The combination of language policies, the global testing industry, and the role of STEM subjects in school systems have been shown to undermine the inclusion of all pupils, especially with regard to language backgrounds. This lack of inclusion shows signs of developing into a point of systematic exclusion for those students. In this article we…

The nation-state remains fundamental to our understanding of nineteenth-century schooling, which is commonly referred to in terms of national school systems or national education systems. While nineteenth-century school systems were often national in scope and promoted with the purpose of creating nationally minded citizens, this article examines…

The historical roots of what is now a modern Swedish school-age educare (SAEC) were formed from a social pedagogical starting point in which children's social development, freedom and well-being were prioritized. SAEC has now become more focused on an educational pedagogical assignment and has been incorporated into the Swedish curriculum. SAECs…

From once being synonymous with reading and writing, literacy, as a concept has expanded in the last three decades to today being associated with multiple meaning making forms and competences. Impactful, in this shift, has been the research orientation of New Literacy Studies. Besides academia, the literacy concept has also had a major influence…

Based on arguments about the need for greater individual freedom, school choice was introduced in Sweden in the 1990s. Swedish municipalities now set up local school choice systems, whose organization varies between municipalities. This study is based on interviews with three politicians and two civil servants from two average-sized municipalities…

Understanding and implementing educational reform policies is a daily practice in the professional lives of school actors. The discrepancy between how reforms are intended and later realised in the local context constitutes an ongoing discussion spanning multiple areas of research. This article adds to prior research by exploring the role of…

In this article, the assessment practice known as the "grade conference" is analysed using an interactionally oriented narrative approach. The aim is to explore the grade conference and what it entails for students when executed in their fourth year of compulsory school, as part of a trial of an educational reform where students receive…

This study is an exploration of the prerequisites in Swedish teacher education policy for teacher educators' dual didactic task of developing student teachers' professional digital competence to such a level that they are capable of developing K-12 pupils' adequate digital competence. Data were collected from 20 Swedish teacher education…

This article examines the juridification of education in Sweden with a particular focus on changes in the legal regulation of schools' measures to combat degrading treatment. In Swedish schools, any degrading treatment must be reported to the head teacher who, in turn, has an obligation to report it to the governing body. Based on interviews with…

"English as a lingua franca (ELF)" is a well-known concept for English used as an international contact language among people from diverse linguacultural backgrounds. Using a questionnaire, we explored the attitudes of Spanish and Swedish pre-service primary school teachers towards English and its users after their collaboration on a…

This paper explores policy related to digital competence and the digitalisation of Nordic K-12 schools. Anchored in some key transnational policies on digital competence, it describes some current Nordic movements in the national policies of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The concept of boundary objects is used as an analytical lens, for…

This study examined collaborative professional development (PD) as a policy instrument for relating external ideas to present teaching practices. The study interprets the global emphasis policymakers place on collaborative PD as a response to the devolution of responsibility in many school systems, accompanied or followed by increased external…

Sweden is often commended for the inclusion of home languages in the formal education system: both mother tongue instruction (where a pupil's home language is taught as an optional school subject) and study guidance (where a pupil is given content support in their home language or prior language of schooling) are offered. Still, while many…

In Sweden, curricula and syllabi for education are politically determined after public consultations. Thus, these educational documents are discursive trade-offs reflecting research, traditions in the educational system, and political ideologies. This study maps the discourses in the syllabus for Sami as L1 mother tongue for preschool class-Year…

The aim is to analyse how policy decisions about assessment practices influence what it means to be a student in a performative system. We examine an occasion where a previously mandatory national test became optional, and how students took the opportunity to try to change the school's decision about this. The study is based on student group…