Purpose: This study aims to investigate how sustainability has been incorporated -- or mainstreamed -- in a school at one university through techniques of responsibilization and accountabilization. Design/methodology/approach: Inspired by the extended case study methodology, the authors participated, observed and analyzed two audit-inspired…

This study compares an ideal model of a sustainable research institution and the dominating model used by Sida. It uses a complementary capacity building (CCB) model aimed to promote an improved research culture for strengthening the sustainability of research partnerships in economics and management disciplines. This study uses bibliometric data…

Based on data from interviews conducted with 14 academic managers at two Swedish universities, this article investigates the consequences of the increasing prevalence of performance measurement in the higher education sector. The study contributes to the discussion of how performance measurement impacts academic work, focusing specifically on its…

This article analyses how the teaching profession takes shape when policy demands on increased documentation in preschool is interpreted and enacted by teachers. The profession and professional identities take shape in the tension between two forms of professionalism: occupational professionalism, based on collegial authority, and organizational…

Are the gifted and talented destined for greatness in a neoliberally oriented knowledge economy? This is undoubtedly an important question for scholars, teachers, and parents advocating the value of gifted education to policy makers and employers worldwide. This review of literature from a multitude of relevant disciplines attempts to answer this…

This study addresses how the autonomy of teachers in higher education, in relation to education policy and reform, can be understood. By taking a narrative-in-action approach, we studied health profession teachers' activities and reasoning within their ongoing practice during one year. The findings show how the teachers created their own policies…

Since 1995, all Swedish compulsory schools have had a legal obligation to establish individual educational plans (IEPs) for pupils with special educational needs. However, previous research shows that there are a number of issues associated with how these plans are used in schools' overall work and identifies a discrepancy between educational…

"New" school inspections are essential parts of "evidence-based governance" concepts and have been implemented by many European countries as a major strategy to assure and improve the effectiveness and quality of their education systems. However, national inspection systems vary in their composition and in their contextual…

If, as the linguistic turn has taught us, there is no representational knowledge, but more agreements and/or struggles over how to talk and learn about what we call reality, we need to address and analyse the consequences of different vocabularies of educational phenomena and schooling, in order to better understand and make use of both the…

In this paper I discuss the possibility of the idea of emancipation within an educational philosophy that does not accept schooling as its first premise. The first part of the paper will take Sweden as an example of an educational state defined through educational policies such as life long learning, accountability and evidence-based research, and…

The purpose of this article is to increase our knowledge about the role that directors of education play as leaders of educational activities. For its analytical framework, the study uses the qualitative research approach known as phenomenography and examines the study's findings against the rationalist perspective, against systems theory and…

This issue of "Leadership and Policy in Schools" outlines research into successful principal leadership from the perspective of four countries--New Zealand, Israel, Cyprus, and the USA (San Antonio). The research followed the methods and protocols established by the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP), which was…

The principles of new public management -- market mechanisms, accountability and standards -- have been applied in the education system. These methods are supposed to increase efficiency, but there is also a risk of negative consequences from the services provided if the measures of performance target a reduced range of goals, ignore relevant…

This is a comparative study, drawing on data obtained from interviews conducted with headteachers, that compares the roles of Swedish and British headteachers as pedagogical leaders. For its analytical framework the study uses the qualitative research approach known as phenomenography and, in the context of the guiding legal documents related to…

This article reveals how educational policies and policy contexts in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Australia establish the circumstances which enable and constrain individual and collective teacher professional development as praxis. We provide insights into existing partnerships between universities and schools, and, municipalities and the state as…