various kinds, such as handmade
pictures. To understand focused intention, the meanings and messages place greater
demands on both the learner and the teacher.
Children create pictures in everyday life. This article therefore deals with children’s
contextual pictorial representation and the importance of understanding that the
logic of image-making depends on the image’s use. This will yield insights into how
pre-school children through drawing discover the object of schooling with meaning.
My point of departure is a wide conception of the text that deals with thinking
about thinking related to the real world; picture work about schooling and the child’s
material use. A picture is a sign with potential within its expression of its content to
*Department of Teacher Education, Kristianstad University College. E-mail: elisabet.malmstrom@hkr.se
©Author. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.111–126
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Elisabet Malmström
be a resource in meaning-making if it is produced, used and analysed in co-operation.
The reconstruction of meaning can be seen in terms of both inter-subjective and
intra-subjective significance. Today, the science of children’s art inquiry in childhood
education (see, for example, Kress, 2000; Taguchi, 2010) is very interesting
as regards future improvement of the field. My contribution is that I highlight that
Peirce’s semiotic for art in education may allow a realistic recognition where freedom
of thought in relation to the object is “real”, and that it is also a matter of the child’s
constraints. I have used concepts that are themselves, despite the fact that society
is changing and creating new ways to grasp (Liedman, 2006), to be integrated with
mental phenomena.
The picture is seen as a resource and a conveyor of knowledge about any matter in
focus; based on logic, from an understanding of social dynamics on the conventional
and personal level and from an understanding of emotional aesthetics.
In the phenomenological approach to the definition of “picture”, three instances
are involved in pictorial consciousness (Sonesson 1989, 1992); the physical picture
thing, the picture subject (in this study this is schooling) and the picture object (the
depicted as conceived of schooling) is an intentional object. I thus attempt to contribute
to the perspective of educational semiotics and pedagogy and deal with how a
picture made from a question may signify the signified. In my view, when considering
pictorial representation as a sign system it is important to not neglect the differences
from other sign systems such as the written (verbal) one. This will accordingly inspire
my position in pragmatism. Communication is understood in the way Dewey used
it – as co-operation (Biesta, 1995). Thus this article deals with how mediation by sign
action functions with complexity and rhetoric when mediation by a handmade picture
leads to discovery of the schooling (object) with meaning. The main questions are:
How is it possible to understand the positive possibility handmade pictures have in a
pragmatic perspective, in terms of the child’s discovery with meaning, built on semiotic
resources equal epistemological status to the verbal How do children visualise
future schooling with meaning
Background, Theoretical and Methodological Perspective
As suggested by several researchers (Lukens, 1896, p. 97; Vygotsky, 1935/1978,
pp.112-113; Kress, 2000, p. 217), the handmade picture is understood as representation
and communication on a level preceding written language. I define the
verbal aspect as a narrow view of language use, as in Kjørup (2004, p. 15). This
narrow and vertical view of the concept of the text, with the verbal on top, makes
the handmade drawing, on the bottom, invisible by relations that may be asymmetrical,
verbal or medial. A wide view means that the drawing is considered to
be a kind of semiotic resource, but it may still not be used to the fullest extent
possible. Gorlée (1994) embraces the scientific semiotic task of paying attention
to the mutual interactions between the verbal and the non-verbal: “This aspectual
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Beyond the word, within the sign: Inquiry into pre-school
children’s handmade pictures about schooling
differentiation has important consequences for the varieties of the translation
between them” (p. 227).
Piaget introduces his concept of semiotic function that involves representation in
the broad sense identical with thought not only by language but also by means of,
among others, drawing and symbolic play, characterising that which they have in
common as the differentiation which separates the signifier and signified (Piaget, 1951,
1969). With the conceptual pair semiotic function and sign he wanted to highlight
a difference to linguistics conceptual pair symbol and sign. Semiotic function as a
concept is a more practical description of a symbolic and personal activity.
In the 1970s interactive competence in the child’s drawing was focused on by
Wertsch (1979, 1985, 1991) who took his starting point in Vygotsky’s theories of
language, fantasy and creativity in play as a social resource. The child successively
develops a competence for expressing significance on one hand, and knowledge about
by which graphic principles significance can be expressed on the other (Wertsch
1979, 1985, 1991). In this respect, language development is analogous to the process
of complex formation in the mental development of the child, taking account of the
self and the emotional aspects. In his thesis The Psychology of Art, Vygotskij emphasises
that “Art is the social within us, and even if its action is performed by a single
individual, it does not mean that its essence is individual” (Vygotsky, 1924/1971,
p. 249). Here he means that signified features of social norms may be found in the
signifier piece of art, as an aesthetic image of an object. This is in my view as much
an aesthetic position. Vygotsky writes that play represents a synthesis of intellectual,
emotional and volitional aspects and is future-oriented (Vygotskij, 1930/1995). The
zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a concept Vygotsky created (1935/1978) and
it actualises what a teacher must know about the pupil and what a pupil might get to
know through good tuition, to provide the child with courage for an education that
might change what children want (Ventimiglia, 2005).
I agree with Marner and Örtegren (2003) that semiotics may contribute to the
socio-cultural educational perspective. These scholars proclaim a horizontal concept
of the text for the purpose of giving the same epistemological status to verbal and
other semiotic sign-action to focus on the fact that a human being acts in a lifeworld
by means of language but also through other semiotic resources.
As opposed to Saussure´s language – orientedness, which subordinates the nonverbal
to the verbal, Peirce gave equal epistemological status to verbal and nonverbal
signs and sign systems (Gorlée, 1994, pp. 11- 12).
There might be situations in which it is easier for children to think about objects
through colour and lines than to express themselves verbally. Sonesson (2000) says
that Peirce is more generally often taken to say that, given the class of all existing
signs, we can make a subdivision into three sub-classes, containing icons, indices
and symbols. Although it is controversial, Sonesson argues that it of course is easy to
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Elisabet Malmström
show that many signs may have iconic, indexical and symbolic features at the same
time. He interprets that this seems to mean that “at least as applied to signs, iconicity,
indexicality and symbolicity do not separate things, such as signs, but relationships
between things, such as parts of signs. Peirce has said that the perfect sign should
include iconical and indexical as well as symbolic traits” (Sonesson, 2000 p. 6). In
my view, he writes about this in Volume 2:
A Symbol is a law, or regularity of the indefinite future./…/ Consequently, a constituent of
a Symbol may be an Index, and a constituent may be an Icon (CP 2.293 p. 160).
The symbol is for Peirce conventional (CP 2.297 p. 167), but in this study it is also
used in the European tradition, which means that it is personal (Piaget 1969; Sonesson,
1994).
The Dynamic and the Immediate Object
In Peircean semiotics the picture sign mediates between its object and its interpretants
(Bergman, 2004). A picture might have iconic, indexical and symbolic features and
its parts relate to each other, similarly to the parts of a written text.
From Peirce’s point of view, written texts are organic (that is growing) wholes characterized
by dynamic interdependence of, and interaction between, their parts (Gorlée, 1994, p. 232).
According to Peirce, in the sign-object-interpretant triad, the object determines the
sign and is qualified relative to an interpretant (Bergman, 2004, p. 274) as logic, energetic
and emotional (Bergman, 2004; Colapietro, 1989). This means that the pictures
made as an answer to a question deal with the object of the question. The qualities
in pictures characterise the concrete field of human interpretation. It is possible
to interpret Peirce’s basic sign relation in communicative terms (Bergman, 2004).
Bergman uses the modal concept as an immediate object which is how the object is
mediated in sign-action and in this study in the mediation of schooling. The concept
of the dynamic object signifies all possible relations to the object and the process of
learning in communicative relations in the schooling context and might as well be
seen as corresponding to learning about the object and related to the child’s proximal
zone of development. There may be no final interpretant as there is always something
to learn about in relation to any object and which, in this case, more pictures from
these children about schooling would show.
Learning the Self, a Semiotic Process
In socio-cultural mediation children and teachers need guidelines on how to link texts
to a physical reality. This is in fact quite complex and learning the rules for translation
is an essential part of modern education (Säljö, 2000). In Collected Papers 1 , Peirce
writes about a child’s private self when the child in interaction with others is aware
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Beyond the word, within the sign: Inquiry into pre-school
children’s handmade pictures about schooling
of its ignorance and that this feeling is different from ego and calls for action and
learning(CP 5.235).
The drawing in this study is a semiotic resource of expressing the child’s state
of fixation concerning the child’s idea about schooling. Peirce’s texts (CP 5.233, CP
5.374) account for the link between the self and the world. The Self is itself a sign
and a framework for understanding human subjectivity through the child’s semiotic
action and discovery with meaning.
The Study
An empirical study of 6-year-old Swedish children creating a picture imagining their
future schooling was conducted (Ahlner Malmström, 1998) and all 990 children
starting school in a town in the south of Sweden were included. The drawing task
gave them a chance to express themselves in another medium as a resource to add
to verbal language.
The question was to ascertain how a child expressed a feeling for, a relation to and
an insight into his/her future schooling by sign-acting. The task given was framed as
a seemingly dramatic question: Next autumn you are going to start school. What do
you think of when you are given this news Tell me by drawing a picture!
Method
A letter was sent to all pre-schools after a previous phone call asking for participation.
The tasks were given to the children by their pre-school teachers. The 121 teachers involved
were asked to write down comments the children made while making the pictures
and they were asked to write down their own comments about how the drawing activity
had proceeded. Twenty-five interviews with children were made by the author in four
pre-schools and included the children’s explication of a specific picture (see Figure 2)
made by one child in the study. The interviewed children also prepared pictures but their
pictures are not among the 45 (see below). The method of questioning and conversations
about school made the children start thinking. Intentionality involves conscious
or unconscious direction. The explicated meaning was carried out for the 45 pictures.
Chosen by the author after reading the teachers’ comments, they were made by those
children who before starting the drawing activity had said they knew little or nothing
about school and that they could not draw anything. The result was reconstructed
built on the Peircean three modes of being, Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness (CP
3, CP 1). Firstness features the mere impression of schooling, Secondness signifies the
relation between elements that feature the positive possibility of schooling and Thirdness
features sign function, and intentionality; its content and qualified discovery with
meaning to the context of schooling.
A holistic method (Arnheim, 1974; Sjölin, 1993) was used to focus on differences
in the pictures’ content, the signified. Social scaling (Andersson, 1994) as size scaling
marked an expression of social value. Element polarisation (Nordström, 1985)
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Elisabet Malmström
comparing different pictures or comparing elements within a picture was used to
understand how the polarisation method might strengthen or weaken the content and
qualified meaning and how intentionality may well be understood. With a Jungian
analysis (Riedel, 1993) attention was paid to the picture’s symbolic bearing on the
future. All 768 pictures that were sent in were analysed inter-textually (Sjölin, 1993)
whereby a group of pictures was compared from a specific aspect and they were also
used as a frame of reference for the mentioned 45 pictures.
Results
The explication process of the immediate object shows children’s target for the dynamical
object. Four themes of content include children’s intention related to the
object, style and composition, orientation to sign-mindedness, the teachers’ reactions
to the act of drawing and, finally, my reconstruction of the semio-cognitive sign.
The Style and Composition
The children were found to use different approaches that vary from concrete graphics
to a suggestion of a central perspective. This is illustrated by the two axes of the
style (projective-indicating realism) and composition (symmetrical – asymmetrical).
Not many children employ the approach that suggests a central perspective (15 out
of 45). The children construct compositions that vary between symmetry and asymmetry.
Twenty-eight pictures out of the 45 were symmetrical. An asymmetrical or a
symmetrical composition could be combined with both styles. Children differentiate
their signs to varying degrees according to their experience of school as a frame of
reference. Style and composition is related to the conveyed message of school experiences
and in some pictures is expressed in a very concrete manner. Not surprisingly,
the projective style and the symmetric composition were the most common cases.
The children consciously or unconsciously represent their lifeworld founded on
logic, social and emotional. The more school-like the pictures are, the more differentiated
the choice of elements and their relations. An example of differentiation
with reference to school is illustrated by comparing two pictures; in one picture the
dominant element in the picture plane signifies a desk alone and the second signifies
several desks arranged in a row. Both pictures refer to the school, but the second picture
can be seen as more differentiated because it says something more about settled
educational and learning conditions; that you have a peer sitting in front of you and
another behind. If a picture is indistinct according to the social world of schooling,
that is the room outside the picture room, it might still be important emotionally to
the inner room of the self.
Children’s Orientation to Sign-mindedness
The children in the study use the method of polarisation as a means of reflection in
order to make the picture message distinct. They use this method on one hand when
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children’s handmade pictures about schooling
they draw and on the other when they interpret the picture and discover with meaning
(see Figure 2); the yellow and red stand for different kinds of feelings. Yellow is
a happy colour. Red is more of an angry colour. The boy who drew the picture points
at the red human beings and says: “The teacher is teaching and she is angry with me
because I know nothing.”
The interviewed children interpret the picture. Figure 2 and the children who
interpret the mere impression of the picture object say:
One has yellow clothes and one has red.
The children who interpret the relation between the elements that feature the positive
possibility of schooling and also interpret the sign function and qualified discovery
with meaning say:
The boy thinks that it will be fun if he is the yellow one and that it will not be fun if he is
the red one.
He is totally cross, the teacher. The other two are learning. They don’t like it very much. He
(points at the red-coloured one with the sad mouth) does not think that school is fun and
he (points at the yellow-coloured one with the happy mouth) thinks that school is good. It
is the happy one who made the picture.
Yellow is a happy colour and therefore he is happy. Red is a little bit an angry colour, I think.
I think that she is scolding him. It is perhaps him, that he has done something silly. So he
is angry because she is angry with him.
He is yellow because he is happy.
They sit in school and do maths or maybe read their homework.
The children discover lightness and experience it as a happy colour. In the context
the children show how with self-regulation they use the colour to express content
with meaning. The sun is a personal symbol and is used in 160 pictures. The children
experience red colour intensely, and it signifies both positive and negative feelings.
The pictures show that blood is red and might change the skin, and a person’s face
might become red if he/she is angry or ill.
The children mediate and make use of colours and lines in terms of social meaning
in a pre-theoretical way. This is sometimes more obvious: When one child likes
yellow and lilac together, he says “It becomes neat”. The child does not know that the
colours are complementary to each other and strengthen the colour effect of both. In
the same way, red/green and blue/orange are complementary colours. The pictures
show that blue-grey signifies that it is “getting dark” or that the school might be having
a dull time. Thus, the children discover meaning as pre-theoretical knowledge about
colour nuance and about the function of mixing colours. They differentiate a special
expression corresponding to a special feeling of experience and express transitions
from day to night or from happiness to dullness/sadness.
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Elisabet Malmström
A dot can be an eye or on behalf of a deaf child it can signify an ear. The horizontal
outline in this context might signify the pages in a closed book, and vertical lines that
someone is turning over the pages of a book. It also signifies hair that stands up because
the person is happy or angry. Another example of a vertical line is the teacher’s
finger pointing straight up to the blackboard arranged with numbers. In this school
context this strengthened the message of mediation. The human being in the picture
is the teacher! The cross on the human being to the right in Figure 2 combines the
horizontal line and the vertical; all the examples to strengthen the intentional message,
content and qualified meaning. It is bad not to know! Diagonals are used to signify a
desk with a lid you can open. The children understand that diagonals express movement
and not a static state. This function of the diagonal is part of pre-theoretical
knowledge but becomes conscious in sign-action and in reflection upon the sign for
the discovery with meaning.
A depicted hand used for either writing or to turn pages in a book or waving is made
with roundness; fingers like a flower. A round filled-in circle is a hand that causes
trouble. When children are younger the use of roundness is not differentiated, but
in these examples it is used to differentiate moves, feeling and form. A mouth line is
happy or sad and spirals are made to differentiate curly hair from straight.
The children in the study often create play-signs for written language. They use
and draw eight different functional methods; signs in books, on the blackboard or in
speech bubbles. One method is used when the child for example combines figures and
letters and another method is a zigzag line. One child could use several conventional
ways for conveying the idea of writing, for example, a proposition with subject and
predicate, its name or nonsense signs. By using the same method twice or more the
child might indicate a learning method.
The children in the study often create play-signs for mathematical language. They
use three methods; systems of numbers on the blackboard, single numbers on the
blackboard or numbers that have in some way a guiding function, such as the figure
on the door.
Twenty-three of all children use the element of a clock. The clock in the drawings
does not look like a modern one, which could be interpreted more as a symbol of starting
school, in which more attention must be given to time limits. The significations
differ depending on the placement of the clock; as depicted on the school building for
all people to look at, or depicted on the wall in the classroom, guiding the children
who are studying. People pay attention to time in our culture.
Children know at this age in general that an element which is far away in reality
should be pictured as small in size. A profile indicates that a person has turned around
to talk with another person. A distance between elements of grass and a human being
suggests that a person is jumping up in the air and what is hiding the scene is in front
of it. Children have an intuitive feeling for central perspective. What you cannot see
in the picture still exists.
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children’s handmade pictures about schooling
The Teachers’ Reactions to the Act of Drawing
The teachers made observations about the children’s comments and thoughts during
the process of picture-making. The focus of the comments represented a wide variation.
Confronted with the children’s pictures, the teachers can gain new knowledge
on which to reflect, as expressed in the following words:
Incredible that they could be thinking about so many different things! They even reflect on
gender!
Remarkable what a child can gather from instruction!
To me it has been very interesting because this has made me understand a lot about development.
A general impression is that the children have a very blurred impression of schooling.
It is surprising that the children do not seem to think much about school.
The teachers comment on the study as follows: 52 teachers (43%) think that the drawing
activity has advantages, 52 teachers (43%) think that the drawing activity has advantages
and drawbacks and 17 (14 %) think that the drawing activity has drawbacks.
Has advantages. The teachers find the inquiry interesting. They like it and will repeat
it with new children. The children find it very exciting and eagerly want to start drawing
at once. The teachers seem surprised and happy about really seeing the children’s
thoughts in the pictures. The children show approval of the opportunity to choose
among different colours and materials. They show a strong interest in discussing
the subject which is sometimes more important than the picture they draw. The act
releases their thoughts! The children are very interested and exert themselves to the
utmost. They really focus on the subject. They seem to like the idea of starting school!
The exercise inquiry is very positive; “The children are excited and I myself think it
was interesting and fun!”
Has advantages and drawbacks. The teachers think that most of the children are quite
motivated, and that the children talk much a lot their drawings if they have the opportunity
to do so. But some children do not understand the instructions and have some
difficulty in thinking further on and “they have to sit there thinking for a long time”.
Has drawbacks. The teachers believe that most of the children think it is difficult. The
instruction may be too abstract or the children may not have started to think about
school yet. Their spontaneity and engagement in drawing faded away; “The children
looked very thoughtful”.
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Elisabet Malmström
Semio-cognitive reconstruction of the sign
The tuition of children’s orientation to sign-mindedness calls for an explication process
with answers to many questions about the outer context, the pictorial and the inner
rooms of the mind and self. Using the pragmatic method the reconstruction matrix
seen in Figure 1 is a “figure of thought” that frames the semio-cognitive meaning
potential in mediation. The matrix is a combination of the parts in the Peircean sign
triad (sign-object-interpretant); the sign (the symbol is used in both the conventional
Peircean meaning and in the European tradition of personal meaning) and the interpretant
(logic, energetic, emotional). The matrix models and supports the general
purpose of pointing at possible connections to the object, between coding and decoding
in qualified modal conversation. The mediation of schooling in the picture (see
Figure 2) made by one of the children in the study connects sign - action and mind.
The meaning potential is the tension between the image’s character levels, the child’s
lifeworld and the teachers’ subject-specific discourse with the child.
Mediation Picture Sign: expression/content (1-9)
Modes of being
Meaning(1-9) Firstness Secondness Thirdness
Icon Index Symbol
Interpretant: See Inquire Known
Firstness
Logic 1 4 7
Secondness
Energetic 2 5 8 intersubjectivity
Thirdness
Emotional 3 6 9 intrasubjectivity
Proximal
Co-operation
with Meaning
Inwardness/the Self/Meaning potential
Figure 1. Matrix of mediation: The sign idea and base (represented by the cells) connect
to the outer and inner worlds of representation. The orientation to sign-mindedness follows
the “process of explication” 1-9, the dialogue about what is seen, what is possible to
inquire and what is known:
Based on logic 1, 4, 7 - Explication from what is possible from seeing.
From an understanding of social dynamics on the conventional and personal level 2, 5, 8 -
Explication from what is possible to inquire.
From an understanding of emotional aesthetics 3, 6, 9 - Explication from what is possible
knowledge about the culture and intra-personal.
The example of the drawing (see Figure 2) signifies human beings, the teacher’s and the
pupils’ desks, the sun, the lamp, a cross and the walls and the ceiling/roof of a room/
house and an aerial. The human beings are painted in red and yellow (1). The graphic
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Beyond the word, within the sign: Inquiry into pre-school
children’s handmade pictures about schooling
style is a suggestion of a central perspective and a symmetrical composition. The child
seems to have the ability to draw and has a confidence in drawing, using fantasy in
lines and colours (2). An explication of a preliminary content might be that the child
has contradictory feelings; which one can see, for example, from the respectively lined
out sad/angry and happy mouths (3). The relation between the elements is connected
by means of the school work inside the school building and a preliminary explicated
unpleasant meaning pertaining to it (4). The dominating elements are the letters in
the balloon and the teacher’s and the pupils’ desks. The child drew himself in red, to
the right; “The teacher is angry with me because I know nothing” (5). The composition
of elements, notably the polarisation of colours and lines, signifies that the child
has contradictory feelings regarding schooling (6). The letters could be discovered
with meaning, a symbol that signifies learning to write or read. The cross on the red
human being to the right might signify the badness of not knowing (7). But the child
might even think that schooling will be fun, as might be suggested by the yellow triad
elements corresponding to the yellow sun, the yellow shine from the lamp and the yellow
happy human being where the human being mediates between the sun’s world of
natural energy and the technique world of electrical energy (8). The child is occupied
with how he could value schooling with meaning. He polarises with meaning in both
positive and negative thinking. The picture is a good but not an unusual example of
distinct polarisation within lines, colours and symbol use. The child will hopefully
acquire the opportunity to experience what good schooling is, as symbolised through
the yellow triad of the three icons, the human figure, the lamp and the sun. The triad
involves conscious or non-conscious directedness intended for the future (9).
Discussion
The question makes the children start thinking (Ahlner Malmström, 1998). The inquiry
starts the process of discovery with meaning. The questioning task involving
the school subject is a problem-solving inquiry, and the teachers help the children
interpret the question of inquiry. Teachers often hear children say they cannot draw
or they do not know what to do or how to do it. But 79% of the children in the study
realise their ideas or find out thinking during the process of drawing. Often the interpretation
during drawing time and process changes the intentionality and content
with meaning (Freeman 1972, 1996). The world of schooling is dynamic and children
sometimes start their sign-action in a very confused way. The child discovers the object
with meaning during the process of drawing. In other words, the dynamic object
is made immediate to the child during the activity of inquiry, including co-operation
with peers and the teacher (Bergman, 2004). The children are realising a sign-acting
activity and the problem caused them to think, struggle and reflect (Peirce, CP 5; Säljö
2000). The 45 pictures in this study were selected because they were made by children
who felt they were ignorant about schooling and about drawing. Their pictures show
what the future school might mean to them.
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Elisabet Malmström
Combining the verbal and the pictorial, the children represent their ideas of schooling
with more or less differentiation. The picture, considered as part of an integrative
pedagogical conversation, transforms the child to new thinking and learning. The
children start to reflect on their thinking about future school by means of the picture
as a conveyor of knowledge about schooling. To paint the sun gives life wings and
protects play and happiness. It is through what the sun symbol signifies that the self
takes form (Brodin, 1982), related to the European tradition of personal meaning.
Pertaining to Peirce, the yellow triad including the sun is thirdness and representational
thought. With more or less approximate certainty it denotes the object (Hoopes,
1991) of schooling. The result shows that children make use of colours and lines in
terms of social meaning in a pre-theoretical way (Habermas, 1990). Horizontal and
vertical lines are not easy to draw (Arnheim, 1974), but children give them high
priority so as to make a differentiation between different meanings. I have come to
the conclusion that children at this age use pictures as organic wholes when special
dominant elements, colours and lines are used to strengthen messages and to discover
the object of schooling with meaning. Children tap into an intuitive feeling to
combine composition, complementary colours and different hardnesses and blacknesses
of line. They differentiate lines and colours in an expressive way. Much of the
child’s expression is made in an intuitive intention and much is made in a focused
intention. One dominant element is more often chosen intentionally to express the
preliminary idea. Often the interpretation during drawing time and process changes
the intentionality and content with meaning. Children often interpret with meaning
what they have expressed after they have finished their pictures and start to reflect
upon them; the picture suggests the thought: “Here I am jumping high. You can see
that the grass is far underneath.”
The interpretation stemming from the children’s drawing activities deepens insights
into how drawing may constitute a way to convey spontaneous categorisations (Sonesson,
1992; Kress, 2000) about future schooling. The study gives an insight into the
way in which drawing activity communicates dominant elements, personal and social
values as well as learning strategies on a meta-cognitive level. To discover meaning
in different texts means to form an identity (Säljö, 2000). But in contrast with the
theory of semiotics, Säljö subordinates the picture sign to the verbal sign. His opinion
is that “a picture theory of the meaning of linguistic expression is totally inadequate”
(p. 84). My opinion is that he does not treat the picture from its socio-semiotic complexity
or its rhetoric resources. Children’s pictures help children understand what
they and other children immediately think about schooling in different aspects, as
made aware of the dynamic object.
From the framework of a general theory of signs I have highlighted the wide
picture-text through children’s pictures of schooling and a considered reconstruction
of the sign, a figure of thought signifying the picture sign from a semi-cognitive
potential. The matrix figure of thought frames the pictorial with meaning in relation
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Beyond the word, within the sign: Inquiry into pre-school
children’s handmade pictures about schooling
to theme, mind and the self in a socio-cognitive and sign-specific aesthetic way when
it comes to pedagogy and rhetoric. It is an aid to better guide learning with attention
to aesthetics and the three human worlds, the logic objective world of facts, the energetic
dynamic social world and the emotional expressive world. It could be helpful
in subject-specific qualifying conversation about any sign-act-thought in pre-school
(picture, sculpture, piece of music) and in analysing developmental pictorial style and
self processes (Malmström, 2006, 2007), tutorial processes and modal competence.
The principal aim of this article has been to deepen insights into drawing as communication
by focusing on the picture sign (signifier/signified) in a school context
and to better understand how drawings made by children relate to their denotations
and aesthetically connote personal, social and aesthetic values. Thus it will hopefully
serve to illuminate the role of picture analysis and modal conversation about handdrawn
pictures in Art education. Admittedly, these questions have not been pursued
to their limits, which would hardly be feasible within the confines of a single study.
Nonetheless, I think that the approach to semiotic mediation by means of the
picture sign as well as the dynamic and the immediate object constitute valuable
“steps” on the way to appreciating the possibilities of the socio-semiotic project within
education including a future aim beyond formalism. Artistic formalism is often the
aim today and that is why the cognitive and the socio-cultural perspectives have to
co-operate. Other important insights stemming from this article concern the child’s
aesthetic learning process as a conveyor of knowledge and the stress on the relevance
of the teacher’s reactions and tutorial competence such as those built on pragmatism,
beyond formalism. Further studies are needed on subjects such as: How do teachers
act in response to the different levels of explication How may proximal communication
between children, children’s pictures and teachers develop to stay more stable
It is important to inquire into discourses of how qualifying conversations are built
on; freedom of participation and acknowledgement by sign-acting, communication
and openness to all possible perspectives, as well as awareness of the critical power
of the verbal communication and the “positive possibility” inherent in the horizontal
subject-specific view on the concept of text.
In the modern world pictures in all different forms have become significant factors
in everyday life. My impression is that if children’s pictures are given a serious
part to play in contemporary education when it comes to rhetoric, aesthetics would
hopefully not then be taken for granted.
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Elisabet Malmström
Figure 2. The boy who drew the picture points at the red humans and says “The teacher
is teaching and she is angry with me because I know nothing.”
Elisabet Malmström holds a PhD in Education and works as a Senior Lecturer of Education at the
Department of Teacher Education, Kristianstad University in Sweden. Her research area is education
with a focus on aesthetics and image.
E-mail: elisabet.malmstrom@hkr.se
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children’s handmade pictures about schooling
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Endnotes
1
The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce is quoted as CP, followed by the volume and
paragraph number.
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Education Inquiry
Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2011, pp.127–139
EDU.
INQ.
Is individual mentoring
the only answer
Ingrid Helleve* & Marit Ulvik**
Abstract
Unlike many other countries, Norway has no induction programme or reduction of teaching load
for newly qualified teachers. However, an interesting model has been developed through the “New
Teachers in Norway” project. This project involves teacher education institutions and schools, novice
and experienced teachers as well as teacher educators in the learning process. Future enterprises
that are currently discussed in a Parliamentary Proposition have an individual focus. The only suggestion
is that all new teachers should have a mentor. The aim of this paper is to investigate how
the needs of novice teachers correspond to the aims of the national project and the future plans of
Norwegian policymakers.
Keywords: novice teachers, mentors, reflective dialogues, networks, learning communities
Introduction
Norway is at a crossroads regarding its future policy for newly qualified teachers. The
question of how new teachers should be introduced to teaching has been discussed in
the Norwegian Parliament several times (NOU 1996; MER 1996; Government report,
2003). Unlike many other countries within the OECD (OECD, 2005), Norwegian
policy documents have concluded that there is no need for an induction year or any
kind of reduction of educational duties in the first year in the profession. The debate
concerning the situation of newly qualified teachers in Norway has again been raised
in Parliamentary Proposition 11, 2008–2009 (MER, 2008). So far, newly qualified
teachers in Norway have been offered participation in a national project New Teachers
in Norway organised in networks between schools and teacher education institutions.
This is set to be changed. The only initiative mentioned in the Parliamentary
Proposition is individual mentoring within the school. Through the national project
newly qualified teachers have been offered to participate in learning communities
outside their own school together with mentors and teacher educators. This paper
aims to investigate how novice teachers who participate in the national project New
Teachers in Norway experience their first year as teachers, and how their needs correspond
to the support they are offered through the national project, and the future
plans announced in Parliamentary Proposition 11, 2008–2009 (MER, 2008).
* Department of teacher Education, University of Bergen, Norway. E-mail: Ingrid.helleve@iuh.uib.no
** Department of Teacher Education, University of Bergen, Norway. E-mail: marit.ulvik@iuh.uib.no
©Author. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.127–139
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Ingrid Helleve & Marit Ulvik
Background
As an alternative to induction, after 2003 voluntary mentorship was initiated through
a national project called New Teachers in Norway (Government Report, 2003). Each
school is supposed to appoint a local mentor to the novice. It is up to the local school to
decide how the mentoring is formally organised. Mentors and newly qualified teachers
meet regularly in the local network meetings administered by the teacher education
institution. These meetings are arranged at different schools each time. Different
models connected to network meetings and mentoring are examined. Mentors and
novice teachers are, for example, assembled in separate, small peer groups. The participants
bring their own experiences into the group and through supervision based
on reflection novice teachers as well as experienced mentors and teacher educators
are supposed to learn from each other.
The national project was evaluated by the research institution SINTEF (Dahl et al.
2006). The New Teachers in Norway project aims to support new teachers’ professional
development, contribute to increased knowledge about mentoring and improve
teacher education (Bjerkholt & Hedegaard, 2008). The main conclusions from the
evaluation report are that network meetings across schools, and local mentorship,
are initiatives that should be further developed. The report warns against too much
emphasis on the individual teacher seceding from the school community. Even if the
results are limited, the evaluation shows that the project contributes to the development
of teacher education.
Yet a serious problem is that participation in the project is voluntary for schools.
Another problem is that participation in the project comes in addition to full-time
teaching. This means that few schools in Norway are engaged. In the 2005–2006
period, only 5% of newly qualified teachers participated in the project. The response
rate to SINTEF’s evaluation report was 60%. The report claims that novice teachers
in upper secondary schools were less content than other teachers, although the
reasons for that have not yet been discussed. The missing discussion combined with
the fact that only 20% of the teachers and 4% of the mentors who responded to the
SINTEF report represented upper secondary schools means there is a strong need
for research concerning the current situation of newly qualified teachers in upper
secondary schools in Norway.
Why mentoring
Many countries have long traditions of formalised mentoring of newly qualified
teachers but, according to Langdon (2007), the aim and purpose of mentoring seems
to differ from country to country. Supported by the OECD report Teachers Matter
(2005), he shows that the political justifications seem to go in two different directions.
The aim of the first one is to focus on adjustment. The novice teacher is a person who
is helpless and needs support in order to become like the others. Based on the study
of 25 countries he claims that politicians in these countries want to fix problems,
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Is individual mentoring the only answer
increase recruitment and avoid drop-outs from the profession. The main task of the
mentor is to give advice to the newcomer. The other approach is built on the newly
qualified teachers’ personal abilities and possibilities for contribution to the school
as a learning community. The purpose of mentoring is to encourage newcomers in
the direction of self-assessment and reflection in collaboration with other teachers.
According to Langdon, England is an example of the first approach, and New Zealand
is an example of the second one.
Maynayard & Furlong (1993) refer to three different mentoring models called the
apprentice model, the competence model and the reflection model. The apprentice
model looks upon the mentor as a model, the competence model refers to standards,
while the reflection model sees the mentor as a critical friend supporting the new
teacher in his or her learning process.
According to Jones (2006), the English induction programme is based on the two
first models, and the notion that new teachers need defined demands and systematic
evaluation throughout their first year. The consequences are that supervision is
characterised by practical advice which completely broadens the gap between theory
and practice. On the contrary, Jones claims that mentors should be encouraged to
investigate their own practice in contrast to others’ in order to engage in the local as
well as global debate on knowledge.
Kelley (2006) claims that engagement in reflective processes is what counts most for
the newly qualified teachers’ further professional development. While the apprentice
and competence models tend to preserve the existing culture inside the school, the
reflection model is basic for a learning school community.
Teaching as a profession is, by nature, an ongoing learning process. Accordingly,
schools and teacher education institutions should be regarded as communities of
learners. The term community of practice is often used to describe workplaces (Lave
& Wenger 1991; Wenger 1998, 2000). A distinction can be made between a community
of practice and a community of learners (Helleve, 2009). In a community of practice,
the novice teacher should be understood as a peripheral participator. Beginning and
experienced teachers work together in schools, which is how the newcomer becomes
an expert. What it means to be an expert differs according to the profession of the
community; whether a person chooses to be a carpenter, nurse or a teacher, he or she
will learn what is considered professional practice within that profession. Practice in
a learning community is learning. A community of learners is centred on the activity
of learning (Brown 1994; Brown & Campignone, 1994; Darling 2001; Helleve &
Krumsvik, 2009; Matusov, 2001; Sumison & Paterson 2004; Wubbels, 2007). This
view of learning means that mentoring cannot be regarded as an individual process
between two people. From this perspective, a school or a teacher education institution
is a learning community where continuing learning is the main aim of all participants,
teachers and teacher educators as well as students. In the last few years, there has also
been increasing attention to teacher educators’ professional development (Loughran,
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Ingrid Helleve & Marit Ulvik
2006; Murray & Male, 2005). An interesting aspect of the Norwegian project New
Teachers in Norway is that it involves experienced teachers and teacher educators as
well as novice teachers in the learning process. This study is limited to investigating
novice teachers’ needs.
Context
The research was conducted by two teacher educators at the University of Bergen.
As a subgroup of the national project New Teachers in Norway, the local project
described in this study was conducted in the Bergen area and is called New Teachers
in Hordaland.
The participating novices were teaching different academic and vocational subjects
in secondary school. All had recently completed a one-year postgraduate teacher education
programme (PGCE). As part of the project, the new teachers were given a local
mentor in the school and met in a network with other new teachers about four times
per term for supervision and peer learning. Both the mentor and network meetings
were in addition to their ordinary jobs. Consequently, participation lacked continuity.
It should be noted that these informants are likely to represent a special group
of newly qualified teachers. They succeeded in finding employment despite strong
competition from other candidates, and they were regarded by the school management
as very competent candidates. They were all committed teachers who regarded
teaching as their primary choice of profession. Some of them had come into teaching
as a career change.
Nine schools participated in the network, and the informants were chosen from
three different schools that represented three kinds of upper secondary schools. One
was a very old and traditional school that taught academic courses only, whereas
the other two schools, one well-established, and one new, both offered academic as
well as vocational subjects. Five of the informants were chosen from the established
school, two from the traditional school and two from the new school. Only one of the
interviewees was male. The numbers and gender distribution correspond with the
numbers and gender distribution of the teaching staff in the three schools.
Methodology and analysis
The research instrument was a semi-structured interview conducted with each of the
nine novices at the end of the school year. The questions were designed to address
issues not sufficiently answered in Norwegian and European reports about how it
is to be a new teacher in upper secondary school and what kind of support teachers
need (Dahl et al. 2006; OECD 2005). The current study is part of a more extensive
research project of novice teachers, which includes a quantitative questionnaire. In the
interviews relevant to this study, selected questions from the quantitative questionnaire
were asked and followed by probing questions to gain a deeper understanding
of various aspects of how newly qualified teachers feel about their work. The teachers
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Is individual mentoring the only answer
were asked about which challenges they faced, how they handled those challenges
and what kind of support they received and felt they needed. The interviewer was
known to the interviewees as one of the teacher educators involved with the project
New Teachers in Norway. Each interview was recorded and lasted about 45 minutes.
The interviews were transcribed and Nvivo software was used for the analysis. The
responses were analysed separately for each question, and the two researchers looked
for categories within the responses to each question. To ensure the reliability of the
findings, the researchers separately categorised positive as well as negative experiences
and aspects. The presented categories are illustrated by selective quotes that emerged
through a moderation process involving the two researchers. In order to increase the
internal validity of the study, Kvale’s seven stages of analysis were used to examine
the interviews (Kvale, 2001). The researchers wrote a meaning condensation and the
meanings expressed by the interviewees into shorter formulations. Through meaning
categorisation the interviews were coded into categories. In order to answer the
research questions, the following presented categories were chosen:
• What kind of challenges do they meet as newly qualified teachers
• What kind of support do they need
• Where do they find it
Findings
What kind of challenges do they meet
This group of teachers has a solid professional background in the subjects they
teach. However, there are many problems that relate to imparting knowledge to the
pupils. Teachers are supposed to make weekly and monthly plans, yet they find that
preparing for one lesson is difficult enough because they lack the necessary overview.
Other challenges connected to subjects are assessment and exams. As student teachers,
they may have participated in assessment work in a practicum, but to be alone
with the responsibility is a different and much more difficult situation. Experienced
teachers have formal rules for how to examine pupils. For novice teachers, examination
as well as assessment can be a serious and scary experience.
When I understood that my pupils were supposed to have an oral exam, there was no one
to help me.
I had to ask and do research and find out everything myself. And I made a couple of mistakes,
like not knowing the rules. (7)
The newly qualified teachers in upper secondary school seem to be least prepared for
the problems connected to human relations, adapted teaching and class management.
One teacher says he has learned that being a teacher means setting limits for others.
This includes setting limits for pupils, classes and colleagues, and for leaders, about
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Ingrid Helleve & Marit Ulvik
how much extra work he will do (2). The expanded use of computers in Norwegian
schools has increased the need to set limits. Teachers may be contacted by pupils
on Friday evenings or Saturday mornings and blame themselves for answering and
then feel they are never free from work (6). Newly qualified teachers may be given
the worst classes. One teacher claimed that the class he is teaching is the worst ever
seen in his school.
One pupil is running around playing a flute, carrying his desk over his head. He has undressed
and is only wearing his pants. You would not believe it was true. (4)
Even if this is an extreme situation, a main challenge for the teachers is that they
become engaged in the huge problems many pupils have to cope with. For example,
they may have to handle psychiatric problems, and questions concerning families who
are supposed to stay in Norway on humanitarian grounds, and yet still have to leave.
These problems are not easily left behind when the newly qualified teacher leaves
school at the end of the day. One teacher said the problems she experiences with her
pupils occupy her mind all the time.
I thought the problems would be about teaching my subject. But that has caused me the
least challenges. It is the human relations. (5)
One characteristic is the wide range of challenges and problems, from small details to
great existential questions the teachers are faced with. The novice teachers feel they
lack control, an overview and information connected to a strong feeling of always
being short of time.
Support: What do they need and where do they find it
The newly qualified teachers certainly need support, but at the same time they also
contribute positively to the school community. Two of the newly qualified teachers
were supposed to teach a subject that had never been taught before. Planning and
preparing for a new subject is a huge task even for an experienced teacher. In this
case, there was no opportunity to seek support within the school community.
And that is a challenge because it has never been done before. It is a new curriculum, and a
new field; a subject that has never been taught in school before. (3)
To plan and initiate a new subject is apparently looked upon as a great challenge, but
also as an honour. Many newly qualified teachers are competent concerning educational
technology. One of them was given responsibility as the “super manager” of
the learning management system (LMS) for the whole school.
The newcomer is new until the first year is finished. The need for information is to
know who is responsible for what, and who he or she should contact. This includes
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Is individual mentoring the only answer
colleagues as well as institutions outside the school, such as those responsible for
pupils with special needs. The information should be structured and given at fixed
times, according to the novice teachers.
The lack of information and an overview are connected to the lack of control the
novice teachers experience. There should be a place to drop problems and a place
for reflection together with experienced teachers and peers. Another concern is that
teachers who teach the same class might not necessarily teach the same subjects.
Long-term plans, assessment and examination should be discussed with experienced
teachers within the same subject field, according to the new teachers. One teacher
mentioned that participating in a team with fixed meetings was a great support.
I feel that it is important to share plans and discuss with colleagues who are teaching the
same subject, particularly concerning midterm tests and assessment. And perhaps to do the
same tests (8)… but if it is planned you could have the same test and you could get feedback
from colleagues on the way you did the assessment. (6)
How to find support was the greatest concern for the novice teachers. They lacked
information, something which is an administrative challenge for the school. The new
teachers want the information to be given regularly throughout the year. Routines
and events differ during a school year.
Because there are thousands of questions, you have so many questions when you start. And
I dare to ask, but I know many others who don’t. And they are scared and afraid and wonder
“Oh, what am I going to do” In the beginning there should be some sort of course in school.
Every week there should be some theme you should know about. But perhaps it is difficult
for the school to remember what you don’t know when you start as a new teacher (7)
The opportunity to observe experienced teachers in their classrooms and to learn from
their practice is also a strong concern. One of the teachers said that she was standing
close to her experienced colleague, thinking.
Oh, Lord if I could take a look into your plan books. I would enjoy that so much. And there
are many other teachers I would like to ask. (9)
The newcomer seeks to learn from the experienced teachers’ experiences. Their
concern for their pupils might be difficult for one person to help with. When dealing
with bad behaviour, and inclusive and adapted education, they want to talk to other
teachers who know the same pupils. The teacher who was given the “worst class in
school ever seen” said this about his mentor:
No, first of all he asks me how I am doing. He cares. He contacts me. Okay, we know you
have a tough situation. Is there anything we can do (4)
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Ingrid Helleve & Marit Ulvik
The mentor is not able to find any solutions. What counts is that he or she cares for and
understands the newcomer. As well as teamwork regarding different subjects, there
should be an appointed mentor. The novice teachers want a person who is available
and who they can contact without feeling they are a nuisance.
Yes, that you are a bothersome person when you come to ask. What is it again That you
can dare to ask and know that this person actually has it as part of the job. That means that
hopefully this is something that this person finds interesting. You understand very soon if
this person has a positive attitude. (9)
To meet other newly qualified teachers was said to be very important. Through the
network meetings they can unburden themselves of problems and realise that other
newly qualified teachers have the same or even worse problems.
It is so important. It has often been like my life buoy … There is some kind of security in the
fact that others also think that it is too much and feel uncertain of how to handle the situation.
There is this feeling of community; that others are in the same boat. (1)
Newly qualified teachers from other schools meet other needs that experienced colleagues
at the same school are unable to. The opportunity to see that others have to
cope with the same problems is one dimension. The connection to teacher education
through lectures in the network meetings is another. The lecture themes are the same
as in initial teacher education, for example, class management and assessment. What
is striking is that these themes seem to have more relevance when the teachers can
relate them to their own experiences in the classroom. Another advantage is having
time for reflection with peers and teacher educators.
Because I notice that in the busy working day, when I say that I am not able to be the teacher
I want to be, I still know that I do some of the things. I think I should have read my own
answers to the examination because I had so many important thoughts. (9)
A striking feature is that the initiatives they experience as useful are also looked upon
as a burden. The reason is that mentorship and participation in the local network
comes on top of their ordinary workload. Some teachers who struggle with class
management argue that they resist leaving their classes and even drop the network
meetings for the same reason. This happened to the teacher with “the worst class ever
seen.” Paradoxically, this means that novice teachers, who perhaps need coaching
and collective reflection most of all, might be left out.
The newly qualified teachers seem to be asking for a wide range of enterprises and
a variety of people to relate to. The demand for information and overview is connected
to the lack of control they experience. There should be a place to take problems and
a place for reflection with experienced teachers and peers. They want to have feedback
on what they are doing and to be seen by the leadership, to be praised when
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Is individual mentoring the only answer
they deserve it and to know when something is wrong. They want the opportunity to
observe experienced teachers in their classrooms and to learn from their practices,
combined with the opportunity to listen to lectures on theoretical topics. As well
as intermittent contact with experienced teachers, there should be the opportunity
for fixed appointments as well as informal mentoring whenever needed. The novice
teachers want mentors with a wide variety of qualities. They appreciate the chance
to meet teachers from other schools and teacher education at the network meetings.
The most important, according to the newcomers, is having time to collaborate with
others, and to be able to do this without having a guilty conscience. They need support,
but they also contribute to school development with new knowledge. They need
a mentor, although their needs cannot possibly be met by one single mentor.
Discussion
This section will discuss the challenges and need for support the novice teachers
reported in this study and how these needs correspond to the aims of the national
project and the future plans in Norway. Newly qualified teachers need some kind of
support. This fact is thoroughly proved by international research (Aschinstein, 2006;
Flores & Day, 2007; Korthagen et al. 2006; Smethem, 2007). This study shows,
however, that newly qualified teachers also add something new to the community
(Ulvik et al. 2009). This corresponds to findings from other studies showing that
not only do newly qualified teachers look upon themselves as resources, but they are
also looked upon as important contributors by the rest of the community (Ulvik &
Langorgen, 2008). This indicates that being a novice teacher does not mean you are
disabled and helpless. The novice teacher is simply at a certain stage of professional
development (Day & Gu, 2007).
Apparently, the need for support is on two different levels; the newcomers need
information and they need to discuss and reflect upon experiences that probably have
no correct answer. The lack of routines for information and overviews are a concern
of the teachers in this study. Schools are complex institutions. Regular information
given throughout the first year seems to be important. An appointed mentor makes
it acceptable to ask silly questions, which is important. This means that novices need
an appointed mentor to contact as daily support when they lack overview and information.
But this is not enough. The novice teachers indicate they need to collaborate
with colleagues for different reasons, including challenges related to their subject
areas and human relations. The challenges the novice teachers are concerned with
seem to affect experienced teachers as well, such as assessment, and pupils with serious
problems. There are different solutions and probably no correct answers. Flores
& Day (2006) claim that if newly qualified teachers encounter a situation that is too
demanding they are likely to become less motivated and to react traditionally. The
best kind of support for both newly qualified and experienced teachers seems to be
to work in a learning community that has a sharing culture (Wang et al. 2008).
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Ingrid Helleve & Marit Ulvik
Other important enterprises for the newcomers are the network meetings for newly
qualified teachers and their mentors. The meetings are held outside their own school
community. They visit other schools, and meet peers and mentors from other schools,
and teacher education representatives. They are offered a place for reflective collaborative
dialogue outside the ordinary workplace. This arena offers a dimension
for learning they could not possibly acquire in their own school. The opportunity to
collaborate with the teacher education institution is not what the novices mention first.
However, some of them are concerned with the theoretical aspects of class management
and assessment. The opportunities the network meetings create for reflection
are also present in the newly qualified teachers’ descriptions of what is important
to them. Summing up, what newly qualified teachers seem to need is a mentor, but
also a wide range of opportunities to discuss and reflect with experienced colleagues,
peers inside and outside their own school as well as teacher education institutions.
The challenges the novice teachers face seem to affect experienced teachers as well.
This means that the possibilities for reflection and learning that mentors are given
through the network meetings in the New Teachers in Norway project are a potential
learning area not only for the novice teacher, but also for the mentor, the teacher
educators and the school as a learning community. If the focus is on the community
rather than the individual learner, teacher education institutions as well as schools
should be regarded as learning communities (Helleve, 2009).
The aims of the national project New Teachers in Norway are to contribute to
the professional development of newly qualified teachers, increase the knowledge
of mentoring and improve teacher education. According to this local project at the
University of Bergen, newly qualified teachers meet peers, mentors from other schools
and teacher educators. The meetings are held at different schools each time. Through
the network meetings, experienced and novice teachers meet teacher educators. The
possibility of network meetings among teacher educators, experienced and newly
qualified teachers opens reflective dialogue across communities. An issue that often
emerges in the discussion concerning teaching and teacher education is the gap between
research and practice. Internationally, there seems to be a growing awareness
that bringing researchers and practitioners together seems to be a way of bridging
this gap (Korthagen, 2007). Across schools and teacher education, experienced and
newly qualified teachers and teacher educators meet in order to learn from each
other. According to the SINTEF report (Dahl et al. 2006), the model based on collaboration
between teacher education and schools is unusual in Europe. The report
warns against future initiatives with too much emphasis on the individual teacher.
Referring to Maynyard and Furlong’s three models for mentoring, teachers who are
participating in the New Teachers in Norway project have been offered the reflection
model. What about the future
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Is individual mentoring the only answer
Implications
Are Norwegian politicians moving in the direction of the apprentice and competence
model, or in the direction of the reflection model Mentoring is the only concrete
suggestion in Parliamentary Proposition 11, 2008–2009 (MER, 2008). Whether
the time for mentoring is supposed to come on top of a full-time teaching workload
for novice teachers and mentors has not yet been discussed. Collaboration between
teacher education institutions and schools is positively referred to in the Proposition,
but is not mentioned as an enterprise that will be developed further. According to
the OECD report (OECD, 2005), the aim or philosophy underpinning the induction
programme for newly qualified teachers influences the kind of programmes they will
choose. The suggestions made in the Parliamentary Proposition may indicate that
Norway is moving away from the induction model that is based on collaboration
between schools and teacher education institutions known as learning communities.
On the contrary, future plans seem to be based on an individual perspective
on mentoring. Teachers and teacher educators are involved in an ongoing learning
process. Being a novice teacher is a critical part of this learning process. There is a
strong need for enough time to become informed and to participate in collaboration
with colleagues through an induction period. Learning is contextualised and teacher
education cannot possibly prepare student teachers completely for the complex world
they will encounter in different kinds of schools. Newly qualified and experienced
teachers, and teacher educators, should be given the opportunity to learn from each
other. The New Teachers in Norway project integrates schools and teacher education
institutions in learning communities where novice and experienced teachers
and teacher educators are given the opportunity to learn from each other. Our study
shows that novice teachers ask for a broad range of collaborative enterprises. The
individual support they are given through one appointed mentor is important, but not
enough. It also shows the importance of novices’ competence and fresh knowledge.
According to Norwegian political documents such as Parliamentary Proposition 30,
2003–2004 (MER, 2003), schools are meant to be learning communities. The aim
and philosophy of the future induction programme should be thoroughly discussed
by Norwegian politicians. Is the future aim to mend and preserve the existing school
culture, or to stimulate school development through learning communities
Ingrid Helleve is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Teacher Education, University of
Bergen, Norway. Her research interests encompass the professional development of teachers and
teacher educators.
E.mail: Ingrid.Helleve@iuh.uib.no
Marit Ulvik is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Bergen,
Norway. Her research interests include teacher education and newly qualified teachers, as well as
teachers’ professional development.
E.mail: Marit.ulvik@iuh.uib.no
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Ingrid Helleve & Marit Ulvik
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Education Inquiry
Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2011, pp.141–151
EDU.
INQ.
Getting Beyond Conversation
Analysis:
Critical and Pedagogical Implications for
TESOL/Bilingual Curriculum for Diverse
Learners in the Age of Globalization
Majid N. Al-Amri*
Abstract
TESOL/bilingual curriculum is becoming a broader and more open field, implementing different
areas and fields of study to meet and satisfy the needs of diverse ESL/bilingual learners in this age
of globalization. One area of study which can be implemented and has pedagogical and critical
implications is conversation analysis. The analysis of conversation can be used to educate diverse
ESL learners, for example, about the sensitivity of English conversation structures and the fact that
the well-organised structure of conversation does not mean that social and human interaction takes
place spontaneously without the influence of participants’ feelings, thoughts and attitudes (microlevel)
and socio-cultural and economic contextual factors (macro-level). Such critical pedagogical
perspectives would empower learners, raise their cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, and improve
their social and cultural awareness. This paper attempts to link the field of conversation analysis
and the field of TESOL/bilingual education for diverse learners.
Keywords: TESOL, curriculum, critical pedagogy, globalization, bilingualism, language learning
Introduction
TESOL/bilingual curriculum is becoming more open and broadly influenced by different
fields and areas of study. One area of study which can be implemented in TESOL/
bilingual curriculum is the area of conversation study. Even though conversation as a
social and human interaction event does not take place randomly and is usually wellorganised
and ordered, it is obviously characterised by recognisable structures which
can make its analysis not an end in itself, but a valuable source of pedagogical and
critical implications in TESOL/bilingual curriculum. The analysis of conversation can
be used, for example, to educate diverse ESL/bilingual learners about the sensitivity
of English conversation and the fact that the well-organised structure of conversation
does not mean that social and human interaction takes place spontaneously without
the influence of the participants’ feelings, thoughts and attitudes (micro-level) and
socio-cultural and economic contextual factors (macro-level). This paper attempts
* English Language Centre at Yanbu Industrial College, Saudi Arabia. E-mail: majid_yic@yahoo.com
©Author. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.141–151
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Majid N. Al-Amri
to establish a link between the study of conversation analysis and bilingual/TESOL
curriculum. To do so, the first part of the paper will review and investigate English
conversation regarding one recognisable structure, namely an adjacency pair. The
second part of the paper will move to discuss and suggest some possible critical and
pedagogical implications for TESOL/bilingual curriculum.
Conversation Analysis: Adjacency Pair Structures
One particular type of conversational sequence which makes the analysis of English
conversation seem a linear and systematic process is the adjacency pair structure. It
is a sequence that is: (i) adjacent; (ii) produced by different speakers; (iii) ordered as
a first part and a second part; and (iv) typed, so that a particular first part requires a
particular second or range of second part (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973; Levinson, 1983). It
refers to that property of interaction by virtue of which what is said at any one time sets
up expectations about what is to follow, either immediately afterwards or later on in
the interaction (Drew & Heritage, 1992). The parts of an adjacency pair may be either
linguistic or non-linguistic, and the second part is monitored by the first speaker which
seems to be related to the first as an expected follow-up (Miller & Eimas, 1995). It is
also apparent that the first part requires a particular second part or a particular range
of seconds, i.e. summons should be followed by responses; questions should not be
followed by greetings but answers and so on. Further, there may be a large number of
different types of adjacency pairs in a conversation and some of them might give more
freedom for response as there are several options available as the second part.
It is possible that some types of second-pair parts like the preferred second pair
parts are typically performed without features of markedness, immediately, and
without delay. They often come before the end of the utterances in the first-pair part.
On the other hand, some types of second-pair parts like the dispreferred second-pair
parts are presented as a series of optional elements, delayed, and accompanied by
the characteristics of markedness: Pause; er; ah (delay/hesitate), Well; oh (preface),
I’m not sure; I don’t know (express doubt), that’s great; I’d love to (token yes) etc.
(Yule, 1996). However, the adjacency pair structure generally seems to be a normative
framework for actions which is accountably implemented (Heritage, 1984). This
means that the second part remains relevant and should be produced on completion
of the first. A piece of evidence for the normative character of adjacency pairs can
be provided under the heading of conditional relevance (Schegloff, 1968; Hutchby
& Wooffitt 1998). What this means is that the first parts do not always receive their
second parts immediately. Consequently, any absence of such a second part is a “noticeable
absence” and the speaker of the first part may infer a reason for that absence
(Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998).
Another piece of evidence for the normative character of adjacency pairs comes
from the fact that we all make different inferences when second-pair parts are not
forthcoming. These are usually based on our motives, intentions, beliefs etc. (e.g. the
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other intended to be insulting, or the other would not answer the question, or could
not do so without self-incrimination) (Heritage, 1984). The absence of the second
part does affect the meaning in the conversation. For example, when speaker A asks
speaker B a question he expects that speaker B will give either a preferred or disprefered
answer. Consequently, when speaker B does not reply immediately in return,
speaker A considers that the absence of a reply is accountable and infers that speaker
B’s answer would be dispreferred. This absence would give rise to another normative
character of adjacency pairs, namely insertion sequence.
An insertion sequence can also be evidence of the normative character of adjacency
pairs. It refers to the existence of one adjacency pair within another. It is an insertion
because the first part does not always receive its second part immediately. This delay
is employed to defer the answer until further relevant information is obtained. For
instance, a question-answer pair can be produced as an insertion sequence. This is
because Q2 does not mean that Q1 will not be answered, it is employed to defer A1
until further relevant information is received. After answering Q2, B shows that he
is still oriented to the relevance of the original adjacency pair by answering Q1 and
providing the relevant second part (Yule, 1996).
There is sometimes a large hierarchical sequence of adjacency pairs forming, for
example, the structure of (Q1(Q2(Q3(Q4-A4)A3)A2)A1). In this large hierarchical
sequence of adjacency pairs, it is clear that the first question (Q1) does not receive its
second part immediately. In spite of the absence of an answer (A1) for the question
(Q1), there is an orientation to the expected appropriate second part even though
the answer never occurs. So the sequences in this conversation lead to a long story
in which its sequences are sequentially organised. However, in some conversations
it is obvious that adjacency pairs give rise to a turn-taking structure in the conversation
where one person speaks at a time and that transition takes place smoothly from
one turn to the next: one participant, A, talks, stops; another, B, starts, talks, stops;
and so the A-B-A-B-A-B distribution of talk across two participants is apparent in
the conversation (Levinson, 1983; Sack et al., 1974; Psathas, 1995). What occurs in
the next turn is closely monitored for its relation to the first, the size of a turn may be
one word or a sound, transitions take place from one turn to the next with very little
gap and no minimal overlap (Sacks et al., 1974; Psathas, 1995).
Conversation does not simply begin and end. It must be opened and commonly
this is done through the use of an adjacency pair such as greeting-greeting, requestgrant,
question-answer, or statement-response (Richards & Schmidt, 1983). Openings
can allow for the possibility of further talk. The word “Hello” can be produced as an
answer/response to a caller’s summons like the ringing of the telephone, and it is the
responsibility of the caller to provide at least one topic of conversation to justify having
made the summons (Schegloff, 1968; Richards & Schmidt, 1983; Pomerantz, 1984;
Drew & Heritage, 1992). Conversation can be opened by the “pre-sequence” which is
regarded as a remarkable device for achieving large joint projects. There are several
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types of pre-sequences such as the pre-announcement, pre-invitation, pre-request,
pre-closing statement and pre-narrative (Miler &Eimas, 1995). Closings, like openings,
do not just take place, but must be made to occur through co-ordinated activities. The
simplest solution is also to use adjacency pairs. Closings are usually preceded by preclosings,
such as well, okay, so-oo, alright (with a downward intonation) (Richards &
Schmidt, 1983; Schegloff& Sacks, 1973; Tsui, 1994). Further, there are many sequence
types for closings such as arrangements, back-references, topic initial elicitors, inconversation
objects, solicitudes, reasons-for-calls and appreciations.
In my reading classes, adult ESL students are usually introduced to different interesting
social and cultural fables and stories. In one of the classes, I recorded the
students while they were being introduced to a story. The story was about a man from
New York City. He was called The Man with the Gloves because he used to give gloves
to poor people in New York in winter. The following is one excerpt of a conversation
between me as the course teacher and one of the students with whom I had a conversation
about the story:
T: Is it an interesting story
S: [silent]
T: Is it an interesting a story Do you think so
S: Yah.
T: Do you like the story
S: Yah.
T: What is the title of the story
S: The Man with the Gloves
T: Is it an appropriate title for the story
S: ah . . .
T: Is it a good title for the story
S: Yah.
T: Is the man with the gloves a good man
S: Yah.
T: Why
S: He helps poor people.
T: Would you do the same if you were the man
S: um . . .
The above excerpt shows that the conversation is guided by the teacher who expected
the student to answer his questions in a particular way. In the excerpt, the parts of
the adjacency pairs are either linguistic (words) or non-linguistic (pause or sounds
like ah), and any absence of a second part is a “noticeable absence” where the speaker
of the first part may infer a reason for that absence. For example, when the teacher
noticed an absence of an answer for his question, namely “Is it an interesting story”,
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he repeated the question. This shows that the second parts of adjacency pairs are
monitored by the first speaker and related to the first parts as expected follow-ups.
They are performed without features of markedness, immediately, and without delay,
but they are sometimes accompanied by the characteristics of markedness (e.g., ah).
Beyond Adjacency Pairs for Bilingual/TESOL Education
The nature of conversation analysis (CA) focusing on talk-in-interaction in various
contexts has recently made more research investigations possible for researchers
in different social and educational fields of research, focusing on the notion of the
learners’ interactional competence (Markee, 2000; Young & Miller, 2004), which
“has the advantage of emphasising the domain and socially distributed nature of the
capacities in question” (Kasper, 2006, p. 86). This is different from what has been
proposed as learners’ sociolinguistic competencies, for example (Hutchby & Wooffitt,
1998, p. 14), which reduce “‘competenc(i)es’ to a ‘single competence’ [that] is perhaps
less apposite, as it takes away the sense of non-finiteness and diversity in type and
organisation of the capacities that participants bring to bear on social interaction”
(Kasper, 2006, p. 86).
In the field of second language learning and bilingualism, CA has recently been
implemented, focusing on “the development of interactional skills and resources and
conceptualizing language learning as a social process” (Seedhouse, 2005, p. 175). Thus,
core CA concepts (e.g., adjacency pairs) have been adopted as a method to investigate
the discourse of second-language learning and bilingualism, considering learning
a second language a phenomenon which is socially and culturally constructed by
learners in an active and interactional manner (Gardner & Wagner, 2004; Lazaraton,
2003; Markee, 2000, 2004; Richards &Seedhouse, 2005; Seedhouse, 2004). Hence,
“knowledge is located in communities of practice” and “learning not only takes place
in the social world, it also constitutes that world” (Brouwer& Wagner, 2004, p. 33).
Studies conducted within a socio-cultural and interactional language perspective
in the field of second language acquisition and bilingualism have demonstrated that
CA constitutes an important framework for pedagogical practices inside the bilingual/ESL
classroom. Cromadal (2001), for example, studied a group of bilingual
children aged 6–8 years as they attempted to access peer activities. He reported
that participating in peer play is a “shared activity” in which children negotiate rules
and dispersed knowledge to achieve a “joint accomplishment”. During interactions,
children manipulated CA concepts (e.g., adjacency pairs), called upon interactional
competence rather than social competencies, and became members in a community
of practice, apprenticing themselves to a group of people who share a certain set of
practices through joint action (Gee, 2004).
Another study which showed learners’ alignment in interactions, moving from
peripheral to fuller participation is Young and Miller’s (2004) longitudinal study of
an ESL learner engaging in a specific activity (revision talks of writing conferences)
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with his tutor once a week over a period of four weeks. In the first meeting with the
tutor, the student showed peripheral participation, producing minimal utterances,
with almost all being limited to yeah. However, the student’s participation increased
through the series of the four conferences. This participation framework change overtime
was co-constructed by the tutor in an interactional way. Although “it appears
that the student is the one whose participation is most dramatically transformed ...
the instructor is a co-learner, and her participation develops in a way that complements
the student’s learning” (Young and Miller, 2004, p. 533).
While I was making a conversation with the ESL students about the story above
(The Man with the Gloves), the students’ participation was peripheral, consisting of
minimal utterances, almost all limited to short sentences in response to particular
questions I had asked. I found myself an active speaker who was in power to produce
turns to direct the students, comparing to the students who were passive and hesitant
to extend turns without direction. It was thus necessary for me to help the students
not only increase the quantity of their talk, but also perform acts without directions
except those that uniquely construct my role as a facilitator. However, in a reading
class I asked the students to listen to the conversation I had with them in the previous
class and answer questions in groups. I considered myself a facilitator, encouraging
students to talk more and produce more turns. I asked the questions below:
• Do you think the speakers understand each other Why do you think so
• Do you think speaker B is telling the truth to speaker A Why do you think
so
• Which speaker do you think is in power Why do you think so
• How do you relate the rules and relations of turn-takings in the conversation
to power
• How do you see the role and the characteristics of markedness in achieving
mutual understanding
• Why does speaker A open the conversation What does this mean to you
• What is the next speaker going to say Why do you think so
• Why does speaker B pause for more than five seconds What does this pause
mean to you
• How does speaker B respond to speaker A If you were speaker B, what would
you say
• What do you think of the role of the insertion sequence in the conversation
in achieving mutual understanding
• What happens if speaker B does not answer the question How do you socially
and culturally interpret this
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• How do you see the way of closing the conversation How do you interpret
this in your culture
• Do you think the socio-cultural background of speaker A affects his way of
interacting with speaker B Why do you think so etc.
In groups, the ESL learners negotiated rules and dispersed knowledge to answer the
questions, achieving joint accomplishments. During interactions, the ESL learners
manipulated CA concepts (e.g., adjacency pairs), called upon interactional competence
rather than social competencies, and became members in a community of practice,
apprenticing themselves to a group of people who share a certain set of practices
through joint action (Gee, 2004). In other words, the participation of the students
started to change; they started to talk more, perform more turns, and achieve many
of the actions that were initially performed by me, like producing more questions
about the story. Not only did the quantity of the students’ talk increase, but they also
showed they had experienced cognitive, meta-cognitive, and critical practices and
had become more independent of my directions.
As can be seen, although English conversation is well-structured and organised and
can be achieved in a systematic process, its systematic nature does not mean that it is
an end in itself, away from critical and pedagogical implications for TESOL/bilingual
curriculum for diverse learners. Instead, it can be a valuable source for diverse ESL/
bilingual learners to reflect and think critically to understand the sensitivity of English
conversation and perceive it as a significant and fundamental connection between
them and other English speakers to achieve mutual understanding. However, learners
can be exposed and introduced not only to the conversations produced inside their
classroom, but also to different types of English conversation produced in different
situations and contexts by different English people and other speakers of English as
a second language for more critical and pedagogical purposes related to empowering
learners, improving their cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, enhancing their critical
thinking skills and raising their social and cultural awareness. In this way, learners
with their teachers can undertake a critical and pedagogical journey by discussing
stimulating and reflective questions related to the different types of English conversation
presented by different tools and symbols from different contexts and sources.
As a facilitator, I had a very important impact in the process. I tried to make
“foreign language classrooms as ideal places to learn about social differences in
ways that challenge students’ lack of knowledge and/or mis-knowledge of people
who are different from them” (Kumashiro, 2004). I tried to create an environment
which can help learners understand the sensitivity of the context of English language
conversation with respect to achieving mutual understanding, leading learners to “a
crisis” which can trouble their knowledge and commonsense, raise their social and
cultural awareness, and empower them. My students and I went through a critical
and pedagogical journey by discussing stimulating and reflective questions related to
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the different excerpts of English conversations produced by the students themselves
with their teacher.
When the students reflected on their answers, they started to realize that an English
conversation is an active, social process in which they construct new ideas or concepts
based on a critical and dialogical socio-cultural way. They started to share their “internally
persuasive discourses” and explore “the authoritative discourse” (Bakhtin,
1981), and subsequently learn to compare discourses and develop meta-knowledge
about them (Landy, 2004). In other words, the learners came to realize that an English
language conversation has certain historical principles and rules, making a dance that
defines what is “normal and deviant, what is the proper way of constructing reality
and what is not” (Kincheloe, 2005, p. 123). “It exists in the abstract as a coordinated
pattern of words, deeds, values, beliefs, symbols, tools, objects, times, and places”
(Gee, 2000, p. 19).
When learners come to understand that an English conversation is not a linear
and static process in which fixed facts and experiences are said for memorizing and
repetition, but it is “a constellation of hidden historical rules that govern what can
be and cannot be said and who can speak and who must listen” (Kincheloe, 2005, p.
122), they would not accept what they hear without questioning and without taking
into consideration the socio-cultural experiences of the speaker which have been
historically constructed at home and in a community culture. In addition, being
aware of the influence of the experiences would prevent learners from social unjust
behaviours and doctrines inside the ESL/bilingual classroom such as considering
learners’ mistakes, contradictions, and misconceptions as signs of deficient thinking
(Valencia, 1997). They would work hard to create a dialogic environment inside
the ESL classroom to discover more about language and how it plays a role in life in
general and the educational setting in particular.
Concluding remarks
In the age of globalization involving a growing number and diversity of ESL/bilingual
classroom learners, TESOL/bilingual education has become a challenge for both teachers
and learners. It is a challenge for teachers to take advantage of every opportunity
to create a facilitating learning environment in which diverse learners are encouraged
to become empowered and more independent. However, it can be an opportunity
for ESL/bilingual teachers to take advantage of English conversation analysis in the
curriculum. Conversation analysis cannot just be a matter of understanding how
to accomplish a restricted set of actions, but it can be a fundamental significance
for one of the most basic issues in TESOL/bilingual education: the question of how
ESL/bilingual learners understand the role of English conversation in obtaining
and accomplishing mutual understanding with native speakers as well as with other
speakers of English as a second language. ESL/bilingual learners can be educated,
for example, about how to reflect on and think critically about the mutual relations of
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utterances in different types of English conversation produced by native speakers or
other speakers of English as a second language in different situations and contexts.
This pedagogical practice would help learners to trouble common sense concepts and
knowledge, improve their cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, enhance their critical
thinking, and raise their social and cultural awareness.
Majid N. Al-Amri, Assistant Professor, received a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from New
Mexico State University, Las Cruces, USA (2008), and an MA in Applied Linguistics from the
University of Essex, Colchester, UK (2000). He is currently an Assistant Professor at the English
Language Centre at Yanbu Industrial College, Saudi Arabia. His research interests lie in the areas of
second language teaching and learning, language education, and educational learning technologies.
He also has a particular interest in human and social justice in education.
E-mail: majid_yic@yahoo.com
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152

Education Inquiry
Vol. 2, No. 1, March 2011, pp.153–171
EDU.
INQ.
An individual learning belief and its
impact on schools’ improvement work
– An Individual versus a Social Learning
Perspective
Ulf Blossing * & Sigrun K. Ertesvåg **
Abstract
Why do some schools fail to improve even after taking knowledge-based improvement initiatives
In this article, we argue that some schools do not improve because their staff members have an individual
learning belief. An individual learning approach to school improvement will disrupt development
processes. Whereas, as we argue, a social learning understanding of school improvement based
on the theory of Community of Practice and its application may provide schools with a theoretical
understanding which enables successful implementation. The results of two major improvement
projects in Norway illustrate how some schools fail to successfully implement improvement due to
the voluntary nature of participation, the lack of situated activities in relation to the improvement
objective, the low frequency of meetings and the absence of systematic leadership. Our advice to
schools is to revisit their beliefs about and understanding of learning so they can manage change
among staff and carefully monitor the situations we highlight as being critical to success.
Keywords: school improvement, community of practice, individual learning belief, social learning
perspective, implementation
Introduction and aim
There is strong empirical evidence that, even when schools are motivated to improve,
some still struggle to implement change or fail to sustain it (e.g. Blossing, Hagen, Nyen
& Söderström, 2010; Blossing & Ekholm, 2008: Datnow, 2005; Durlak & DuPree,
2008; Ertesvåg, Roland, Vaaland, Størksen & Veland, 2010 ; Skolverket, 2009). As a
result, a growing body of research on teaching and teacher education focuses on the
successful implementation of improvements (see e.g. Fullan, 2007 for an overview).
To understand the challenges schools face, we consider a view in which the beliefs
held by teachers and school leaders concerning individual learning actually disturb
the improvement process. A better understanding of this belief and its effect on school
improvement may be vital for practitioners as well as researchers and teacher educators
and may help with the successful implementation of improvements.
* University of Gothenburg, Sweden. E-mail: ulf.blossing@gu.se
** Senter for atferdsforsking, University of Stavanger, Norway. E-mail: sigrun.ertesvag@uis.no
©Author. ISSN 2000-4508, pp.153–171
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Ulf Blossing & Sigrun K. Ertesvåg
The study is based on data from Norway. Norway has a compulsory school system,
from ages six to sixteen. The systems for pre-school and upper secondary school are
comprehensive and, although not compulsory, they are attended by over 90 percent
of children and young people. School improvement research has been scarce. While
major reforms have been evaluated, school improvement has not necessarily been
a main focus. Generally, school improvement research has been more or less left to
the individual researcher’s interest.
The primary focus of this study is the beliefs held by teachers and school leaders
concerning how learning comes about when they are organising improvement work.
In this study, improvement work refers to school-wide improvement processes that
include the whole school organisation; for example, how to implement student democracy
or self-guided learning materials, or attempts to create a qualitative system
in the school or the forming of collaborative teacher teams. Hence the content of the
work may differ, even though it is all of the kind for which schools have free hands
to develop practical solutions.
The study is hypothetical in its methodology. We argue that schools need to be challenged
about beliefs concerning effective innovation and how it is achieved. Our starting
point is the assumption that schools, teachers and school leaders have traditionally
held individualistic learning beliefs about school improvement (Fullan, 2007; Blossing,
2000; Stoll, 2009). School improvement has largely been left to or has focused on the
individual teacher. However, we assume that what needs to be challenged is the belief
that the improvement process is first and foremost about discrete, cognitive processes
which prioritise the individual’s understanding. Instead, we propose that teachers and
school leaders develop a social learning understanding so they can more effectively organise
school improvement. Second, we question the belief that the individual teacher is
the centre of improvement work (e.g. Leithwood & Jantzig 2006). This has implications
for innovation leadership and a school’s capacity to improve.
School Improvement
School improvement is “a distinct approach to educational change that aims to enhance
student learning outcome as well as strengthening the school’s capacity for managing
change” (Hopkins 2001, p.139). Knowledge about improvement and institutionalisation
processes has accumulated since the mid-20 th century. See e.g. Miles and Seashore Louis
(1987) for a reflective review. Over the last two decades school improvement research
has passed through different phases focusing on both system levels and micro levels,
different aspects of culture and the process of change (e.g. Reynolds, 2009; Hargreaves,
2003; Stoll, 2009). School improvement research has generally focused on how schools
develop the conditions and processes that support and enhance learning. In Reynolds’
(2009) words, “to develop a sustainable energy of school improvement from within
organisations, rather than relying on without-the-school educational change that may
implode on the impermeability of schools’ organisational culture.” However, Fullan
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An individual learning belief and its impact on schools’ improvement work
(2007) questions why schools that already possess all the knowledge concerning what
it takes to improve are still unable to achieve that. It can be argued that schools have,
for different reasons, not been able to take on the new knowledge provided. The moving
contextual landscape of school improvement seen in the last decade brings new
meaning to how we need to conceptualise school improvement and enhance capacity
(Stoll, 2009). How teachers and school leaders understand innovation processes may
affect their ability to implement improvement.
Capacity and Process
Changes have increased the need for capacity-building to deal with this wider agenda.
According to Harris (2001), the capacity to improve is all about creating opportunities
and conditions that promote co-operation and mutual learning. Capacity represents
power in the form of the skills, knowledge and behaviours required to successfully
implement an improvement (Oterkiil & Ertesvåg, submitted). Schools as teachers have
a long history of improving student learning. By contrast, schools as organisations
have less tradition and knowledge about developing the school as an organisation to
manage change. Seeing capacity as something interpersonal and organisational will
obviously challenge traditional individual learning beliefs about innovation Stoll
(2009, p. 125) argues that capacity is a ‘habit of mind’ focused on engaging in and
sustaining the learning of people at all levels of the education system for the collective
purpose of enhancing student learning in its broader sense. On the basis of this,
it is evident that the traditional cognitive learning perspectives of innovation, which
give preference to the individual’s understanding, are insufficient. When learning
becomes a collective issue, the question of situatedness becomes important.
Social Learning and a Community of Practice
Situatedness is an essential feature, a cornerstone, of the social learning perspective.
Professional development that simply focuses on increasing a teacher’s knowledge of
classroom practice is inadequate for building capacity for schools, Stringer (2009)
argues. There must be elements of increasing organisational, collective and individual
capacities in terms of knowledge production and use. Collaborative forms of
professional development, a situated layered approach and a learning community
culture not only foster collective opportunities to discuss beliefs about teaching and
learning, but also give permission to be critical about practice, take risks and share
in ongoing processes of knowledge acquisition and use. Park and Datnow (2008)
found in a “Successful Schools for All” study a comprehensive school reform model
that primarily centres on early literacy intervention that, although much of the theory,
strategy and tools driving this approach to school reform was important, the deeper
process of creating knowledge for school improvement was a collaborative, situated
endeavour. The combination of the explicit, detailed modelling of new skills with an
emphasis on understanding the theory behind the tools has proved valuable. Given
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this, there is less focus on measuring the fidelity of implementation and more on
helping educators think more reflectively about their practices and to use tools that
are more effective in improving pupil achievement.
Yet schools may struggle even when interventions are welcomed and considered
worthwhile. Situating the change process in the actual teaching and learning context
where the new ideas will be implemented is an effective strategy for helping teachers
to change their practices (Borko, Mayfield, Marion, Flexer & Cumbo, 1997; Blossing,
Hagen, Nyen & Söderström, 2010). Some other specific issues also seem to be important.
For example, Somech and Drach-Zahvy (2007) found that in teams of teachers
working together to implement a new reform the frequency of meetings was crucial
for ensuring that team members exchanged information, which in turn promoted
team performance.
There is no activity that is not socially situated, Lave and Wenger (1991) argue.
Accordingly, framing improvement work as a situated practice enables attention to
be focused on the relationship between participation and context, using Lave and
Wenger’s conceptualising of context as communities of practice. This also addresses
the issue of whether participation is voluntarily or mandatory. Although the intervention
was a school-wide project involving all teachers, Midthassel and Bru (2001)
found that the teachers’ involvement varied. Moreover, the degree of relevance attributed
by teachers to the theme of improvement to be was a main motivating factor
in their involvement. These findings emphasise how important it is for participants
to perceive the improvement work as relevant.
A community of practice emerges where people gather around a common mission
and have the opportunity to appear as legitimate participants in a committed conversation
about the nature of the mission, says Wenger (1998). These communities
and conversations focus on everyday, practical work. The dialogues, or rather the
negotiations, between the participating parties deal with how the work should be
understood, how the visions and goals will be interpreted, how they should be translated
into practical procedures, what is problematic and what needs to be resolved.
Wenger’s concept of a community of practice is interesting and useful since it is
theory-oriented, looks at natural phenomena, when describing its structure, agency
and processes. Wenger states that a community of practice is indicated by joint work,
mutual engagement and a shared repertoire. However, Wenger points out that these
communities arise spontaneously and therefore need not include a professional working
group at a school. What teachers talk about does not necessarily have to do with
the formal body of assignments. Further, one cannot plan or manage a community
of practice, Wenger adds. We can only provide for it, but cannot know the result of
the conditions given.
The community of practice concept is still being debated. Wubbels (2007), for
example, asserts there is a need to distinguish between learning communities and
communities of practice. His argument is that a learning community can be more
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easily developed than when practice is the first concern. Cox (2005) discusses that the
ambiguity of the terms community and practice leads to different applications by different
researchers. Moreover, he suggests that the joint enterprise of the community
in Wenger’s description focuses the impact on the individual identity and he questions
whether in this “heavily individualized and tightly managed work of the twenty-first
century” (p. 527) there really are any communities that could have this kind of impact.
An interesting feature of Wenger’s theory is his concept of learning being an integral
part of practice. Like Cox, we assume that, within an organisation, individualism can
be so prevalent that no community of practice arises. In fact, our hypothesis is built on
the assumption that this is a main reason why improvement processes in schools fail.
Method
Using Perspectives Metaphorically
In this article we employ the individual versus the social learning perspective in a
metaphorical approach to examine the assumption that an underpinning individual
and cognitive learning belief disrupts improvement processes. We use “perspective”
when we describe our analytical work and “belief” when we address the individual
learning stances of teachers and school leaders. Likewise, we use “understanding”
to address a developed and conscious stance of learning where the social dimension
is integrated.
We do this by looking at situations where improvement has been disrupted and
applying an individual and cognitive learning perspective to them to see if they can
be understood meaningfully, to ascertain why they are disrupted and why there is no
sustainable change that promotes student learning. Then we apply a social learning
perspective to the same situations to see how they could be rearranged and meaningfully
understood in terms of building capacity for change.
Using perspectives in research can be done in several different ways. First, the
perspectives themselves could be the target of the research question, e.g. which
perspectives on learning do teachers take on when organising instruction or what
kind of perspectives do change agents start from when planning improvement in
organisations (see e.g. Handal, Vaage & Carlgren, 1994). Second, perspectives could
be used as an instrument for analysis. Morgan (1986) did this using metaphorical
perspectives to create images of organisations and thus gain knowledge about how
organisations could be understood. In this article we employ a version of Morgan’s
research design and use two epistemological perspectives; the individual versus the
social learning perspectives, to examine disrupted improvement processes in schools.
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) have shown how metaphors in fact represent fundamental
views on how the world is constituted and knowledge is created. They state
that the way we choose language to express everyday life experience, through metaphors,
communicates and constitutes our perception of the world and life around us.
Significant for our reasoning here is their reference to Reddy (1979) and the conduit
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metaphor. It says that we understand: 1) ideas or meanings as objects, 2) linguistic
expressions as containers, and 3) communication as sending. This conduit or pipeline
metaphor of language permeates our everyday expressions. Notice these examples
(Lakoff & Johnson, p. 11):
• It’s hard to get the idea across to him.
• I gave you that idea.
• Your reasons came through to us.
• It’s difficult to put my ideas into words.
Likewise, we state that the individual learning perspective is fundamentally rooted
in the everyday conception of the human body and especially one part of it, the head,
as the container of knowledge. One can easily see that this conception is close to the
conduit metaphor as Reddy explains it. To continue our bodily version of the metaphor:
Knowledge is mainly expressed in language “coming out” from the mouth and body
of a human being. From there it is easy to understand the conception that knowledge
has its origin and is stored in the source from which it comes, behind the mouth, in the
head of the human. We further suggest that the basic features of this conception are
that knowledge can be stored in the brain without undergoing any changes and can
also be carried to different locations where the knowledge can be taken out of storage
and used. Another basic feature is that the knowledge thus stored in a human being,
underneath the skin of the body and head, is hidden and unavailable to me and can
only be given to me if the head of the container decides to share it.
In contrast, we would describe the social learning perspective as very much the
opposite. Knowledge is mainly expressed as communication and dialogue manifested
in the space between humans. A basic feature of this conception is that knowledge
is under continuous creation and is hard to store because of its dynamic nature.
Another feature is that it is visible in ongoing communication and that it “grows”
through dialogue. For clarity, we have outlined a matrix of essential concepts where
the theory of a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) is illustrated (see “Analysis
Matrix” and Table 1).
Now we must remind ourselves that these are metaphorical statements trying
to conceive the everyday and bipolar understanding of the basic characteristics of
knowledge creation and dissemination. They share certain common features with the
scientific conceptions but diverge from them in terms of the bipolarising characteristics.
When taking on a scientific perspective it could be easily argued that knowledge
creation and dissemination, or learning, has both an individual as well as a social
learning dimension. Vygotsky (1962/1969) assumed a cultural and historical perspective
on learning and showed how the development of the individual is integrated with
his or her social community and framed by the historical process. One of the more
interesting and current efforts to develop an integrated model of learning where
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both the individual and the social aspects are accounted for is elaborated by lIlleris
(2007). He describes three dimensions of learning – the content, the incentive, and
the interaction – which are all active in the learning process.
Empirical Sources
The analysis is carried out on two major research projects:
1. The Respect Programme, (e.g. Ertesvåg, 2011; Ertesvåg, 2009; Ertesvåg et
al. 2010; Ertesvåg & Roland, in press; Ertesvåg & Vaaland, 2007).
2. The Evaluation of the Knowledge Promotion Reform (Blossing, Hagen, Nyen
& Söderström 2010).
The Respect programme is a school-wide programme which aims to help schools
prevent and reduce problem behaviour. The programme provides schools with a
framework for strengthening the adult role and builds on the assumption that teachers
are essential for developing and maintaining a positive learning environment. A
key element is strengthening the school’s capacity to improve, which is imperative
for long-term results. So far, about 100 Norwegian comprehensive schools have implemented
the programme.
Both the effect and implementation of the programme have been evaluated and
presented through a series of publications, including an evaluation several years after
the active programme period had ended. The 2.5 year programme has been found to
reduce disobedience, off-task behaviour and bullying and improve teachers’ support
and monitoring. Although the programme has a documented effect, including in the
longer term, some schools struggle to successfully implement the programme. The
findings suggest that a major reason is a lack of collective effort, shared responsibility
for improvement and mutual engagement combined with a struggling leadership.
Some schools that are able to implement the programme and obtain results are, for
the same reasons, unable to sustain the improvement. The lack of collaborative action
is one of the reasons given by staff members.
The analysis in this study is mainly based on data from project group interviews at
schools which were implementing a one-year pilot version of the programme (Ertesvåg,
et al. 2010) and interviews with headteachers at schools implementing a revised
2.5 year programme (Ertesvåg & Midthassel, in progress). For the project groups the
interviews were conducted twice, at the end of the programme and 2.5 years later.
The headteachers were interviewed three times throughout the programme period.
For detailed information on the interview procedures, see Ertesvåg et al. (2010).
”Knowledge promotion reform – from word to deed” was a government programme
which aimed to strengthen school improvement in line with the goals of the
Knowledge Promotion Reform. The main instrument in the programme is to support
school improvement projects based on tripartite co-operation between schools, school
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owners and external agents. The programme had a budget of 195 billion Norwegian
Krone (NOK) for the 2005-2009 period, of which NOK 125 billion was awarded as
direct project support.
The main research questions in the evaluation examined the degree to which and
in which circumstances tripartite co-operation strengthens the ability of schools to
improve their work and create a better learning environment for their pupils.
The main empirical data comprise five case studies and questionnaires. The cases
consist of five improvement projects that each include one to seven schools. Sub-cases
are those schools in each project where we interviewed teachers, students and school
leaders to review the improvement process. Case stories of the schools’ improvement
capacity as well as the process were written. It is from these stories that situations with
disrupted improvement processes were chosen for this study. The questionnaire was
distributed to teachers, school leaders, project leaders and consultants. For a detailed
description of the method and sample used in the project, we refer to the evaluation
report (Blossing et al., 2010).
In the evaluation of the Knowledge Promotion Reform, one of the main findings is
that the support of external agents only influenced teaching and classroom work to a
modest degree. So the co-operation between the school owners, schools and external
agents did not influence the most important element in the learning environment: the
pattern of instruction and teaching. In most cases, judging by the frequency of contact
between the teachers and external agents, the support was not very close. We thus see
few examples of changes in teaching practice, apart from a few individual changes.
Analysis Matrix
In order to examine the disrupted improvement processes we developed an analysis
matrix (see Table 1) where the horizontal axis consists of the social and individual
learning perspective as defined above. The vertical axis is based on Wenger’s (1998)
three dimensions of joint work, mutual engagement and a shared repertoire, constituting
a community of practice. Table 1 provides illustrations of behaviour characterising
each of these categories as manifestations of a social learning perspective and an
individual learning perspective, respectively. We apprehend Wenger’s dimension in
the sense that a community of practice could have different levels of joint working
where the operationalised descriptions to the right in Table 1 show a community where
no joint working could be found because of the individual responsibility for learning,
voluntary participation, individual decisions about learning needs and individual
work. In fact, this pole illustrates a kind of zero-point on the scale of joint working
where the community itself ceases to exist.
The opposite can be found to the left in Table 1. Here we have a community with
shared responsibility for improvement where participation is required, there is the
joint identification of learning needs and people working together to complete tasks.
On a scale from 0 to 10 this is a 10-community where joint working is at its best.
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Table 1: Examples of the three dimensions that influence the coherence of a community
of practice as manifestations of a social perspectve - or an individual learning perspective.
Community of Practice Social Learning Perspective Individual Learning Perspective
Joint Work
Mutual Engagement
Shared repertoire
(shared history of language
and artefacts)
– Shared responsibility for
improvement
– Participation required
– Joint identification of learning
needs
– Work together to complete
tasks
– Collective effort
– Experience which learning
needs arise in interaction
– Collective planning and
problem-solving (e.g. peer
counselling)
– Leadership needed because
activities go beyond the
individual and observational
situation
– Soliciting each other’s opinion
– Checking for agreement
– Development of a common
language (using terms familiar
to the group)
– The situation carries new
knowledge
– A shared repertoire of earlier
events
– Shared beliefs and
assumptions rely on
knowledge
– Individual responsibility for
learning
– Voluntary participation
– Individual decision on learning
needs
– Individual work
– Working without consulting
others
– Making decisions
independently
– Individual planning
– No need for a leader because
reponsibility is shared among
the individuals (but no skills
to organise situations for
learning)
– Explaining personal terms
– The individual carries new
knowledge
– Reference to individual
classroom experience
– Shared beliefs and
assumptions rely on simplistic
or easily summarised
explanations
In looking at disrupted improvement processes, we want to show how improvement
activities in schools which appear to be based on a social learning understanding where
teachers come together in groups to learn from each other may still ‘run out of steam’
due to events we believe are a result of an individual and cognitive learning belief.
For this, the interviews from the two studies were reanalysed on the basis of findings
that some schools had failed to implement the school improvement efforts. Transcripts
were read and reread to identify trends, patterns (Sim, 1998) and processes,
or the lack thereof, which disrupted the improvement efforts. We identified aspects of
joint working, mutual work and a shared repertoire in the data based on the analysis
matrix outlined above and shown in table 1. Accordingly, the data wers reanalysed
through the lenses, so to speak, of the social and individual learning perspective, as
bipolar metaphors.
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Result
Situations of Disrupted Improvement Processes
Participation Requirements
In line with Wenger (1998), an element of ‘joint work’ is the question of participation.
In the interviews with teachers concerning their evaluation of the Knowledge
Promotion programme it was revealed that participation in the various improvement
activities was often voluntary. Teachers could decide for themselves whether they considered
it worthwhile to participate in a reflective conversation or guidance. This was
particularly characteristic of some schools which had a large number of counselling
programmes based on a certain peer-counselling model (Lauvås & Handahl, 2001;
Lauvås, Hofgaard & Lycke, 1997). We found that peer-counselling was an interesting
choice in a social learning perspective as it gave the opportunity to situate the learning
in the classroom and to immediately be able to see and learn what happens in the
interaction between teachers and students and thereby foster the joint identification
of learning needs and to share the responsibility for what ought to be improved.
However, it appeared that participation was optional for teachers in several of the
schools. According to an individual learning belief, the decision on learning needs
was left to the particular teacher involved.
In the Respect programme peer-counselling was mandatory. As a consequence,
some schools did not start the programme, or the activity faded soon after the start.
The lack of participation and longer term activity in the Respect programme can be
understood as an expression of an individual learning belief. Involvement was at
a low level since there was no shared responsibility among the teachers or mutual
engagement among staff members. The results show that it is not just a question of
voluntariness, but also a question of the joint identification of learning needs, collective
planning and leadership when implementing the action.
The Voluntariness on the Knowledge Promotion programme was justified, albeit
not clearly expressed, by professional arguments. It is part of the teacher’s professional
skills to determine their own learning needs. We believe this is also an expression of an
individual learning belief where it is possible for the teacher to make this assessment
in isolation from others and from a specific situation. In an individual learning belief
one assumes that the individual fully owns his or her knowledge ‘in him- or herself’,
he or she can communicate with it and determine whether improvement activities
can bring something to the already-owned knowledge. One option, in a social learning
understanding, would be to include the voluntary nature later in the process and give
teachers the opportunity first to experience what learning needs may arise in interaction
with others in situations where they have not previously appeared together, such
as the classroom. Here the starting point is that individuals are unable to own their
knowledge fully, but could access it through different communities where conversations
arise about the practical objects of the knowledge.
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The results presented above illustrate that the learning beliefs of teachers in the
organisation may influence school improvement processes. As demonstrated, participation,
whether voluntary or mandatory, can promote or hinder opportunities
to develop shared responsibility for improvement, collective effort, a shared repertoire,
among other things, all characteristics of joint working, mutual engagement
and a shared repertoire that Wenger (1998) argues are essential to communities
of practice.
Situating
In a social learning perspective the situating of an activity becomes important, i.e.
where it takes place. The situating could be understood as a strong incentive to
develop a shared repertoire around the core part of the educational business. In
the case descriptions of the schools from the Knowledge Promotion programme, it
becomes clear how in most cases improvement activities are not situated in the situations
that are the subject of the discussions and activities. If, for example, teachers
need to talk about how they could better teach the percentage calculation to improve
student understanding, the relevant situation is the classroom in whice the teachers
teach. This separation of improvement activities from the context they are meant to
improve is typical for the teaching profession (Little, 2002). In the Knowledge Promotion
programme this was particularly valid for classroom and instruction activities.
The shared repertoire that manifested in these schools was based on an individual
learning belief, with simplistic or easily summarized explanations. References were
made to individual classroom experience without putting these into an organisational
perspective to see the whole “instruction-picture” throughout the school. Another type
of reference were these simplistic cause-chains where e.g. school leaders explained
that, if only teachers could talk things over, teaching would improve or, if only they
could get the students to become more disciplined, classroom learning would be better.
Following the social learning perspective, it may of course seem unreasonable to
situate a reflective conversation between teachers in a classroom while a mathematics
lesson is in progress! But there are models that try to couple the conversation
between teachers and the relevant situation. In study learning (Holmqvist, 2006),
teachers plan together and then implement the lesson while colleagues observe and
video record the lesson. This is followed by evaluation and reprogramming where
corrective actions are taken and tested by another colleague in a new group of students.
In another type of activity, namely, peer counselling (Lauvås & Handahl,
2001; Lauvås, Hofgaard & Lycke, 1997), a teacher carries out pre-counselling with a
colleague about a lesson he or she intends to implement. The lesson is then carried
out while the colleague observes, after which a post-counselling session follows. The
close link to the teaching situation could also be done through what we would call
a virtual link. This especially appears in peer-counselling where observation can be
replaced by the teacher’s own description of the educational dilemma to which he or
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she wants to find a solution. The description should be as concrete and real as possible,
so that it appears as an “illusion” and virtual reality for their colleagues. The
learning community thereby gains access to the practical situation, without having
the conversation situated in the actual classroom.
According to Lave and Wenger (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), the key
mechanism for individuals’ and groups’ learning comprises access to observing
and then participating in the practices at the core of the community. In the Respect
programme, the intention is that teachers participate in both formal and informal
communities of practice in order to learn both as an individual and as group(s). For
example, similar to the procedures of Lauvås and Handal (2001) outlined above,
novice teachers may join an informal group with more experienced teachers to get
access to their colleagues’ knowledge and experience to improve their classroom
management skills. Also, formal groups are intended to provide reflective discussions
aimed at developing a shared commitment to improvement and lay the foundations
for developing a shared repertoire of strategies and actions. At some schools, they
were unable to develop communities of practice in this sense during the programme
period and even more schools failed in the longer term.
That the situating of an improvement activity is not addressed may be explained
by an individual learning belief. In such a belief the group conversation is intended to
change the teacher’s cognitive understanding. The teacher could bring this changed
understanding to the relevant situation in which he or she can again pick it up from
the memory storage unit, and apply it. Analysed from a social learning perspective,
this is not simply done because this understanding is not naturally taking place in the
individual’s brain, but rather manifests in the conversation between people. When
the individual is in the middle of the conversation he or she can indeed understand
the knowledge and experience new insights, but this does not necessarily lead to new
cognitive patterns forming in the individual in such a way that they are able to activate
them later in different situations.
Given the complexity of schooling, joint work and mutual engagement seem to be
imperative in order to share responsibility and improve.
Frequency of Meetings
Group conversation and counselling appeared with a relatively high frequency at
the beginning of the schools’ improvement efforts in the Knowledge promoting
programme. This fostered mutual engagement and a collective effort to improve.
Teachers met in groups once a week or perhape once a fortnight to have discussions.
Counselling took place a couple of times a month. In the group meetings, teachers
could solicit each others’ opinions and check for agreement and, at times, managed
collective planning and problem-solving. However, over time, the meetings and counselling
seemed to happen less and less often and only occurred a few times a year.
This could be because the expert agents who were hired to manage the conversations
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and counselling could not meet more often. In some cases, schools arranged their
own meetings in between, but not always. The result of the less frequent meetings is
that the teachers tried to carry out the programme in line with an individual learning
belief without consulting the others, and hence ended up making decisions and
planning independently.
In some schools in the Respect programme, a lack of meetings in the project group
responsible for planning and organising the day-to-day activity in the programme,
as well as the unpredictable timing of meetings was found to be a problem for some
of the schools participating in the Respect programme (Ertesvåg et al. 2010). As a
result, the infrastructure which was meant to foster and encourage learning among
staff members suffered, resulting in no or little improvement. Even though there
was quite a strong mutual engagement in the project group, the responsibility for
learning and improvement was not shared. These findings are interesting since Somech
and Drach-Zahavy (2007) found that the input of the frequency of meetings
was crucial for the extent to which teacher team members engaged in exchanging
information, which in turn enhanced team performance. It is reasonable to assume
that the frequency of meetings may be crucial to other types of teacher groups as the
success of such groups, at least partly, depends on the members’ ability and willingness
to share information.
The low frequency of meetings is understandable from the point of view of an
individual learning belief. If one believes that what an individual expresses in conversation
is more or less an exact image of the individual’s cognitive patterns, and
that new insights which arise in conversation form identical cognitive patterns in the
individual that he or she can store and carry around, then frequent meetings would
not appear to be necessary. It would appear sufficient to meet and talk occasionally,
get new insights and store these for later use. From a social learning perspective, the
view is that it is the situation and not the individuals which carry the new knowledge.
When the situation, such as a conversation in a group of teachers, dissolves,
the knowledge produced in the conversation also dissolves. For lasting cognitive
changes to occur in the individual, conversations need to take place continuosly,
so the individuals involved can process the new knowledge from many different
angles and eventually integrate it with their existing cognitive patterns and social
behaviour. Fullan (2007) emphasises the need for infrastructure to support the implementation
of change. Although Wenger argues that you cannot entirely manage
a community of practice, we assert from research as well as experience that much
indeed could be done to promote a social learning perspective e.g. planning activities
which enable the promotion of new knowledge through ongoing conversations.
This could develop a shared repertoire with a common language and shared beliefs
and assumptions about teaching and learning which will, besides the individual,
“carry” the knowledge.
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Leadership
The absence of leadership in the groups explains why several of the improvement
activities in schools ran out of steam. From a social learning perspective, leadership
is a prerequisite for upholding mutual engagement and developing a shared repertoire.
Since the social perspective asserts that learning goes beyond the individual
and directly observational, the focus of leadership is to manage the learning process
on a systemic level. In the Knowledge Promotion projects a project manager at each
school was responsible for the overall direction of the development projects at the
schools. The hired expert agents also exerted leadership in the discussion groups and
counselling interventions. In the daily work when teams of teachers were to follow
up the improvement work, in many cases there was no leadership. Where a formal
leader existed, he or she lacked the skills to organize situations for mutual engagement
between the colleagues that could develop a shared repertoire. Instead, a community
was fostered in which each individual made reference to their own classroom experiences
and explained them in their own personal and non-scientific terms.
Although external change agents supported the project group in the Respect programme
through seminars and guidance, the main responsibility was at the school
level. As for the Knowledge Promotion programme, at some schools this led to no or
weak leadership with a lack of skills on how to organise for learning. On the other
hand, schools that were successful in implementing the programme seemed to develop
leadership skills throughout the school (Ertesvåg et al. 2010). A main challenge seems
to be as, Hatch (2007) argues: capacity is needed to build capacity.
Leadership in teacher teams is a burning issue. It has often been argued that no
leadership is needed for teachers while responsibility is shared in the team. We see
this as a manifestation of an individual learning belief. With such a belief, there is no
need for a leader to co-ordinate and organize situations where teachers can meet and
where dialogues can proceed in a coherent way. With an individual learning belief,
the individual has the responsibility to put his or her own coherent cognitive pattern
together. We believe it is necessary to provide leadership for social learning since it
reaches beyond the individual and the directly observable situation to a system-level
understanding of how different situations are related and can be arranged to foster
learning in the school organization. If not, schools might be faced with a dilemma
where the needs and wants of individuals differ from the needs of the organization
as a whole.
Concluding Reflections
We have reasoned that processes may soon come to a halt where teachers and school
leaders embrace an individual learning belief and put the individual teacher in the
centre of improvement work. The individual learning belief is reflected in how the
requirement to participate in improvement activities is formulated, how they are situated,
the meeting frequency of the activities, and the leadership of it. The voluntary
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nature of participation, the failure to situate activities in relation to the improvement
objective, the low frequency of meetings and the absence of leadership can
all be understood as an expression of an individual learning belief as opposed to a
social learning understanding characterised by joint work, mutual engagement and
a shared repertoire.
The social learning understanding involves a system-theory and organizational
perspective rather than an individual and cognitive one. In the individual belief, a
single teacher holds responsibility for the continuity of learning. When the individual
activates its “new” or modified cognitive patterns in different situations, the new
knowledge will appear in different parts of the organization and thus be applied and
developed. The central dilemma in this organisation becomes how to fulfil the individual
teacher’s right to formulate his or her own learning requirements and to keep
up a dialogue on how this can be manifested throughout the daily work.
In the school organisation where teachers and school leaders embrace a social
learning understanding, it becomes more important to review the system the school
organization consists of and arrange the system parts in a way that provides teachers
as a collective an opportunity to organize themselves and discuss and negotiate
what the focus of improvement efforts should be. For example, it could be a matter
of the grouping system and how teachers are assembled in teams and how different
types of team-building make up the school organization. It could also be a matter of
the responsibility system and the related decision-making system. What a teacher
in a team is able to be responsible for and to decide on will affect the dialogue in the
school organisation.
Where an individual learning belief prevails, the hunt for the single, magnificent
improvement idea can appear overwhelming. In this kind of school organisation,
improvement ideas appear as qualitatively different products that could be considered,
valued and “bought” by individuals after which they will be incorporated into
the individual’s brain and carried along with other ideas of a similar nature. When
such an improvement idea does not work, it will be rejected and the hunt for a new
idea begins.
Where, on the other hand, a social understanding forms the basis for the school
organisation, ideas do not appear as products to the same degree. Here, ideas are more
or less stable constructions out of the dialogues between teachers in the organisation,
for example, in the team when planning an instruction period. When an improvement
idea does not work, it is not immediately rejected, but the teachers return to the dialogue
to try to understand and clarify the situation in which it has been implemented.
Finally, we believe that in meetings with schools and their improvement work,
it may be relevant to penetrate the belief of learning and to challenge it. It will be
difficult to disseminate knowledge about improvement work and how this can be
implemented if the knowledge is received and processed from an individual belief
perspective. Before you know it, it may have been rejected as a bad product that did
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not fit. In this context, change agents must act as role models in leadership for a social
learning understanding and have meta-conversations with teachers about their
belief of learning.
School improvement is difficul, and, following Stolls’ (2009) perspective, developing
school capacity to improve requires the involvement, skills and knowledge of many
people throughout the educatiol system. This may require a broader perspective than
this study, which is confined to social processes in local schools and uses a bipolar
approach differentiating between individual and social learning. Given this, factors
at the individual, organisational and broader levels must be considered. Organisations,
such as school, must be seen as complex and dynamic, where an intervention
should be understood in the context of a larger interrelationship instead of just one
more activity in a linear chain of causes and effects. Hence, when taking on a school
improvement effort it is important to take a holistic view of the school as an organisation,
and acknowledge that, in order to create change, one has to understand the
complexity of the various factors that influence internal capacity. The social learning
understanding addresses the staff members’ collective learning as a condition for
improving schools. We need to acknowledge the dynamics that exist within the school
and become aware of how both internal and external parts of the system influence
and becomt influenced by each other. In order to make positive and lasting changes
within a school, it will therefore be important to work on several levels, with the aim of
developing the school in its entirety. It is reasonable to assume that the individual alone
as the focus or learning and change may not be able to promote such development.
Since this investigation is hypothetical in nature, we suggest further research on
the prevailing beliefs of learning among teachers and school leaders when it comes
to school improvement. For example, the situations where there were disrupted
improvement processes could form the basis for an interview guide to establish how
teachers see these situations and how they understand the inherent learning process.
Those descriptions could then be compared to our hypothetical reasoning of how to
understand them with the individual contra the social learning metaphor.
Ulf Blossing holds a PhD in Education and works as an Associate Professor at the University of
Gothenburg, Sweden. His research interest is school organisation and school improvement. He
has comprehensive experience in collaboration with schools as both a development consultant
and researcher.
Sigrun K. Ertesvåg has a PhD in Education and works as an Associate Professor at the Centre of
Behavioural Research at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She is Research Project Director of
the Respect Programme, a school-wide intervention to prevent and reduce problem behaviour and
improve the learning environment.
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