Through the Historicizing Intelligence project, the Museum of University History collaborates with the Department of Education (UiO) and the Oslo University Library.
Strategic collaboration
The Museum of University History (MUV) collaborates with faculties and departments at the University of Oslo to identify historically valuable objects. We establish and catalogue museum collections and make them available for research. The dissemination of knowledge about the collections is an integrated part of our work.
The idea behind the Historicizing Intelligence project was to develop a working methodology in which the curatorial management of objects, done in collaboration with departments and faculties, goes hand-in hand with historical research and dissemination online and in exhibitions. The research project thus connects the tasks assigned to MUV while being contemporary and socially relevant, and addresses issues that transcend disciplines, departments and faculties.
Test collection
We have a close research collaboration with the Department of Education at the Faculty of Educational Sciences (UiO). The department’s expansive collection of commonly used IQ tests over the past hundred years was a key starting point for the Historicizing Intelligence research project.
Much of the material in the collection originates from the Pedagogical Research Institute, a forerunner of today’s Department of Education. The Institute was established in 1938 under the leadership of the psychologist and pedagogue Helga Eng. It underwent strong expansion in the decades following World War II, under the leadership of Eng’s student Johs. Sandven who was head of the Institute from 1948 to 1972.
An important driving force behind the growth of the Institute was the need for educational research that could provide a knowledge base for reform work and governance in the national school system in Post-War Norway. Kim G. Helsvig has shown in his doctoral thesis that Sandven aimed to develop the Institute into a “test-service centre” for the school system. Test psychology also played an important role in the education of pedagogues at the Institute during this period.
Archiving project
The archiving project Historicizing Educational Testing played a key role in the initial stage of our current research project. Through this project a huge collection of instruments, tests, published and archival sources which originated from the Pedagogical Research Institute were arranged, catalogued and made available. An unorganized storage room at the Faculty of Educational sciences was turned into a curated heritage collection which is accessible for research.
The collection is available in the database Alvin.
The project was a collaboration between our project, the Department of Education, which owns the collection, the research project Transnational Trends and Contesting Concepts for Measuring Merit in the Nordic Countries, and the project "Spesialsamlinger og databaser" (“Special collections and databases”) at the University of Oslo Library.
Solveig Marie Siem was in charge of the practical implementation of the project.
The exhibition "Inside the Box?" is based on the collection.