The History of the IMTEC foundation
IMTEC originated as a leadership training project within the OECD in the 1970s, focusing on educational leadership development. In 1977, Per Dalin established IMTEC as a Norwegian foundation, aiming to work internationally on school development, contribute to knowledge advancement through conferences and publications, and support educational progress in Norway.
Center for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI in OECD) accepted the challenge and started a research program to analyze the educational systems’ capacity for change (Dalin, 1973).
As a result of this program, a leadership development program was created: ”International Management Training for Educational Change”, based on the assumption that knowledge about how schools improve is important to school leaders. This also instigated a number of national school leadership programs. Later the word “Management” was replaced by “Movement”, and today the foundation’s name is “IMTEC – International Movement Towards Educational Change”.
Professor Per Dalin was IMTEC’s founder and leader during the OECD period in Paris. Upon his return to Norway in 1977, he brought back with him the name and the project idea, and IMTEC was established as a Norwegian foundation.
