Local quality work in an age of accountability – between autonomy and control

Abstract

This article analyses a specific part of the actions taken to improve the quality of Swedish education, namely the expectations formulated in national policy documents for the quality work that local authorities, schools and teachers are supposed to undertake. For the empirical analysis of how these expectations have changed over the last two decades, two sets of theoretical concepts have been combined: management of placement and management of expectation and autonomy and control. The specific research question is: How can local systematic quality work be understood in an age of accountability and what are the implications for teachers’ practices? The results show that expectations for local quality work have changed radically during the studied period. There has been a significant change in the language used, the content of education has been recontextualised and there are obvious changes in the relation between local autonomy and national control. It is argued that these changes are a consequence of the changed design of the education system, rather than an answer to a content-related question of what is educationally desirable. As a consequence, paradoxical expectations land at the local level and have to be resolved by teachers.

Keywords:

• quality work
• autonomy
• control
• accountability
• teacher
• Sweden

Acknowledgements

This article was supported by the Faculty Board of Humanities and Social Sciences at Örebro University and the Faculty of Educational Sciences at Uppsala University. The author acknowledges the support of researchers at the Centre for Public Policy Research (CPPR) at King’s College London, the Education and Democracy research group at Örebro University and the Studies in Educational Policy and Educational Philosophy (STEP) research group at Uppsala University.

Notes

1. During the studied period, the Swedish Government was alternately led by the Social Democrats and a right-wing coalition consisting of the Moderates, the Centre Party, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals: 1982–1991 Social Democrats, 1991–1994 right-wing coalition, 1994–2006 Social Democrats and 2006–2014 right-wing coalition.

2. The National Agency for Education is hereafter shortened to NAE.

3. Equivalence has been a central concept in Swedish educational policy for several decades (Englund and Quennerstedt 2008). Even though different interpretations of quality and equivalence could be in tension, also the use of equivalence has changed over time. In the policy texts of the twenty-first century, equivalence has been given the more limited meaning of goal attainment or, as in the above sentence, in relation to expectations about equivalent assessments.