Increased international attention paid to research-based education has resulted in various national initiatives to exploit research in education. However, this poses challenges for school professionals. Based on an ethnographic single case study in a Swedish educational setting, this article investigates how national policy on research-based…

This article examines individualising processes in the context of Municipal Adult Education in Swedish for Immigrants (SFI). Demands to adapt education to individual students' needs are increasingly evident in adult education policies, requiring accountable authorities' active engagement in enacting effective organisational frameworks while…

This article examines the contemporary Swedish policy responses to increased cultural and linguistic diversity in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC). More specifically, it explores how national authorities and organizations initiate collaborations, use and produce policy knowledge and identify priorities and challenges. The…

Within the specific cultural and historical context of Swedish adult education, this article employs autoethnography to explore teachers' complex experiences during the era of neoliberalism. Its aim is to illuminate teachers' multifaceted realities within this dynamic and shed light on the diverse challenges and struggles they encounter. Drawing…

This article contributes to a better theoretical understanding of the social processes underlying the development and implementation of schemes to improve the recognition of prior learning (RPL) in vocational education and training (VET). It traces the global diffusion of RPL, and then analyses the formulation of RPL policies and design and…

Return on investment (ROI) has become part of the policymaking toolkit, particularly pertinent for activities like school-based career guidance deemed optional by some policymakers. There are institutions supporting ideal ROI methods alongside an academic critique, but little research on how ROI has been applied in practice in a guidance setting.…

Purpose: In the rational model of the democratic governing chain, intervening spaces at all levels are neglected in relation to the policy process. An intervening space is a group of persons with the power and responsibility to interpret policy at their level in an organization. The research question is as follows: How are democratic policy ideas…

In this article, we examine how policymakers from three Nordic countries, Finland, Iceland and Sweden, reflect on the future at 2 different points in time: just before the first PISA study (1998-1999) and more than 15 years later (2015-2017). The empirical data consist of interviews (N = 37) with national policymakers, collected in two comparative…

Previous research has identified political ideology as central in the landmark Academies Act (2010). This article further analyses how politics of evidence played its part in the policy process by focusing on long-term structural changes and preferences among policymakers. The article draws on policymaker interviews after the reform, a mapping of…

Purpose: Using a large-scale school improvement program in Sweden as a case, this article aims to explore the state governance of a large-scale school improvement program in Sweden and how officials at the state agency level made sense of the reform ideas and operationalized them in policy actions. Design/methodology/approach: Data were integrated…

As the privatisation of the public sector has grown rapidly in Sweden in the last decade, private companies have become an imperative part of education. Private companies sell and deliver consultancy, hardware, software, services, etc. to schools and municipalities. This study examines a growing rate of activities from companies and businesses…

National policies on school digitalisation take shape in their local contexts. Consequently, to understand the outcome of national policy, the local translations must be set within a contextual perspective. This article explores how four contextually different municipalities in Sweden translate national school digitalisation policy. It draws on a…

Competence-based approaches (CBAs) in education have become an internationally important educational policy concept in recent decades. However, a substantial body of research has suggested that in order to understand and explain the evolution of CBAs, there is a need to analyse curriculum-making as a complex and multi-layered practice. To…

This study describes and critically discusses a development project designed to create and enact a local language policy at a Swedish multilingual school, its context, content and implementation dimensions. The collaborative construction of a school language policy is a complex process, with tensions that need to be resolved. By describing the…

Purpose: This report provides an overview of social science education in primary and secondary education in Sweden with the purpose of introducing the international research community to policy-related issues concerning citizenship education, educational institutions and the scholarly state of the art. The principal topics are: a context of Sweden…