This chapter focuses on the empirical value of course literature in order to understand paradigm shifts in teacher education over time. In order to show this, the example of Swedish special education teachers is presented. This case is of international interest since the Swedish school systems have been highly committed to international trends. These trends are among others, the inclusion movement, i.e. the making of a school for all in the spirit of the Salamanca declaration of 1994, and the impact of PISA since the 2000s, related to paradigms of standardised student performance measurement of all students. By making qualitative and quantitative content analyses of course literature lists since the 1970s, we show that there are indeed significant shifts in what prospective professionals in school are expected to be. In the case presented in this chapter, it can be shown how special education teachers until the 1990s had a profound medical focus on schooling and disability in their training. Today, they are by their academic training more expected to be expert teachers for all children. Moreover, their reading includes today much focus on scientific method. This illustrates that this professional group is expected today to produce own systematic knowledge.

Hur går det till när en friskola byggs upp från grunden?

Samtalet om den svenska friskolan är starkt politiserat och utgör ett väsentligt inslag i offentliga debatter och medierapportering. Den här boken vill försöka förstå friskolereformen genom att studera uppbyggnaden av en helt ny fristående gymnasieskola under dess första tre år. Fram till att friskolans första elevgrupp tar studenten får vi följa skolans lärare och deras arbetssituation. Konkreta exempel visar hur organiseringen av ett skolsystem med fria skolval och ekonomisk vinst, omfattande nationella prov och skolinspektion påverkar såväl lärares arbete och autonomi som skolans organisation. Genom att sätta in händelseförloppet i ett vidare sammanhang, både svenskt och internationellt, belyser författarna olika aspekter av friskolesystemet och lärares arbetsvillkor.

A special Issue of Nordic Journal of Studies on Education Policy, with contributions of among others, Mel Ainskow, Peder Haug, Michel Knigge, Lise Roll-Petersson, Kajsa Falkner, Christian Ydesen, Daniel Östlund, Thomas Barow.

Föreliggande presentation argumenterar för att stödinsatser i skolan i sin utformning genomsyras av en mångfald av syften, där de mest frekventa är måluppfyllelse i relation till läroplanens kunskapskrav, juridisk eftergivenhet, för resultats- eller kvalitetsredovisning, för att äska resurser, eller för att tjäna administrativa syften. En nutidshistorisk tillbakablick indikerar att individualiserade stödinsatser ursprungligen förväntades minska kategoriska placeringar till förmån för mindre restriktiva lärmiljöer. Den styrningsmodell för utbildning som därefter har införts bygger på ekonomiska marknadsprinciper med tydligt formulerade mål, medvetna strategier, styrning och ledning samt tydlig uppföljning och utvärdering för att uppnå målen. De offentliga policydokument som utformas i linje med styrningsmodellen ger exempel på en statlig myndighets sätt att tala till lärare och elever samt föräldrar i den svenska skolan. Ett didaktiskt läroplansteoretiskt perspektiv bidrar med teoretiskt och metodologiskt stöd för att granska aktuella marknadsprinciper, offentliga policytexter samt exemplifiera möjligheten att utgå från lärmiljön i utformningen av stödinsatser. Efter granskning av offentliga policydokument, presenteras förslag för att utveckla en läroplansstödd utformning av undervisning och utvärdering genom att i förhållande till policytexterna upprätta alternativa mål och alternativ bedömning samt ersätta resultat med didaktiska undervisningsmetoder.

Special Support based on the learning enviroment

In Sweden, as in many other countries, the current model of public governance for education is based on principals from the financial market, with clearly formulated goals, conscious strategies, governance and management as well as clear monitoring and evaluation in order to achieve the goals. These financial principles affect the design of policy documents addressing students who need special support, which in turn affects the design of support actions within educational activities. The purpose of this presentation is to explore the possibilities of pedagogical professionals to use pedagogical-didactic principles to design changes in the learning environment with preventative instructions and forms of collaborative learning in order to reduce the policy informed dominance focusing on individual support actions. Curriculum theory is used to explore policy documents, and the analytic approach is informed by speech act theory. The results demonstrates performative statements that informs teachers as well as students and parents to individualized support actions. There is also evident that the support actions in the policy documents have a vast variety of purposes. Most frequent purposes are goal fulfilment guided by national curriculum syllabi, legal compliance, accountability measures, resource allocation and administrative purposes.  Drawing on the consequences of performative statements in public governance and policy, proposals are presented for designing documentation with support actions that have the relation between the individual and the learning environment as a starting point.

The aim of this study is to generate a grounded theory that explains the content of teachers' and students' work with personal development dialogues and individual development plans using written assessments, all regulated in the national result-oriented curriculum for the Swedish compulsory school. Two secondary schools participated and data was collected on two occasions. Data consists of recorded personal development dialogues, which are informed by written assessments, and copies of the individual development plans written as a conclusion stating agreements between the teacher and student. All data was continuously compared and analyzed by using a grounded theory method. Underpinning the study are the premises of pragmatic philosophy and transactional theory that are assumed to shape the focus of the grounded theory approach and hence of teacher and student transactional strategies. It is argued that teachers' and students' primary concern is to establish result-oriented individualization. This is a means for cooperation in a mutual endeavor to establish improved results, guided by the phases of visible accountability and responsible awareness. By using strategies for planning, guiding, auditing and reflecting, new ways of managing individualization are developed. It is also suggested that a new professional approach has been developed, where teachers and students work in collaborative teams, continuously focusing on improving student results.

This study aims to develop a model for comparing different forms of teacher autonomy in various national contexts and at different times. Understanding and explaining local differences and global similarities in the teaching profession in a globalized world require conceptions that contribute to further theorization of comparative and international education. Drawing on a governance perspective and building on considerations of curriculum evaluation, the study argues that teacher autonomy is a crucial factor that has to be conceptualized in its national and historical contexts. It presents an examination of the teaching profession from both an institutional and service perspective. In both perspectives, teacher autonomy, framed by curriculum evaluation, can be regarded as both extended and restricted, but not necessarily at the same time. This point of view enables us to discuss different forms of autonomy in relation to each other. To support this idea, the study discusses cases of teachers in various contexts of time and space.

The article presents different models of comparative education by discussing the government committee reports (SOU) which prepared the Swedish teacher education reforms of 2001 and 2011. These serve as examples for different kinds of policy borrowing from an international Bologna process discourse in national government document. The article facilitates Waldow (2009) term of “silent borrowing”. The reform of 2001 shows distinct references to international discourses without making this explicit. The reform of 2011 is then an example for explicit borrowing. The related government committee report refers very obvious to the Bologna process. However, this is seen as strategy in order to mark its distinction to its predecessor reform. Our cases are assumed to show how socio-historical and political contexts condition national discourses’ recourses of legitimation.