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The 19th century saw the rise of mass schooling. School acts were published, increasing number of teachers were trained and hired, and children increasingly attended schools. This development was strongest in Europe and North America, with schooling in the USA, France and Prussia leading the way. While this development with its national and regional variations continues to puzzle researchers, it also creates challenges of communication and presentation. What English language terminology should be used when denoting schools, teachers, and pupils in non-Anglo-Saxon countries? In this article, I address a part of this question by examining the case of Swedish 19th-century primary schools. By relating these schools to those in other countries, and the terminology used in the research literature, this article provides recommendations for English-language terms to be used when denoting these schools, the teachers who taught them, and the children who attended them. This terminology includes primary school, parish school and mass schooling, and the terms used to denote teachers and their training include junior schoolteacher, primary school teacher and term teacher training schools. As a result, this article problematizes the use of terms such as compulsory, public, state, and national when describing schools in 19th-century contexts such as that of Sweden, indicates the varying meanings of terms such as popular education, and highlights the problems of not translating terms such as "folkskola."

In the 2020s, there are both societal and academic reasons to reflect on the field of history of education. In this article, we focus on the issue of the social, which remains central to the field as we acknowledge that society shapes education and education shapes society. By exploring the social on theoretical, methodological and broader societal levels, we provide suggestions for how we can rethink the field of educational history in the future. In line with a postmodern emphasis on particularity and complexity, we do not present any simple or general answers. We do not promote a return to the social history accounts of the post-war era and its emphasis on social class, economic development and the state. Instead, we encourage efforts to rethink the terms social and society on the basis of both classic social history accounts and the lessons learned from new cultural history of education. What would a new social history of education look like in the twenty-first century, and how can we write updated histories on education and society today?

Many critical educational philosophies assume that learners are naïve and unable to critically read their social reality. Critical educational gerontology (CEG) aims to emancipate learners from oppression, to which they are oblivious. This strand of older adult education charges teachers with the task of raising learners' naïve consciousness, by leading them on the (Freirean) path of critical reflection and critical action. Literature employing CEG concludes that this path often ends with learners being reluctant to engage in critical action because of their ongoing (internalised) oppression. In this paper, we adopt a critical stance towards CEG's logic of emancipation guided by Anthony Giddens' structuration theory. As such, we question the inability of older learners to understand, and act on, their social reality independently from teachers. Starting from Giddens' theory, we apply a reflexive thematic analysis to interview data tackling the socio-economic reality of 11 older learners at a university for the third age in Lebanon. The results support the conclusion that older learners at the U3A can decode their social reality and reflexively engage in social change, but their efforts or reluctance are influenced by constraints, not necessarily naïve consciousness. Consequently, we recommend a revisit of CEG's logic of emancipation.

The history of education is, and can be, many things. In this article, I argue that the history of education in the Nordic countries is marked by three phases, based on its institutional setting. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the history of education was written by schoolmen for schoolmen. In the post-war era, the discipline of education took increasing responsibility for the field. Since the 1980s, it has been a multidisciplinary research field based on the disciplines of education and history where history of education was combined with research in history education, sociology of education, child studies and educational policy. While the development of the history of education varied across the Nordics, this setting proved to be fertile. In terms of active researchers, output and coordination, the Nordic history of education clearly stands stronger now than it did 20 years ago.

Starting in the late nineteenth century, the teaching profession became increasingly feminized. This article examines the results of this process, exploring the working and living conditions of rural female primary school teachers with a focus on the experiences of loneliness, harassment, and violence that they suffered in early twentieth-century Sweden. By investigating the public debate on these issues 1900-1940, we found that two main threats to the well-being of female teachers were identified: isolation and the threat of male violence. Male politicians as well as female authors and teachers acknowledged that female teachers faced loneliness, anxiety, and possible threats from violent men. The consequences of these threats were both emotional and practical, but the debate focused to a large extent on practical solutions such as providing the teachers with telephones, guard dogs, or weapons.

This article analyzes how childcare vouchers were introduced in the context of the Swedish welfare state by examining vital political decisions from the prohibition of publicly funded private preschools in 1984 and onwards. Basing our argument on theories of political institutions and historical institutionalism, we argue that this remarkable shift in preschool policy was due to a set of specific historical premises that included an expanding preschool sector and incremental reforms that did not abolish public preschools, but merely complemented them with private preschools. Instead of perceiving childcare vouchers as the mere results of marketization ideology, we interpret this reform as the result of a sequence of decisions, institutional layering, vested interests, and positive feedback mechanisms, where the expansion of the early care and education sector played a significant role. In this context, we argue that the marketization may be seen as a successful support of the rapidly growing sector of publicly funded preschools in Sweden. Although the Social Democrats lost the battle of marketization, they certainly won the war on publicly funded preschools for all.

The infant school was a nineteenth-century innovation with British roots that quickly achieved an international reputation. This article contributes to the study of the transnational dissemination of the infant schools by examining the case of Swedish infant schools. Using theoretical concepts from the transnational history of education, this article focuses on how the model of infant schools was transferred to Sweden, and how this model was translated and transformed in this process and by local Swedish contexts. Combining printed handbooks and unprinted archival materials from infant school societies, this article emphasises the role of travels, handbooks, and the infant school society of Stockholm in this transfer process, and its inherent contradictions. This study indicates the vital role that religion played in transforming the content of the teaching taught at infant schools, and the impact of primary schools on the educational practices. As elsewhere, Swedish infant schools were sometimes transformed into a kind of preparatory primary school.

The nation-state remains fundamental to our understanding of nineteenth-century schooling, which is commonly referred to in terms of national school systems or national education systems. While nineteenth-century school systems were often national in scope and promoted with the purpose of creating nationally minded citizens, this article examines whether such systems were national in the sense of being designed to impose national uniformity and standardisation on schools, teachers and pupils. Based on an investigation of public regulations of primary schooling in Sweden 1842-1920, this article shows that the Swedish school system promoted regional variation by officially sanctioning a wide range of school types, including ambulatory schools, junior schools and minor primary schools. As a result, this case study encourages considerate use of the term primary schooling and raises questions as to whether nineteenth-century school systems are, in this respect, more aptly described as regionalised rather than national.

The physical environment in early childhood education and care is crucial. This paper examines the Swedish government's vision of preschool design in the welfare state of the 1970s and the conceptions of children and society upon which it was based. Presenting an investigation of reports, booklets, and study materials published by various branches of the central government, this paper analyses an ambitious preschool design intended to provide children with a diverse and stimulating environment that supported their independence and freedom of choice. Unlike similar designs in postwar Europe, this preschool design was not formulated in response to the experiences of the world wars. Inspired by the theories of Piaget and Erikson and based on the rationality of the Swedish welfare state, this preschool design was instead intended to remedy the shortcomings of a perceived anonymous, sterile and barren modern society. In relation to existing research, this paper contributes to the study of the so-called nursery heritage by examining how it was formulated in the setting of the Swedish welfare state. In so doing, the paper also provides ample ground for a continued critical discussion on contemporary strands of neoliberal preschool design.

Dewey's influence on Chinese education has been described as a prime example of the transfer of knowledge from the West to the East. This article investigates the precise process of this transfer by re-examining two themes stressed in current scholarship: Dewey's thoughts on education and democracy and his incremental approach to educational and social reform. In doing so, it explores the many roles Dewey played in both radical and moderate reforms and in an educational discourse that shifted its focus from democratic education to education informed by the scientific attitude. As a result, it raises further theoretical questions about the conceptualisation, unity and diversity, and 'influence' of Dewey in transfer processes. In this article, we argue that Dewey's ideas were subject to constant reinvention in Republican China and that the received Dewey was largely a fragmented Dewey born out of its ever-shifting socio-political and cultural context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Europe, there are many different ways in which early childhood education and care professionals are trained. This article investigates how these different forms came into being. Comparing two small, prosperous European countries, Sweden and Switzerland, we analyse the developments in training regimes for early childhood professionals since the 19th century using a historical institutionalism approach. We focus on corporate actors and the institutionalization of educational structures and identify critical junctures and path dependencies. Although both countries developed a comparable diversity of training opportunities in the 19th century and early 20th century, developments since the 1950s have diverged widely. While Sweden is developing a uniform, fully academicized training structure, the Swiss case exhibits no such uniformity but is characterized by continuity and incremental change. The article traces the role played by central governments, private associations and educational reform in the development of the training of preschool personnel.

This article discusses how an increased interest in the global, the international and the cross-national may be informed by the recently renewed focus upon the social and economic history of education. The history of school buildings in a comparative framework offered here illustrates how such approaches also have important contributions to make to the study of international and cross-national phenomena. This article therefore makes a case for a social history turn in this field.

Drawing inspiration from the new social history of livelihood, this article examines how rural nineteenth-century teachers made a living by engaging in livelihood diversification. By using a wide variety of source materials from nineteenth-century Sweden, this article shows that, far from specialising exclusively in teaching, teachers were often engaged in multiple occupations as late as the year 1900, and that teachers' work ranged from activities that were encouraged to those that were frowned upon or even illegal. As a result, this article sheds new light on teaching as an occupation in the nineteenth century and contributes to the discussion of the social and economic positions of teachers. By investigating how teachers earned their livelihoods, this article also addresses the role of teachers' multiple occupations in the expansion of mass schooling during the nineteenth century.

The purpose of this article is to clarify what kind of role schools and teachers played in the well-being of Finnish war children during and after the Second World War. The study focuses on the children who were evacuated to Denmark, also known as Finnebørn, and their experiences and memories as war children in Denmark and returning evacuees back home in Finland. All together, 11 former Finnebørn were interviewed for the research. The interview data was supported by other primary sources such as published and unpublished written material and newspaper articles. This article explores the roles schools and teachers played in the lives of the evacuee children; what kind of influence an individual teacher had on Finnebørn's resilience processes; and finally, how schooling effected children's well-being. According to our data, going to school played an important role in Finnebørn's lives. In Denmark, the children's integration to their new home country was facilitated by supportive and understanding teachers. Escaping the wars, and learning a new language did, however, affect the children's return to Finland. Having lost their first language, the re-integration into the Finnish society could prove a challenge, to which the Finnish schools and teachers were not prepared for.

This article addresses the role of the state and state formation in the establishment of national education during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Through a comparative case analysis of two countries at the European periphery (Finland and Turkey), this article shows how national educational systems, in both instances, were driven by periods of intense state building. In the nineteenth century, military defeats sparked educational reforms, and in the early nineteenth century school laws were enacted due to the establishment of the republics of Finland and Turkey. Nevertheless, these examples also show the limits of a state formation perspective. Despite changes in educational policy, neither state reached high enrolment levels in the nineteenth century, and only in Finland schooling for all was realised in the 1930s. Thus, this work encourages further comparative analyses of the social, economic and political circumstances in which these states acted.

This article discusses the significance of in-kind taxation and payments in kind for the establishment of an elementary school system in Sweden, in the 1840-1870 period. By analysing the funding of teachers' wages, the heating of the school facilities, and school building construction in the 12 rural school districts of the Sundsvall region, this study shows that schooling to a large extent relied on in-kind transactions in this area. Despite the practical problems that such transactions entailed, the author has argued that they were instrumental in the establishment of schooling in the Sundsvall region. Apart from making schooling affordable for the school districts, since in-kind taxation and payment made it possible to avoid extensive cash expenditure, the natural economy presented an opportunity to align the school funding to the school districts' local resources, price levels and social structure. In contrast to the historiography of schooling that has mainly linked the emergence of mass schooling to the modernisation of society, this work reveals that age-old customs of in-kind transactions are an important factor to acknowledge when explaining the educational revolution that mass schooling entailed.