Searching for Democracy. A study of Democracy in Education in English and Norwegian Secondary Schools

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis is to explore participatory democracy in selected English and Norwegian secondary schools. The study applies a comparative approach which aims to identify what factors in the school environments which represent democratic strengths and weaknesses with regard to participatory democracy. The research question to be answered is What promotes and what hinders democracy in education in selected secondary schools? To answer this question we applied in-depth interviews with a total of six school leaders from five schools in South East England and seven school leaders from four schools in the Oslo area in Norway. The interviews were carried out in a semi-structured fashion, focusing on democratic implications of central areas of daily school life: citizenship education practices, student voice, interpersonal relations and learning environment, inclusion of students life experiences in school life, and leadership practices. These are some of the findings from the study: With regard to how citizenship education was viewed, all respondents from both countries agreed on the great importance of this area in education. In the English context respondents found it challenging for schools and educators to maintain a commitment to the subject in an educational environment that looked primarily at academic rigour and favoured traditional subjects that are more easily tested. In the Norwegian context, respondents were content with the way citizenship was embedded in the curricula and how this approach worked in practice. The Norwegian respondents were concerned about a possible weakening of student voice due to the removal of the student council slot from years 8 and 9. The influence the English student councils had in school life appeared more limited than what was allegedly the case for their Norwegian counterparts. Leadership approaches in the Norwegian schools were generally less hierarchical, teamwork oriented and informal whereas in the English schools distributed leadership was the general approach and hierarchy was more pronounced. One aspect of the study was to map views on democracy in education in general in the two countries. A rather striking finding was that all English respondents characterized their education system as definitely not democratic whereas the Norwegian respondents meant the Norwegian education system definitely was democratic. Across all sub-areas of the study, dialogue emerged from the data as perhaps the most important factor for the promotion of participatory democracy in the schools. This underscores the importance for educators to make an effort to implement a quality dialogue in interpersonal relations in education.