Sweden: Uncovering Nordic Education and Society with Janne Holmén

02/12/21 • 44 min

This podcast tackles a wide-range of factors about the educational systems of the Nordic countries, focusing primarily on Sweden and comparisons with Finland. On the way, it answers the following questions:

Why does the Finnish education system have such a good reputation around the world?
After decades of reform, is the Swedish education system in crisis?
How does decision-making and the politics around education in Finland and Sweden differ and how is it similar?
What role do schools and teachers play in the creation of our 'mental maps'? A term usually used by cultural geographers, mental maps encompass many different dimensions of our world view: from an awareness of our country and region’s place in the world, to our view of history and where we sit on an imaginary timeline.
How is all of this influenced by national politicians and institutional systems, and even the international dimension?

Join the editor of nordics.info, Nicola Witcombe, on her virtual visit around the Nordic countries, this time to Janne Holmén, Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Uppsala University to discover the answer to these questions. Janne is from the Åland Islands and this has influenced his research interests.
This podcast was recorded in February 2021 and is the second in the series: The Nordics Uncovered: Critical Voices from the Region. The third in the series is an interview with Elisabeth Staksrud, Professor in the Department of Education and Media at Oslo University in Norway. She will be talking about childhood in the Nordics and the online lives of children and young people.
Sound credits from freesound.org including school break noise outdoor.wav by Libra222.

Why does the Finnish education system have such a good reputation around the world?
After decades of reform, is the Swedish education system in crisis?
How does decision-making and the politics around education in Finland and Sweden differ and how is it similar?
What role do schools and teachers play in the creation of our 'mental maps'? A term usually used by cultural geographers, mental maps encompass many different dimensions of our world view: from an awareness of our country and region’s place in the world, to our view of history and where we sit on an imaginary timeline.
How is all of this influenced by national politicians and institutional systems, and even the international dimension?

Previous Episode

Extra material: The Nordics and Small State Theory

This is extra material on the The Nordics and Small State Theory from the nordics.info podcast with Janne Holmén, 'Sweden: Uncovering Nordic Education and Society with Janne Holmén' from February 2021.

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Norway: Uncovering Nordic Childhood in an Online World with Elisabeth Staksrud

Children being exposed to a certain level of risk is not always seen as a bad thing in the Nordics; exposure can give children the tools to deal with risk and help them to become resilient and independent. The attitude of caregivers, teachers and children in the Nordics to online risk also reflects this approach - while elsewhere in the world a more stringent view is often taken. How we tackle children’s online lives and behaviours is rather complex and is influenced by the cultural norms of where you live, the role of schools, as well as how policymakers and classification institutions decide to regulate in the area.

This podcast addresses everything to do with children's online behaviour, taking Norway and a range of other Nordic and non-Nordic countries as examples. On the way, it answers the following questions:
- Is screen time harmful per se?
- How do we protect children from online harm?
- How has Covid-19 and online teaching affected children’s online lives?
- And what approaches are prevalent in the Nordic countries?

Join the editor of nordics.info, Nicola Witcombe, on her virtual visit around the Nordic countries, this time to Elisabeth Staksrud, Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at the University of Oslo to discover the answer to these questions.
This podcast was recorded in February 2021 and is the third in the series: The Nordics Uncovered: Critical Voices from the Region. The fourth in the series is an interview with Gunnþórunn Guðmundsdóttir, Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Iceland. She will be talking about Icelandic literature, Nordic Noir and how writers and cultural commentators frame the past - and how they help people to digest global crises.
Sound credits from freesound.org including mechanical keyboard sound by TolerableDruid6.

Knowledge on the Nordics - Sweden: Uncovering Nordic Education and Society with Janne Holmén

Transcript

Janne Holmén 0:10
Some areas of society are perceived to be in crisis like the school, for example, on these areas or areas where there have been a lot of reforms maybe a bit a bit too often there's been reforms that have not really been left in place to do their work.
Nicola Witcombe 0:24
That was the voice of Associate Professor in the Department of Education at Uppsala University, Janne Holmén, my second guest in this new nordics.info podcast s