From June 2024 through January 2025, Nordic Bildung (DK), Musikkens Studieforbund (NO), and the Finnish adult education umbrella association, Kansanvalistusseura / KVS (FI), who are also the main organizers of the Nordic Bildung Network / Nordiskt Sivistys Netverkið, researched for and prepared a pan-Nordic survey about bildung. The goal is to find out how educators across the Nordic countries, from kindergarten to university, and from formal to non-formal educaction experience and work with bildung.
The pre-project had four goals:
- To find out to what extent educators may find a full survey important
- To find out how educators perceive and define bildung
- To find out how important they find bildung
- To explore to what extent they find that they have time and resources to promote bildung in their work.
After talking to educators, teachers’ union representatives, researchers, and administrators in education across the Nordics, the pre-project result was very clear: A better understanding of the role of bildung in education and among educators will be very much appreciated! There is a general sense that bildung is crucial and that we do not focus on it enough in current education. There is thus a need for more awareness about bildung, also among educators, and we need to somehow create this increased awareness.
Among the organizers of the pre-project there has been, for a while, an awareness that we are using our local words for ‘bildung’ in a slightly different way in the Nordics than how the word bildung is used in Germany and the Netherlands–and in the rest of Europe, for that matter. In the Nordics, we are closer to the original meaning of the word, which is a multi-facetted phenomenon that includes both formal knowledge and personal character development.
We were not aware, though, that among the Nordic countries and among Nordic educators, we also seem to be using our local words for bildung, i.e. dannelse, sivistys, menntun, danning, and bildning, in slightly different ways. A surprising, and therefore very interesting, result of our pre-project is that before we can create the big Nordic survey that we set out to explore, we need to map the meaning of the five words as they are being used in Danish, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian, and Swedish respectively.
The main conclusion is thus that there needs to be two surveys:
- A smaller survey with 40-50 hand picked respondents in each of the five countries where we explore the specific perception or meaning of the following five terms (and their equivalent in each language):
- Formation / Bildung / Dannelse / Sivistys / Menntun / Danning / Utdanning
- Education / Ausbildung / Uddannelse / Koulutus / Menntun / Utdanning / Utbildning
- General knowledge / Allgemein Bildung / Almendannelse / Þekking / Allmenn danning / Allmänbildning
- Nonformal lifelong learning / Erwachsenenbildung / Folkeoplysning / Kansansivistys / Voksenopplæring / Folkbildning
- Personal development / Persönliche Entwicklung / Personlig udvikling / Henkilökohtainen kehittyminen / Þroski / Personlig utvikling / Personlig utveckling
- A more extensive survey where we engage with a survey company and collaborate with a university and explore what we set out to explore among educators across the Nordics:
- How they perceive and define bildung?
- How important do they think bildung is?
- To what extent do they find that they have time and resources to promote bildung in their work.
Nordic Bildung, Musikkens Studieforbund, and KVS would like to thank the Nordic Council of Minsters for financing the pre-project.