This article focuses on Nordic school leaders and how rural principals experience autonomy and control in current governance regimes using a sample of principals in the very north of Norway and Sweden as a case. An analysis instrument constituting four different schooling domains (educational; social; developmental; administrative) and the ways in…

In this article, we explore and discuss how the clustering of values in local educational governance manifests in the case of inclusion. Public values and the role that these play as mediating factors are important in local governance processes; however, they are often overlooked in empirical studies. Inclusion is interesting because it is…

National policies aiming at marketisation and privatisation in welfare sectors such as Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) require governance and organisation to be realised. In Sweden, the municipalities are key but largely under-researched organisers for preschool quasi-market infrastructures. This study explores the different ways in…

This study addresses a fundamental but neglected aspect of efforts to ensure quality and improvement in a decentralised school system: the relationship between the local education authority (LEA) and local school principals. Empirically, it is based on analysis of relevant documents and interviews with key actors in a Swedish LEA (a municipality),…

Substantial research has shown that changes in contemporary western societies have prolonged transitions from youth to adulthood and altered the conditions and timing of transitions in education, work and family formation. Thus, contemporary society is creating new temporal conditions with important implications for social institutions,…

This study highlights how 20 Swedish principals, school managers and architects involved in planning, construction and reconstruction of primary and secondary school buildings at regional, municipal and local levels represent good learning environments. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, the analysis focuses on how the stakeholders understand…

The focus of this study is to examine seven municipalities that, in different ways, are working to recruit more men to work in preschools. The aim of the study is to identify different ways of working to recruit more men to work in preschools and to effect a change in the gender imbalance among the working staff in preschools. Relational agency is…

This paper investigates trends in the study of Modern languages or second foreign languages (SFLs) in Swedish lower secondary school between 2000 and 2018. Over the last decades, SFLs, i.e. French, German and Spanish, have been the target of several policy measures as a response to a declining interest. However, few reports on their impact have…

Since the 1980s, numerous education reforms in Europe and beyond have sought to dismantle centralised bureaucracies and replace them with devolved systems of schooling that emphasise parental choice and competition between diversified types of schools. Despite this general trend, Finland continues to emphasise the municipal assignment of school…

An earlier study showed that the changes in teachers' classroom practice, after participation in a professional development program in formative assessment, significantly improved student achievement in mathematics. The teachers in that study were a random selection of Year 4 teachers in a Swedish mid-sized municipality. In the present study, we…

This article develops a conceptual framework for exploring the role and consequences of evaluation at the local level of school governance. It also provides a frame of reference for the articles in this special issue on the role of evaluation in local school governance in Sweden. It consists of key concepts, three models of decentralised…

This study explores the extended demands for writing in the Swedish public service sector of early childhood and how academic writing in the higher education programmes aimed at professional work in that sector is perceived to be of value for early childhood practice among practitioners. Empirical data was collected in individual interviews and…

This paper explores how evaluation, which has expanded at all levels of school governance across Europe, shapes parental roles by studying how local school governors and schools in Sweden represent evaluation to parents on their websites. Websites are prime locations for public communications and are useful for exploring the functions of…

This article reports findings from a case study carried out in a Swedish municipality focusing on a school-to-school collaboration established to support implementation of a nation-wide curriculum. The aim was to study how ideas for improvements in this temporary organisation were transferred to the local schools. The findings presented are…

Time capacity is defined here as the individual teacher's perceived time for professional development (e.g., the capacity to develop and renew oneself as a teacher). The pressure of paperwork on the individual teacher should not be so demanding that it goes beyond the teacher's time for professional development. The purpose of this paper is to…