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Denmark: Contracts and Evidence-Based Best Practice

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What Works in Nordic School Policies?

Part of the book series: Educational Governance Research ((EGTU,volume 15))

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Abstract

Foundations for national education governance can be found in history and context. Cultures and policies emerge historically in collaboration and interactions with other states and transnational alliances. In the case of Denmark, we see historical relations with Nordic countries and contemporary relations with transnational agencies like the European Union (EU) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We also see the emergence of diverse societal and educational paradigms like a welfare state with democratic education and a competitive state with aims- and outcomes-based education.

Beginning with a short walk over Nordic relations from the Middle Ages till contemporary times, the chapter focuses on fundamental societal change in the post-World War II era.

Through an analysis of Danish cultural history, formation of the welfare state and education discourse of general non-affirmative education/Democratic Bildung, we find strong common trends in values and – although less so – in practices that characterise the core of Danish society, governance and education: believing in and striving for democracy and local autonomy with self-activity, and the struggle to make all levels of society develop into less unequal communities that respect other people and communities.

Another line of analysis looks into globalization, transnational agencies, formation of the competition state and education policy. Here we also find identical trends. The market-place logics are found in the transnational thinking and initiatives, in the move of states from a welfare state to a state competing for success in the global marketplace. New conceptions of government in nation states change into conceptions of governance on the basis of policy networks. One of the social technologies used for this movement is the contract, which is very commonly used in Denmark as well as management by objective and management by outcomes (The concepts used here: neo-liberal globalization as marketplace, globalization and marketplace logics can be seen as parallel concepts to the thesis that Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (2001) developed in analysing the Empire, ‘the sovereignty of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule.’ This Empire is decentred and deterritorialised. It has no centre or territory).

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  1. Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Lejf Moos & John Benedicto Krejsler

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  1. Lejf Moos
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Correspondence to Lejf Moos .

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  1. Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark

    John Benedicto Krejsler

  2. Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Lejf Moos

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Moos, L., Krejsler, J.B. (2021). Denmark: Contracts and Evidence-Based Best Practice. In: Krejsler, J.B., Moos, L. (eds) What Works in Nordic School Policies?. Educational Governance Research, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66629-3_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66629-3_2

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