Individualising processes in the making: policy complexities and tensions of municipal adult education in Swedish for immigrants

Abstract

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 accommodating the labour market’s needs. Such endeavours are often sources of tensions. Conceptual tools from cultural-historical activity theory are employed to address the complexity and multiplicity of individualising processes. An analysis of policy documents and interviews with municipal actors shows that individualising processes are played out through tensions found in three areas of object formation: making of an individual student; making of an effective education; and making of a coherent society. Hence, the study unpacks how individualising processes elicit transformations of SFI education through destabilisation/restabilisation cycles in the involved actors’ activities, concluding by highlighting the concept’s dynamic and potentiality for development in contemporary adult education settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Individualising processes
• Swedish for immigrants
• municipal adult education
• complex concepts
• cultural-historical activity theory

Introduction

The present article is about policy demands to adapt adult education frameworks to individual students’ needs and conditions. In Sweden, which is the focus of the study, these demands frequently appear in adult education policy documents and are particularly evident in the context of Municipal Adult Education (MAE) in Swedish for Immigrants (SFI). The latest Government Bill concerning SFI education (Prop. 2021/22:51), for example, has launched reforms to tackle problems resulting from a lack of individualised solutions, particularly for newly arrived immigrants enrolled in the so-called Establishment Programme.¹ In addition, the programme syllabus states that ‘teaching should be planned and designed together with the student and adapted to the student’s interests, experiences, all-round knowledge, and long-term goals’ (Swedish National Agency for Education [SNAE], 2022, p. 1). This premise draws from the Swedish Education Act (SFS 2010:800) and the Ordinance on Adult Education (SFS 2011:1108), which define students’ individual needs and conditions as the point of departure for Swedish adult education in general.

However, individualising processes are not a recent phenomenon. In the 1960s post-World War II era of educational differentiation, when SFI was launched, the idea was to enable individuals’ educational participation, which had previously been hindered by economic and social factors (Husén & Härnqvist, 2000). Thus, ‘the question of educational justice between social groups in society was turned into the question of the talented individual’ (Wärvik et al., 2020, p. 209), gradually forming social mobility and rendering the individual increasingly visible.

Nevertheless, the programme’s historical trajectory reveals that individualising processes have changed over the years. SFI was first introduced in 1965 by the state in cooperation with trade unions and employers from the industrial sector. At the time, the aim was to help newly arrived male workers gain basic communicative skills to enable their participation in the labour market, and the pedagogical frameworks were mostly arranged in terms of study circles (Lindberg & Sandwall, 2007). Progressively, SFI has become a rather regulated programme, with its own syllabus, stated expected outcomes and well-defined structure. Since 2016, it has constituted part of MAE with significant participation numbers, reaching a total of 123.474 registered students in 2022 (SNAE, 2023). For many adults, it is the first—and potentially sole contact—with the Swedish education system; therefore, it is considered a major factor in promoting integration through education. The connection with employability has also become increasingly prominent, often constituting SFI as a labour market instrument (Beach & Carlson, 2004). Because of its evolving multifaceted character, the programme is expected to fulfil a range of political ambitions to deal with societal hopes and fears, a process considered to be facilitated by prescribing and enacting individualising processes of a different kind.

We are interested in how individualising processes are enacted in this framework and the consequent implications for the involved actors, their practices, and organisational settings. Therefore, our aim is to analyse how individualising processes are played out in SFI policy and municipal actors’ everyday work in organising SFI. The study is also conducted against the backdrop of potential tensions emerging at the interplay of adult education’s contested roles, that is, as education, integration and labour market activity (cf. Engeström, 1987).

Although demands to individualise SFI education have emerged in a plethora of policies, there is a lack of clarity concerning the organisational and educational implications that the prescribed measures entail. For example, a research overview from the Swedish Institute for Educational Research (2019) investigated factors characterising ‘individualised instruction’ in adult education and identified a need for further research in the field, arguing that, in practice, the term is rather vague, ambiguous and built upon ‘a complicated interplay between various factors’ (p. 3, our translation). Individualising processes, we argue, need to be understood as emerging at the nexus of socially and historically situated policies and practices (Engeström & Sannino, 2021; Papadopoulos, 2023).

These situated policies and practices also embrace new regimes of economic control within the marketised adult education sector. A rather unstable landscape of global threats, diverse expectations and quests for coordination between layers of actors has emerged in tandem with the labour market’s pressing needs, the rise of anti-immigrant political movements and, recently, the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. By this, we mean that the global character of the aforementioned phenomena and difficulty of establishing clear-cut loci of control might have far-reaching effects. These are not possible to fully grasp by the stakeholders involved because language training governance is currently located at the intersection of rather complicated policy fields (e.g., Righard et al., 2019), creating a landscape of tensions (cf. e.g., Engeström, 2007; Engeström & Sannino, 2021).

We consider the aforementioned arguments valid in that what is referred to as ‘individualised instruction’ in SFI is an issue that has been elicited on by a range of societal and political expectations and that involves different stakeholders, here with their uniquely situated interests and motives. The term holds a central part in policy and is expected to be realised in the marketised framework of Swedish MAE, involving municipal actors, educational institutions, procurement processes and, of course, teachers and students. Therefore, it does not solely refer to pedagogical practices (e.g., how teachers adapt content and instruction to students’ individual characteristics), but rather, as we argue, it constitutes a multifaceted concept that both poses challenges and creates development opportunities in the complex field of adult education. For this reason, we use the term ‘individualising processes’ instead of ‘individualised instruction’, meaning broader societal processes to individualise studies. We thereby opt to accommodate the concept’s complex and contested features.

We specifically focus on SFI for two reasons. First, as mentioned above, demands to individualise education constitute a core policy agenda upon which the programme is expected to be implemented, leaving a large amount of interpretation to involved stakeholders (e.g., Swedish Institute for Educational Research, 2019). Implemented at the municipal level, the plethora of organisational aspects and diverse characteristics of SFI create a rather tension-laden landscape to enact individualising processes. Second, SFI student groups are rather heterogeneous, especially regarding ethnic and cultural backgrounds, age or previous studies. Enrolled students may range from individuals who lack basic reading and writing skills to those with considerable years of previous academic education. This characteristic entails greater challenges regarding enacting individualising processes. Student diversity, thus, in tandem with pressing policy demands to individualise SFI, renders the programme a unique educational arena in which emerging challenges require further examination.

Previous research on individualising processes

Although individualising processes are a prominent feature in SFI, they extend to frameworks beyond adult education. According to Beck (1992), this phenomenon is a general characteristic of late modernity, in which traditionally rigid forms, such as class attachment, recede in light of neoliberal governing rationalities. Individualising processes emerge as the locus of rational decision making is placed within people (see also Morrison, 2008) and ‘the management of risk within institutionally structured risk environments is thus constructed as the responsibility of the individual’ (Kelly, 2001, p. 31).

At the same time, multilevel models of governing result in complex policy-making processes and have far-reaching effects. Brine (2006), for example, argued that EU policy creates a distinction between those who know and those who do not know. This latter group is constructed both as at risk and as the risk, with the concept of lifelong learning deemed the most appropriate solution for a knowledge society. The result, Brine argued, is a focus shift from employment to employability; therefore, ‘individualisation’ becomes ‘linked with the concept of employability: a state of constant becoming, of readiness for employment’ (2006, p. 652). Furthermore, Thompson (2011) drew attention to the distinction between the inherent relation of ‘individualisation’ with late modernity and capitalism (see Beck, 1992) and, very importantly, the misleading justifications of individual-level solutions to societal problems (e.g., social exclusion), which, the author argued, take ‘individualisation’ at face value (2011, p. 788). Fenwick (2003), in addition, described ‘individualisation’ as a dominant force in contemporary knowledge economies, with asymmetrical risk distribution and availability of choices (see also Biesta, 2006; Edwards & Miller, 2000; Glastra et al., 2004; Jansen & Van Der Veen, 1997).

In Sweden, arguments of individualisation were put forward in the 1967 adult education reform, where the adult students were expected to be motivated to study, successful in their self-tuition, and taking courses during their leisure time (Rubenson, 1994). Compared with the 1960s, however, ‘individualisation’ in modern adult education has turned into a dynamic concept informed by neoliberal educational policies and reflecting a shift in the relationship between the individual and society (see Beach & Carlson, 2004; Fejes et al., 2018).

More specifically, Fejes et al. (2018) argued that discourses on ‘individualisation’ shape new forms of students’ subjectivity, and Gustafsson (2018) showed how particular pedagogical approaches connected to ‘individualisation’ contribute to the reproduction of social inequality. According to Mufic and Fejes (2020), the concepts of ‘individualisation’ and ‘flexibility’ are strongly connected to a political discourse of quality in Swedish adult education. As such, they can be seen both as part of the problem when identifying a ‘lack’ of quality and the solution for obtaining quality in adult education. Moreover, Henning Loeb and Lumsden Wass (2014) identified how the organising of ‘individualisation’ and ‘flexibility’ in adult education settings paradoxically seems to be conditioned by strictly institutionalised procedures to keep the students on track.

Turning to the specific organisation of SFI, a limited number of studies have focused on individualising processes. Norlund Shaswar and Wedin (2019) and Wedin and Norlund Shaswar (2019, 2022) raised the importance of adapting instruction to learners’ individual language and literacy competences. At the same time, the authors highlighted the role of promoting practices for meaning negotiation between students, which nevertheless may be hindered in whole classroom interactions and, therefore, may be best enacted in smaller groups. Finally, Hållsten et al. (2022) examined individualisation in SFI and, similarly to our point of departure, argued that individualisation is a very prominent policy demand, however ‘it is neither clear nor consistent how this buzzword is defined’ (p. 269). Nevertheless, their study examined individualisation ‘as adaptions made by teachers within instruction’ and ‘solely as a pedagogical practice conducted by teacher and students in dialogue’ (Hållsten et al., 2022, p. 275). Their findings indicated the importance of feedback as a functional educational tool to achieve individualisation and were, thus, focused on classroom interactions between teachers and students.

Taken together, few studies have examined individualising processes in the SFI context. Hence, the present study will contribute to an under-researched area regarding individualising processes, not solely as pedagogical practices but, rather, as they are played out in policy and the organising of SFI by transcending the specificities of classroom interactions.

Individualising processes in the making – conceptual framework

We analyse individualising processes through the notion of a complex concept (Engeström et al., 2005; Teräs & Lasonen, 2013) and by examining the point of view of policy makers as expressed in SFI policy and in the everyday work of municipal actors when organising SFI. In general, policies may be thought of as regulating texts, aiming to prescribe certain rules to address existing issues and draw the limits of possible courses of action. Hence, policy-making may be seen as an endeavour to identify problematic situations and set out plans or reforms that will tackle them. What this notion fails to acknowledge, however, is the idea that policy-making is not a process during which problems are captured in complete and exhaustive accounts. Considering contemporary societies’ extreme levels of complexity, fluidity and multiplicity (Bauman, 2000; Engeström, 2020), this task would be rather difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Individualising processes have been prescribed as a solution to several issues in SFI. Thus, they have, on the one hand, a capacity to encompass a range of societal problems and types of activities but must, on the other hand, also be understood as multifaceted, partial, incomplete and even unstable.

We consider this to be the case for individualising processes in SFI policy and everyday work because of the involvement and interactions of different stakeholders across institutional boundaries, leading to a range of various manifestations and solutions as sources of conflicts but also of development. Because SFI does not exclusively address educational issues but rather has a range of aims (e.g., integration, labour market supply), we employ analytical and conceptual tools from cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) (Engeström, 1987) that can account for the contested and dynamic character of our study object.

Thus, we understand human societies as networks of historically developed and interacting activity systems (Roth & Lee, 2007). Activity systems are dynamic and culturally and socially mediated systemic structures, all of which are elicited by, and directed towards, objects able to satisfy human and, consequently, societal needs. Importantly, objects should not be seen as things in isolation or as specific goals. Instead, objects should be seen as a horizon of possibilities towards which an activity is directed. Objects are material, collectively acted on and reproduced by individuals (the subjects) who share a common object to keep the aims and motives of social formations, that is, collective activity systems, stable and ongoing. Objects are historically evolving as they are transformed by societal needs, and they transform societal needs (Leontiev, 1978). At the same time, they are robust and stable, meaning that objects are inherently laden with tensions and potentially contradictory as they evolve (Engeström, 1987).

In this sense, evolving activities can also be seen as processes of concept formation. As Engeström and Sannino (2010) stated, ‘Such concepts are embodied, embedded and distributed in and across human activity systems equipped with multi-layered and multi-modal representational infrastructures or instrumentalities’ (p. 20). Nevertheless, complex concepts are filled with hopes and fears; they underpin human collective actions and intentions—because of their fluidity—across institutional boundaries. Therefore, complex concepts may be contested, they may conflict with each other, and they may even be contradictory (Engeström, 2009).

The present paper argues for the need to problematise individualising processes through the notion of a complex concept (Engeström et al., 2005; Teräs & Lasonen, 2013), meaning that we take into account their loose nature and potential to embrace multiple meanings. As Engeström et al. (2005) concluded, ‘[Complex concepts] cannot be easily defined and put to rest as categories in a dictionary’ (p. 48). When in use, complex concepts have the potential to shape specific conditions (e.g., within which SFI is to take place) and must be seen in relation to other important actors involved in the field. Thus, complex concepts might blur and stabilise distinctions (here, e.g., between institutions) and, accordingly, create possible futures as they evolve. Because this element may potentially go against pre-existing values, hopes and fears, it poses ethical and ideological challenges to those engaged, between everyday routines and what might be imposed from the outside.

To understand individualising processes through the notion of an evolving complex concept in the context of SFI, we now adjust the article’s aim to a more precise question:

• How are individualising processes played out within and between object-oriented activities in the context of SFI policy and everyday municipal work?

Methods and analytical strategy

The study’s empirical base consists of public policy texts related to SFI and interviews with representatives from municipal authorities in Sweden who are responsible for organising and implementing the programme.

The criteria for selecting and analysing public policy were based on the texts’ relevance to setting individualising processes as concrete policy goals in SFI education. Therefore, we have focused on the period preceding the 2016 SFI incorporation into MAE and consequent years of evaluating and promoting new measures to further enhance individualising processes in the programme. The policy documents included are as follows:

• Government Bills: Prop. 2014/15:85 and Prop. 2021/22:51

• Government Official Reports: SOU 2013:20, SOU 2013:76, and SOU 2020:66 (known as KLIVA report), along with its preceding Memorandum

• SFI syllabus (SNAE, 2022)

• Swedish Education Act (SFS 2010:800) and Ordinance on Adult Education (SFS 2011:1108)

• Swedish Schools Inspectorate Report (SSI, 2018)

We conducted semistructured qualitative interviews with representatives from five Swedish municipalities between 2019 and 2021: five SFI principals, one Head of Adult Education Unit and one programme coordinator. All municipal representatives had key roles in deciding upon, organising and controlling the frameworks within which SFI education takes place.

Regarding the selection of municipalities, a challenge emerged related to contemporary organisational aspects of Swedish MAE. After the Adult Education Initiative, which was a major reform during the period 1997–2002 (see Lumsden Wass, 2004), municipalities were given the option to outsource MAE through procurement. This resulted in a rather diverse landscape of organisational MAE features over the years, creating considerable differences between municipalities in organising, implementing and controlling education (Holmqvist, 2022). Our ambition was to accommodate a high degree of diversity regarding MAE features. Therefore, the selected municipalities present different organisational aspects, including (1) fully owned municipal SFI schools, (2) tendering-based procurement for SFI education that is provided by private organisations or (3) a combination of both municipal and private education providers within the same municipality. In addition, all classification categories of Swedish municipalities (Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, 2022) are represented, namely, large cities and municipalities near large cities; medium-sized towns and municipalities near medium-sized towns; and smaller towns/urban areas and rural municipalities.

Protection of participants was of central importance throughout the whole research process, following recommendations from the Swedish Research Council (2017). Two interviews were conducted in person, while the rest were online because of restrictive measures against the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants were informed about the study’s aim before the authors obtained their documented informed consent, including the use of a digital device to record discussions. The participants were also informed about their option to quit the study at any time without providing further explanations and their right to review the transcribed recordings and provide further clarifications. Following instructions from authors’ home university, digital voice recordings were uploaded to a designated folder on Microsoft Sharepoint to prevent unauthorised access. During the interviews, the participants were asked to describe their work, along with the responsibilities they had, the problematic issues they faced and the ways in which they tried to resolve them. Their identities were protected through confidentiality and the use of pseudonyms. Ethical considerations were attended to throughout the whole process, following recommendations from the Swedish Research Council (2017). However, based on the study’s aim and content, none of the conditions requiring an ethics review applied (see Swedish Research Council, 2017, p. 30). No relation of dependency existed between the participants and the authors.

We developed our analytical strategy as a five-step process, informed by the conceptual framework of CHAT and by taking the activity of policy makers as a point of departure for the analysis. To identify object formations, we first searched for the kinds of problems raised in policy and everyday municipal work, pointing to system errors and forming a ‘baseline’ for individualising processes (What problematic issues are taken for granted?). Second, we focused on descriptions of necessary measures to address the aforementioned issues (What actions have to be taken?). Third, we searched for the kinds of tools that were prescribed to facilitate societal mediation and better address individuals’ needs and conditions (Who must do what?). The final two steps aimed at grasping object transformations of the involved municipal officials’ activities, in which individualising processes are played out, by lifting tensions in policy and municipal practice between the historical (What was before?) and anticipated future to be created (What is to be achieved?).

Results

The activity system of the municipal officials is an analytical point of departure and our analysis shows that individualising processes are elicited by specific kinds of societal problems and tensions. These processes are played out in policy and municipal practice as a steering issue between different stakeholders in the following three areas of object oriented activities: making of an individual student, making of an effective education, and making of a coherent society. In each of these expressions of object formation, emerging tensions elicited and were elicited by individualising processes, thereby transforming SFI in different ways.

Making of an individual student

A major policy shift took place around 2016, which can be considered a milestone in the history of SFI. Previously, two Government Official Reports examining Basic Adult Education (SOU 2013:20) and SFI (SOU 2013:76) resulted in the Government Bill ‘Increased Individualisation – A More Effective SFI and Adult Education’ (Prop. 2014/15:85). The Government Bill suggested modifications in the Swedish Education Act so that SFI would cease as a separate school form in 2016 and would eventually be incorporated in MAE. The aim was that students should speed up their educational trajectory and transition to labour market or further studies. The new policy landscape entailed increased responsibilities for municipalities: the creation of individual study plans for all students, vocational and educational guidance, and increased collaboration with other actors (e.g., Swedish Employment Agency).

In the texts, the policy shift was grounded in emerging tensions between individualised vis-à-vis group instruction, which was elicited by the composition of the adult student population. More specifically, it was stated that, over the course of the decade 2000–2010, the percentage of adult students born abroad increased dramatically, with a similar tendency predicted for the near future. This prediction was quite accurate because the year 2015 saw an extraordinary peak in the number of asylum-seeking individuals in Sweden, reaching a total of 162.877 applications (Swedish Migration Agency, 2022). The percentage of individuals undergoing the risk of social exclusion was disproportionately represented by this rather diverse group mainly because of delayed entry into the labour market. In addition, according to the Government Bill (Prop. 2014/15:85), the results from international comparisons, such as the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competences (PIAAC), showed that Sweden was doing relatively well. Nevertheless, a discrepancy was detected between the achievement of students with many years of previous education and those with fewer years—with SFI students most likely belonging to the latter category. Furthermore, the Government Bill identified a shift for the purpose of adult education in general because of the special composition of student groups:

When the role of adult education has increasingly become to educate foreign-born women and men with varying educational backgrounds and very diverse professional experience, new demands are placed on adapting education to the goals that individuals have with their studies. (Prop. 2014/15:85, p. 32, our translation)

Therefore, tensions emerging from the inability to teach adult students groupwise rendered individualised instruction in SFI as something to strive for, implying a historical shift in societal needs and eliciting object transformations in the activities of the involved actors.

In our interviews with the municipal actors, individualised vis-à-vis group instruction was also mentioned frequently as a source of tensions in organising and implementing SFI education. Here, one SFI principal describes the challenges of teaching groupwise with continuous student intake:

We had uniform classes in which course B students went by themselves and course C students went by themselves […] Many teachers had difficulties with this because of the continuous student intake. They had a textbook in course C and had reached page 70 and then a new student came in and started on page 70 anyway because that’s where the class was. It was absolutely crazy! (SFI principal in Municipality 4)

Problems from switching to online learning during the COVID19 pandemic, mixed student groups and a plethora of needs and conditions related to student backgrounds and life situations posed challenges to the municipal actors. Developing new tools to ensure higher degrees of student success was deemed a solution. Examples of such tools were the overall planning of study tracks and the making of various available educational trajectories corresponding to individual students’ profiles:

What is it that our students need in their daily lives? […] So we must look at what we do at the lessons and why. We try (to say), ‘A ha, you are (a trainee) in a preschool. OK! What do you do at the preschool? Can you take pictures and bring them to SFI class? What can we see in these pictures?’ Then, we can talk about nouns. Or we can talk about verbs. So (that) we have a theme. (SFI principal in Municipality 2)

In addition, digital tools and platforms, IT plans and increased planning on behalf of teachers were deemed appropriate measures to enhance the accommodation of students’ needs. In this case, individualising processes as an object formation materialised in new kinds of rules and instruments that were played out in tensions emerging from the inability to apply erstwhile effective types of group instruction in the classroom.

Making of an effective education

In the previous section, we showed that tensions from the inability to teach groupwise in SFI elicited object transformations, empirically implied by efforts to create flexible organisational and educational frameworks adapted to individual students’ needs and life situations. Nevertheless, creating such individualised forms of education often leads to tensions with effectivisation measures because Swedish MAE is bound by strict economic considerations. Efforts to overcome such tensions lead to a different sort of shift, both in policy and practice.

More specifically, an SFI evaluation (SSI, 2018) identified problems in the provision of individualised instruction to address students’ personal needs and aspirations, along with the connection of SFI to other aspects of students’ lives. The use of individual study plans was deemed inadequate. In this way, it was argued that SFI students were often obliged to repeat the same course content, had limited possibilities to shape learning contexts and, consequently, seemed to lose their motivation and dropped out of the programme.

As a response, a new Government Official Report was commissioned, this time with a focus on how to ensure that municipalities offered individualised instruction and raised unqualified teachers’ professional competence. The first results of the public inquiry, known as KLIVA, were reported in a memorandum issued in June 2019 and titled ‘On the way’. The focus was specifically on asylum-seeking individuals, inscribed in the Establishment Programme (Swedish Public Employment Service, 2022), including mandatory SFI enrolment.

In the text, student groups’ diversity remained one of the biggest challenges in contemporary Swedish adult education; therefore, it was deemed necessary to establish conditions that would ensure students’ right to individualised instruction. The document, however, acknowledged the difficulties on behalf of municipalities in implementing policy requirements for individualised instruction because of resource and time limitations. The suggestions were related to the improvement of communication between involved stakeholders, the need for further research and the importance of competence development among (unqualified) teachers, here with individualised instruction considered a top priority.

So how do municipal officials manoeuvre between demands to individualise SFI and their restricted organisational contexts and resources requiring effective measures? We found that actions have been directed at creating and applying control mechanisms. In our interviews, the participants very frequently acknowledged that a great deal of their work aimed to establish and ensure students’ right to individualised education. When asked, for example, about their work duties, one SFI principal outlined them as mostly controlling:

… that teachers’ instruction follows the laws and the ordinances. That teachers follow the existing syllabi. That grading is based on the existing course objectives. That they adapt their instruction to where the students are and that they make adjustments for those students who have special needs. (SFI principal in Municipality 3)

Nevertheless, the participants admitted that they faced challenges in their efforts to follow prescribed measures and reforms: ‘The difficult thing is to organise SFI based on the policy documents’ (SFI principal in Municipality 4). These challenges emerged because of restrictive organisational contexts and resources, in which SFI is to be financed, organised, and implemented. Frequent student intake, lack of predetermined time frames for SFI courses, cancellation of national exams because of the COVID-19 pandemic, less funding and consequent demands for streamlining organisations were the main challenges mentioned by participants in their efforts to enact individualising processes. In addition, a rather challenging factor was outsourcing SFI education based on tendering-based procurements, that is, a complicated process adopted by many municipalities, hence necessitating a well-organised auditing system.

These challenges required that practitioners, situated in specific organisations and accustomed to particular practices, needed to transform their professional conduct to comply with existing policies and overcome emerging tensions. To achieve this, they developed tools that enabled higher levels of controlling local SFI education providers so as to ensure that policy demands are followed. These tools were described as school visits, fixed course time frames on the local level, quality assurance models, documentation for tendering-based procurements and contracts with concrete examples of quality delivery. In the following excerpt, a principal highlights the importance of contracts resulting from procurement processes as a tool that regulates control mechanisms:

What I think about the procured (MAE) is that its quality depends on the agreement and the contract we have signed with the schools … and on what we, as a municipality, demand that they will deliver. Yes, depending on how the contract is formulated, we can demand a lot when it comes to what we want them to deliver in terms of quality. (SFI principal in Municipality 3)

In this case, individualising processes were played out as object formation in tensions emerging from the programme’s embeddedness in schemes of strict economic control and policy demands for effectiveness. As we have shown, in this continuous dialogue between addressing individual students’ needs and adhering to effectivisation demands, individualising processes both shaped and were shaped by the organisational frameworks in which they emerged, eliciting transformations of the involved stakeholders’ activities.

Making of a coherent society

Our analysis revealed one more contested area of interactions in which individualising processes are played out. The focus here was mostly on tensions emerging from efforts to tune SFI to the needs of other actors against its all-embracing role of contributing towards creating a coherent society.

In the final report of the latest public inquiry, students’ diversity, but now also the labour market’s constant change, were considered challenges for adult education. Municipalities should strive for a certain kind of education that ‘addresses the needs of both individuals and the environment they find themselves in’ (SOU 2020:66, p. 28).

Therefore, individualising processes in SFI not only entailed the adaptation of education to individual students, but also tuning the programme to the needs of other stakeholders, such as the labour market. Whereas previous policy documents prescribed mostly top-down processes in which educational and organisational frameworks had to be adapted to individuals, KLIVA has drawn attention to a reciprocal relationship between individuals’ and labour market’s needs.

It seems, then, that SFI has been individualised not only for the sake of students. The problem that legitimised individualising processes in SFI was not only a change in the constitution of student groups, as stated in previous policy documents, but also the fact that society and labour market were seen as constantly changing:

The target group for adult education has both grown and changed, with more newly arrived (individuals) and people in need of support. At the same time, increasingly high demands are made for active participation in society and working life. This means that the accountable authorities (municipalities) need to continuously review the organisation and conditions to offer an education meeting the needs of both individuals and the environment in which they find themselves. (SOU 2020:66, p. 28, our translation)

Finally, in the latest Government Bill concerning SFI (Prop. 2021/22:51), the assumption that education is a crucial factor for becoming established in Swedish society and the labour market was manifest. Major societal problems of unemployment and social exclusion were linked to a fragmented and incongruous type of education for newly arrived immigrants. To this, a coherent education that ‘makes sense’ and secures newly arrived immigrants’ right to individualised education for further studies or labour market participation appeared as (the best) solution:

Coherent education refers to an education in which the content consists of a composite selection of courses on different levels from the existing course range within MAE and the selection of included courses is adapted to the needs and conditions of the target group. (Prop. 2021/22:51, p. 24, our translation)

By outlining contemporary adult education for immigrants as a ‘disjoint chain of activities’ (p. 10), the problem of incoherent education is attributed to Swedish municipalities’ inability to sufficiently offer solutions adapted to individual students’ needs. A tension is manifest here between what has been (the historical) and the anticipated future towards which any potential object transformations need to orient themselves. Nevertheless, it was acknowledged that there is ample space for different interpretations on behalf of the municipal authorities concerning individualised education, an assumption legitimised both by the Swedish National Agency for Education and Swedish Schools Inspectorate. In addition, the lack of a clear division of responsibilities between municipal and other actors involved in SFI education contributed to insufficient individualised approaches.

Accordingly, increased involvement of the labour market and other stakeholders in SFI education was described by the municipal actors as a challenge when organising and running the programme. Here, an SFI principal refers to the Establishment Reform, which was introduced in 2010, when the responsibility to facilitate newly arrived individuals’ establishment in the labour market was transferred from municipalities to the Swedish Public Employment Service: ‘We have two systems for newly arrived (individuals) then. We have our school system, so to say, but we also have the one that is governed by the Establishment Reform. And these two (systems) clash in more ways than one’ (SFI principal in Municipality 3).

The close connection of SFI to the labour market required thorough communication between authorities to negotiate on potential areas of internship. This was achieved through good communication between different actors, a situation that has not always been the case:

I have to say that it’s been really good (the communication with the Public Employment Service) … but they are looking differently at adult education today than they used to do a few years ago. They didn’t trust our educational programmes. (SFI coordinator in Municipality 3)

This statement reveals a reorientation of not only the municipalities’ agenda, but also of the Public Employment Service. Therefore, individualising processes do not only shape the conditions within which SFI takes place, but are also shaped by the different stakeholders involved while transforming their activities. For example, when internship positions are created for SFI students, the content of the language instruction must be adapted to the situation at hand. If internships are in a local hotel, teachers must adjust content and instruction in this direction so that students are better prepared to work in this specific branch. Similarly, the activity of the local hotel becomes directly affected when organising frameworks for accommodating SFI internships.

Double binds, that is, contradictory demands with no available ways to solve them, often emerged in these interactions between municipal actors and other stakeholders (Engeström, 1987). In cases, for example, when the local labour market exhibited high labour demand, SFI students tended to drop out of the programme and engage in paid labour. Thus, accommodating the labour market’s needs and keeping up with the educational goals of SFI was described as a rather contradictory endeavour:

I am thinking about adult education’s mission. It is enormous. It is about students getting out to work, but they must also be able to study. So it is labour market policy goals that can clash with education policy goals. It is about finding a balance. And then, the most important thing is what the student wants to do. (SFI principal in Municipality 1)

The policymakers struggle with a new emerging object: the making of a coherent society. Individualising processes, therefore, were played out in the tensions emerging within shared, but also fragmented, objects in which educational policy collides with agendas set by the labour market. The municipal actors were then expected to keep up with labour market demands, students’ personal aspirations for social and/or labour market establishment, and the more educationally focused goals of a language programme with strong societal projections.

Conclusion

In the current article, we have examined individualising processes through the notion of a complex concept (Engeström et al., 2005) in the SFI context by analysing policy and practice at the municipal level. Our study has drawn from insistent policy demands to individualise SFI education and, thereby, overcome emerging problems. Because municipalities are the main actor in organising, providing and controlling the provision of individualised SFI education, we have focused on municipal officials as subjects in enacting policies, developing tools and, thereby, transforming SFI. By identifying tensions in policy and practice, we can draw conclusions about the ways in which individualising processes are played out and the consequent transformations of SFI.

More specifically, we argue that individualising processes were elicited by tensions stemming from the inability to teach SFI students groupwise, similar to what has been pointed out by Fejes et al. (2018). To overcome this, tools and frameworks have been created that allow students with different needs to enter and successfully go through SFI education. Therefore, individualising processes were played out in the making of an individual student by stabilising distinctions between students and creating a number of different study paths/futures for them. However, this process, as we show below, not only involved education providers, but it was also affected by other actors interacting with municipalities.

Further tensions emerged in the making of individual students because of the embeddedness of SFI education in a nexus of strict economic considerations, quality assurance schemes and auditing systems. Municipalities need to ensure students’ right to individualised education with limited resources. Therefore, they were also engaged in the making of an effective education. In this case, individualising processes were played out within a framework of control in which municipal authorities attempted to secure stability in SFI education by means of effective organisational features. This process materialised in the tools developed in– and enabled by– the way MAE was conducted in each municipality and was articulated in procurement systems and control mechanisms. This situation, we argue, can pose challenges to practitioners involved in SFI education because they may need to readjust their professional conduct to demands stemming from binding agreements.

Finally, the interactions and negotiations between municipal authorities and other stakeholders point towards a shared object, collectively acted on but also fragmented and contradictory. SFI’s overall aim of educating citizens at risk—thereby engaging in the making of a coherent society by lifting the issue of citizens as the risk (cf. Beck, 1992; Brine, 2006)—often clashes with attempts to tune the programme to the needs of the labour market by providing tailor-made solutions. Individualising processes were played out at the nexus of societal needs and emerging tensions between education and labour market policy, where two different systems collided and elicited transformations of the object of SFI towards different, often antithetical, directions.

Taken together, the different expressions of object formation we have identified point to the complexity and implications that individualising processes entail when concretised and played out within and between contemporary forms of collective activities. Our examination, however, focused on a limited number of municipal actors and therefore the conclusions we have drawn may not apply to all instances of municipal policy making and practice. As mentioned earlier, Swedish MAE is a very diverse school form, permeated by the specificities of municipalities’ local practices and organisational features (see Holmqvist, 2022).

Nevertheless, we have shown that individualising processes, elicited initially from an obvious inability for group instruction in SFI, then expanded to frameworks outside the classroom through processes of destabilisation and restabilisation, transforming SFI in novel and often unpredictable ways. Therefore, our examination was not delimited to classroom phenomena and to individualising processes as exclusively pedagogical practices (cf. Hållsten et al., 2022). Such inquiries are certainly important and valuable, in that they provide insights and potential tools for practitioners who work out contradictions in their daily practices. Nevertheless, it is also necessary to conduct examinations capable of tracing individualising processes out of the classroom and with perspectives that can accommodate the way contemporary societies are organised – i.e., in processes of collective object formation, involving different actors and permeated by disagreement, conflict, or any other type of tensions. Taking into consideration that institutional boundaries in late modernity are increasingly blurred and fluid (Bauman, 2000; Engeström, 2020), we argue that the proliferation of similar contested concepts is bound to happen, thereby eliciting new kinds of problems and opportunities for development in educational policies and practices. Further research is needed to explore the possibilities and challenges emerging from engagement with concepts whose potential dynamic and complexity may not be obvious from the start but that nevertheless may have tremendous implications in contemporary collective activities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Establishment Programme (Etableringsprogrammet) concerns newly arrived migrants, aged 20–65, who have been granted residence permit as refugees, and it includes learning activities (e.g., SFI) and labour market placements (Swedish Public Employment Service, 2022).