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Abstract
This case study of the development of the Norwegian compulsory school curriculum of 1997, Læreplanverket 1997, parallels a study of the development of the Illinois Learning Standards of 1997. The pair of case studies is designed to explore the administration of state-based curriculum-making and, in particular, the use in curriculum-making of the administrative tools of compartmentalization, segmentation and licencing. Often the use of these tools serves to make the curriculum as a guiding instrument largely symbolic and/or ideological.
Notes
1. As Svingby (Citation1995) observed: The reforming of the schools systems [in Scandinavia in the post-war years was], on the whole, based on a social democratic ideology. The fact that the Scandinavian countries have had almost half a century of social-democratic political dominance has made possible the realization of a school ideology that in other countries has been weakened by compromises. (p. 213)
2. ‘We know very little about Norwegian education. This was said clearly in the OECD review of Norwegian education more than two years ago. The OECD experts had difficulty evaluating the schools' use of material resources and the achieved results of teaching. It was the data which was not good enough; even the statistics on education were imperfect. The experts could not quite understand how one could direct school and education on such a fragile basis’ (Sjoberg 1991; from Hagen and Tibbitts (Citation1993), p. 27).
3. We interviewed 30 participants involved in the writing of L97 shortly after that writing was completed: two of 5 members of the political staff of KUF; 13 of 30 persons from the permanent staff of KUF; and 27 (of 193) persons engaged for subject-area syllabus committees.
4. Hernes as Minister was at the centre of the work around L97 from 1991 until his appointment as Minister for Health and Social Affairs in 1995. He was succeeded as Minister by Reider Sandal.
5. Gundem and Karseth (Citation1998, p. 6) note that ‘“core” [is] used in a special way—denoting underlying principles and aims meant to be common to all schools … and not as a common core of factual knowledge and skills to be mastered by everyone’.
6. Both projects concluded in fall 1996.
7. See Hirsch, Citation1987; Hirsch and his colleagues went on to publish a series of, e.g. What your first grader needs to know: Fundamentals of a good first-grade education, etc. and to develop a model for a school. In Citation1996, he published the controversial The schools we need and why we don’t have them (New York: Doubleday).
8. i.e. Reform94; prior to the 1994 reform there had been three branches of upper secondary schooling: ‘general’ (language, history, etc.), ‘mercantile’ (accounting, etc.) and ‘vocational’ (electronics, carpentry, etc.). Reform 94 merged these branches into a single system.
9. The Bridge and the syllabus-writing task groups were also augmented by ‘reference’ and ‘expert groups’ that provided advice and feedback to the task-groups. The leaders of the syllabus-writing groups were dispersed across the country and supported by the regional offices of the KUF.
10. There was no mother tongue syllabus for language minorities in L97 (Gundem & Karseth, Citation1998).
11. The ultimate drafting of the syllabus texts was managed by Hernes, and his successor, Reider Sandal, and their political staffs.
12. Note that Hernes was Minister of Education, Research and Church Affairs, responsible for the governance and management of the established Christian church. Religious education had long been taught in Norwegian schools as part of the formal curriculum.
13. The members of the minister’s office were the only respondents we interviewed who acknowledged interactions with the political and policy issues and constituencies around L97.
14. Hernes, the State Secretary, and other members of the minister’s office played active roles in all aspects of the commission’s work. As noted earlier, public and political advocacy, along with on-going liaison with the Storting and its committee on education, political parties and organizations, etc. were handled only by the minister’s office. These ‘political’ tasks were regarded as outside the professional scope of work of the staff of KUF or those involved in the curriculum-writing.
15. The focus here is on the core members of the committees responsible for the ‘The Bridge’ and the subject-area syllabi. The work of each of these task groups was augmented by formal national ‘reference groups’ and smaller working committees.
16. ‘KUF’, personnel in the Department for Primary and Lower Secondary Education of the Royal Ministry of Education, Research and Church Affairs; ‘Schools’, working in schools as teachers or administrators; ‘County and district education offices’, working in county or district education offices; ‘Regional colleges/research institutions’, working in Norway’s regional colleges (now university colleges), teachers colleges or research institutions; ‘University’, working in universities’; ‘Public, professional, business and education interest groups’, appointed from teachers unions or other education-focused interest groups, from public interest and business (including textbook publishing) interest groups as well as other education-focused interest groups; ‘Other’, from other central state agencies, artists, musicians, etc. The music curriculum-writing group included, for example, a prominent folk musician.
17. ‘As your team/group made its final recommendations, what priority or significance was given to the following types of arguments’. What followed was a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “none” to “very significant”’.
18. The respondents were asked to indicate no more than 2 responses from a set of 11.
19. For this reason, L97 was seen as being ‘against’ local interests and teachers’ professional mandates (see Hovdenak, Citation2000; Løvlie, Citation1997; Solstad, Citation1997; Trippestad, Citation2003).
20. For a discussion of parallel mother tongue issues in the development of the Illinois Learning Standards, see Westbury (2016; see also Wixson, Dutro, & Athan, Citation2003).