As part of a longitudinal research project on the transition from physical education teacher education (PETE) to school physical education (PE) in Sweden and exploring whether and how PETE matters, this article uses narrative inquiry to 'represent' a PE teacher's professional journey from PETE to the induction phase of PE teaching. The study…

Experiencing a teacher shortage, Sweden has allowed vocational teachers to gain employment without teaching qualifications. In this context, a population of non-qualified vocational teachers has emerged, a group of people rarely captured by national statistics and previous research. This study aims to shed light on the profile of non-qualified…

Little is known about the nature of educational proficiency in evaluation practices in academia. This is unfortunate, since excellence in teaching is increasingly seen as significant for the prosperity of contemporary higher education institutions. This study explores the meaning ascribed to educational proficiency in the recruitment of academic…

Re-organization of practicum within Initial Teacher Education in Sweden has initiated changes of support for student teachers. This article discusses learning during practice, where student teachers are placed with peer students, and what this method of learning indicates how student teachers should learn the profession of teaching. This article…

Critical educational literature suggests that an increased reliance upon neoliberally inspired management technologies transforms the very foundations from which images of the ideal teacher are constructed. The purpose of this paper is to add to this literature by (i) identifying and analysing a number of "theoretical qualities"…

National and regional variations in school systems, have often been explained in comparative school governance research in the Nordic countries with variations in long-standing traditions in curriculum development, characterised by a dichotomy between an Anglo-American curriculum tradition and a German/European continental tradition of Didaktik.…

European institutions of higher education have increasingly sought to improve the accountability and transparency of teaching and research with formal procedures and performance criteria. In a longitudinal analysis conducted in faculties of social sciences and economics at universities in the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, we examined…

This article is a part of an on going ethnography project that run over six years in an Upper Secondary School in the south of Sweden. In this particular article we shed light over the implementation, enactment and reactions from the staff of one of the latest of a series of reforms that has been launched into the Swedish educational system: The…

At an international level, teachers' work is increasingly circumscribed and regulated. Notions of accountability have shifted from primarily inputs to primary outcomes, and investment in strengthening teacher performance evaluation has expanded. At the same time, investment in enhancing the quality of teacher education programs is contested in…

Performative technologies are increasingly relied upon as a means of controlling the work of teachers. As noted in the literature, one possible outcome of this trend is the performer, a teacher identity that presupposes the internalization of, and adaptation to, a performative logic. Based on the findings from an empirical study of a Swedish upper…

A researcher's number of publications has been a fundamental merit in the competition for academic positions since the late 18th century. Today, the simple counting of publications has been supplemented with a whole range of bibliometric indicators, which supposedly not only measures the volume of research but also its impact. In this study, we…

This article reports on two professional development programs for mathematics teachers and their effects on student achievement. The projects' design and their implementation within a larger municipality in Sweden, working together with over 90 teachers and 5000 students in elementary school, are described by using a set of core critical features…

Auditing, accountability, and transparency are concepts that greatly impact the working conditions of today's public sector professionals, including teachers. Documentation requirements have been on the increase for some time, which can be seen in the education sector's Individual Development Plans (IDPs), for example. These IDPs are pedagogical…

Since 2009, the Swedish Government uses an "audit" agency--the Swedish Schools Inspectorate--to monitor and assess the accuracy with which teachers grade student responses on national tests. This study explores the introduction and subsequent establishment of the Inspectorate's regrading programme as an example of political management of…

This article examines how material objects such as photographs, papers and computers influence documentation practices in a Swedish preschool. The importance of teacher documentation is emphasized in the 2010 revised Swedish preschool curriculum as a means of evaluating preschool quality. However, the curriculum gives no specific guidelines about…