One long-standing characteristic of schools in Norway is inclusive education as a primary goal. The last years, the Norwegian government has emphasised increased parent-school cooperation as a way to limit risks, i.e. of drop-outs. This article focuses on how parent-school relationship is played out in an economic and socially diversified urban borough in Bergen, Norway. It draws on fieldwork and interviews among parents, teachers and principals in three different schools. As this article shows, the increased focus on parents' active engagement in the school encourages and creates expectations of an intensive parenting model. Yet, not all parents are ready, willing or have the capacity to pursue the intensive parenting model. We suggest that the current promotion of middle-class intensive parenting by schools, in practice, shifts the responsibilisation of equal education away from the state towards individual families and undermine the ideals of inclusive education and equal opportunities in Norway.
This paper analyses the construction of Norwegian couples' sexuality through the study of a publically financed and organised relationship course called Living Well Together (Godt Samliv). Established in 2005, this relationship course aimed at first-time parent couples is offered free of charge by municipal health centres. Scrutiny of national policy documents and political debate and of the course handbooks presented to couples, makes visible a particular Norwegian discourse on sexuality, which stresses gender equality and neutrality and ideas of inclusive democratization. New parents are advised to make active efforts to maintain a loving, lasting relationship and sexuality, for the sake of the children. The idea of sex implied by this couples relationship policy is based on what might be described as a 'duty of spontaneity', presented as a work both parents should undertake in order to achieve a stable and healthy relationship. We argue, however, that the inclusive rhetoric of diversity that characterises this public form of Norwegian sexuality has its limitations and that certain forms of intimacy and sexuality are excluded from this discourse.
Background Child poverty rates are rising in Norway with potential negative consequences for children. Services for families with low income are often fragmented and poorly integrated, and few coordinated initiatives have been implemented and evaluated in Norway. Aims: The aim of the current study is to evaluate how integrated and coordinated services provided over a prolonged period by a family coordinator are related to changes across a wide range of health, wellbeing and home environment indicators for the participants. Methods: The study uses a mixed methods approach utilising survey and register data, as well as information from interviews and shadowing, to document and evaluate outcomes associated with the intervention and the process of implementation. Data are gathered at baseline and annually throughout the duration of the study. Participants are identified to facilitate longer-term follow-up using register data. Conclusions: This project will develop important knowledge about the implementation of coordinated services to families with a low income, and how this way of organizing services influences important outcomes for the family members in the short and long term.
This paper investigates parents' involvement in multi-ethnic and class-differentiated urban public schools in Bergen, Norway. It examines how some parents deal with diversity and social inequality in a socially mixed urban area in Norway and Europe today. With the help of the concept of conviviality-the capacity to live together peacefully while negotiating tensions-we focus on the hope of inclusion when people are sharing a place that is important to them in everyday life. Existing research shows how parents engaged in schools are concerned with ensuring the academic success of the school thereby reproducing classed privileges. We find that parents engaged in public bodies in schools act on hopes of social inclusion of the diversity of children and their parents more than they pursue academic success. We argue that, rather than aiming at reproducing classed privileges, some parents aim for a politics of inclusion, leveling out social differences. Using the concept of conviviality, we explore how this has, simultaneously, both inclusionary and exclusionary consequences.
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