This study examines the distribution of epistemic authority in Swedish education policy over the last half century through an analysis of the composition of governmental commissions of inquiry. The professional backgrounds of all individuals appointed to commissions focused on education initiated between 1968 and 2021 are analyzed, revealing a dramatic reconfiguration of the epistemic community assembled in education policymaking. The inclusion of education sector professionals such as teachers, school leaders, and educational administrators has declined sharply over time. At the same time, the representation of government ministry personnel has increased substantially. This pattern holds across a wide range of education policy topics and cannot be attributed to a shifting policy agenda. Nor is it primarily ideologically driven, as governments of varying political orientations have all contributed to the shift. Rather, the pattern reflects a piecemeal institutional change through which successive governments accept and build upon lower baselines of professional inclusion rather than restoring earlier norms. We argue that this reconfiguration of epistemic authority may have contributed to enabling and sustaining major education reforms by reducing the capacity of education sector professionals to shape problem framings in the legislative process.
Teacher education (TE) policy is often caught between preparing teachers as agents of social change and a narrow ‘teacher effectiveness’ paradigm. This article examines this tension in Norway, where egalitarian traditions meet global neoliberal accountability discourses. Analysing the pivotal Norwegian TE curriculum policy document, Stortingsmelding nr. 11 (Minstry of Education and Research, 2008–2009), the study uses the Public Good Professionalism (PGP) framework as an analytical lens to assess the extent to which the policy enables the development of teachers as transformative public good professionals. We employ an AI-assisted deductive content analysis using a multi-coder ensemble of nine GPT-4 assistants configured with diverse parameters (temperature and top_p) to provide a parametric stress-test of the coding scheme. Findings reveal a significant discrepancy between stated social equality goals and substantive content. Capabilities explicitly addressed in policy (e.g. Informed Vision) show high ensemble convergence but are instrumentally reframed, stripped of their transformative potential. Conversely, capabilities essential for social justice (e.g. Social and Collective Struggle) show the lowest convergence, reflecting their marginalization. The study concludes that the policy prioritizes a ‘proficient technician’ over a ‘public good professional’, revealing a fundamental structural barrier to socially just teacher education in Norway.
The study explores overrepresentation of children with a migration background in Swedish schools for children with intellectual disability. Theoretically positioned within the framework of a critical approach to education policy analysis, ontologically and epistemologically rooted in a Foucault-inspired poststructural tradition, the aim is to describe, analyse and problematize how 23 local educational stakeholders in six Swedish municipalities understand and respond to overrepresentation. The main axis of understanding overrepresentation is framed as a social problem and formed around the notion of unknown normalcy. Migration flows, for what reasons migrants are coming to Sweden, and some cultural practices among migrant families are understood as the main causes of overrepresentation. Furthermore, cultural differences, trauma and language deficiency are aspects of migration background that interfere with the referral process, ‘confusing’ the operations of an otherwise, as understood, meticulous and robust system. One of the study’s major implications is that constructing overrepresentation as an ‘immigrant problem’ and as a social problem overshadows the policy and practices of the referral process as another potentially powerful cause of overrepresentation. Moreover, this dominant framing narrows the scope of institutional responsibility in efforts to address overrepresentation.
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 article contributes to research on educational governance by showing how accountability relations shape the interpretation and enactment of national policy at the meso level. By approaching accountability as a social relation rather than a policy instrument, it highlights how formally similar governance arrangements may give rise to different practices. The study examines Swedish school organizers, an understudied group occupying a central position in the governance chain, and how they navigate partly conflicting expectations from actors across governance levels. Drawing on the Accountability Regimes Framework, it explores (1) which expectations and demands organizers identify, (2) how they prioritize when demands collide, and (3) what governance practices emerge from these prioritization processes. The study uses abductive qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews with thirteen superintendents representing public, private for-profit, and private non-profit organizers in Norrbotten County, Sweden. The findings show that all organizers face extensive state steering often poorly adapted to local conditions, yet respond differently depending on organizational context. Public organizers rely on legality and administrative procedure, for-profit organizers emphasize internal alignment and efficiency, and non-profit organizers draw on proximity, values, and trust. Similar arrangements are thus enacted as distinct governance practices across organizational contexts.
