Visions unite through the concept of democracy: The school and the Popular Adult Education

With a point of departure in the concept of democracy, this article aims to show how Swedish Popular Adult Education influenced the content of the established school system in Sweden. The Popular Adult Education and established school systems are studied through their relation to democracy, based on curricula, as well as on visionary and political steering documents. In accordance with conceptual history, the study shows how Popular Adult Education and the established school, with their different spaces of experience and references to separate traditions, gradually became accommodated through a common horizon of expectations about the importance of democracy. When this coalescence appeared, an administrative shift could be identified and the Popular Adult Education Movement was partially disarmed