2013, Vol., No.14

Journal of the Scandinavian Society of Korea 2023 KCI Impact Factor : 0.21

pISSN : 1229-8646
https://journal.kci.go.kr/jssk

Sweden is known as the welfare state of high ‘total tax revenue’ and social expenditure. However, on facing economic and fiscal difficulties, Sweden implemented tax reform and fiscal restructuring on a large scale. This paper deals with the development of the swedish tax and fiscal system in the twenties century. Traditionally Swedish tax system had been characterized by high statutory marginal tax and broad tax allowance designed for encouraging productive investment of profit. The Swedish tax reform of 1991 is called as ‘the most far-reaching reform in any industrialized country in the postwar period’ due to its dramatic tax rate cut and tax base broadening. It was the outcome of political adjustment between Social Democratic and Conservative forces. As the result, Sweden currently enjoys fiscal substantiality by the generational accounting and wins the support of citizens for the tax system. This is why Sweden receives attention as a model state in market capitalism since 2008 fiscal crisis in Europe.

This paper aims to contour Finnish teachers's life in order to revisit the success of education in Finland because the Finish teachers are considered the heart of Finland's educational success and particularly the main factor responsible for PISA accomplishments for a decade. The daily life of teachers in Finland could be summarized with the two tasks, one in teaching and the other in doing research. The rest of their works in schools is in support of these two main works so that they could provide the excellence of teaching for Finnish students. Also the teacher education programs for prospective primary and secondary teachers in Finland have been designed and built for providing a competent teacher as a researcher. Therefore Finland could finally has exceptional teacher quality thanks to time, tolerance and decision which have been given by the whole Finnish society in the name of the educational reform since 1970s. But interestingly the teachers in Finland do their best and provide the exceptional teaching quality not just because of high salary and pleasant work conditions in addition to social respect but because of the fulfillment of moral mission, in other words self realization by Dewey's words. This critical factor among many has been ignored and not been articulated so far by various scholars except Pasi Sahlberg, a distinguished Finnish educational expert. This paper found it out by revisiting the existing literature, which implies a very critical lesson to us who are now trying to learn from the educational success in Finland.

This study analyzes the features and the conditions of the educational reform in Sweden that resulted in the formation of comprehensive upper secondary school. The results of study are as follows;First, the main feature of educational reform of Swedish secondary school is that the problem of vocational education had the central position of the reform. The reform was consistently intended to make the status of vocational education equivalent to that of academic education. Second, the integration of vocational and academic education became main agenda of the reform through the combination of the needs of vocational education originated from industrial change and the political feature of corporatism. Third, the reform resulted in the formation of comprehensive upper secondary education system through the contents of reform and institutional conditions. The contents of the reform maximized political supports for it by embracing various class interests according to the change of embedded contexts. The institutional conditions that resulted from previous reforms imposed constraints on differentiation, and induced integration. Fourth, the analysis on Swedish case implies that institutions regulate the process of educational formation, and therefore historical and institutional approach to educational system is necessary. The analysis of institutions that intermediate the dynamics of politics and economy can explain the formation of educational system. The historical and institutional analysis will lead us to understand the nature of educational system in a more accurate manner.