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Wednesday 12 April 2023
16.30 - 18.30
N-4
EDU04
Educational Miracles under Empirical Scrutiny: Schooling, Inequality and Economic Development in the Nordic Countries and Switzerland
C33 (Z)
Anne Berg, Johanna Ringarp & Emma Laurin :
From the Sidelines? The Role of the Academic Field and Social Movements in the Rise of Integration Policies regarding SEN-pupils in Sweden 1960s-1990s
From the 1960s and onwards, pupils with so called special needs (SEN-pupils), or pupils that traditionally had been excluded from the traditional educational forms of the majority society, successively was integrated into the public education system. The change can be traced both at classroom level and at policy level. For ... (Show more)From the 1960s and onwards, pupils with so called special needs (SEN-pupils), or pupils that traditionally had been excluded from the traditional educational forms of the majority society, successively was integrated into the public education system. The change can be traced both at classroom level and at policy level. For instance, since the 1990’s, the concept of inclusion has gained a status as basis for education policy in most of the world. The purpose of this paper is to offer a new explanatory perspective regarding how and why the integration paradigm, as a dominant way of managing ‘the other pupils’; in this case pupils with special pedagogical needs, arose and changed in Sweden from the 1960s to the 1990s. To examine the conditions for the rise of an integration paradigm, the paper examines how different institutions and interests’ groups in civil society have contributed to establishing and (re) producing the knowledge and ideas about problems and solutions on which integration and inclusion policies rests. This distinguishes us from previous research that primarily is characterized by a top-down perspective and focused on policy making at the government level. The paper presents new results from studies that focus on two different institutional arenas that we believe are important in explaining the establishment and change of the integration paradigm. These are the level of the scientific field and the level of social movements civil society. Together, these arenas constituted parts of the welfare state ‘corporative’ structure of governance during the 20th century. What role did the academic field and the representatives of educational science research play? What impact did the disability organizations have on the policy changes? What significance did the teachers 'unions' attitude to the issue have? The material for the study consists of research articles and opinion-forming materials from the arenas. For example, the role of the disability organizations in special investigations, consultations and consultation responses, articles in newspapers and specialist press. In the paper, we suggest that civil society and the educational science field must be included in the history of the transition from segregation to integration when it comes to the school's management of SEN-pupils. This suggests that a ‘ from the side-perspective’ must be incorporated into the explanation of the rise of integration in Sweden. (Show less)
Joël Floris, Stefan Kessler & Gabriela Wüthrich :
Switzerland's Secret Success Story? Vocational Education and Industrialisation in Switzerland, 1880-1930
Why is Switzerland a rich country? Switzerland became one of the richest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita between 1850 and 1914 (Müller and Woitek 2012, p. 95; Stohr 2016, Floris et al. 2019, p. 213). Striking is that Switzerland had one of the highest literacy ... (Show more)Why is Switzerland a rich country? Switzerland became one of the richest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita between 1850 and 1914 (Müller and Woitek 2012, p. 95; Stohr 2016, Floris et al. 2019, p. 213). Striking is that Switzerland had one of the highest literacy rates (85%) and one of the highest school enrolment rates (47.3%) in 1870 (Crafts 1997, p. 306). Consequently, it is natural to highlight the quality of the labour force as a particular factor that impacted Switzerland's economic development. Today's Switzerland is proud of its vocational training system and its long apprenticeship tradition. In craft, technical, administrative, or service professions, vocational education is one of the foundations of the economy and public administration. Today about 2/3 of young people opt for vocational training. After nine years of compulsory schooling, they begin an apprenticeship in a company and attend vocational education at a vocational school (the dual education system). Only about 20 percent of the young people attend a high school to start a university degree afterwards (but regional differences are large). Since the 19th century, politics and business seem to have placed particular emphasis on good educational institutions. Switzerland was a pioneer in popular education, modern vocational training, and technical education: the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich was founded in 1854, and the Technikum in Winterthur in 1874. In 1884, the federal government decided to subsidize vocational training institutions. But it was not until 1930 that a federal law on vocational education was enacted that provided for greater federal involvement. There is surprisingly little recent quantitative research on this topic for Switzerland. Our paper examines therefore the emergence of modern vocational education in Switzerland between 1880 and 1930 and its connections with the structural changes that begun with the new phase of industrialisation in the 1870s/1880s. We investigate whether the quality of human capital and vocational training was a real prerequisite for Swiss firms to specialize in high-value niche products and pay their employees and workers relatively high wages. Or whether the quality of human capital was more a consequence of success and whether entrepreneurs and politicians deliberately promoted elementary school, higher vocational education and in-company training in order to promote the niche strategy. Using detailed and recurrent data on school and enrolment rates together with socioeconomic indicators as well as popular voting data, we aim to outline the decision-making process paving the way for Switzerland's successful economic transformation at the turn of the 20th century. (Show less)
Heidi Hirvonen :
Educational Inequality in Early 20th Century Finland
The Finnish education system has gained global admiration in the past decades, but less is known of its historical roots. Finland was one of the last European countries to get compulsory education in 1921. The roll-out of primary and secondary education in the early 20th century was unequal. Yet, the ... (Show more)The Finnish education system has gained global admiration in the past decades, but less is known of its historical roots. Finland was one of the last European countries to get compulsory education in 1921. The roll-out of primary and secondary education in the early 20th century was unequal. Yet, the precise magnitude of these differences and their causes and outcomes have not been analyzed in detail due to data limitations.
My paper utilizes a new and unique panel data to unveil previously hidden educational inequalities in early 20th century Finland. I will use regression models to analyze the effect of local development on the spread of education. How did local characteristics affect the founding of schools? How did the quality of schooling differ regionally? Were there differences in regional enrollment rates by gender and social class?
The main source material is a new municipal level panel data on health, education and livelihood collected by the working group of Sakari Saaritsa at the University of Helsinki. It covers about 25 000 observations and includes schooling, demographic, economic and social variables for each municipality and each year from 1880 to 1938.
Unfolding the history behind Finnish educational development in its social and economic context also provides perspectives for discussions on the current state and future of education in Finland as well as globally. The global learning crisis in primary education is one of the biggest development challenges of today. Regional, socio-economic and gender differences are still topical issues also in many wealthy countries. (Show less)
Francesco Maccelli, Gabriele Cappelli :
The Political Economy of Primary-education State Funding: France and Italy in the Late 19th Century
The human capital concept and its application have a long tradition in economic history. Among other issues, the historiography on the determinants of rising schooling and mass education has focused on the rise of State funding in primary education and its role in reinforcing / reducing regional educational inequality. One ... (Show more)The human capital concept and its application have a long tradition in economic history. Among other issues, the historiography on the determinants of rising schooling and mass education has focused on the rise of State funding in primary education and its role in reinforcing / reducing regional educational inequality. One issue that has been shown to be relevant, but remains under researched, is the relationship between State funding, institutions and reforms, as well as the impact of politics and political actors on the allocation of available resources for education. This latter issue, though little explored, is linked to a large body of literature tackling the question of whether increased State funding accelerated regional convergence in primary schooling during the rise of mass education in the period c. 1850–1950. While this literature concentrated the attention on national and regional school-related statistics, a genuine comparative perspective on the mechanism of state funding in primary education is still lacking. For example, why was the allocation of state education funding so different between France and Italy at the end of the 19 th century – with the former clearly offsetting regional educational inequality while the latter seemed to reinforce them? This paper tries to fill this gap by focusing on France and Italy from the 1860s to the 1920s, in two distinct yet integrated ways: first, through an in-depth qualitative analysis of the historical mechanisms regulating State-funding allocation to different regions in each country; secondly, by producing new harmonized data on schooling expenditure and primary education statistics in France’s and Italy’s departments and provinces (today’s NUTS3 units), and carrying out a statistical cross-section analysis of the determinants of state-funding allocation in the late 19 th century, including political and institutional core variables while controlling for contextual factors. In this way, we shed light on the political and structural influence of policy and policymakers in the evolution of state funding and, as such, one of the main forces of educational convergence and divergence across regions of Europe. (Show less)
Sakari Saaritsa :
The Impoverished Insophisticate: Human and Economic Development in Finland, 19th-20th Centuries
A central tenet of the Scandinavian development narrative has been the notion of synergy between human capital and economic growth – a model Lars Sandberg (1979) famously elaborated by referring to mid-19th century Sweden as an “impoverished sophisticate” characterized by high life expectancy, high levels of literacy and low GDP. ... (Show more)A central tenet of the Scandinavian development narrative has been the notion of synergy between human capital and economic growth – a model Lars Sandberg (1979) famously elaborated by referring to mid-19th century Sweden as an “impoverished sophisticate” characterized by high life expectancy, high levels of literacy and low GDP. The human development characteristics were seen to facilitate later take-off in terms of growth. It is a well-worn practice in Finnish economic history literature to use Scandinavia as the primary reference group when assessing Finnish economic and social development, although by many standards Finland was midway between this group and what is now termed Central and Eastern Europe. This paper assesses the Finnish case from this perspective by reconstructing and deconstructing a historical human development index (HHDI) for Finland and comparing it both to the usual suspects from Scandinavia and Western Europe and to a select set of countries more similar by initial state and geopolitical economy (E.g., Ireland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland). Comparison are made not only in terms of timings of convergence and timings of take-offs and accelerations, but also timings of divergence. Methodologically, the paper also discusses characteristics of the HDI as a representation of development by unpicking how perspectives change when moving from a composite “mashup” index of development to a “dashboard” of dimensions, and how this affects the plausibility of the Nordic narrative. A systematic comparison of HDI and contributions to HDI of its subcomponents in the Nordic countries over different historical periods à la Prados de la Escosura will be included. Despite a rather complete convergence with the Nordic pattern by the late 20th century, Finland emerges as an “impoverished insophisticate” where economic growth was the first dimension to diverge from the periphery, education lagged behind not only other Nordics but also parts of the European periphery surprisingly long by many metrics, and the evolution of health was far from linear. The observations are discussed in detailed historical context. (Show less)
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