This study sheds light on the mundane enactment of a policy in educational settings by focusing on a new Swedish national standard, the Early Learning Support Guarantee (ELSG), in Reading, Writing, and Number sense. An ethnographic-inspired study unpacks the significance of the interplay between formal guidelines and professional judgement with a particular focus on teachers’ professional enactment of a policy in the context of mundane school practice. The policy is rendered compatible through the continuous adjustments made by teachers. This has implications for how educational policy practices in the school sector can be refined by considering and including values of locality, teachers’ discretion, and the potential role of policy evaluation and the reciprocity of standards.
This study investigates how Local Education Authority (LEA) officials make sense of systematic quality work (SQW), with a particular focus on their intermediate position between national policymakers and local school actors. By examining this often-overlooked role, the study explores what LEA officials do when interpreting, constructing and enacting SQW. The analysis draws on a three‑year study conducted in five Swedish municipalities and is based on semi‑structured interviews with LEA officials and participant observations of SQW meetings. The findings show the important role that LEA officials have as organizational sensemakers of SQW. The LEA officials translate broad and aspirational national SQW policies into meaningful and contextually relevant practices by narrating local SQW models. This proves particularly challenging due to the national policies limited practical guidance. Using Weick’s theory of sensemaking and Czarniawska’s narrative organizational approach, the study identifies three key processes through which LEA officials make sense of national SQW policies: professional, narrative and rational sensemaking in efforts to reduce the complexity of SQW and offer organizational meaning and identity.
This article adds to the growing body of research on educational governance in times of crisis by examining primary and lower secondary teachers’ post-pandemic reflections across the five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden). Unlike previous studies that focus on individual national responses or limited cross-country comparisons, this study offers an exploration of Nordic teachers’ experiences, emphasizing their reflections on trust, support, and uncertainty in relation to diverse government strategies and educational practices during the Covid-19 pandemic (2020–2022). Drawing on both survey data and qualitative insights, the article sheds light on teachers’ experiences of educational continuity and institutional support. The analysis is framed by the Nordic countries’ varied responses to the ‘wicked problem’ posed by children who, while typically exhibiting mild symptoms, represented a potential transmission risk due to high-density classroom environments. By highlighting how teachers in culturally and politically similar nations navigated a common crisis in distinct ways, the study offers a nuanced perspective that may inform future crisis-management strategies in education.
This study examines how teachers are positioned as both agents and subjects within the discursive field of digital transformation. As education reforms in Nordic countries prioritise digitalisation, teacher professionalism is mobilised to mediate technology integration. In Norway, this is articulated through the policy construct of professional digital competence (PDC). Drawing on interview data from a Norwegian municipality’s professional development initiative, the analysis explores how teachers, as local policy actors, rearticulate policy discourses within their work contexts. Rather than treating PDC as a fixed set of competencies, the study approaches it as a contingent and contested construct enacted through discursive practices shaped by institutional constraints, technological infrastructures, and affective investments. Two dominant enactments of PDC emerge: teachers as controllers of devices and as purposeful users of devices. These modalities overlap, reflecting tensions between control and innovation, autonomy and accountability. By foregrounding the discursive and material conditions of policy enactment, the study offers a nuanced understanding of how digital transformation is negotiated in schools. It argues for a shift in perspective—from viewing PDC as an individualised skillset to recognising it as a dynamic process of constructing capacities within a sociotechnical landscape.
Collaborative approaches are increasingly promoted to strengthen research connections between universities and school practices and indorse improvements. In Sweden, a national initiative launched in 2017 aiming to enhance the scientific foundations of teacher training and strengthen relevant research through a trial project creating sustainable structures for collaboration between schools and universities. Universities providing teacher education were expected to translate national ambitions into opportunities for collaboration with schools. This paper draws on an evaluation of six Swedish universities’ realization of this initiative, empirically based on survey responses and group interviews. Using institutional logics theory, we discern and interpret key elements of collaboration logics and characteristics of distinct identified logics. Our analysis identifies three configurations of logics: the Explorer, the Organizer, and the Competitor. We highlight the benefits and drawbacks of these logics and their relations with prevailing university logics. The paper contributes an institutional perspective on collaborative approaches between universities and schools, suggesting that links between organizational and field logics play important roles that have been largely neglected in much of the literature.
There are legislation and policies promoting equality and non-discrimination in Finnish schools, yet racism remains part of everyday life in schools and school staff find it difficult to address. This article analyses 77 laws and policy documents on the international, national, municipal and school levels, and maps the policy landscape that determines how racism in basic education is perceived in Finland. This article takes the perspective of depoliticization and claims that the policies and their measures discursively remove power and politics from the issue of racism and basic education, resulting in difficulties grasping racism in basic education. By analysing the problem representations in the policies, we find that the topic of racism in basic education is depoliticized in the following ways: universalizing equality, individualizing racism, placing responsibility elsewhere, technicalising actions, suppressing the inherent conflict in racism, silencing the issue of racism, decontextualizing racism, and making declarations of non-racism. We suggest that if racism in basic education is to be addressed through policy, the political dimensions of racism should be articulated in order for the policy to meet racism in its full existence. More research into the tension of depoliticization and politicization of racism and antiracism in education is needed.
In Norway, upper-secondary school admissions in cities are primarily based on grades, favouring students with top grades for the most popular schools. This study examines student support for this grade-based system, exploring gender differences and the influence of family affluence and student grades on attitudes. The findings reveal that boys are significantly more likely to support grade-based admissions, even after accounting for various background factors. Conversely, girls are more likely to favour a system where admission chances are equal regardless of grades. Boys generally have lower grades than girls, suggesting that these preferences are not solely driven by self-interest. The gender gap in support is substantial across the grade spectrum but slightly narrows among top-grade students and those from affluent families, indicating that class and gender might interact. These results align with broader research on gender differences in political attitudes among youth, highlighting the role of childhood socialization.
Policies of school integration aim to improve intergroup relations between different ethnic, racial and religious groups through social mixing in educational institutions. Although there are high expectations for the benefits of such policies, it is far from certain that the social mix leads to positive intergroup relations or even intergroup interaction. This paper investigates the extent and nature of interethnic interaction in integrated schools in Aarhus, Denmark, based on extensive fieldwork in two school classes (children aged 5–8) over a period of 14 months. The results are presented in part as an analysis of peer groups and interethnic interaction frequencies in different school settings and in part as a comparative analysis of interethnic and intra-ethnic reprimanding and collaboration. The paper demonstrates that interethnic interactions are frequent across all school settings. However, the children’s peer groups are exclusive with regard to ethnicity and the interethnic interactions reflect a tacit but general inequality in the roles played by ethnic minority and majority children. Implications for school integration policies are discussed.
In this paper, the consequences and manifestations of international policy trends of marketization within education, increasing financial efficiency and competency-based curricular planning are explored, using the Icelandic upper secondary academic curriculum as an example. The academic programmes are to introduce students to varied academic subjects as well as to provide students with a sufficient specialized preparation for higher education. With the general aims to increase flexibility in upper secondary education, encourage more individualistic approaches and accommodate the needs of a more diverse student body, Icelandic upper secondary schools were given substantial curricular authority to design their own academic programmes around certain learner-specific competencies. The aim of the paper is to explore and critically discuss the curricular consequences of the policy changes from the perspective of educational equalities, building on the argument that access to academic knowledge is a matter of social justice. The findings indicate significant difference in the structure and content of the academic programmes that invite questions on students’ access to academic knowledge.
This paper focuses on ideas of preschool principals’ responsibilities for quality work expressed in Swedish local authorities’ policy documents. Empirically, it is based on a three-step analysis of 202 policy documents from 21 Swedish local authorities. This involved thematic analysis followed by application of a discursive institutionalist lens and assessment of the alignment of policies and accountability structures expressed in the documents with national policies. The result of the analysis shows that the national preschool curriculum plays a role in shaping ideas about preschool principals’ responsibilities at the local level, notably the overarching idea of ‘equivalence’, emphasizing their responsibilities for promoting social and economic equality. However, the recontextualization of the national curriculum is also influenced by socio-economic conditions, such as limitations of staff and resources available to the local authorities, highlighting a need to tailor accountability in accordance with the local authorities’ contexts. This results in varying degrees of alignment and accountability, with expressions in the local authorities’ policy documents sometimes extending beyond national guidelines and offering inconsistent support for preschool principals. The paper also illustrates that preschool principals may struggle to take responsibility for quality work due to the emphasis on local contextual needs.
Principals are important actors in enacting national educational policy, so it is important to elicit their views of curricular change. Thus, this study explores Early childhood education and care (ECEC) principals’ perspectives of a new ECEC curriculum and its interpretation in a Swedish municipality. Using a contextual lens with cultural, structural and material filters, I examine the principals’ views of the reformulated curriculum and an Implementation Project that the municipality organized to provide support. Empirically, it is based on non-participant observations of group discussions and activities that were parts of the implementation project and in-depth interviews with 16 principals who participated in the project. The findings reveal a positive set of attitudes towards the new curriculum and the concept of ‘teaching’ it has introduced, both as highly valued ideas and for the increase in status it will bring to preschools. At the same time, the principals recognize that it also introduces challenges for preschool education and professional staff associated with complex webs of interactions between actors, activities, contextual factors and new concepts. Although the principals view the municipality’s support very positively, they raise concerns about its organization and timing. The findings have important implications for future support initiatives of municipalities.
Internationalization is often regarded as a tool for enhancing the quality of education and research, but the question is how are they related? This paper aims to address this by analysing the way quality and internationalization are represented in strategy documents of four universities, looking into how quality and internationalization are discussed together, what kinds of premises are present about their relationship, and how quality relates to universities’ geographical positioning. We do so by analysing strategies in four European universities; two ‘capital’ universities and two ‘town’ universities. First, we analyse what quality means in relation to internationalization within the strategies and show that the meaning is often empty; then, we unfold the implicit meanings of this ‘self-evident quality’. With a spatial perspective we analyse how the universities position themselves in the world and how this is intertwined with notions of quality. The discussion compares and contrasts the four strategies and shows more similarities between universities of town or capital origin rather than universities with the same nationality.
In this article, we analyse how educational policy debates regarding specific school subjects are related to the demarcation of science. Utilising boundary-work theory we analyse material from a later abandoned revision process for the Swedish upper secondary school curriculum in 2004–2006. During this process a new subject – Sustainable Development – was proposed by the Swedish National Agency for Education. As a consequence, the Geography subject, potentially a suitable arena to naturally handle education for sustainable development, would be given a very peripheral role in the upper secondary school curriculum. From the suggestion a debate about scientific boundaries arose, with arguments that may be traced back to the theoretical concepts; ‘exclusion’, ‘expansion’ and ‘protection of autonomy’.
This special issue examines the policy model of School Autonomy with Accountability (SAWA) and its diverse configurations . The focus is on understanding how SAWA reforms shape governance practices and influence educational systems in different educational settings. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, the issue explores how political factors, administrative traditions, and local professional frameworks shape the adoption and evolution of these policies. SAWA reforms promote school autonomy in decision-making while holding schools accountable for performance outcomes through various instruments such as standardized assessments, school improvement projects, and accountability arrangements. However, these policies often create tensions between autonomy and accountability, and their implementation produces varied outcomes depending on local contexts and institutions. The issue also highlights the growing role of data use in educational decision-making and examines the challenges associated with policy enactment at the school level. Taking stock of these discussions, in this introduction to the special issue, we delve into the complexities of SAWA reforms and their implications for educational equity, innovation, and governance. We also highlight the need for further research into the dynamic interaction between the formulation of SAWA policies and their local implementation, particularly in underexamined national contexts.
School buildings worldwide have given voice to educational purposes and have been employed as policy instruments. This article outlines a study concerning governance of the design of the physical learning environments in a decentralized policy setting. Based on document analysis of three design briefs and interviews with key persons for local school design in three local governments, this article seeks to explore how central policy imperatives and regulations are enacted in local school design. By deploying the concepts of translation and path dependence as analytical tools, the paper highlights how laws and regulations on school buildings’ design are transformed in local settings. The concepts of loose and tight couplings are deployed to investigate how organizations are tied together. This paper demonstrates strong regulations from the health authorities and building authorities which were enacted by translations into the design briefs. Weak regulations were demonstrated through the absence of the central education authorities in the developments of school buildings. This paper argues that local governments had a concern for good physical environments for both learning and health for their students; however, the central education authorities were absent in the discussion, leaving students’ physical learning environment to a matter of health and well-being.
The multi-level governance education system in Sweden is complex, comprising many actors. This study focuses on one of them, which is thus far very under-researched: the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR, in Swedish SKR). We examine SALAR’s policymaking through a critical policy analysis of its policy document on the topic of inclusive education (IE). We take a poststructural perspective utilizing the analytical approach What’s the Problem Represented to be? (WPR), developed by Bacchi and Goodwin. We have identified problem representations, assumptions, and absences in the policy. The key finding is that SALAR uses the concept of IE, even though it is only vaguely defined, to govern school staff into self-governance by appealing to their presumed inclination to do ‘right’ by children, while simultaneously directing focus away from structural factors for which SALAR’s members are responsible. From a wider perspective, this is important because it shows how policy on IE is particularly well suited for governing towards self-governance in education practices, due to its positive connotations, and ambiguous meaning, which can be filled with whatever content suits the policy actor’s agenda.
