Bureaucracies in Schools—Approaches to Support Measures in Swedish Schools Seen in the Light of Skrtic’s Theories

ABSTRACT

In Sweden, policy changes for provision of special support have been introduced, implying that teachers are obliged to provide and evaluate extra adaptations in regular classrooms prior to referring pupils to special support. The policy changes raise questions about school staffs’ views of support measures and of necessary professional competence for provision of the support measures. We conducted focus group interviews with 60 school staff representatives—headmasters, general education teachers, and special educators/school welfare teams—about their understandings of the new policy. The data were analyzed qualitatively, with the objective to explore school staffs’ approaches to the policy changes. Two main “ideal type approaches” were discerned, using Skrtic’s theories, viz. the bureaucracy approach and adhocracy approach. In the light of Skrtic’s theory, professionals’ reasoning about the new policy may reflect difficulties that are encountered in the process of implementing the policy in bureaucracy-steered schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Focus group dialogues
• ideal type
• approaches to support
• inclusion
• Swedish school staff

Acknowledgements

Martin Karlberg, Lena Nilsson, Johanna Sköld, and Annie Åkerstedt Berg have contributed to the collection of data for this study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Nina Klang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0027-084X