Minorities and educational testing in schools in Arctic regions: An analysis and discussion focusing on normality, democracy, and inclusion for the cases of Greenland and the Swedish Sami schools

National testing in primary and secondary schools is a practice that has recently become more prevalent throughout the world. In Denmark, it was fully implemented nationally for the first time in 2010, while in Sweden, as in many other countries, it has been carried out since many years. Such national testing practice aims to test all children in uniform ways to compare their performance and place them at, above, or below an average. However, such test forms are adjusted and standardized in relation to the majority. This means that, by testing children in such standardized ways, consideration is not always given to different kinds of minorities with regard to, for example, language or cultural background. The tests can become an expression of the dominant culture’s language and cultural value set and, thus, could also mean that other languages and cultures can be discriminated against. Therefore, such test practices could represent a threat to inclusion and, thus, also, from a wider perspective, to democracy, for which inclusion can be considered a core value. In some contexts, this has been taken into account, and particular variations of such national tests designed for linguistic minorities have been created. For example, this is the case in Greenland, which is a part of Denmark but where a large proportion of the population do not speak Danish as their native language. In Sweden, the same consideration is not shown in relation to the Sami people. The two countries’ practices regarding national testing are analysed and discussed in this article, with a particular focus on the role of national testing in relation to issues connected with the handling of these Arctic minorities in Scandinavian welfare states.