Idunn Seland

Citizenship policies and ideas of nationhood in Scandinavia

This article analyzes the recent changes in naturalization policies in three Nordic countries, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Considering the homogeneity of the region in terms of culture, social structure and polity, the discrepancy in current citizenship regulation is remarkable. Similar problem definitions have generated diametrical opposite solutions. This is even more striking as the three countries, hailing on perceived ideas of common interests and various experiences of shared rule in different political constellations for the best part of the last 500 years, also cooperated closely in forging their national citizenship legislation from the 1880s up till 1979. The article gives perspective to this novel variation, analyzing the interplay between aims and means in the naturalization policies. Basic questions like citizenship rights, the social and cultural cohesion of the nation state, national ideology and questions of identity will be addressed.

Gender Policies Meet VET Practices--The Case of Health and Social Care in Norway.

Could the labour market gender balance be improved by introducing new types of apprenticeship-trained workers? This article investigates what happened in the wake of the Norwegian VET programme for health and social care, a new approach introduced via the 1994 educational reform. By upgrading this traditionally female-dominated area of education, it was hoped that working conditions for women would improve and that, over time, the gender balance among workers would improve. Hence, Norwegian VET policy became a means to meet and the ambitions set by national policies for gender equality. Twenty years on, health and social care remains the most popular VET programme for female applicants. However, only a minority of those attending the school-based part of the education applies for apprenticeships as health care workers; most opt to switch to general education in order to access higher education. Those who stay on typically hold part-time jobs. This area of the labour market remains segregated in terms of gender. Based on extensive quantitative and qualitative data, the article discusses what might explain this development.

National test results: representation and misrepresentation. Challenges for municipal and local school administration in Norway

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the publication of results from national tests in primary and lower secondary schools by Norwegian national authorities. Test results must be made available to the public, and are published in an aggregated format at school, municipal, county and national levels on a public website. These aggregated test results are meant to provide information on school quality for local government, as well as for school development. However, how the data are presented influences their usability, and this is further affected by the fact that many municipalities and the majority of schools are quite small. Hence, in many instances the information that can be retrieved from aggregated test results at school or municipal level are of little or no value to the users. When presenting the aggregated data to the public, the government should clearly state that the data might not be useful for small schools or small municipalities with regard to analysing their own performance and for quality enhancement.

National Tests in Norway: An Undeclared Standard in Education? Practical and Political Implications of Norm-Referenced Standards

Educational standards were not the official object of national tests, when they were introduced as a tool for quality assessment in Norwegian schools in 2004. As the national curriculum relies on teachers’ professional judgement for setting criteria for student learning, there are no direct links between the standardised tests and the managerial and pedagogical employment of the norm- referenced test results. In this study, we investigate how municipalities and teachers conceptualise and utilise results from national tests. We find that whereas school owners simply set future results from national tests to be above the national mean, many teachers either disregard or do not seem to comprehend the relationship between the norm-referenced test results and the national curriculum. Consequently, teachers seem to under-exploit test results for student learning development, while school owners seem to over-exploit the same results, as the national norm-based mean demonstrates that there is little variance at a local level, nor does it provide explanatory power. Results and teaching have never been linked to through ​authors’ explanation: teaching in Norway has of course been linked to curriculum aims. Our point is that results from national tests have not been “fed back” to teaching linked to these curricular aims. Results and teaching have never been linked through set curricular aims, which is partly a political process. Instead, national tests emerge as an undeclared standard in Norwegian education, causing ambiguous political demands and signs of professional frustration.