The way school Health and Physical Education (HPE) is conceptualized and taught will impact on its ability to provide equitable outcomes across gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion and social class. A focus on social justice in HPE is pertinent in times when these ideals are currently under threat from neoliberal globalization. This paper draws…

In this paper, we investigate a new national collaborative Benchlearning program for principals in Norway and Sweden. Four process leaders have been running the program. The aim is to give the participants the knowledge to develop a leadership practice and school environment that are more innovative. The program includes theoretical inputs,…

A core element of the proPIC project is the development and implementation of the so-called study weeks: a five day face-to-face stay abroad at one of the partner institutions in which all the participating students took part. In this chapter, the authors present and discuss the results and impact of these events which took place twice during the…

School inspections have become an important instrument of quality assurance and quality development in many European countries. So far, the focus of empirical research on school inspections has been on the acceptance of the procedure among the school-internal actors, its influence for internal quality development and its effects on student…

It has been widely documented that accountability systems, including school inspections, bring with them unintended side effects. These unintended effects are often negative and have the potential to undo the intended positive effects. However the empirical evidence is limited. Through a European comparative study we have had the rare opportunity…

This article provides results from a study of the hidden processes of consensus formation that precede and make possible official judgments and decisions of the Swedish Schools Inspectorate (SI). The research question for the study was: How is knowledge negotiated on the back stage of school inspection and presented on the front stage? The article…

The article outlines a programme theory for the Swedish school inspection. The theory has a format of 'if … then … because', whereby the last term states one or more generative mechanisms behind the reactions to inspection, and the former terms imply what the inspectorate does and which reactions it receives. The assumptions of the theory are…

This paper reports on an analysis of how school inspection in Sweden -- its aims, directions and procedures -- is portrayed in texts produced by the responsible national authorities. The study involves a textual analysis of official annual accounts and plans (texts directed to the government, municipalities, schools and the public) produced by the…

In November 2007, a delegation from the Consortium for School Networking visited three Scandinavian countries to examine best practices. The delegates were motivated by their desire to understand the high achievement levels of students in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. For several years, students in these countries have been outperforming their…

This paper describes a Florida educator's visit to two Swedish schools for students aged 16 to 19. The educator spent 2 days visiting Duveholmsskolan in Katrineholm (about 70 miles west of Stockholm) and 3 days visiting Wargentinsskolan in Ostersund (situated 350 miles north of Stockholm and about 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle) observing…