For folks new to this blog, each post typically has three sections: a personal update, a view from 30,000 feet of things I’ve learned in my research, and Nordic Nibbles: stories and tidbits about Norwegian culture.
Orkestere (Orchestra)
When interviewing for this grant, I asked the Norwegian interview committee ‘’How do you see Americans successfully get engaged in the community?’’ One of the leaders responded, ‘’well, sometimes they just get engaged!’’ After a brief pause, she pointed to her ring finger, and we fell into a fit of giggles.
While I curiously have not been proposed to yet, I’ve found my own answer to this question: playing viola in orchestra.
Little Geoffrey began playing viola at age 11 after hearing a high schooler play the ‘’Pink Panther’’ theme on viola, followed by me racing home and explaining to my parents that I could get a college scholarship. Clearly I was a very popular and cool 6th grader. Flash forward 24 years later and I’m now playing in the Oslo Kammerorkester (Oslo Chamber Orchestra) and the Universitetets Symfoniorkester, Oslo (University of Oslo Symphony Orchestra). Both groups provide a much-needed artistic outlet, and a unique opportunity to make friends in Norway.
The Oslo Kammerorkester is a small string orchestra that plays a variety of creative performances with many different collaborators. For example, our first concert of the season was in a gallery within the National Museum as part of the Oslo Culture Night, a city-wide evening of cultural events. We featured the principal flutist of the Oslo Philharmonic as well as a talented young conductor from the Norwegian Academy of Music.
Oslo Kammerorkester rehearsing before our performance at the National Museum. Peep me by the blue screen. Photo Credit: OKO
Preparing for our fall concert in Majorstuen kirke with piano soloist and conductor Nina Haug.
Universitetets Symfoniorkester, Oslo is the official student orchestra of the University of Oslo, though this is quite a different arrangement than what we are used to in the US. Firstly, only a handful of musicians are current students. The rest of us are employees of the university, alumni, or just community members looking for a fantastic group to play with. In addition to our own concert cycle, we also perform at official university functions.
There are two parts of playing in this orchestra that are particularly delightful: first, we rehearse in the university’s Aula, a grand and historic building filled with murals painted by Edvard Munch (the artist who painted ‘’The Scream’’). The Aula is also where the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony was once held, before being moved to the Oslo City Hall. The other wonderful part about playing in this orchestra is that it is over 130 years old, and has many wonderful traditions, one being the Fall Gala. This is a celebration where we members dress in our finest attire, sing ridiculous orchestra-themed lyrics to familiar Norwegian folk tunes, and hold a riotous award ceremony filled with pomp and circumstance.
Universitetets Aula
Higher Ed in Norway and the US
When folks I meet here find out I’m from the US, I’m almost always asked ‘’which state?’’ At this point I’ve just taken to saying I’m from Texas. This is often followed by a healthy pause and a knowing glance, perhaps while pondering if I’m one of those Texans. Norwegian awareness of the US isn’t limited to just the more recognizable places like Texas, NYC, or Hollywood – I find that I’m often able to talk about growing up in Oregon, going to college in Minnesota, and teaching in rural Mississippi without having to explain at least the basics about cultural differences.
At first, this surprised me – why do Norwegians have such depth of understanding about states within the US when many Americans would be hard-pressed to name a state in any other country?
While this awareness can certainly be attributed to the quality of Nordic education as well as the mass export of American media, some of this is also due to comparative politics. In many ways, the U.S. is less like an individual country and more like the European Union: a political and economic union of states in the same continent (well… mostly). In that way, states in the US function as their own countries, which allows for helpful comparisons for Americans to understand. For example:
Texas is slightly larger than France by land area.
If California were a country, its GDP would be the 5th largest in the world, which in Europe would place it between Germany and the UK.
Norway’s population (5.4 million) is comparable to a mid-sized US state like Colorado or Minnesota (both about 5.7 million). Norway has 70,000 teachers, Minnesota has 72,000, and Colorado has 55,000.
These kinds of comparisons are relevant for my research as I plan to bring policy recommendations back to the US, especially when thinking about preparing for counterarguments about feasibility. For example, whenever we in the US hear about the Finnish education system, Norwegian parental leave policies, or Iceland's gender pay equity practices, there’s a common refrain we resort to: the Nordic countries are small, and ethnically and culturally homogenous, while the US is too large and diverse for any Nordic-inspired systems to be successful. Though I find this sentiment is too fatalistic, that’s why part of my strategy is to propose policy recommendations that can be implemented on a state level.
Comparing Norway to a state like Colorado or Minnesota works when thinking about the scale and composition of postsecondary education. Norway has 36 universities and university colleges, and Colorado has 25 four-year colleges and universities. The similarities continue when addressing indigenous education at the college level. In the US, we have what are called Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), schools which have a collective mission to serve indigenous students pursuing post-secondary education. Similar to other Minority Serving Institutions, they are incubators of teacher talent, preparing educators for teaching in an indigenous context while preserving indigenous cultures and languages.
Norway has its own indigenous history and population, notably the Sámi people whose primary lands are found in northern Norway. Three higher education institutions in Norway are tasked with preserving and teaching the Sámi language, in addition to offering Sámi teacher education programs: the University of Tromsø: The Arctic University of Norway, Nord University, and the Sámi University of Applied Sciences. Similarly, Minnesota has three tribal colleges: Leech Lake Tribal College, Red Lake Nation College, and White Earth Tribal & Community College. Taking similarities like these into account, the scale and composition of Norway compared to a US state allows for policy recommendations to have many direct parallels.
There are key distinctions I’ve already encountered between Norway and the United States, the most obvious one being collaboration vs. independence. Collaboration is deeply ingrained into the Norwegian system, whereas independence is of greater value in the US, so much so that school districts in Texas are called ‘’Independent School Districts.’’ To illustrate just how collaborative the Norwegian system is, I mapped out all of the stakeholder organizations involved in reforming teacher education. If you’re not an education policy wonk, don’t worry about looking too closely.
Policy nerds can look more closely here.
Just to illustrate how important the role of collaboration is, when I first had a colleague look over an early draft of map above, the first thing he noticed was that some of the unions were not included despite participating in the reform efforts. His point was that each group plays an important role, one that policymakers must be keenly aware of.
In the center of the diagram is an organization called Universitets og Høgskolerådet - UHR (University and College Council), a state-sponsored organization composed of leaders from all universities and the Ministry of Education, with the purpose of promoting the interests of universities and colleges, and coordinating efforts to turn policy into practice.
My advisor at the University of Oslo is a member of the committee addressing teacher education, which hosted a conference in September to discuss the national framework plans for teacher education, the very reforms I’m researching. This was a quarterly convening of all stakeholders in teacher education (college deans, professors, union leaders, etc.) to share opportunities and challenges, and break out into smaller working groups to address more nuanced issues for specific degree programs.
UHR Rammeplanseminaret (Framework Plan Seminar) meeting in September 2023
What struck me as particularly poignant was the way that the conversations were led. For example, a valued approach here is to elevate ‘’district perspectives,’’ ensuring that rural voices are not discounted in favor of larger metropolitan areas like Oslo, Bergen, and Trondheim. The conference began with representatives from four universities sharing their perspectives, with three of the four programs from more rural regions and only one from Oslo. Furthermore, even though the Ministry of Education directly funds the work of UHR, they are officially designated as an ‘’observer,’’ holding no voting power within UHR and instead occupying a listening role.
Throughout the proceedings, my mind was filled with possibilities of what a transferrable practice like this might look like in the US:
What common understanding about ‘’a rising tide lifts all boats’’ must be shared by colleges and universities to have productive gatherings?
What actions would policymakers and government officials have to make in order to build trust with institutions of higher education?
Are the roots of rugged individualism and competition too intertwined into American culture to allow for this level of successful collaboration?
During the conference, I hurriedly texted a colleague back in the US: ‘’Can you imagine Texas convening leaders from all educator-preparation programs to collaboratively create and improve teacher prep policy with the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and Texas Education Agency? Absolutely wild.’’ Admittedly, the word ‘’absolutely’’ was an expletive.
As I finally feel like I’m making progress in my research, I’m inspired by the possibility of what lessons a state like Texas could learn and implement from Norway.
Nordic Nibbles: Norsk
Despite having only 5 million speakers, my perception is that the Norwegian language has as much or more regional dialectical diversity than English in the United States. Close to 100% of Norwegian citizens speak Norwegian, but there are also thousands who speak the languages of northern indigenous communities: Sámi and Kven. There are two written forms of Norwegian: Bokmål (‘Book Language’) and Nynorsk (‘New Norwegian’), with Bokmål used by 90% of the country, and Nynorsk more commonly used in the western region. Students learn both written forms in school.
When it comes to spoken Norwegian however, there are nearly 400 different dialects. There are certain regional commonalities, but some Norwegians tell me can usually pinpoint not only the region but even the exact city or village that someone is from by their dialect. This would be like an Oregonian identifying that someone was actually from Lincoln City and not Pacific City, both small beach towns along the Pacific Coast, simply by their speech. I’ve come to learn that geography and climate likely played a significant role in the regional evolution of linguistic differences. For example, rugged mountain ranges and frigid fjords made travel between villages quite difficult before roads and ferries were commonplace, and much of Norway. Some villages were only accessible by boat up until the 1990s.
Language enthusiasts might be interested in this article from Språkrådet, the Norwegian Language Council, about the written and spoken forms of Norwegian.
Learning Norwegian
Last week I was finally able to start my Norskkurs (Norwegian language course). I enrolled in a private language school in the center of town, with a small group of fellow expats from Algeria, France, Germany, Greece, and Hungary. Our course is approximately 90% in Norwegian, with occasional explanations in English for particularly complicated explanations.
Every Norwegian I’ve met so far is quite adept in English, due in part to English being taught from an early age in school. English is also the lingua franca in education research, and so most of my colleagues here at the university not only speak English but also publish in English. Admittedly, I allowed this English cushion to create a big disincentive for me to learn the language in my first few months. The high level of English fluency here actually makes Norway one of the rare Fulbright destinations where grantees can be selected without having proficiency in the country’s official language.
At the same time, the pressure to learn Norwegian grows daily. While there are a handful of international researchers that are part of my research group here at the university, I learned last month that the meetings are largely held in English solely for my benefit, a realization that left me feeling both embarrassed and immensely thankful. Both of my orchestra’s hold rehearsals in Norwegian, and in one of them I’m the section leader, which means that when I can’t use my limited Norwegian and musical context clues, I need my stand partner to translate for me. I find myself most days toggling between gratitude and frustration, the former for the willingness of friends and colleagues to provide language accommodations to me, and the latter for feeling like I’m missing out on so much.
Missteps in my research also provide a reminder that proficiency in Norwegian would be beneficial. For example, though Google’s translation tools are incredibly powerful, they often lead to incomplete, and sometimes hilariously incorrect, translations. Earlier this year I was reading an article about increasing levels of violence against teachers from students, and Google translated a sentence to: ‘’In Bergen alone, 1,596 punches and/or kicks were reported last year and 52 cases where employees were/or attempted to be scalped last year.’’ Upon reading this sentence, I leapt from my desk and ran to my officemate in disbelief, desperately seeking an explanation. He laughed and explained that the confusion stemmed from a mistranslation of the word skallet. Directly translated skallet means ‘’bald,’’ but the meaning changes depending on context. Google thought this meant ‘’scalped,’’ but the correct translation should have been ‘’headbutted.’’
To be clear, acts of aggression against teachers are not the norm here, but there are some concerning data indicating a recent uptick in such actions. In the next post I’ll dig into how a new education policy may be a leading factor for this change, how this policy is influencing teacher retention and recruitment, and how policymakers are seeking to address this problem. Oh, and fun Christmas season things here just to balance that out. :-)
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