Jon Lauglo, Norwegian academic and scholar: a tribute

Jon Lauglo was a lecturer in Education in Developing Countries in the Department of International and Comparative Education (DICE) at the Institute of Education (IOE) in the 1980s and 1990’s. He lectured on the postgraduate MA and particularly on the core Education Policy and International Perspectives course drawing on a deep knowledge of social theory and development challenges. 

A time for international development

It was a time of heady change and optimism as newly independent countries in Africa, Asia and elsewhere, worked to identify and design their development models and secure their future trajectories. Debates raged about the nature, value and purpose of education and what were worthwhile investments; the best ways to administer and manage education and what kinds of curriculum were likely to be most relevant and under what circumstances. Connections between policy and practice were never so important.

Jon’s academic work was central to all this. In 1983 along with his Comparative Education colleague, Martin McClean, he had organised a conference on ‘International perspectives on the Centralisation-decentralisation of Education’ at the IOE. The book - The Control of Education, published in 1985, was the result which Jon co-edited with Martin McClean. Jon knew a great deal about sociological theory and was keen to research the potential of the education service for national development. He lectured on Modernisation theory, drawing on classical theorists like Durkheim, Marx and Weber, and later thinkers from the USA and Scandinavia, including Parsons, Eisenstadt, Smelser, Inkles, Smith, Fagerlind, Saha and Hoogvelt. 

Vocationalising education

Along with Anders Narman and Kevin Lillis, he researched vocational education, ever searching for ways to make education more practical as well as fairer and more relevant, effective and efficient in a time of post-war opportunity. 

In 1985-86, Lauglo and Lillis together convened and organised another high profile international conference at the IOE, to debate the possibilities of extending opportunity and progress through increased vocational education. By 1988 they had edited the results in Vocationalising Education: An International Perspective, another landmark publication in international education policy research. His own paper, researched and written with Anders Narman, with support from the Swedish International Development Authority (SIDA), focused on the possibilities and potential of diversifying secondary schooling by including a vocational education strand in the Kenya secondary curriculum. 

A change of course

But this was not to be. Their conclusion was that it was uneconomic, requiring more managerial expertise than teachers could muster. And along with George Psacharopoulos and William Loxley’s devastating findings from their studies in Tanzania and Colombia, the results were to confirm the economic folly of diversifying secondary education. Philip Foster’s earlier ‘Vocational School Fallacy’ argument was to stand, and the embrace with vocational school education saw a quick end, as the World Bank and other funders ceased their support for vocationalised schooling, almost overnight. Employers and their workers were to be left to take the strain of skills development for economic productivity and growth. 

Ever the social pragmatist, he moved on to pursue other research interests in adult education. Supported by the World Bank, he returned again to Kenya to work for the Government on ways forward for adult education through the Kenya Education Sector Support Programme (KESSP) 2005-2010. Later on, from Oslo, he engaged with the problem of how to extend and deepen democratic opportunities through youth engagement in politics, faced with the pressing problem of growing youth (un)employment.  

Fundamentally committed

Jon Lauglo was a consummate academic, with a deep sense of social justice and practical application. Fundamentally committed to extending democracy and material progress in the best of the Scandinavian social science tradition, based on reliable theory, he developed his ideas through rigorous research and practical application. A committed cosmopolitan in the very best of the European tradition and its enlightenment heritage, he gave intellectual service throughout his academic life to the development interests of some of the least advantaged. He will be remembered and missed by his many friends, colleagues and students alike from around the world. A critical scholar, intellectual, social democrat, pragmatist and gentleman through and through.

We miss you, and we salute you.  

Chris Yates
Lecturer in International Education
Centre for Education and International Development 
UCL Institute of Education