Restructuring the Educational Profession in Denmark

The development of nation states, and the concurrent development of national school systems, which occurred in many Western countries during the first half of the 19th century (Thomas et al. in Institutional structure: constituting state, society, and the individual. Sage, Newbury Park, 1987), instituted the teacher as important official person. Teachers had a main responsibility for molding new generations into competent and well socialized citizens, who could contribute both economically and politically to national progress. The social status of teachers rose and the state started to take an interest in the work of teachers, their skills and the recruitment and training for the job. Thus started a process through which a teaching profession was gradually established, in interaction between the teachers as a group and the state.