Increased international attention paid to research-based education has resulted in various national initiatives to exploit research in education. However, this poses challenges for school professionals. Based on an ethnographic single case study in a Swedish educational setting, this article investigates how national policy on research-based…

Government policies increasingly focus on transformative innovation policy (TIP), as programmes are being reoriented towards addressing societal challenges and contributing to sustainability transitions. Evaluation practices need modification to keep up with this change. While a small number of frameworks for TIP evaluation have been proposed,…

This article examines individualising processes in the context of Municipal Adult Education in Swedish for Immigrants (SFI). Demands to adapt education to individual students' needs are increasingly evident in adult education policies, requiring accountable authorities' active engagement in enacting effective organisational frameworks while…

This article examines the contemporary Swedish policy responses to increased cultural and linguistic diversity in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC). More specifically, it explores how national authorities and organizations initiate collaborations, use and produce policy knowledge and identify priorities and challenges. The…

Within the specific cultural and historical context of Swedish adult education, this article employs autoethnography to explore teachers' complex experiences during the era of neoliberalism. Its aim is to illuminate teachers' multifaceted realities within this dynamic and shed light on the diverse challenges and struggles they encounter. Drawing…

This article analyses how the future has been discussed in Swedish higher education and research policy, providing an overview of public inquiries during the period 1970-2020. Expanding on the conceptual framework of German historian Reinhart Koselleck, the article approaches discourses on the future through the analytical lens of sociology of…

Purpose: In the rational model of the democratic governing chain, intervening spaces at all levels are neglected in relation to the policy process. An intervening space is a group of persons with the power and responsibility to interpret policy at their level in an organization. The research question is as follows: How are democratic policy ideas…

In this article, we examine how policymakers from three Nordic countries, Finland, Iceland and Sweden, reflect on the future at 2 different points in time: just before the first PISA study (1998-1999) and more than 15 years later (2015-2017). The empirical data consist of interviews (N = 37) with national policymakers, collected in two comparative…

Purpose: Using a large-scale school improvement program in Sweden as a case, this article aims to explore the state governance of a large-scale school improvement program in Sweden and how officials at the state agency level made sense of the reform ideas and operationalized them in policy actions. Design/methodology/approach: Data were integrated…

As the privatisation of the public sector has grown rapidly in Sweden in the last decade, private companies have become an imperative part of education. Private companies sell and deliver consultancy, hardware, software, services, etc. to schools and municipalities. This study examines a growing rate of activities from companies and businesses…

National policies on school digitalisation take shape in their local contexts. Consequently, to understand the outcome of national policy, the local translations must be set within a contextual perspective. This article explores how four contextually different municipalities in Sweden translate national school digitalisation policy. It draws on a…

This study describes and critically discusses a development project designed to create and enact a local language policy at a Swedish multilingual school, its context, content and implementation dimensions. The collaborative construction of a school language policy is a complex process, with tensions that need to be resolved. By describing the…

This edited book provides a critical re-reading of the concept of teacher education, in addition to a re-thinking of the sole focus on Initial Teacher Education (ITE), with implications for education policy, theory, and practice. This book presents new investigations that explore the concept of teacher education from ITE to retirement and how this…

The modest impact of national policy efforts on school digitalisation relates to a gap between views among policy-makers and practitioners, giving rise to complexity in translating policy into action. Acknowledging changes in governing through alternative policy formation-processes, and Ward and Parr's (2011) arguing for the importance of…

The rise in the use of scientific evidence as a basis for educational policymaking has been a noticeable feature globally. In this study, we describe and discuss how educational research is used to make policy and governing evidence-based. To illustrate this, we use the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (SSI) as a case and focus on two of the processes…