Where the rubber hits the road: how school leaders work with government-initiated policy within physical education

ABSTRACT

Previous research has addressed how societal demands shape ideas about appropriate practices in physical education (PE) and the consequences for those involved and for society at large. It has also highlighted the influential role of groups and organisations, including PE teachers, in shaping PE practices. However, the significance of school leaders in driving change in PE practices has been largely overlooked, despite their crucial responsibilities in decision-making, division of labour, and resource allocation. To address this gap, this study answers the following research question: what types of institutional work do Swedish school leaders engage in as they navigate government-initiated policy? Guided by the institutional work perspective and data collected in semi-structured interviews with 13 school leaders, the thematic analysis reveals that school leaders engage in structural work, operational work, conceptual work, and relational work when navigating government-initiated policy. In more empirical terms, the results indicate that most of the power to shape the implementation process is passed on to PE teachers. This suggests that although school leaders have substantial control over strategic resources and wield other forms of power, they do not necessarily significantly influence practices and beliefs in PE. The theoretical significance of these findings lies in their ability to shed light on how changes occur and explain how such changes impact widely accepted norms, rules, and structures. In practice, knowledge of how ideas and practices guide future decisions can be used in efforts to support those working in, working with, or striving to develop PE, including decision-makers, school leaders, and PE teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• Embedded agency
• physical education
• professional work
• institutional change
• institutionalisation

Introduction

Previous research has addressed how contemporary societal demands shape ideas about appropriate practices in physical education (PE) and the consequences for those involved and for society at large (e.g. Bailey et al., 2009; Kirk, 2010; Sandahl, 2004). In Sweden, the empirical context of this study, the very establishment of PE in the nineteenth century was a phenomenon of its time, and its purpose has since then varied depending on contemporary demands (Lindroth, 2011). These changes have impacted various aspects of PE, including the content outlined in national curriculum documents, time allocation, teaching methods, assessment, and grading (Annerstedt, 2001; Karlefors & Larsson, 2014; Sandahl, 2011).

In both Sweden and other contexts, various influential groups and organisations have been acknowledged as key drivers for change and in shaping practices and beliefs in PE (Bailey et al., 2009; Kirk, 2010; Penney, 2017; Sandahl, 2011). Additionally, the vital role of PE teachers in shaping educational policies and facilitating their implementation has been recognised (Wilkinson et al., 2021). However, the role and impact of school leaders in changing practices in PE have been largely overlooked despite the crucial responsibilities of these leaders in regard to decision-making, division of labour, and resource allocation, all of which significantly affect policy implementation within schools (Lundahl et al., 2013).

This gap in the research is noteworthy given the crucial role of effective leadership in successfully implementing change (Lynch, 2017) and the fact that actors in control of strategic resources or other forms of power can exert substantial influence on the transformation of shared systems of meaning within an organisation (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). This means that school leaders’ beliefs, ideas and actions may significantly influence PE practices. Against this background, this study was constructed to answer the following research question: what types of institutional work do school leaders engage in as they navigate government-initiated policy? This research question was formulated to generate knowledge regarding the potential influence of such work on practices and beliefs within PE. Consequently, the discussion section focuses on highlighting how these approaches collectively contribute to the transfer of power, outsourcing, and changes in instrumental reasons for legitimising PE, as well as the potential consequences of these.

Introducing the Swedish case

In this study, a government-initiated policy was applied as an empirical example to explore types of institutional work. This particular policy entailed and implied an allocation of an additional 100 teaching hours to PE in the Swedish school system (Regeringsbeslut U2014/5377/S, 2014). More specifically, the teaching time for PE in the Swedish nine-year compulsory schools was extended from 500 to a total of 600 h, a decision that came into force in July 2019. After this adjustment, only mathematics (1230 h), Swedish (1490 h), and the social sciences (885 h including geography, history, religion, and social studies) have more teaching hours than PE, with the total guaranteed teaching time for nine-year compulsory schools amounting to 6890 h (Skolverket, 2022).

A prominent argument for extending teaching in PE was the assumed connection between physical activity and increased learning ability. This is evident in the rationale underlying the decision-making process, as the government emphasised scientific studies that highlighted the positive links between physical activity, motor-skills training, and school performance (Regeringsbeslut U2014/5377/S, 2014). In relation to this decision, the government commissioned the Swedish National Agency for Education [SNAE] to develop recommendations outlining the optimal distribution of this allocated time among various school years. After consultations with universities, higher educational institutions, and other organisations, SNAE recommended that the extension of teaching hours should be added to school years 6–9 (Skolverket, 2018). The government followed SNAE’s recommendations, which in practice meant that 20 h were added to year 6 and 80 h to years 7–9 (Skolverket, 2022). This corresponds to approximately 30 min per week for year 6 and about 45 additional minutes for years 7–9 (Skolverket, 2018). Apart from the increase in teaching hours, no modifications were made to the regulations or curriculum documents (Skolverket, 2018). Consequently, individual schools were granted the autonomy to determine the distribution and practical implementation of these additional hours (Lindkvist, 2022).

To put this government-initiated policy into context, the Swedish educational system, like many other school systems worldwide, has become guided by processes of deregulation, privatisation, and marketisation (Lundahl et al., 2013; Nordholm et al., 2021; Rönnberg, 2011). In fact, a set of reforms carried out in the 1990s transformed the Swedish educational system from one of the world’s most centralised systems into one of the most decentralised systems in the world, characterised by multilevel governance (Lundahl et al., 2013). Multilevel governance, in this case, means that local municipalities are responsible for the running of the schools, which includes the authority to plan and organise the education, while the state is responsible for laws and regulations, which includes the authority to legislate the national curriculum, including syllabuses for all the different subjects (SFS 2010:800).

This extensive reforming of the Swedish educational system also led to a disruption of the ‘state monopoly’ on education and cleared a path for private actors to establish and operate independent schools (Rönnberg, 2011). So today, independent schools are run by various private actors such as individuals, religious organisations, non-profit organisations and commercial companies (Lundahl et al., 2013). Both independent and municipality-governed schools are tax-funded through a voucher system, but independent schools have the possibility to draw profit from their publicly financed schools (Rönnberg, 2011). Both types of schools, whether privately owned or public, are required to adhere to the laws and regulations established by the state, such as, for example, the national curriculum (SFS 2010:800).

This development has created a competitive environment in which schools strive to attract the same pool of students. To enhance their appeal, a range of schools (both public and independent) have implemented ‘sports profiles’. These profiles provide students with the opportunity to pursue their interests in sports beyond the standard PE curriculum and classes. Schools often offer either a diverse range of physical activities and sports (sport-for-all approach) or the option to specialise in specific sports (Ferry et al., 2013).

Since politicians decide on the objectives (the what) and the profession is responsible for the means (the how), schools can themselves shape teaching in order to achieve the national criteria for assessment and grading (Lundahl et al., 2013; Rönnberg, 2011). In this work, school leaders are responsible for the school’s internal organisation, resource allocation, and division of labour, and are thus also ultimately responsible for coordinating the pedagogical work (SFS 2010:800). One specific instance in which school leaders can exercise their authority is in relation to the ‘school choice option’, which allows them to decrease the allocated time for a particular subject (excluding Swedish, Swedish as a second language, English, and mathematics) by up to 20 per cent, thus creating room for specialised activities, such as additional mathematics instruction or sport (Skolverket, 2022). The school leader therefore plays a crucial role in developing the education and is responsible for addressing issues such as how students are divided into classes, ensuring that grading aligns with current regulations, implementing systematic quality work, facilitating student influence, promoting parental involvement, and preparing local rules of procedure (Skolverket, 2023).

Theoretical framework: capturing institutional work within field-level institutions

This study builds upon the institutional work perspective, and incorporates institutional thinking to understand how school leaders work with government-initiated policy. Within the institutional work perspective (as well in all institutional thinking), the role of institutions is as important as it is complex (Hampel et al., 2017). Broadly speaking, institutions can be understood as both formal and informal taken-for-granted social behaviours and organising structures that become ingrained within the operations and cognitions within a given setting (Greenwood et al., 2008).

In this study, I focus primarily on the transformation of practices and beliefs within organisations (schools) but view PE as a field-level institution. This means that what are considered appropriate practices in PE extend beyond individual organisations to encompass practices, norms, and beliefs that are widely shared and established at a societal level. Such field-level institutions play such a significant role in shaping the behaviours, interactions, and dynamics of individuals within the organisations operating in that field that they become institutionalised (Greenwood et al., 2008).

These institutions often emerge from social, cultural, and historical contexts, influencing the practices, rules, and identities within the field (Greenwood et al., 2008). Therefore, to understand contemporary PE, it is essential to incorporate its cultural and historical heritage, which has formed field-level rules, practices, and beliefs. PE, like other school subjects, is a social construction created by humans for a particular purpose under specific conditions (Kirk, 2010). However, unlike many other school subjects, PE is strongly shaped by activities outside formal education, so it is also institutionalised across fields (Sandahl, 2004).

In contrast to other institutional approaches, the concept of institutional work focuses on actors and enables exploration of actions associated with transforming and/or deinstitutionalising institutions (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). This perspective is most often credited to Lawrence and Suddaby (2006), who defined it as ‘the purposive action of individuals and organisations aimed at creating, maintaining and disrupting institutions’ (p. 215). According to Hampel et al. (2017, p. 558), it focuses ‘on understanding how, why, and when actors work to shape sets of institutions, the factors that affect their ability to do so, and the experience of these efforts for those involved’. The institutional work perspective is based on two theoretical foundations – embedded agency and the concept of practice – that facilitate exploration of how individuals’ actions and institutional arrangements shape one another (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). Thus, like more traditional institutional thinking, it upholds structuralist notions of actions as embedded in institutional structures, while recognising that structures are constantly (re)negotiated by actors trying to legitimise their actions (Hampel et al., 2017; Lawrence et al., 2011).

Derived from the authors’ definition, Lawrence and Suddaby (2006) divide institutional work into three categories according to its intended outcomes: creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions. However, this categorisation is not particularly useful in discerning what types of institutional work school leaders engage in as they navigate government-initiated policy. To address this limitation, a categorisation based on the means employed to achieve institutional objectives (Hampel et al., 2017) offers more clarity and insights. Consequently, I have employed a categorisation framework developed by Cloutier et al. (2016), which also focuses on the means utilised during policy implementation. This categorisation guided the first round of deductive and theory-driven thematic analysis, allowing for a more comprehensive exploration of the institutional work undertaken by school leaders.

Cloutier et al. (2016) takes Lawrence and Suddaby’s (2006) categorisation as a starting point and further develops four distinct types of institutional work: structural, operational, conceptual, and relational. Structural work refers to ‘managerial efforts to establish formalized roles, rule systems, organizing principles, and resource allocation models that support a new policy framework’. Operational work involves ‘managerial efforts to implement concrete actions affecting the everyday behaviours of frontline professionals that are directly linked with the new policy’. Conceptual work entails ‘efforts by managers to establish new belief systems, norms, and interpretive schemes consistent with the new policy’. Relational work underpins the other types and concerns ‘efforts aimed at building linkages, trust, and collaboration between people involved in reform implementation’ (Cloutier et al., 2016, p. 266).

This perspective is used to explore how school leaders’ actions are scripted by institutional arrangements (i.e. formal and informal structures, and practices that govern social interactions within a specific context) given that this perspective assumes that individual behaviour occurs within institutionalised rules (Greenwood et al., 2008; Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). As school leaders make decisions about schools’ internal organisation and resource distribution (Lundahl et al., 2013), it is assumed that their beliefs and thoughts about PE shape the institutional work within their schools and associated contexts. According to Hampel et al. (2017), this approach has the potential to offer policy recommendations that are culturally and socially contextualised, allowing for a diverse range of voices to be heard across social, demographic, and economic boundaries.

Focusing on the lived experience of organisational actors is important for understanding how and when shifts in ideas and assumptions occur because they reflect efforts to turn away, innovate, and transform the institutional structures in ‘which they live, work, and play, and which give them their roles, relationships, resources, and routines’ (Lawrence et al., 2011, p. 53). This adds knowledge about how traditional beliefs and ideas about appropriate practices guide future decisions concerning PE. It can also provide indications of potential future changes in practices and how organisational aspects can be altered to address these. Such knowledge can be used in efforts to support those working in, working with, or striving to develop PE, including decision-makers, school leaders, and PE teachers.

Previous research exploring the development of PE through the construction of appropriate practices

While certain scholars acknowledge the influential role of school leaders in driving educational change (Lundahl et al., 2013), there is an opposing argument suggesting that their comprehension of the goals, curricula, and pedagogies of PE is limited due to their personal experiences shaping their beliefs about the subject (George & Curtner-Smith, 2017). Surprisingly, no prior study has explicitly examined how their actions in policy implementation influence the transformation of practices and beliefs within PE. Nonetheless, scholars have studied how appropriate practices are created, maintained, and changed, thereby developing the subject (e.g. Alfrey & O’Connor, 2022; Kirk, 2010; Lynch, 2017; Sandahl, 2004; Thomsom & Sparkes, 2020).

In Sweden, PE was initially legitimised for political, military, health, sanitary, and recreational reasons, with the purpose shifting over time to now focus on public health (Lindroth, 2011). Changes in views on legitimate practices are significant in the development of PE and can be attributed, according to Sandahl (2004), to factors influencing professional practices, including the government, interest groups, and material preconditions.

Governmental control has played a significant role in shaping educational practices and policies, as laws and regulations strongly govern many aspects of education (Sandahl, 2004). The influence of neoliberalism, with market-oriented ideology, has also affected PE practices. In Sweden, a competitive environment among schools has been evident, as indicated by factors such as the growing presence of sports-oriented schools that aim to attract the same pool of students (Ferry et al., 2013). Similarly, in countries such as the UK, Thomson and Sparkes (2020) found that Ofsted ratings – the results of inspections by the UK Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills – were major determinants of a school’s status and that teachers prioritised the development of physical skills to obtain high ratings. Although PE teams had widely varied beliefs and experiences concerning the aims and purpose of PE, they aligned with senior management and favoured a teaching approach that was observable and measurable in order to secure high ratings.

Despite the impact of neoliberalism on educational systems in many Western countries (Nordholm et al., 2021), schools have the ability to resist trends such as privatisation (Heinze & Zdroik, 2018). For example, in the US, public schools commonly charge students to participate in extra-curricular sports activities, on a ‘pay-to-play’ basis, but Heinze and Zdroik (2018) showed that community culture and school district leadership trumped trends of privatisation. They argued that schools situated in communities that prioritise education and equal participation are more likely to oppose privatisation practices, such as pay-to-play, as these values are interconnected with other resources. Bottom-up resistance to trends can also come from students and their perceptions of what PE should involve, and how it should be organised, since they influence teachers’ decisions and teaching at the individual classroom level (Modell & Gerdin, 2022).

In Sweden, influential interest groups are mainly connected to the Swedish Sports Confederation (SSC; an umbrella organisation for Swedish voluntary and membership-based club sport), which according to Sandahl (2004) significantly affected PE during the second half of the twentieth century. The SSC has served as a consultation body in various school reforms and influenced extra-curricular school sports. When studying PE in Sweden, it is therefore important to consider the impact of the national sport movement on subject content (Quennerstedt & Öhman, 2008). However, this phenomenon is not exclusive to Sweden. Numerous authors, for example Kirk (2010), have emphasised that PE largely reflects views of club sports, thereby reinforcing reproduction of practices. Despite mixed research findings, PE is still considered crucial for promoting physical activity and lifelong participation among young people (Green, 2014). Although scientific evidence does not guarantee such outcomes (Bailey et al., 2009), this view still impacts PE teachers’ lesson planning and decision-making (Lindkvist, 2022). PE teachers view themselves as experts, who strongly promote physical activity in policy implementation (Lindkvist, 2022).

In relation to material preconditions, more facilities and equipment are needed for PE than for other subjects, such as sport facilities, running tracks, swimming pools, forests, balls, nets, and obstacles (Sandahl, 2004). The availability of these physical spaces and objects affects the perceptions of school leaders, teachers, and students about what should take place during PE. However, not all schools have an ideal environment for PE (Lindkvist, 2022), and factors such as safety and time limitations can hinder certain teaching approaches (Goodyear et al., 2017). For instance, the lack of on-site swimming pools in some schools shortens swimming lessons and the time available for students to develop swimming skills (Goodyear et al., 2017). Such factors clearly influence possible, and appropriate, practices and their consequences, but we still know relatively little about the interrelationship between actions and institutions in PE and how they structure one another. This study sought to add such knowledge by exploring how school leaders’ actions influence the transformation of practices and beliefs within PE.

Research method

Participants and sampling strategy

This study aimed to answer the question of what types of institutional work school leaders engage in as they navigate government-initiated policy in order to create knowledge about how institutional practices and beliefs are (re)shaped by strategic actions. Since the policy examined in this study (Regeringsbeslut U2014/5377/S, 2014) largely affected the secondary schools, the first selection criterion was school leaders responsible for one or more secondary schools. Secondly, since the policy was implemented in 2019, I deemed it necessary to ensure that the school leaders had work experience from before the actual implementation. Thirdly, drawing on experience from previous studies (Lindkvist, 2022), the included school leaders had to have worked, in one way or another, with issues related to the reform. To gain access to participants meeting these selection criteria, I contacted school leaders who I knew from previous studies had worked on implementation of the reform (Lindkvist, 2022). In some cases, I also asked school leaders to suggest other suitable participants. Taken together, these selection criteria followed a purposive and snowball sampling strategy (Cohen et al., 2013).

In total, 42 school leaders were approached and 13 chose to participate (seven men and six women). The respondents were all provided with written and oral information regarding the study’s purpose, the conditions for participation, and the code of ethics (Vetenskapsrådet, 2017). I prepared an interview guide with questions concerning how, and in what ways, school leaders had worked with policy implementation, their experiences of the process, perceived opportunities and obstacles, and the ways in which they handled such issues. To encourage reflection, I asked the respondents questions such as ‘When the reform was effectuated, can you describe how you worked to allocate and implement the 100 added hours?’, ‘Could you give an example of how you worked with issues related to the implementation of the 100 added hours?’ and ‘Can you describe how the process of implementing the 100 added hours has worked for you?’.

I asked all questions in the interview guide in the same order but allowed for some flexibility and follow-up questions depending on the interviewees’ expressed experiences. The 13 school leaders had 4–25 years’ work experience, were responsible for 15–50 employees, and led both independent and municipally managed schools. The school leaders represent a variety of Swedish demographics, from northern to southern parts of the country, including rural and urban areas. The interviews were conducted in Swedish using either a cloud-based online video conferencing tool or phone and lasted approximately 55 min on average. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and respondents were assigned pseudonyms. The data extracts used to illustrate the findings were translated into English before being added to the manuscript.

Analysis

Key initial steps in processing the data were to analyse and classify the institutional work described in the interviews, based on the means applied to achieve institutional objectives (Hampel et al., 2017). Therefore, the first round of analysis was based on a deductive and theory-driven analytical approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The thematic analysis started with a review of all interview transcripts and the coding of text segments using R software with the addition of an R package for Qualitative Data Analysis (RQDA; Chandra & Shang, 2019). The analytical process was driven by the data content while simultaneously compared with Cloutier et al.’s (2016) description of the four types of work (i.e. structural, conceptual, operational, and relational work). In this process, R software, with the help of the RQDA package, worked as qualitative data analysis software, which was a useful tool when assigning codes to the large dataset and cataloguing them into specific categories (Chandra & Shang, 2019). Initial coding involved repeated readings of the transcripts, looking for similarities, contradictions, and contestations across the data (Braun & Clarke, 2006). For example, statements such as ‘there were challenges in scheduling the sports facilities. In terms of organisational resources, there were challenges’ were coded as ‘structural work’. In contrast, statements like ‘I want to train young people to be in groups, to cooperate in groups. I think that the social development is so perfect in a subject like PE’ were coded as ‘conceptual work’.

Rather than simply reporting a surface reading of the data, the overarching categories were revisited in a second, inductive round of data analysis that focused on producing a more detailed understanding of what the categories contained. In this second step, I was interested in the intentionality of actions and focused on statements that revealed activities, rather than achievements (Lawrence et al., 2011). I also focused on statements that could reveal the kinds of efforts that school leaders made in policy implementation, as Lawrence et al. (2011) argued that this is important for understanding connections of such practices to contextual institutions. This means that by focusing on the actual activities school leaders described (and not on their descriptions of achievements), connections could be made between such actions and thoughts of appropriate practices in PE. For example, when examining the broad category of relational work, it became apparent that there were two distinct types of relationship-building. One focused on cultivating relationships with individuals within the organisation, while the other focused on building relationships between the organisation and external actors. This prompted the creation of two subcategories: internal relations and external relations. Themes were mapped, revised, and reworked before finally defining and naming them, and choosing data excerpts that best represented each theme. The four overarching types of institutional work with associated subcategories are defined and explained in the findings as representations of the types of institutional work school leaders engage in as they navigate government-initiated policy.

Findings

The analysis suggests that Swedish school leaders engage in four types of institutional work as they navigate government-initiated policy. The four overarching categories, visualised by the subheadings below, are a result of the first deductive analysis based on the four types of institutional work identified by Cloutier et al. (2016). Under them, I present the associated subcategories that are a result of the second inductive analysis.

Structural work

Structural work refers to the efforts undertaken by school leaders to strategically organise, coordinate, and allocate resources with the explicit aim of promoting physical activity. However, this approach often conflates PE with general physical activity, and obscures the specific PE-related knowledge and skills that students are expected to acquire. As a result, this work could negate previous efforts to clarify the subject’s purpose and content. This type of work is illustrated by school leaders’ efforts to stabilise policy implementation with the help of, or against, pre-existing formalised roles, rule systems, resource allocation and procedures.

Several school leaders highlighted that the current multilevel governance structure (i.e. governed at both the state and municipal levels) has resulted in a sense of uncertainty, as the preconditions for schools to carry out teaching are constantly changing. Ultimately, it falls upon the school leaders to manage and navigate these changes. One way to handle such constant change is to create systematised processes that will stay the same even if external conditions change. These systematised processes are designed in such a way that they are applicable across subjects and types of policy reforms. One interviewee (Sofie) described this as follows:

It’s the same thing. [Time for teaching in] math also increased a lot. So, it’s possible to draw parallels, because we worked in pretty much the same way in both subjects … There is a systematic [approach] in it, so that regardless of whether the subject decreases or increases, it is in that forum that you work on it.

Through this way of working, the implementation process in PE was not isolated in relation to other subjects’ implementation processes. However, since the policy entailed more hours for teaching and emphasised physical activity, the most preferred option was to allocate an extra lesson per week for students to engage in movement.

Operational work

Operational work can be described as an extension of structural work. If the previous category is described as work with and against structural arrangements, operational work is related to the creation of concrete actions and/or activities rooted in such arrangements. Three subcategories were inductively created: systematic quality work, organisational logistics, and strategy work.

Systematic quality work involves school leaders’ work on quality assessment, goal fulfilment, and evaluations of PE. School leaders work in a decentralised system but with centralised forms of control, which seems to raise the prioritisation of accountancy and box-ticking at the expense of educational issues. Hence, this way of working prioritises the development of PE within bureaucratic structures, rather than relying on the knowledge of school leaders or teachers, or recommendations from researchers. Therefore, such work has the potential of making PE less a question about knowledge and learning and more a matter of adapting a product for future needs.

This type of work is illustrated by the ways in which school leaders appoint working groups, often consisting of PE teachers, to ensure that PE is conducted according to governing documents, which is considered by school leaders to constitute quality assurance. To secure a successful implementation process, one interviewed school leader, Jonas, believed that:

those who will do the work must be involved, think, and give their thoughts, somewhat freely. Then we get to prioritise … So, they actually analyse and quality-check themselves. What are we good at? What do we want more of and what are we missing in relation to the curriculum?

Regarding goal fulfilment, school leaders guide teachers in a specific direction by striving to ensure that the goals teachers set in relation to policy implementation align with the organisation’s overall goals and curriculum regulations. Since policy success in many cases is equated with more physical activity, several school leaders expressed beliefs that future policy evaluations will probably show increases in both PE goal fulfilment and achievements in other subjects.

Organisational logistics refers to organisational convenience taking precedence over subject-related needs. In combination with school leaders’ substantial autonomy in shaping teaching, this type of work arguably contributes to increases in disparities in teaching across schools, and hence educational inequalities. This type of work is illustrated by ways that school leaders manage this process of change in already-established ways of working. Many school leaders expressed the idea that evenly distributing three PE lessons per week would have been the optimal solution. However, in many cases this was hindered by, for example, restricted access to facilities. So, in opposition to the intention of the reform, school leaders in some cases chose to include theoretical elements of PE that could be conducted in regular classrooms. In other cases, school leaders included extracurricular activities, such as field days or activities during breaks, that are PE-oriented, but not necessarily conducted by a PE teacher or included in the PE curriculum. David, another interviewee, also noted that he used the ‘school choice option’ to solve the problem of insufficient facilities for an extra PE lesson while maintaining the school’s sports profile:

We have sports profiles at our school […] So, we thought, what do we do now? We wanted to keep these profiles, so we used the school choice option to take 20% from one subject, and we took it from PE. That amounted to 30 minutes and then we took 5 minutes from some other subjects to be able to accommodate a profile of 60 minutes per week.

Strategy work means that school leaders apply methods to effectively navigate the changing preconditions for schools to carry out teaching, in a way that serves the interest of their own school. To keep up to date and prepare for possible future changes, many school leaders scanned the surrounding environment using various types of information sites (i.e. information school leaders receive by email or by visiting various websites). Through this way of working, school leaders can decide which external actors get access to PE and thus the type of content considered to have some degree of relevance. Since these actors have the chance to influence teaching, there is a possibility that this could result in (unintentional) outsourcing.

This type of work is illustrated by examples of school leaders acting as gatekeepers, deciding which actors (with varied interests) from the private, non-profit, and public sectors can have access to teachers and students by selecting collaborations that are in line with current objectives. One school leader, Björn, described how he managed the pressure from surrounding organisations seeking contact with his school, as follows:

I clear my inbox. Thanks, but no thanks. But then there are these parts that you can see fit in well with what we have planned this year. Then I get to have a discussion [with the teachers]. This has come to my knowledge, could it be something we can collaborate with? Gatekeeping, that’s part of the job […] What’s difficult to remove is what you yourself think arouses interest and which you see fits into what we do and what we think.

Conceptual work

Conceptual work refers to efforts by school leaders to establish belief systems, norms, and interpretive schemes consistent with or contrary to beliefs and ideas about appropriate practices salient in policy implementation. Two subcategories were inductively created: advocacy work and symbolic work.

Advocacy work refers to school leaders trying to influence teachers’ and students’ perceptions of what PE is (or could be) by, for example, emphasising the benefits of PE for students, the school and wider society. This work is consistent with the beliefs and practices emphasised in policy descriptions, which highlight PE’s value for assumed benefits beyond the subject itself. However, this approach blurs the boundaries between PE and other types of health-promotion projects, which can create challenges in evaluating overall progress resulting from the reform.

This type of work is exemplified by school leaders trying to work inclusively by, for example, creating separate teaching groups. This is argued to provide more students with opportunities to participate in PE classes, which is especially important for students who might otherwise be excluded from PE due to factors such as physical or cognitive disabilities. Some of the participating school leaders also strove to motivate students by arranging competitions, increasing students’ health awareness, and removing barriers for participation. Through these initiatives, school leaders hope that students will benefit from the added value of PE, which extends beyond physical fitness and includes mental and social benefits. However, school leaders often face difficulties in distinguishing between the work required for implementing the reform and broader efforts to improve students’ (and sometimes also teachers’) physical and mental health. One interviewee, Anne, pointed out that:

The purpose [of the reform] I think is that you should not focus solely on the students’ playing basketball or football. I think the introduction and purpose [of the reform] has created a good and positive development among colleagues to talk about health, not just for students. It has become a form of consciousness in the entire organisation, I think.

Symbolic work is an extension of the fact that school leaders pointed out that PE can bring about added value. Although many school leaders agree with policy descriptions, they also recognise that contemporary PE differs from competitive sports encompassed within the SSC. This type of work can help dispel the misconception that PE is solely about physical activity. However, it can also foster new expectations for PE. If such expectations are not properly addressed, this could result in criticism that ultimately leads to further attempts to alter PE in the future.

This type of work is illustrated by cases of school leaders including consideration of other types of added value than those expressed in policy descriptions. Several school leaders note that part of schools’ mission is to compensate for variations in students’ opportunities to engage in physical activity during their spare time. Thus, schools need to offer opportunities for physical activity, as it contributes to students’ physical, mental, and social development. Therefore, school leaders argue that more PE is beneficial for efforts to promote physical and mental health, counteract social phobia, stimulate brain development, improve group dynamics, and enhance feelings of security and well-being. For example, one school leader, Emma, commented that:

The school has a compensatory mission, and those of us working with children and young people can see that there is a lot of sedentary behaviour. There are so many aspects to movement. It’s not just about feeling good physically; it’s also about counteracting mental health problems.

Hence, PE is seen as part of a larger ‘health-promotion project’ that schools contribute to through various playtime activities, recreational sessions, brain breaks, meals, and so on.

Relational work

Relational work refers here to efforts by school leaders to build links, trust, and collaboration between people who are directly or indirectly involved in policy implementation. Two subcategories were inductively created: internal relations and external relations.

Internal relations are based on the interactions between teachers and school leaders working in the same school. Through this way of working, several school leaders delegate much of the responsibility for the implementation process to PE teachers. Consequently, these teachers’ understanding of the nature and purpose of PE strongly influenced key decisions, with associated risks that the emergence of other ideas and viewpoints could be impeded, thereby hindering progress in PE.

This type of work is exemplified by several respondents portraying teachers as doers and holders of expert knowledge, who should therefore be responsible for amending practices in accordance with policy, and describing their own role as creating organisational conditions that enable teachers to do so. In such cases, school leaders applied a form of trust-based management, redistributing much of the power to implement the policy to the teachers. To optimise the functionality of this relationship, they perceived a need to emphasise the importance of participation, clarity, responsiveness, and goal-orientation. They also perceived needs to employ certified PE teachers and ensure their long-term retention. Non-certified teachers are not considered to be holders of expert knowledge and hence force school leaders to engage in matters that touch on content knowledge and assessment. One school leader, Herman, reflected on the work of distributing responsibility and implementing the policy as follows:

We left the implementation of this to our three PE teachers. I always assume that my teachers are the ones who possess the expert knowledge that is needed. And then, of course, I need to be involved in directing it [the implementation process] and making sure that it looks good and that it works in the end. But it’s still the teachers who I think should take care of things like this.

External relations refer to relationships between the schools and external actors. As previously mentioned, all schools have collaborations with external actors, to varying degrees, and school leaders argue that these are important as they contribute to good teaching. Interviewees raise needs, for instance, to consider relations such as those with community citizens, officials, the SNAE, and the government. In some cases, they mention experiences of feeling isolated in their work and dissatisfaction with governing bodies. This prompted some to disregard the views of governing bodies and make decisions they perceived as being in the best interest of their schools. However, continuing to disregard the views and demands of governing bodies could potentially undermine future efforts to develop the subject.

This type of work is illustrated by school leaders’ recognition of the importance of participation, clarity, responsiveness, and goal-orientation in both external relationships and internal relationships. The perceived absence of these factors in such relationships may lead to school leaders’ dissatisfaction. For example, when one interviewee, Karoline, was asked if there was anything she wished she had done differently, she said, ‘I wish someone had asked us first’. When the relationship with external governing actors is strained, it seems easier for school leaders to prioritise their own interests over those of the external actors. Björn has been a school leader for a long time, which he said gave him great ‘go-to-hell capital’, and he thought that school leaders:

need to be much better at leadership that is about capturing the power that exists [inside the organisation] and channelling it. Then we can solve a great deal of problems. Keep politicians and others out of the schools. So we don’t just sit here playing make-believe.

These two last quotes highlight a paradox wherein school leaders strive for greater involvement in the decision-making processes of governing bodies, while also emphasising their autonomy in shaping the internal organisation of the school.

Discussion and conclusions

This study aimed to answer the question of what types of institutional work school leaders engage in as they navigate government-initiated policy in order to create knowledge about how institutional practices and beliefs are (re)shaped by strategic actions. The findings reveal that school leaders employ various forms of work – structural, operational, conceptual, and relational – to navigate government-initiated policy. They also show how each type may be manifested and potentially affect the development of PE. This section highlights how these approaches may collectively contribute to transfers of power, outsourcing, and changes in instrumental reasons for legitimising PE, as well as the potential consequences of these.

The implementation of this policy is an example of institutional work, initiated by the government, to change the timetables of Swedish schools. This resulted in school leaders acting as micropolitical players in a game they neither created nor chose to engage in. This study has shown that external factors, some conflicting, strongly affect how school leaders play this game and navigate in the dynamic environment of their schools. In response, school leaders recognise the importance of establishing structured processes to regulate policy implementation. These processes become formally established, accepted, and integrated into school practices, which have been shown to have implications for teachers (Lynch, 2017; Thomson & Sparkes, 2020). In this study, school leaders describe that they often delegate power over the implementation process to lower levels of the hierarchical structure to ensure successful policy implementation. However, there is ongoing prioritisation of practical over theoretical knowledge (Modell & Gerdin, 2022), and PE teachers tend to focus mainly on curriculum maintenance (Alfrey & O’Connor, 2022). Thus, such a strategy is likely to foster maintenance of the practices and content associated with the subject, or at least a minimisation of changes. Therefore, if a more fundamental change is desired, school leaders and teachers require better support in the creation of strategies for implementing specific changes.

Previous scholars have emphasised the significance of leadership in supporting a process of change (Alfrey & O’Connor, 2022; Lynch, 2017). However, the findings of this study indicate that school leaders have treated PE teachers as the holders of expert knowledge, and hence delegated responsibility to them for creating policy content. Kirk (2010) argues that teachers should be involved in policy-related processes from decision-making to implementation, but the results of this study indicate that school leaders largely delegated the responsibility for implementing change to teachers without formulating a joint ‘best practice’ approach. This implies that although school leaders have control of strategic resources and other forms of power, they might not be the local actors who most strongly affect the transformation of practices and beliefs within PE.

The findings also indicate that school leaders strive to create stability in policy implementation. However, their work also leads to destabilisation, making the subject more sensitive to influences from external actors. When scanning the surrounding environment using various types of information sources (e.g. information received via email or visiting various websites), school leaders can decide which external actors get access to PE teachers and students. The relationships with actors in the private, non-profit, and public sectors inevitably influence expectations regarding PE. However, students already perceive a hierarchy between different sports and how they are valued (Modell & Gerdin, 2022). Expanding ‘outsourcing’ has the capacity to reinforce the existing hierarchy, resulting in regression to an earlier era in which PE was mainly associated with gymnastics (Kirk, 2010), with the inclusion of one or a few other sports. While my outlook may seem dystopian, I believe that such work could potentially reduce the legitimacy of PE in the eyes of governing actors and induce a disruptive future.

Apart from, or perhaps as a consequence of, navigating among various influences from external actors, school leaders applied a strategy of attaching their own added value to PE. The governmental decision forming the basis for the reform (Regeringsbeslut U2014/5377/S, 2014) expresses nothing concerning mental health, counteracting social phobia, stimulating brain development, improving group dynamics, or enhancing feelings of security and well-being. Instead, school leaders themselves added these effects as possible outcomes. While PE has historically been recognised as important for addressing a wide range of welfare-related issues (Bailey et al., 2009; Kirk, 2010; Sandahl, 2004), the fact that school leaders attached their own added value to PE cannot be regarded as a case of opposition to trends, which Heinze and Zodrik (2018) describe as promoting other options. Instead, it was more a case of merging new structures with established structures, a strategy that proved to be very practical since they could legitimise actions according to expectations of both internal actors (e.g. teachers, students, and schedulers) and external actors (e.g. government bodies, municipalities, and stakeholders).

However, previous research has shown that one of the most valued resources identified by teachers for supporting PE curriculum transformation and enactment is a clear vision for PE (Alfrey & O’Connor, 2022). Incorporating additional value into PE may not align with a clear vision for the subject, which raises questions about how teachers perceive this strategy. Additionally, if the focus on instrumental reasons for legitimising PE increases, such as improving academic performance, the full potential of PE may not be realised, leading to uncertainty about its development.

The data considered here were acquired from semi-structured interviews with school leaders, which could be seen as a strength, because the leaders’ own stories provide important insights into their day-to-day work. However, it could also be seen as a weakness because there could be a discrepancy between their stories and their actual behaviour. Moreover, I interviewed each respondent only once and supplementation with information from additional sources, such as observations and document collection, could have potentially provided a more nuanced understanding. Future researchers should therefore include observations or more ethnographic approaches to try to capture actual actions. Such studies should continue to examine the apparent simultaneous, and parallel, occurrence of various types of institutional work and how such processes affect institutionalisation.

Disclosure statement

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