In 2004 the University of Gothenburg established the Centre for Educational Science and Teacher Research (CUL). CUL aims to promote and support research and third-cycle studies linked to the teaching profession and the teacher training programme. The graduate school is an interfaculty initiative carried out jointly by the Faculties involved in the teacher training programme at the University of Gothenburg and in cooperation with municipalities, school governing bodies and university colleges. www.cul.gu.se
In this article the historical background to the reactivation of the concept of Bildung in the Swedish school debate during 1980s is presented. The article argues that the resurrection of this concept is intimately related to the foundation of the discourse of the Knowledge School (Kunskapsskolan), and shows how these two terms were central in school political program developed by the Knowledge Movement (Kunskapsrörelsen) in the early 1980s. The article shows how the concept of Bildung since it was resurrected not only has been highly contested, but that it was actually reactivated within the same movement that helped pave the way for the manifest economic-instrumentalist school discourse that dominates the current curriculum.
In the last decade, a number of studies have been published relating the in media highlighted problems of the Swedish school to the cluster of reforms launched around 1990. It has been pointed out that, e.g., the municipalization of the school, the introduction of a management by objectives as well as an educational system structured by a voucher model, all carried out in the years around 1990, substantially have contributed to the current problems in Swedish schools. As has been shown in a number of studies, the ideas permeating the reforms are not specific to the educational sector, but can be related to other societal reforms aiming at increasing decentralization as well as a further market orientation.
Increasing discontent with the current status of democracy has prompted a renewed interest in Athenian democracy. This article contributes with the first comparative analysis of two political theoreticians -Hannah Arendt and Ellen Meiksins Woodwhose reactivations of ancient political experiences significantly predate recent trends. Despite the fact that Arendt levelled fierce critique against the Marxist tradition of which Wood was a part, it is shown how both thinkers involved a close consideration of the relation between the social/economic and the political in their analyses; regarded Athenian forms of equality as the differentia specifica when measured against modern incarnations of democracy; committed themselves to the controversial move to grant slavery a marginal role in their analyses; turned to the American Revolution to discern the specificity of the ancient forms equality and modern democracy; and how both departed from the mainstream definitions of democracy as a list of institutions or a number of criteria. We argue that Arendt and Wood reach similar conclusions about the distinctive form of separation between the political and the social/economic in Athens, reach different conclusions about the distinctive forms of collapse and separation respectively in the modern epoch, but nonetheless unite in their critique of the American Revolution. On those premises, the central aim is to investigate how the reactivation of Athenian equality can serve as a resource for critique of three forms of equality that underpins democracy in the modern age, which we designate formal, distributive and imaginary equality.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.