Danish Experiences of “Togetherness” and Its Implications for Multicultural Education

It was Finland that received global adulation from education policy circles during the first decade of the 2000s. After the first Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results were released in 2001, the Finnish education system’s (surprisingly) excellent performance triggered an international scale of ‘educational pilgrimage’ to learn about ‘educational know-how’ (cf. Sahlberg, 2009, p. 341). Turning to the second decade of the 2000s, the global envy directed towards Finland has since faded as Finnish schools have been continuously slipping in their PISA results. Amid this eventuation, Denmark, another Scandinavian country, has increasingly been receiving the spotlight, initially by journalists (e.g. Kingsley, 2013; Oh, 2014). While there would be multiple reasons for this attention shift, probably the most likely reason is the fact that Denmark has consistently ranked first place in the World Happiness Report commissioned by the United Nations, the Organisation for Economic and Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Better Life Index, and the European Social Survey (ESS) in recent years.