Friday, September 20th, 2019 Half a century of Swedish school reforms: trying to reform society through schools

Description

Inger Enkvist is professor em. of Spanish and Latin-American literature at Lund University, Sweden and also a well-know author of books on education published mainly in Spanish and Swedish. She has some 40 books published and more than 200 articles. In Spanish she has written on the Peruvian-Spanish writer Mario Vargas Llosa and the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo. She has published on Spanish philosophers and Latin-American Icons. In education, she has published books on the Swedish education reforms and books on international comparison in education. Her current research focuses on new trends in teacher education and how to reform teacher education in Sweden.

Sweden introduced the “comprehensive school” in 1962. Obligatory school up to the age of 16 was to lead to social harmony and equality, and there was to be no specific learning targets to be acquired in order to graduate. Reforms in 1969 and in 1976 put still more emphasis on a social and caring approach. In 1985, the teacher education was changed in order to prepare teachers for the new role that teachers were to adopt.This basic model was not changed in the 90s, but the 90s also saw a radical decentralization and the introduction of a kind of charter schools plus a new type of curriculum. In 2001 there was a reform that introduced a teacher education based on the basic equality between different kinds of teachers. A number of reforms 2010-2011 introduced some changes but did not touch the basic model neither for schools nor for teacher education.