About the project

The Norwegian Educational Reform: LK20 in a European Context

In 2020, the Norwegian government launched an ambitious educational reform ‘Knowledge Promotion’, LK20 (Kunnskapsløftet). Emphasising how values constitute its central core, the reform was presented as ‘The Value Promotion in Education’ (Udir, 2021). LK20 states that primary, lower, and upper secondary education should build on “values that unite the Norwegian society” and constitute the “foundation of our democracy” (LK20 CC, p. 4). The LK20 identifies six core values claimed to be based on the Christian and humanistic cultural heritage: human dignity; identity and cultural diversity; critical thinking and ethical awareness; creativity, engagement, and exploratory desire; respect for nature and environmental awareness; and democracy and participation (LK20 core curriculum).

Norway’s LK20 reform is connected to larger national and European debates on ‘Norwegian’ and ‘European values’, understood and rhetorically represented as being under pressure due to the current geopolitical situation, increased diversity, growing intolerance, and the rise of populism and extremism (European Commission, 2020). Accentuating the urgency of the matter, The Council of Europe’s Reference Framework of Competencies for Democratic Culture (RFCDC, 2018), provides a systematic approach to all levels of education, aimed at equipping young people with ‘all of the competences’ necessary ‘to defend and promote’ what is presented as ‘the cornerstones of the European culture’: human dignity and human rights, cultural diversity, democracy, justice, fairness, equality and the rule of law.

European countries define schools’ foundational values in different ways. For instance, in the UK (England and Wales), all schools are required by law since 2015 to ‘actively promote’ fundamental British values’ as part of pupils’ spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development.

Although Norway’s LK20 core curriculum brings values to the forefront, it is not evident how these values should be interpreted and implemented in educational contexts. Norwegian schools are by default diverse, educating students with different sets of values. It may create tension when politically defined values are characterised as foundational for the entire Norwegian society. The NeVa-project highlights the fact that Norway’s LK20 core curriculum provides teacher-education programs with a task that may appear both challenging and problematic. How should educators equip students to handle value encounters in daily school life, while also being conveyors of overarching Norwegian values?

What will the NeVa project investigate and how?

The NeVa-project focuses on the first three of the six central values mentioned in Norway’s LK20 core curriculum: human dignity, identity and cultural diversity, critical thinking, and ethical awareness.

The project seeks insight into how the selected values are addressed in Norwegian teacher-education's teaching, curriculum, plans, and practice, in a comparative perspective with fundamental British values in teacher-education in England. A central goal of the NeVa-project is to develop methods for negotiating values that support teachers in their work on value issues and contribute to the students' development of the ability for critical and dialogic reflection. NeVa perceives 'negotiation' as an exploratory process that is Socratic and dialogic, involving reflection and experience, and requiring empathetic interaction (Nussbaum, 1996, 2016). NeVa acknowledges that values may be challenged, create conflict, and may require negotiations between different actors in specific socio-political contexts and educational institutions. Values and value negotiations are explicitly or implicitly part of daily social interactions between individuals and groups locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. In addition to Nussbaum’s concept of negotiation, NeVa will work with the concepts of reflexivity (Ryan, 2015, Garnett & Vanderlinden, 2011, Gorski & Dalton, 2019), and recognition (Fraser & Honneth, 2003, Honneth, 2007).

NeVa has three research areas, organised into three scientific work packages.

Read more about the research areas and work packages on this page.

Project information in the research database Cristin 

Project description 

Project proposal in full