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he purpose of the article is to discuss pedagogical preconditions for the role of the school as a democratic institution, in connection with the renewal of the Norwegian curriculum. Democratic citizenship is something that is learned, and the curriculum alignment can tell a lot about what kind of democracy the school is going to help build for citizens of the future. In this article, we argue that four preconditions are particularly important. Firstly, the school’s mission as a democracy-forming institution should be understood in a youth perspective. Secondly, democratic citizenship is something that is learned, and the youth perspective must therefore be based on learning theoretical presuppositions. Third, we argue that the school can be seen as an institution mediating between children and the greater communities. Fourth, we argue that the school should build on democracy as a way of life, and not limited to democracy as a political regime.

The context of this article is the on-going renewal of the Norwegian curriculum. Our point of departure is the challenges that arise when implementing policy into practice. One of the traditional aspirations and goals of the Norwegian education system is to foster democratic citizens. How to implement democratic practices into the classroom is a challenge faced by politicians, academics as well as practitioners. One obstacle might be the lack of theoretical resources that can help translate policy in to practice. We argue that theory can be used for contextualising pedagogically grounded ethics on what goes on in the classroom. Theory can be used for translating policy into pedagogy. In this article, we propose transformative learning theory (TLT) as a possible resource for negotiating the gap between policy and practice.

The purpose of this article is to discuss how the capacities of reflection and judgement are developed through dialogic instruction. We begin this study with discussing the concepts of critical reflection and political judgement. Then, building on relevant literature and contributions by Mezirow, Arendt, Englund, Pappas and others, we explore approaches to democracy and citizenship. Based on this, we argue that the teacher plays an important role in facilitating constructive dialogues that contribute to the development of students’ ability for reflection and judgement.