Conference Agenda

During the last decade, private foundations have taken up an increasingly central role in sponsoring projects and programs across all levels of public education in Denmark, reflecting a global trend toward private sector participation in public education (Erfurth & Ridge, 2021). While some donations come in the form of money to projects formulated by schools or municipalities themselves, recent years have seen private foundations take a more proactive role in shaping and developing projects, teaching materials, digital platforms, know-how, and partnerships.

It is important to analyse how private foundations observe their purpose and environment when the foundations are not only funneling money to public schools, but are also actively involved in generating partnerships and programs. Under the monitor of ‘venture philanthropy’ or ‘new philanthropy’, recent studies have begun to shed light on how contemporary private foundations appear to implicate a high degree of expectations for a return on their philanthropic actions (Junemann & Olmedo 2019; Lubienski et al. 2022; O’Neill & Powell 2022; Olmedo 2014; Rowe 2021; Rowe 2022; Saltman 2010). This paper contribute to this emerging field of research, assuming the return on investments not necessarily being in the sense of profit but rather as a matter of influencing the Danish school and future society.

The paper thus focus on the objectives and strategies of the private foundations and of the private companies financing the foundations. How and why do the foundations want to influence school and future society? How do they do it and what are their considerations? What is the strategy with the foundation of the mother company? The theoretical framework is drawn from business and management studies. This is in order to be able to describe the objectives and strategies of the foundations in a language close to their self-descriptions. Henry Mintzberg and his strategy concept (Mintzberg 1987; Mintzberg et al. 2009) is a classic in the field of strategy studies. With his 5 p’s for strategy (plan, ploy, pattern, position, and perspective) Mintzberg opens to a set of analytical questions (Mintzberg 1987, p. 20-21). How leaders try to establish direction for organizations (plan), how threats, feints and other maneuvers are employed to gain advantage in direct competition (ploy), how consistency in behavior gradually forms (pattern), how organizations find their positions and protect them in order to meet competition (position), and how intentions diffuse through a group of people to become shared as norms and values (perspective).

Lodged in a relatively small, homogenous and publicly financed school system with a well-established pedagogical tradition, the Danish case of private foundations and public schooling provides an ideal space to explore the strategies and impact of private foundations in a welfare state setting. The two Danish foundations, Novo Nordisk/LIFE and Lego Foundation, constitutes the empirical cases. The two foundations are the most granting foundations in Denmark (Fondenes Videnscenter 2022). They share an international profile and outreach and they have formulated objectives for Danish School. LIFE focus on science (LIFE 2022), Lego on play (Lego 2022). The Novo Nordisk foundation’s LIFE is a “nationwide science education initiative”, channeling DKK 1.9 billion into improving science education in public schooling over a ten-year period (Novo Nordisk 2022). From the foundation’s LIFE Campus in Lyngby, LIFE presently has around 120 employees who facilitate, teach and develop lessons for science instruction in schools. The goal of the LEGO Foundation is to “re-define play and re-imagine learning”. With partnerships like Playful Learning (Knudsen & Rasmussen 2023) they aim at building “a future where learning through play empowers children to become creative, engaged, lifelong learners” (Lego 2022).

The introduction and normalization of digital tools in Swedish schools has not passed without attention. The digitalization of education is often described as an efficient, fun, individualized way of learning, a way to train students in critical thinking and data literacy and a way to leave the established textbooks to learn from authentic settings. As well, digital tools offer efficient platforms for organizing teaching and school administration. On the other hand, digitalization of education has met resistance in different shapes. Social-conservative voices have claimed that digitalization of school is segregating, that students learn less through the computers than more traditional instructions (Hultén & Ideland, 2020), and despite massive investments no clear gains in student academic achievement can be linked to these (Fernández-Gutiérrez et al., 2020). Also, strong concerns have been raised regarding how multinational commercial actors have been given an increased role in public education using computers, platforms, etc. (Player-Koro et al 2017; Hillman et al 2020; van Dijck et al 2018).

However, the use of ed-tech is not only driven by the business sector, lobby work has also been intense in relation policy reforms inviting the commercial companies (Williamson et. al 2019; Raptopoulou 2021).

Ed-tech produces hopes and fears about conditions for teaching and learning. This Janus-face of ed-tech is not unique for digital technologies, most technologies have at one point been full of wonder, hopes and fears (Marwin, 1988). This paper historicizes the discussions on contemporary ed-tech by turning to a time of introduction and heydays of other educational technologies – film and radio. The aim is to analyze how educational technologies in the first half of the 20th century were embedded in hopes and fears for school and in what forms the “old ed-tech” invited commercial actors into school. Departing from policy documents and teacher press we address the following research questions (RQ):

1) What educational problems and qualities were educational technologies expected to bring to the comprehensive school system in Sweden?

2) What relations between comprehensive school and commercial actors are formed through educational technologies?

The focus will be on the period 1940-1962, the formative years of the comprehensive school Grundskolan and the heydays for the educational technology radio and film. Grundskolan was formally introduced in 1962 and was nine years comprehensive school that united a thereto differentiated primary and lower secondary school system in Sweden. But the study also includes a prequel, 1920-1939, to bring forward the very early introduction of the educational technologies radio and film. We will argue that educational technologies came to play an important role in shaping Grundskolan and that commercial actors were active in these processes, and that film and radio was at the center of this edutechnical transformation.

Theoretically, the paper departs from the concept of sociotechnical imaginaries. That is “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology” (Jasanoff & Kim 2015, p. 4). Thus, we illuminate and discuss how the hopes and fears about the new technologies – as well as the actors providing them – are not innocent tools but performing imaginaries of a future society.