Conference Agenda

This symposium is concerned with crises in educational policy and rhetoric, both contemporary and historical. Education policy is defined broadly and can refer to political and/or public debates about schools, policy documents or political decisions that lead or have led to changes in schools and education. In the symposium we aim to identify motives, typical sites of thought, key patterns of argumentation and language use in different political regimes. We will also focus on practices that emerge from political rhetoric about education. Persuasion in education policy also involves control of the political process, exclusion or inclusion of parties in the design of governance, organisation and institutions for long-term and systematic influence.
Crisis, on the other hand, often denotes an important moment when decisive change is imminent. A crisis can typically be a decisive moment in a narrative, with great potential for an undesirable outcome. The German historical theorist Reinhart Koselleck combines crisis, critique and fantasy. Critique expresses the possibility that things could have been different. Moreover, criticism involves having or acquiring a historical consciousness through the imagination. The study of political crises, therefore, involves the study of political imagination, the critiques that emerge, the judgments and political outcomes that result from new political judgments.

Geography was included as a mandatory and independent discipline in the Norwegian school system in late 19th century. At that time, geography served as a deliberate tool in crafting a distinct national narrative for a country that had yet to attain full independence and lacked the storied history of its European counterparts. Geography was a school subject until the 1970s when a radical curricula reform merged subjects and constructed new interdisciplinary subjects for primary and secondary schools. In general (at least for secondary school), geography was one third of the subject social studies; history and civics being the two other disciplines. This paper explores the evolution of geography content within the social sciences framework, tracing its negotiation and adaptation to contemporary policies and educational philosophies across four educational reforms since the 1970s. The focus is twofold: firstly, to elucidate the shifts in geography content influenced by political ideas and policies (national and international). Secondly, the study employs a analysis, drawing upon various conceptual frameworks of geographical thinking such as contextualization, scale and multiscale-thinking, relational thinking, spatial variation analysis, diverse perspective consideration, holistic and integrated thinking, meaningful creation, and the use of geographical imaginaries (Jackson 2006, Eidsvik 2022, Smith 2023). The paper applies these conceptual lenses to categorize the content of geography in different curricula iterations, emphasizing a particular focus on dissecting the alterations introduced in the most recent curriculum in 2020. By doing so, this research contributes to understand the interplay between educational reforms, political landscapes, and evolving paradigms of geographical thinking within the Norwegian education system. Conclusion: Fragmentation of geographical content and learning in education is highly problematic. The geography discipline has a substantial potential for holistic system thinking, combining knowledge, values, and skills from a different knowledge system. This is of paramount importance in an educational future compass where interdisciplinarity is highlighted as one of the main keys for a more sustainable future (ie UNESCO and OECD educational compasses). Reduction of geography as a discipline in schools and in teacher education is a step in the wrong direction in the quest for a more holistic and improved way to address the sustainability crisis through education.

Eidsvik, E. (2022). Geografisk danning og utdanning for berekraftig utvikling. I Geografididakikk for klasserommet. R. Mikkelsen og P. J. Sætre (red.). Oslo, Cappelen Damm Akademisk: 81-111. Jackson, Peter (2006) Thinking Geographically, Geography, 91:3, 199-204, DOI: 10.1080/00167487.2006.12094167 Smith, J. S. (2023). Thinking geographically. I Teaching Human Geography. Theories and Practice in Thinking Geographically. E. H. Fouberg og J. S. Smith (red.). Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing: 11-38.

Sub-paper had to be withdrawn.

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On July 22nd, 2011 a car bomb exploded in the government quarter in Oslo, Norway, killing eight people and injuring hundreds. The responsible terrorist then drove to Utøya, a small island about an hour drive from Oslo. There, he shot and killed 69 people, most of whom were participants at the annual labor youth party’s (AUF) summer camp. In the immediate aftermath, and in the years that have followed, different, and in part contradictory, narratives describing and explaining the terrorist attacks have emerged, the dominating one being that this was an attack on the Norwegian democracy. Consequently, the best way to heal and to prevent similar attacks in the future is to protect and strengthen democratic values within the Norwegian population. Today, Utøya is a site of commemoration and education, as well as a social center for the youth labor party. Since 2016 thousands of Norwegian secondary and upper secondary students have visited the island to learn about the July 22nd terrorist attacks, to commemorate the victims, and to participate in educational activities aimed to strengthen their democratic agency. Both within the Norwegian social science curriculum, as well as the different public narratives, knowledge about the terrorist attacks of July 22nd, 2011 is considered important to prevent radicalization, extremism and terrorism. However, studies on school trips to former concentration camps in Poland and Germany question whether it is possible to learn about, and visit, sites of past atrocities as a means to empower students as democratic citizens. This paper will study students’ reflections written shortly before, and a while after, visiting Utøya. Using a narrative analysis, I will explore students’ historical consciousness through the research question: In what way to students negotiate past, present, and future in their understanding of the July 22nd, 2011, terror attacks, and Utøya as a site of trauma, commemoration and education? As the educational activities they participate in is framed within the narrative context of empowering democratic citizens, the paper explores how the students place themselves as actors within this context.

None references included