Ulf Blossing

A School for Every Child in Sweden

Behind the introduction of a public primary school in 1842 was the idea of education for all its children and youth. These discussions were intense among the political parties in Sweden throughout the nineteenth century and reached its culmination in preparation of the comprehensive school reform in 1962. The vision of a school for all, where all children from the society met, has been one of the cornerstones in the social democratic building of an equal and democratic society from the 1960s to the 1980s. But time changes and in the twenty-first century and the new era of globalisation and market-oriented education, the question can be asked: What has become of the vision of a school for all?

Reshaping the Nordic education model in an era of efficiency. Changes in the comprehensive school project in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden since the millennium

ABSTRACT The Nordic Education Model was an important part of the social democratic welfare state for many years in the second half of the 20th century. Since the millennium, transnational agencies have drawn education from the realm of politics into a global market place by advocating strategies such as efficiency, competition, decentralisation, governing by detailed objectives, control, privatisation, and profile schools. This article gives brief accounts of major trends in current school development policies, discourses, and practices in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden since the millennium, and explores how the values of the Nordic model are affected by the new policies. It is argued that the Nordic model still exists as the predominant system for the large majority of Scandinavian children at a national level, but that a number of new technologies aiming to increase the efficiency of teaching and learning are gradually undermining the main values of the Nordic model.

Nordic Schools in a Time of Change

In this first chapter, the aim of the anthology is introduced which is to have a closer look on what happens in practice when the school for all meets the neo-liberal education policy undertaken in the Nordic countries today. The criticism claims that the Nordic educational ideology, with the child in focus and a comprehensive school system in solidarity with the weak ones in society, is being on the retreat, and that it does not produce the qualities necessary in a competitive, global perspective. In today’s neo-liberal education policy, the concept of ‘a school for all’ is no longer a part of the rhetoric. The historical background of the Nordic countries is accounted for as well as the growth of the neoliberal policy in education. The chapters in the volume are briefly presented. New institutional theory is used as a framework to understand the encounter between schools and neo-liberalism. Loose coupling between institutions and school organisations indicates a varied picture when we explore the neoliberalist impact on the Nordic model of education. Because of the long historic traditions of democracy and welfare, we do not foresee any dramatic changes in the values underpinning the national educational policies, although there may be controlling measures and changes in school practices that run contrary to these values. However, this depends on the sustainability of the logic of legitimacy at school level. If the logic of efficiency expressed in quantified parameters is taking the lead in the schools’ environments, the future of the school for all is more uncertain.

Progressive Education and New Governance in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden

Progressive education has been an important, educational philosophy that has given inspiration to practical, pedagogical renewal, and school-based development in the Scandinavian countries since the middle of the twentieth century. The ideology has spread to teaching practices along with the structural development of “A School for All.” The question discussed in this chapter concerns whether the progressive ideology is a necessary basis for pedagogical thinking that aims at cultivating democracy and offering a meaningful education to all kinds of students, regardless of diverse abilities, interests, social background, and ethnicity. What happens to progressive educational practices when confronted with transnational, neoliberal management ideologies?

A Central School Reform Program in Sweden and the Local Response: Taking the Long-Term View Works.

This article reports the results of a longitudinal study of 35 Swedish comprehensive schools involving interviews with teachers, school leaders, students, and parents carried out in 1980, 1982, 1985, and 2001. During the 35-year period covered by the study, the schools experienced significant reforms. The most important of these reforms involved a shift from a system of highly centralized control of school activities to a system where a large degree of control over schools was devolved to local municipalities—kommuns—and to the schools themselves. These reforms are such that today, for example, local kommuns are responsible for school budgets where previously the state was in charge of them. This study makes a strong argument for the need for a process of progressive decentralization that puts the emphasis on local democracy as opposed to the alternative that tends to emphasize greater state control.

An individual learning belief and its impact on schools’ improvement work – An Individual versus a Social Learning Perspective

Why do some schools fail to improve even after taking knowledge-based improvement initiatives? In this article, we argue that some schools do not improve because their staff members have an individual learning belief. An individual learning approach to school improvement will disrupt development processes. Whereas, as we argue, a social learning understanding of school improvement based on the theory of Community of Practice and its application may provide schools with a theoretical understanding which enables successful implementation. The results of two major improvement projects in Norway illustrate how some schools fail to successfully implement improvement due to the voluntary nature of participation, the lack of situated activities in relation to the improvement objective, the low frequency of meetings and the absence of systematic leadership. Our advice to schools is to revisit their beliefs about and understanding of learning so they can manage change among staff and carefully monitor the situations we highlight as being critical to success.

Schools for All: A Nordic Model

The chapters in this volume show that a Nordic model can constitute a delicate balance between traditional values, institutionalised practices and contemporary, neoliberal forms of governance and policies. Along with new institutional theory, we also argue that social technologies are being interpreted in different ways in actual school practices. This process of translating national regulations into internal sense builds on the values in the culture to which they are introduced.

Professional Development in the Use of Data: From Data to Knowledge in Data Teams

ABSTRACT Schools need support in the use of data. To provide this support, a data team intervention was developed. A prior study conducted in the Netherlands showed that several factors can enable or hinder the work of data teams. The current replication study focuses on the factors influencing data use in data teams and the perceived effects of the data teams’ work, but looking at data teams in Sweden. The results of this qualitative study show that the data teams’ work is influenced by the same factors as in the Netherlands: Data characteristics (e.g., relevance of the data), team characteristics (e.g., heterogeneity of the team), and school organizational characteristics (e.g., school leader support).

Practice among novice change agents in schools

The aim of the article is to understand practice as negotiation of meaning among novice and internal change agents in school organisations. The research question is as follows: What themes of participation and reification/management occur among the change agents? The study was qualitative in design using the social learning theory of community of practice, as well as organisation development theory in the analysis. Primarily, the data source comprised 36 change agents’ journals during 3 years from 2009 to 2011. Four themes of participation and reification were identified in the agents’ negotiation of meaning in their new role: (1) daily work management, (2) emotional supervision, (3) role development and (4) community development. The change agents reified or managed the problems with various micro-processes to structure the work with the teachers. Over time, more macro-processes became visible. The article concludes that the core of practice is the following question: How should the change agent’s role be developed and built upon? This is the question that nurtures the negotiation in the ongoing participation and reification process of being a change agent.

Capturing Sense-Made School Practice. The Activities of the Interviewer

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to discuss how to interview to investigate the practice of school organizations. The research question is: What are the activities the interviewer uses to capture improvement practices in school organizations? We apply a self-assessment method to examine two former projects. We argue that a practice lens is required and, thus, the analytical questions we ask ourselves are derived from practice theory and sense-making. The activities the interviewer uses to capture improvement practice in school organizations are expressed in four categories: (1) interview questions, (2) tools, (3) samplings, and (4) interview groupings. We found it difficult to address the critical role of body and material things and to pay attention to the importance of power and politics. An overall reflection is that the textual aspects tended to dominate in the interview, whereas the bodily and material aspects of practice seemed more elusive.