COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE DANISH AND THE NORWEGIAN CURRICULUM
FOR
DANISH AND NORWEGIAN LANGUAGE TEACHING
PAPER PRESENTED AT NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE
14-15 JANUARY 2011
HAI PHONG, VIETNAM
JENS RASMUSSEN, PROFESSOR, PHD
THE DANISH SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, AARHUS UNIVERSITY
TUBORGVEJ 164
DK-2400 COPENHAGEN NV
DENMARK
JERA@DPU.DK
Keywords: comparative curriculum study, Danish and Norwegian curriculum in national languages,
competences,
Introduction
Curricula are state administrative instruments for establishing teaching practice as a part of
educational policy. Their function is to express the political system’s expectations for schools and what
students are to get out of school. In this way, curricula have both a social and a pedagogical-didactic
function. The social function consists predominantly in making clear the expectations society has for
the way schools prepare students for their future life in society, at work, and at leisure. The
pedagogical-didactic function consists of making clear the expectations for teaching and learning at a
particular time.
In recent decades, there has been a tendency for curricula to express in ever clearer ways expectations
for what students are to achieve through teaching and not what they are to be taught in, which was
ordinarily the case before. At times, this displacement from content orientation to result orientation in
which interest is directed toward what students get out of teaching has been designated as a paradigm
shift. The expectations for what students are to get out of teaching are formulated as goals or
standards.
In Denmark, the development toward the target management of teaching was introduced in 2001 with
so-called Clear Goals. In 2002, these guidelines were re-dubbed Common Goals and made nationally
binding and expanded to include attainment goals and final goals. In 2009, these goals were revised
and clarified under the title Common Goals 2009. In Norway, the development toward the target
management of teaching was introduced in 1997 with Primary School Reform. However, the
curriculum from 1997 was content-oriented even though clearer goal formulations were introduced. It
was only with Knowledge Promotion Reform 2009 that competence goals replaced the tradition of
content-oriented curricula.
In this study, the Danish curriculum for Danish language instruction and the Norwegian curriculum for
Norwegian language instruction will be analyzed and compared. Both curricula are introduced with the
objectives for the subjects, which will not be included in this analysis, and both curricula provide
attainment goals, while only the Danish curriculum provides final goals. In the Danish curriculum for
Danish, there are attainment goals for grades 2, 4, 6, and 9 and final goals for grades 9 and 10. In the
Norwegian curriculum for Norwegian, there are attainment goals for grades 2, 4 and 7, but no final
goals.
Table 1: Overview of goals
Attainment goals
Denmark
2
Norway
2
4
4
6
7
9
10
Final goals
9
10
The Danish curriculum Common Goals 2009 contains objectives for the subject, the subject’s
attainment and final goals, a syllabus, and teaching guidelines for the subject as well as an appendix on
the canon of Danish literature – a total of 71 pages (Danish Ministry of Education,
(Undervisningsministeriet, 2009). The Norwegian curriculum for Norwegian contains objectives for the
subject, the subject’s primary areas, provisions respecting number of hours and basic skills for the
subject, and competency goals for four grades as well as provisions for assessment – a total of 16
pages (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2010). In this comparative study, the goals and objectives of the native
language curricula of the two countries will be analyzed.
Goals
A goal is not a clear-cut concept. A fundamental distinction can be made between content goals and
performance goals. Content goals usually describe what the teacher should teach and what the
students should learn. Performance goals are only directed at what learning benefits the student gets
out of the teaching. Performance goals cannot be used to establish a student’s expected benefits from
teaching, but they can be used to establish the skill level that students are expected to achieve at a
particular point in time.
Typically, a distinction is made between three forms of goals: Minimum goals, rule or normal goals, and
maximum goals. (Criblez, et al., 2009; Drieshner, 2009; Ziener, 2009)
- Minimum goals establish a basic level of expectation, i.e. the level that all students at a
particular level must achieve. Minimum goals provide the skill level that the school must make
it possible for all students to achieve.
- Rule or normal goals establish the average expectation level, i.e. the skills that students as a
rule achieve. Rule goals provide the average level of competence that is assumed to be
realistic for a particular age group.
- Maximum goals establish the highest level of expectation, i.e. the level that only the best
students achieve. Maximum goals provide a theoretical highest achievable skill level.
Competence goals typically concentrate on core or primary areas in individual subjects, not on the
subject in its widest sense. The goals express expectations for subject or subject-overlapping skills that
are of significance for later schooling and education in that they increase the possibilities for acquiring
new knowledge. Thus, competence goals aim to a wide extent at developing learning-to-learn skills
(Rasmussen, 2011):
’Learning-to-learn’ is the fundamental, unavoidable skill for an overall life, which must be
generalized in schools in a modern, open society. (Klieme, et al., 2003, p. 66)
To a broad extent, competence goals are linked with the Anglo-American concept of literacy, which is
also the concept on which the PISA studies are based. This concept stands for an emphasis that basic
skills must be acquired in a usable and everyday-oriented way. The German didactician Elmar
Drieschner has pointed out that, to a broad extent, the Anglo-American concept of literacy is
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compatible with the Central European concept of core competencies, since both concepts have a
functional aim of understanding competencies as fundamental cultural tools. (Drieshner, 2009, p. 44)
This presumption, which is the basis for the shift from content-management curricula to resultmanagement competence-oriented curricula, takes as its starting point that teaching is more effective
when it is not structured from a systematic content but from the student’s process of acquisition. In
other words, the focus is shifted from the content of the teaching, which becomes a means, to student
learning, which becomes a goal.
Areas of competence in Danish and Norwegian curricula
Both the Danish and the Norwegian language curricula divide the subject into a number of core areas
or, as they will be designated below, competence areas. In the Danish curriculum, the competence
areas are: Spoken language, written language – reading, written language – writing, and language,
literature and communication. These four areas are the same for all attainment and final goals (2, 4, 6,
9, 10). In the Norwegian curriculum, the competence areas are: Oral texts, written texts, composite
texts, and language and culture. These four areas are likewise the same for the four grades (2, 4, 7, 10)
for which competence goals have been set.
Table 2: Competence areas with competence goals
Denmark
Spoken language
Written language - reading
Written language - writing
Language, literature and communication
Norway
Oral texts
Written texts
Composite texts
Language and culture
At first blush, it may look as though the primary areas are the same for the two curricula and that it is
merely the use of terminology that is different. However, it may quickly be seen that the Danish
curriculum is oriented toward language and communication, i.e. toward something the student is to
end up possessing to a greater or lesser perfection, while the Norwegian curriculum is oriented toward
texts, which are rather to be understood as the content of the teaching.
Performance descriptions
Furthermore, each competence area is differentiated into a number of different sub-skills that are
concretized by descriptions of what the students are expected to be able to do, i.e. in so-called
performance descriptions. This rather high degree of complexity is illustrated in the schematic
overview below.
Table 3: Overview of competence areas and performance descriptions
Denmark
Norway
Competence areas
Grade
Spoken language
Written language reading
Written language - writing
Language, literature and
communication
Performance descriptions
2
•
4
•
6
•
9
•
Competence areas
10
•
Grade
Oral texts
Written texts
Performance
descriptions
2
4
7
•
•
•
10
•
Composite texts
Language and culture
The concept of competency has gradually developed into a concept that summarizes what a person
can or is expected to be able to do, which typically comprehends knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
(Drieshner, 2009, p. 40, 45; Ziener, 2008, p. 18) Thus, a person can be designated as competent, when
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he possesses knowledge he understands how to use and to which he can take a position. Competenceoriented curricula, therefore, must set goals that aim at providing the student with knowledge and
skills as well as the capacity to reflect on his knowledge and skills. But this is not enough in itself; the
student must also be capable of displaying his competencies in actions or performances. In other
words, acquired competencies must be observable.
This implies that the performance descriptions of curricula must be formulated in terms of what
students are to achieve, i.e. be able to do (‘can do’ descriptions) as a result of the teaching. This often
happens with terms such as ‘can,’ ‘master,’ ‘have at his disposal,’ ‘reflect,’ etc. Thus, performance
descriptions for teaching consist of a list of competencies that students must master upon completing
a grade or before leaving school. A progression will typically be built across the various grades of the
overall course of study that is described in such a way that attainment goals can be seen as steps
toward the final goal they are striving for. This is referred to as constructive learning or that the
competencies students acquire may be considered a result of cumulative learning.
Both the Danish and the Norwegian curricula have performance descriptions for individual competence
areas. In the following, the performance descriptions for the competence area ’spoken language’ in
the Danish curriculum and ’oral texts’ in the Norwegian curriculum, i.e. the areas marked by a bullet in
table 3, will be analyzed.
Analysis
My analysis will focus on three aspects of the performance descriptions: 1) competence terms, i.e.
whether and to what extent the goals are described so that they are observable, 2) progression and
cumulativity, i.e. whether the goals are described in such a way that they relate to competencies that
are described at an earlier point in the process of schooling, and 3) the type of goal, i.e. whether they
express minimum requirements that all students must achieve, whether they express average
requirements that middling students are expected to achieve, or whether they express maximum
expectations that the best students are expected to achieve.
It is immediately striking that fewer attainment goals are set for individual competence areas in the
Norwegian curriculum than in the Danish. Eight goals are established for all competence areas in the
Danish curriculum, while five to seven goals are set in the Norwegian curriculum. Another
immediately striking observation has to do with the designations within the competence areas. The
Danish curriculum mentions ’spoken language,’ which refers to a competence; while the Norwegian
curriculum mentions ’oral texts,’ which refers to content.
1) Competence terms
A goal that is formulated in competence or ’can-do’ terms must be able to answer the question: What
do we want a student to be able to do upon completion of a grade or at the end of schooling? The
student is the subject of the goal, since it is the student who is to master the competence. In this
sense, goals and standards are student-oriented. However, since they are oriented toward a
competence that teaching is to promote, goals are result- or process-oriented at the same time. Goals
formulate what the student is to be able to do after a successful lesson or set of lessons with respect to
knowledge, skills and approach, and they must be formulated so concretely that they can provide
guidance for the preparation of lessons, assignments and, in principle, also for tests.
Most goal formulations by far in the Danish curriculum live up to this criterion, as do all goal
formulations in the Norwegian curriculum, except one. Many competence terms recur in the Danish
curriculum from grade to grade and in the two final goals, while this is not the case to the same degree
in the Norwegian curriculum.
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Most of the goals by far for sub-competencies in the competence areas ’spoken language’ (DK) and
’oral texts’ (N) are formulated in such a way that it is possible to plan teaching from them and,
particularly, to observe whether the individual student has achieved them. However, some goal
formulations do not live up to this criterion. This has to do with goal formulations such as ’develop,’
’understand,’ and ’master.’ For these terms, since they deal with psychological processes, it is not
possible to determine whether the student has achieved the goal. To the extent it could be possible in
the given case, the goals must be supplemented with signs or indicators of the student’s development,
understanding or mastery.
Table 4: Competence terms used
Danish curriculum
Attainment goals 2, 4, 6 and 9
Competence term
Non-competence term
Use
Develop
Be able to exchange
Understand
Present
Refine
Retell
Tell
Dramatize
Give expression to
Read
Listen
Improvise
Experiment
Explain
Comment
Interview
Argue
Debate
Inform
Express
Be able to
Communicate
Final goals 9 and 10
Speak
Use
Express
Read
Listen
Present
Norwegian curriculum
Attainment goals 2, 4, 7 and 10
Competence term
Non-competence term
Play
Understand
Improvise
Experiment
Tell
Talk about
Listen and give response
Interact
Explain
Express
Present
Perform
Listen
Discuss
Give
Present
Participate
Understand and
reproduce
Lead and take minutes
Assess
Understand
Master
2) Progression
When standard-based curricula are introduced with attainment goals and even final goals, it is
endeavoured to formulate these goals in such a way that they show a progression from grade to grade
over the entire process. Ideally, the goals provide a planned sequence for when certain competencies
are acquired by students. In this respect, attainment goals are directed toward cumulative learning,
which implies that the content that students work with as a means to achieve these goals are
constructed in such a way that it can be actualized and made actively usable in later learning processes
and that acquired competencies form the prerequisite for the acquisition of other or more advanced
competencies.
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The Danish curriculum for the subject of Danish contains both attainment and final goals, which is why
the attainment goals must be constructed in such a way that the intended final goals can gradually be
achieved through the student’s acquisition of the competencies that the attainment goals provide. The
same is not true for the Norwegian curriculum for the subject of Norwegian, since it operates solely
with attainment goals and has no final goals. Here, a progression in the given case must be indicated
through attainment goals without a final goal to aim for.
The Danish curriculum contains a schematic overview of attainment goals and final goals from which it
is easy to read how the progression from grade to grade is conceived. Nothing corresponding is found
in the Norwegian curriculum.
In the Danish curriculum, the competence area ’spoken language’ is divided into eight performance
areas, which are the same – though with varied formulations – for all attainment goals and final goals.
The competence terms are grouped into eight categories, and each category is represented at every
grade. Yet, the formulations within a category may be different in that they also indicate a progression
from grade to grade at the competence goal level. For example, the competence term ‘develop’ is
used at grade 2 and the term ‘refine’ at grade 4, while the term ‘develop’ is used again slightly
surprisingly at grades 6 and 9, even though at all grades there are allusions to the stock of concepts
and vocabulary. A corresponding progression is seen in the formulations: ’Present, refer, tell,
dramatise,’ Tell, explain, comment, interview, argue’, ’Argue, debate, inform’ and ‘Present and
communicate.’
Table 5: Competence terms for the competence area ‘spoken language’ (DK)
Competence terms
2nd grade
4th grade
Use
•
•
Develop
•
Refine
•
Present, refer, tell, dramatize
•
Tell, explain, comment, interview, argue
•
Argue, debate, inform
Present and communicate
Give expression to
•
•
Express
Read
•
•
Listen
•
•
Improvise and experiment (with body language)
•
Use body language (body language)
•
Understand
•
•
6th grade
•
•
9th grade
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Every competence term or category of competence terms is described so that the competence is
gradually expanded to include a broader repertoire of activities. For example, being able ’to use
colloquial language’ is gradually expanded – as shown in the table below – from ’being able to listen
and express oneself’ (2nd grade) to ’being able to function as moderator in a group’ (4th grade) to
being able ‘to express oneself understandably and as moderator’ (6th grade) in order finally to ‘be able
to lead meetings and guide discussions’ (9th grade). Only a modest difference in performance
descriptions at the 4th and 6th grades can be observed. Otherwise, the individual performance area is
gradually expanded in such a way that more is added to competencies already acquired.
Table 6: Performance descriptions for pt. 1 in the competence area ’spoken language’ (DK)
2nd grade In conversation and work, being able to shift between listening and expressing
4th grade In conversation, collaboration, and discussion, acting as moderator in a group
6th grade Understandably and clearly in conversation, collaboration, and discussion, functioning as moderator
9th grade Leading meetings and guiding discussions
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The final goals toward which the attainment goals in the Danish curriculum are aiming for the students
to achieve are formulated in more general performance statements than in the attainment goals: ’’to
speak understandably, clearly and in a varied form appropriate to the situation’ (9th) and ‘to express
one’s own opinions in discussions and to assess what is sound argumentation’ (10th).
The Danish curriculum aims at a progression from grade to grade – however, not always with clearly
new or intensified performance descriptions and performance expectations. In principle, there is an
endeavour, but not always in reality, to make the acquired competencies a prerequisite for the
acquisition of more advanced competencies in a cumulative learning process.
The goals in the Norwegian curriculum are not gathered around the same competence terms from
grade to grade in the same way as the Danish. Goals are provided for some competencies at many
grades, but no competencies are provided goals at every grade. At individual grades, the same
competence is stated several times with a different performance description.
Table 7: Competence terms for the competence area ’oral texts’ (N)
Competence terms
2nd grade
Play, improvise and experiment
•
Express
•
Tell
•
Talk about
••
Listen and give response
•
Interact
Explain
Express
Present
Perform
Listen
Discuss
Give
Present
Participate
Understand and reproduce
Lead and take minutes
Assess
4th grade
7th grade
10th grade
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
••
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Since the competence terms for individual goals are different from grade to grade, the performance
descriptions will be as well. Thus, it is difficult to see a clear progression in the Norwegian curriculum.
An example that emphasizes this especially clearly has to do with the performance description
respecting the Scandinavian languages Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. In the Danish curriculum,
there are competence goals for Norwegian and Swedish at all grades, while in the Norwegian
curriculum there are only competence goals for Danish and Swedish at the 10th grade. Thus, the
Norwegian curriculum must be said to provide guidance in only a minor (modest) way for cumulative
learning processes.
3) Goal type
The Danish and the Norwegian curricula operate only with rule or normal goals for, respectively,
Danish and Norwegian. This means that both curricula only state a middle or average requirement
level for the desired competencies. Rule goals are ordinarily defined empirically, i.e. from
practitioners’ experiences and evaluations.
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Rule goals will typically direct the teacher’s attention toward the middle group of students, since these
goals are formulated from a tacit assumption that students’ competencies are normally allocated
differently, albeit so that a majority of students will achieve these goals. By orienting themselves
toward an average level, rule goals reflect a widespread ‘normal allocation’ mindset that finds it
’natural’ for student performance to be allocated in accordance with a normal distribution curve with a
greater or lesser number on each side of a fictive average. In other words, rule goals strengthen the
focus on the middle group that strikes the teacher as natural. In this way, both weak and strong
students fall outside the teacher’s field of vision, so to speak.
Thus, in principle, rule goals help strengthen the tendency to orient teaching toward the average
student, as the first professor in pedagogy Ernst Christian Trapp pointed out in Versuch einer
Pädagogik from 1780. Here, he writes that teachers typically relate to the heterogeneity of school
classes by orienting and calibrating the teaching in accordance with an imaginary average or in
accordance with average students, which he designates as ’Mittelköpfe.’ (Trapp, 1977 (1780)) There is
much to indicate that this is still the case in the comprehensive schools of the day, which can be read
from the fact that the middle group of students in both Denmark and Norway achieve quite acceptable
results in school, while this is not the case, cf. the PISA studies, for weak and strong students. (OECD,
2007)
A number of European countries, including Denmark and Norway, have decided to introduce rule
goals. Maximum goals are often rejected, because they imply that rule goals and minimum goals
would be formulated negatively as a deviation from an ideal. The choice of rule goals implies with great
probability that the problem of the comprehensive school – namely, that both weak and strong
students attain poorer results from their schooling – is reinforced.
Instead of choosing one standard type, the possibility exists for choosing minimum goals and rule goals
or maybe all three goal types and letting them complement each other. Minimum goals are
characterized by putting a focus on weak students. Many students even at the beginning of a grade
have already met the minimum goal – often, even without the school’s efforts. Many students will
follow at different tempos, while some individuals will not achieve the goal within the established time
period. It is this latter group of students around which attention may gather, since they must be
offered special help to achieve the goals that everyone is to achieve. Maximum standards are specific
goals for what the best students are expected to achieve. Often, the number of students who are
expected to achieve these goals as a percentage is stated. By their nature, maximum standards direct
the teacher’s attention toward strong students.
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By using several goal types and by letting them complement each other, the teacher’s opportunities for
being attentive to weak students, strong students, and the large middle group of students, in which
none of these groups need to be the same in all subjects and at all times, are increased.
Conclusion
The Danish and the Norwegian curriculum in Danish and Norwegian language show a number of equal
signs. Both countries have introduced goal based curricula. The goals are arranged around few main
areas of the subject, not around the subject in its full extent. To each of the competence areas a
number of competence goals are stated along with performance descriptions. The goals are
intentionally formulated so that they show progression from grade to grade, and attainment goals are
stated for selected grades, but only the Danish curriculum has final goals.
The two curricula also show a number of differences. In the Danish curriculum the competence areas
are oriented toward language and communication, i.e. toward something the student is to end up
possessing, while competence areas in the Norwegian curriculum are oriented toward texts, i.e.
toward content of the teaching. Each curriculum aims at progression from grade to grade. In the
Danish curriculum the competence goals are formulated so that the competence is gradually expanded
over the course of school years. In the Norwegian curriculum mostly new competence goals are stated
for every grade, which means that it is difficult to see a clear progression over the course of school
years.
Both the Danish and the Norwegian curriculum for Danish and Norwegian language aims at being goal
oriented competence based curricula but it seems like the Norwegian curriculum does not release its
hold on content oriented curriculum thinking.
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