Abstract
By situating the analysis in cultural studies of education history, this chapter explores how school authorities in Norway have promoted a school system that reflects historical reform trajectories influenced by both national and international reform ideas. Most of the school reforms in Norway have built on the contract-school model, which began as a Lutheran project in Northern and Central Europe during the early eighteenth century. This chapter presents this model, focusing on how it developed in Scandinavia and Norway and how complementary ideas and powerrelations emerged and contested the old legacy of this model during the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Historical Trajectories of the Contract-School Model in Norway