Swedish teachers’ views of security in schools: narratives disconnected from the national security discourse

ABSTRACT

National security discourses have entered teacher’s classrooms. A strand of largely critical literature in education studies have noted that new security tasks clash with the roles of teachers. However, few studies have yet approached this audience about their views on security. This article analyses how Swedish teachers conceive of security in relation to the school system. Data consists of semi-structured interviews with teachers and principals, conducted in medium-sized municipalities in Sweden. The analysis finds that teachers maintain a conceptualisation of security that focuses on the individual. Simultaneously, teachers rarely adopt national security discourses (except regarding school violence) and several argue against emphasising the concept of security in relation to schools. The results offer an opportunity to analyse the views of teachers as audiences in relation to the extension of the security field into the educational domain.

KEYWORDS:

• Security
• teachers
• audience
• school security
• Sweden

Introduction

New security threats are placing demands on a broad range of societal sectors (compare Stevens and Vaughan-Williams 2014). In this context, government strategies declare that professional security actors need support from occupations that are conventionally not considered a part of the security field. (Swedish Government 2015a, 2017). Still, knowledge is lacking on the security concerns of these occupations themselves. For a long time, the field of education has been of importance to national security. However, it is only recently, and primarily in relation to counter-terrorism, that teachers in the Western world have gained explicit roles as agents in relation to security.

The new security tasks of teachers are mostly highlighted by a strand of literature in education studies. The strand is particularly interested in the implementation of the United Kingdom’s highly regulated counter-terrorism programmes, in which teachers are obliged to report suspect pupils to the authorities (Davies 2016; Martin 2018; Means 2014; Preston 2009). Existing research asserts that the overall problem definitions, roles, and tasks associated with security could be expected to clash with teachers’ roles and views of themselves. Nevertheless, the perceptions and narratives of the new security actors themselves, the teachers, are seldom heard – although some studies exist, it is pointed out that teachers do not have much room for opposition to their new security task (Elwick and Jerome 2019). Also, little attention has been directed at teachers views of security beyond counter-terrorism efforts.

Although teachers’ roles in security have been debated in education studies, the study of teachers as security actors is largely absent in security studies journals (exceptions include Heath-Kelly 2017; Heath-Kelly and Strauz 2018; Martin 2018; Sjoen and Mattsson 2020). Still, knowledge of how ordinary citizens perceive threats is increasingly important as we live in ‘a time when attempts have been made to “conscript” ordinary members of the public into the state’s security apparatuses, and national security strategies make a virtue of involving citizens in the risk management cycle,’ (Stevens and Vaughan-Williams 2014, 150, compare also Sliwinski 2013). In light of the current incorporation of the public into the security field, Jarvis argues for more research to be conducted on local views of (in)security which includes studying “how (in)security is understood and experienced at all levels of sociopolitical life – especially, perhaps, as lived by non-elite communities.” (Jarvis 2019, 116).

Thus, research should be directed at how teachers – in particular beyond the UK context – themselves view this development and their role as agents of security. Analysing how occupational groups that are traditionally not associated with security conceive of their roles in relation to the field, therefore, offers opportunities to problematise vernacular security.

The purpose of this article is to analyse how Swedish teachers think of security and how their views connect to national security discourses. Three research questions guided the analysis: How do teachers approach and reflect upon the concept of security? What referent objects do they identify? What are the threats to these referent objects? Data consists of semi-structured interviews with teachers and principals, conducted in schools in two municipalities in Sweden. The findings are related to a national security discourse with three main elements relating to schools (countering violent extremism, school violence, and civil defence). The national security discourse against which teachers views are related is described in a separate section below. However, briefly introducing it here, Sweden has had two major terrorist attacks in Stockholm during the last decade. Compared to the UK, the focus on counter-terrorism has a low profile in Sweden. There are no high-profile programmes such as Prevent or Channel. Instead, the tasks awarded to personnel at the municipal level are expressed in general terms without strong regulations (see further below). The country has during the same period suffered from one deadly school violence incident with an external perpetrator. The national security discourse is, since 2015, dominated by a rather traditional national defence focus, aimed at countering military threats. In this context, the concept of total defence becomes relevant.

The results show that none of the respondents frames the state as the referent object of security. Although some refer to instances of the national security discourse (school violence), the focus of the teachers and principals are clearly elsewhere. They take the concept of security and transfer it to their own daily setting where the focus is on individual security. This suggests that teachers in Sweden are disconnected from the discourse that characterises the national security field. The results help us challenge political processes taken for granted within political science and security studies. As argued by Cote (2016), a more thorough analysis of the audience responding to security discourses is necessary. Therefore, it is important to continually assess how new security actors conceive of security and their roles and tasks in the context of national security discourses.

Below, a note on the security and education fields and the role of teachers in this context is provided. The following section presents the national security discourses present at the central level, which constitute the extension of the security field into the educational domain in the case of Sweden. Subsequently, a methods section introduces the data that the article relies upon. The article then moves on to the results and the analysis of the teachers’ narratives, followed by a concluding note.

Previous research on the security and education nexus

As noted in the introduction, the security field has been extended to the educational domain, and more attention needs to be directed towards the non-traditional security actors who are being adopted into the security field extends (Jarvis 2019). A nexus between security and education has existed within international relations for a long time. However, little attention has been directed at teachers as agents of security. Instead, the focus has been on the strategic level. One research area has studied the links between education, civil defence, and preparedness as tools of the state. The focus in this literature has been on state strategies, the role education plays in these, and the images of the population being conveyed (Preston 2008, 2009, Nguyen 2017). Another research area, closely connected to peace and conflict studies, examines the role of education in peace and conflict prevention. Here, the main interest lies in education as an institutional tool available to both local and global actors (Smith 2005; Nelles 2006; Cardozo 2009; Cunningham 2014; Novelli 2017).

A related, but broader research area deals with education, security, and state-building. In this literature, education is seen as part of identity constructions (Müller 2011; Silveira 2013; Swimelar 2013; Talbot 2013; Ghosh et al. 2017, Nguyen 2017). Education also plays an important part in mature democracies (such as Sweden), as it is seen as contributing to the foundation of a tolerant, democratic society (Cooper 2019, see also Rautainen and Räihä 2012). Although the ‘democratic assignment’ is not explicitly related to security, it has increasingly been given meaning in relation to threats to democracy (Sjoen and Mattsson 2020).

Finally, and most recently, research has focused on education and counter-terrorism. In this context, the major policy programmes of the UK have caught the attention of critical researchers, who highlight various challenges in relation to the education-security nexus (Davies 2016; Thomas 2016; Ecclestone 2017; Heath-Kelly 2017; O’Donnell 2017; Martin 2018; Mattson 2018; Page 2017). In relation to this most recent addition to the nexus, it becomes apparent that the focus on teacher’s individual agency in relation to security is new. During the Cold War and in relation to peace and state-building contexts during the post-Cold War era, as well as before the addition of counter-terrorism, the nexus between security and education was approached from a strategic, abstract level. The states promoted certain syllabus, information and identities, and teachers were assumed to distribute these in the classroom. It was taken for granted in security studies that teachers did not question central directives regarding educational content and tasks assigned to them.

What is new within the context of the counter-terrorism debate of the 2010s, is that teachers are given more active roles as security actors that shall conduct surveillance and reporting. The addition of this aspect to the education-security nexus means that teachers are seen to hold agency in relation to security. However, the academic critique against this view of teachers’ role in security has been substantial (Means 2014; Davies 2016; Thomas 2016; O’Donnell 2017; Heath-Kelly 2017; Martin 2018).

The new role implies that new demands are posed on the teacher occupation (Alvinius, Holmberg, and Hobbins 2018). O’Donnell argues that the adoption of a language of therapy, resilience, and well-being have opened the path for teachers entering into the field of counter-terrorism (O’Donnell 2017). According to this line of thinking, teachers have always conducted some form of social safeguarding for students. Sjoen and Jore (2019) argue that although relational approaches are likely to be more successful in preventing radicalisation, the effects of policies are often ‘harder’ approaches. Studies of British teachers show that individual teachers have diverse ways of interpreting their role in counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism, although these views are affected by the local leadership and context. Elwick and Jerome (2019) find that teachers either identify their Prevent duties as security issues where their role is to safeguard pupils and prevent radicalisation, or as an educational issue, where their role is to teach students and gain their trust. In the first case, some teachers experience that their agency is reduced, as compared to the latter, where teachers express that they have opportunities to influence the students. However, the process of positioning oneself in this context appears to cause some teachers distress. Based on interviews and a survey, Busher, Choudhury, and Thomas (2019) conclude that a majority of teachers approve of the task, and overt opposition is largely missing (similar findings in the area of health are reported by Heath-Kelly and Strauz 2018). The authors explain this by the construction of the risk of radicalisation being broadly accepted, the narrative of professional continuity as a legitimising factor, and professional confidence. This happens in a complex process.

[…] it can be seen as the product of a complex set of interactions between high-level policy narratives and the ways in which the duty has been “translated” and integrated into other, pre-existing policy and practice regimes, including pre-existing safeguarding approaches and pre-existing institutional practices concerned with promoting positive values, inclusive citizenship and antiprejudice norms. (Busher, Choudhury, and Thomas 2019, 20)

As a result, in teaching about terrorism and trying to prevent radicalisation, teachers use different pedagogies depending on the local context (Jerome and Elwick 2020).

As teachers’ approach to the education-security nexus is (or appears) context-dependent, it should also vary across countries. For instance, the role of teachers as agents of security could be said to be strongly regulated in the case of the UK. Contrastingly, findings from a study of teachers in the case of Norway suggest that less regulated contexts allow teachers to adopt approaches focusing on individual security rather than national security. The Norwegian teachers mainly focused on a therapeutic approach, aimed at reducing the vulnerabilities of students, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) on citizenship education (Sjoen and Mattson 2020).

This article directs attention to Sweden, where the role of teachers in security is also less regulated. At the strategic level, there has been opposition, or institutional resistance towards these tasks – i.e. different public authorities have had conflicting views regarding teachers roles as security agents (Mattson and Säljö 2017, see further in next section). Thus, the extension of security-related tasks to teachers has, in at least one country, been contested at the strategic level by the institutions that represent the educational field.

As security and crisis management roles expand in society, the occupational groups that are the targets for new roles either embrace or contest these. Coté (2016) argues that the role of audiences – new security actors can be seen as audiences who receive their tasks from the government – is insufficiently developed and there is a need to recognise the interactive role of audiences, which contribute to creating and recreating security (Coté 2016). Therefore, more studies need to focus on how it is received by various audiences.

This article contributes to research that problematises the nexus between security and education beyond the strategic level. It does so by directing attention to teachers as audiences in processes that extend the security field into the educational field. In particular, it offers insights from a country where the security tasks of teachers have been less regulated than in the UK, and where the extension of security tasks to teachers have actually been contested at the strategic level. This article shows that different views and ways of understanding security and the role of teachers are present at the local level – views that are largely disconnected from the national security discourse relating to education.

The national security discourse: teachers’ role in security as set out by the Swedish government and authorities in 2014-2018

Security policies, including those concerning counter-terrorism, differ substantially between countries in Europe (O’Brien 2016). This section identifies the Swedish national security discourse in relation to education, which in 2018 covered three areas: countering violent extremism and terrorism, limiting school violence and civil defence. These three areas have been identified and mapped by the author, and illustrate the attempts at the national level to extend the security field into the educational domain in Sweden. These areas are used as reference points in the subsequent analysis of teachers’ views on security. In Sweden, schools fall under the responsibility of municipalities, which in turn are governed by a state authority – the National Agency for Education.

The end of the Cold War changed Swedish security and defence policy. Like in most western countries, the security agenda in Sweden broadened and came to include problems like terrorism and organised crime. In parallel to a rather active security and defence policy, Sweden has pursued a foreign policy that has been conceptualised as ethical and cosmopolitan, emphasising values such as human rights and gender equality (Bergman-Rosamond, Aggestam, and Kronsell 2019). In this context, Sweden has also accepted many refugees in comparison to its population size.

Turning to the specifics in relation to security and education, the first link identified in the national security discourse concerns the effort to counter violent extremism. The government states, in its strategy to counter-terrorism:

“Several actors that can contribute with operational tasks and knowledge in counter-terrorism work have not specifically been assigned to do this according to the law, government regulations or other directives. The work that they can do within their area of responsibility is still important for the societal work against terrorism.” (Swedish Government 2015a, 41)

Government ministers reiterated this stance in 2017 as it was pointed out that all actors must acknowledge their role in countering terrorism (Dagens Nyheter 2017).

The Government created the National Coordinator to Safeguard Democracy against Violent Extremism. The Coordinator introduced guidelines for teachers on how to discuss the topic of terrorism with pupils. The guidelines also assisted teachers to identify and act on signs of possible violent extremism (Conversation Compass Undated). Similarly, the Swedish Government Agency for Youth and Civil Society published a report on how municipalities and civil society could work together in countering violent extremism (Mucf Undated).

Mattson and Säljö (2017) analysed how the National Agency for Education reacted to the instructions issued by the above-mentioned initiatives. The National Agency for Education asked Uppsala University for a legal opinion and the results show, according to Mattson and Säljö, that the instructions were poorly anchored in research and not in accordance with Swedish law. This meant that the National Agency for Education as an audience critically opposed central elements of the Government’s strategy towards countering violent extremism. This could be seen as an institutional, collective contestation of the extension of the security field into the educational field. The National Agency for Education persisted in its critique. In October 2018, it issued a response to a Government inquiry that stated that the role of education is to develop and support pupils in becoming democratic citizens. The agency argued that this is the most important task of education in contributing to countering violent extremism. The individual human rights of the pupil prohibit the schools or individual teachers to keep records of ideas and opinions, and the agency pointed out that the role of schools is not to prevent crime. The agency maintained that no teacher should report a pupil as a suspect violent extremist to the police, the security police or any other agency working on preventing extremism. Instead, social services should be consulted. The agency called for continued analysis, should the agency’s stance be subject to change (National Agency for Education 2018). The Compass was later withdrawn.

The second link between security and education concerns school violence. The National Agency for Education has published information about how to avoid and manage violence in schools (National Agency for Education 2014). Although deadly school violence in Sweden is rare, the most dramatic case of school violence in Sweden took place in October 2015, when a masked 21-year old man entered a school in the town Trollhättan and murdered three people with a sword. Investigations showed that the attack was planned and that it was a manifestation of racist hate (Dagens Nyheter 2016). Following this incident, media have increased its attention towards violence in and around schools. No quantitative estimation is provided here, but in the first half of 2018, national media reported weekly, and sometimes daily on incidents that related to possible school violence (Aftonbladet 2018; SVT 2018a, 2018b, 2018c).

The third link to education in the national security discourse concerns civil defence. Shortly after the end of the Cold War, Swedish territorial defence was basically deconstructed. This changed in 2015, following Russian aggression in Crimea. The remilitarisation of the Swedish defence policy process (Holmberg 2015), re-introduced total defence planning in 2015. Both public and private actors are involved in the planning, which aims at managing society during situations that demand increased preparedness (Swedish Government 2015b). As part of defence planning, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency entered a number of agreements regarding the role of municipalities in civil defence. Initially, the goal was to increase knowledge of civil defence in municipalities, later the focus turned to developing, planning and preparedness (Civil Contingencies Agency 2018a, 2018b). In 2018, the agency also issued a pamphlet to all households in Sweden regarding individual preparedness in the event of crisis or war (Civil Contingencies Agency 2018c). The details of total defence planning were not in place at the time of the interviews, but schools are likely to get assigned the task of keeping education running as long as possible, during demanding and insecure conditions.

Method and material

This article seeks to analyse teachers’ narratives with respect to security. As argued by Jarvis, it is vital to address ‘[…] non-elite individuals within security research and to treat their understandings and experiences of the (in)security challenges of everyday life as vitally important.’ (Jarvis 2019, 122) Narrative analysis is chosen because it can help capture expressions of meaning and allow us to discover how teachers approach security (compare Muhr and Slok-Andersen 2017). It is important to highlight and examine the stories of both individuals and different collectives as every understanding and experience is important and worthy of attention. Of course, this article does not claim to cover the full range of views on security present among Swedish teachers; there are thousands of teachers in the country. However, through the interviews conducted it is possible to identify common themes and concerns, which are presented in the results section. Continuous research is needed to follow up on, and possibly broaden the results.

In the collection of empirical material, an inductive approach has been employed, and the respondents have been invited to elaborate on their own conceptions of security, crisis management, and risk. In the conclusion, the results are discussed in relation to the parts of the national security discourse in which teachers and schools are supposed to play a role. In this way, a form of comparison is made between the teachers’ views on security and the national security discourse, which enables us to problematise how teachers relate to the national security discourse.

The empirical material consists of 16 interviews with teachers, five of the respondents also worked as principals. The respondents consisted of 11 women and 5 men (there were both men and female respondents among both teachers and principals). The interviews were conducted in May-June 2018 in four elementary schools (children aged 9–15 years), located in two medium-sized municipalities (one outside Stockholm, one in western Sweden), with no previously known encounter with security problems or strategies, as far as the author could identify. Given the aim of capturing everyday views of security, the choice of municipalities lacking pre-conceived vulnerabilities to security problems was deliberate. The author did not want to turn to municipalities framed as particularly problematic, for example with respect to vulnerability to natural disaster or the presence of violent extremism. Another research design, which directs attention at municipalities identified as struggling with particular security problems, might be suitable if the research question targets a more specific issue.

Principals at schools in the selected municipalities were contacted with information about the purpose of the project, and once they accepted participation, interested teachers volunteered. The respondents were informed of the purpose of the project and received the interview guide before the interview (for the full interview guide, see Appendix A). All interviews were recorded and transcribed. The participants were also informed that their identities would not be published, they were offered to inspect the interview transcripts for errors of interpretation and they were informed that they could at any time choose to withdraw from participation.

The interview consisted of three themes: security and crisis, profession, organisation and leadership, as well as risk and risk management. Respondents had some time to prepare, as they received the interview guide beforehand, but most respondents seemed to have come to the interview quite unprepared. The interviews were half-structured around these themes and questions, as the aim was to collect the respondents’ views and experiences without more interference than necessary. However, it is clear from the interview transcripts that some respondents expected the interviewer to search for or represent certain conceptions of the concepts discussed, possibly because of the institutional affiliation of the interviewer. When this came up, the interviewer invited the respondents to disregard any expectations that they might feel, and instead give expression to their own views. Importantly, however, the respondents choose to hold on to their own interpretations of security, crisis and risk in the discussion that followed.

Three research questions guided the subsequent analysis: How do teachers approach and reflect upon the concept of security? What referent objects do they identify? What are the threats to these referent objects? First, the content of the interviews were divided into main elements that seemed to answer the questions. Second, the citations linked to each question were grouped. Within these groups themes, or narratives were identified. These are presented in the results section, accompanied by representative citations. In all, the answers and the narratives allow for an analysis of how teachers reflect upon and approach security, and if and how they view themselves as security actors.

This method diverges somewhat from the one usually pursued in narrative analysis, which focuses very much on a specific event (Robertson 2012). In the interviews, the respondents were asked to recall events, but they also talked much about their general work situation and approach to the themes discussed. The narrative analysis, thus, becomes a little less event-driven and more focused on stories of everyday routines. However, Czarniawska (2004) writes about collecting stories from interview transcripts in a way that is similar to this approach. By talking about views of concepts, events and work in general, narratives can be constructed in relation to the research questions.

The presentation of the result is not referring to the individual interviews. The respondents are not viewed as particular experts in special areas, but rather the data is treated as a collection of stories in which it is not useful to single out particular individuals. Thus, the interviews represent a snapshot of Swedish teachers’ views of security. This is also a way of protecting the respondents from unnecessary exposure.

Results: teachers’ views of security and their relationship to the (national) security field

In this section, the analysis of the empirical material is presented and structured according to the research questions.

How do teachers approach and reflect upon the concept of security?

Most respondents recognise that their schools have a ‘crisis-management plan’ and fire exercises. The plan is brought up at gatherings once or twice a year. Besides this, a theme in many of the interviews is that the respondents claim not to think about security in their daily work. One respondent explains, ‘I think that we do not think about it [security], actually. I guess that you are so caught up in the day-to-day work somehow. […]’. Some respondents say that they read about security problems in schools in the newspapers, but they do not relate these to their own work and daily situation. As one respondent highlights ‘[…] that is not here, that happens over there […]’. These sentiments can be seen as an expression of views that signals that the teacher deals with other tasks in his or her daily work, and do not care much about the security field.

Other respondents do relate to the security concept and to thinking about it. Such thinking could materialise as ‘for instance, just to count all the children and see to it that everyone is on board […]’. Among those who associate the concept of security with day-to-day situations, the presence of the concept of security is recognised but shaped in a non-national context. Instead, it is related to the local context involving care and concern for the children, rather than national security.

One teacher claims that security, crisis, and risk is something that is discussed a lot and that all schools take these things seriously. Some respondents refer to increased awareness regarding risk and security. They place this in relation to different contexts, such as their experiences with pupils that arrived during the immigration crisis and that have experienced war trauma. The focus on the day-to-day security of pupils is seen by many respondents as a concern that has increased in the last decade. Still, a few respondents do not recognise changes, but relate the shift in focus to different geographical settings.

When asked to reflect upon how teachers as a group talk about topics related to security, the answers are divided in a similar way. Some claim that there is limited discussion about security issues, whereas others recognise that there have been discussions. Those who recognise that discussions take place say that the topics relate to actual events that have taken place – in Sweden or elsewhere. School violence is a theme that is present in the discussion, and the only theme that is connected to the national security discourse in relation to schools.

“How would one react, how would we do –physically – here? Where could you lock yourself in securely, I mean, we have glass windows – it is very easy to get into a classroom here. We have shelters [old, Cold War style] in the basement, but there would not be room for everyone. How would we act? These are the things we have discussed.”

The citation above relates to a teacher that reflects upon the occurrence of school violence. There are also examples of respondents embracing the security field through discussions about events in other schools. Teachers claim to discuss amongst themselves how to approach the children if something like the attack in Trollhättan occurs. The threat is recognised and discussed, but due to the views teachers hold of their own profession, the threat is not allowed to change the social structure of teachers work or the physical appearance of the school. Some respondents state – with reference to Trollhättan – that they feel that security should be a bigger issue in their workplace (from this it is understood not to be a dominant issue today). Others claim that school violence does not relate to their own workplace, and that discussions do not consider the question of something similar occurring in their work context.

Several of the respondents – in particular principals – point to perceived dilemmas in relation to making traditional security concerns more present in schools. The first dilemma concerns the focus of school employees.

“I imagine that if we become too focused upon security and crisis management, then we lose something. If we see dangers everywhere it becomes easy to make this your focus in the day-to-day work, and then you might lose what is most important. That is, how we encounter people and how we are [towards each other].”

Above, the role of teachers as educators is emphasised – a professional role that may be threatened by letting a focus on security and crisis-management influence day-to-day work. The two positions identified by Elwick and Jerome (2019) are clearly balanced against each other in the citation.

The other perceived dilemma concern the focus of the pupils in schools.

“ … as we have a concept called evacuation then maybe we need something called accommodation […] if it comes some idiot with a big sword or something like that, what do we do? This calls for ‘accommodation’ instead. We have talked about this. […] it is difficult, because you do not want to create worry among the pupils either.”

The respondents seem united that there should be no exercises in ‘accommodation’. This would be too frightening for the pupils.¹ This reasoning is interpreted as an implicit weighing of risks versus benefits of conducting this type of exercise, where the risk is considered too low to worry pupils. Teachers appear to try to maintain the core values of the teaching occupation – where the care and development of the pupil are considered the overarching priorities.

What referent objects do the teachers identify?

The majority of teachers think about security in a day-to-day context. The pupils are the referent objects of security, and security considerations regard how to protect the pupils – for instance by tracking who picks them up from school. Others view security as avoiding risks – a gymnastics teacher thinks about the number of adults that are needed in order to safely conduct swimming classes.

Girls are seen as particularly vulnerable, in particular girls in the context of an honour culture where male relatives have opinions about their way of life. The respondents also point to gender differences when it comes to risks.

“ … boys may be more at risk of violence and girls may be more at risk of sexual harassment and that is something that has been highlighted recently and that has escalated I would say. At the same time, you should not forget about the boys that may encounter these situations, sexual harassment, they may disguise it more than the girls do.”

Everyday practices in order to enhance security for the pupils relate to schoolwork, not national security. Teachers talk about and adopt strategies for preventing security situations to emerge and escalate. These consist of remaining calm, try to lower tensions and build trust among the pupils (see also Alvinius 2019). It is thus clear that the referent object is the pupil as an individual rather than the state. As a result, the teachers’ practices focus on day-to-day performances rather than images of large-scale crisis and national security discourses.

However, teachers’ relationship to security appears to be complex and paradoxical. When asked about whether a principal sees themselves as a security actor, the answer is

“In my present role as manager, yes, absolutely. As a teacher you are [a security actor], but you do not have the education in your portfolio. And I think that we are still … it is us who are outside at the breaks, I mean teachers, and … It will be these that first encounter an external threat.”

The question – who is a security actor – is answered in relation to a traditional view of security that does not fully correspond to the narratives found in the above analysis. Possibly, this relates to traditional conceptions of agency in relation to security. The citation indicates that the thinking around security may not be entirely coherent. This could be a consequence of the ambiguous relationship between the teachers’ occupation and the concept. As teachers are not allowed to confront the social order of their work, it becomes difficult for them to consider themselves security actors.

None of the respondents refers to the security field in a way that frames the state as the referent object. Although some briefly refer to instances of the security contexts referred to above (countering violent extremism, school violence and civil defence), the focus is clearly elsewhere. One respondent related the discussion to the pamphlet issued to Swedish households by the Civil Contingencies Agency the month of the interview. The teacher reflects upon the recommendation to keep food kits at home and concludes that if this is necessary at home, it should be recommended to schools and organised centrally within the municipalities. This is the only mentioning of this national security discourse (related to civil defence) in the interview material. The mentioning of this discourse could be interpreted as identifying the school and its pupils and personnel as the reference object to be protected by preparedness measures.

What are the threats to the referent objects?

Teachers largely view external individuals as a threat to security in schools. These individuals can be more or less closely associated with the pupils and the school. Most respondents highlight the need for surveillance of the school area (conducted by teachers) in order to hinder intruders and unauthorised people. This has become established as a daily activity that is present both inside and outside (in the schoolyard). The responsibility of this task affects all adults in school. External individuals are assumed to be potential threats to both pupils and school personnel (here we may note a slight extension of the referent objects of security as compared to the discussion above). In this context, it is clear that security concerns are embraced by teachers and schools – it is more or less taken for granted that surveillance of the school area is part of the teacher’s everyday work. Still, the step from this everyday practice to imagining school violence on a large scale is far. School violence appears to be a concern that is present at the margins of the social order in schools.

One typical example in the context of threats is the narrative that pictures parents as threats to both pupils and teachers.

“one day when I was running between two classes […] there was a dad standing and yelling at another teacher and threatening … well … . he had many threats […] he has spent many years in jail, he is the world’s kindest man, but if he gets angry … yes, then he punches.”

In addition, conflicts over custody can be a source of such ‘threats’. Here the schools receive an (informal) role in upholding custody restrictions against one of the parents.

Pupils can also be identified as a threat to other pupils and teachers. This is a common narrative with many illustrations. The citation below refers to an incident that had been ‘trending’, called city baton. This refers to a pupil buying a cucumber and use this for hitting a teacher or pupil in the head – while other pupils record a video of the event.

“We had one of these ‘city batons’ not so long ago where a teacher received a cucumber in the head. This may seem like a little thing, but still, it affects the mood and in particular the teacher concerned, which do not feel safe. It is perhaps not something that makes all of us feel unsafe, but you start to think about how ideas spread.”

School shootings are not a common phenomenon in Sweden, but the occurrence of such events in other countries affect some teachers that start to think about pupils that fail, and what they may do as a consequence of this. There is also an example of a pupil at one of the schools visited that had recorded threats directed towards the school on video and published them on the internet. When referring to this incident, the respondent who mentioned it emphasised the efforts made in re-introducing the pupil to the school afterwards, trying to make him feel as good as possible in the difficult situation.

Overall, the answers provided to the third research question – which consider whom or what is the threat – sustains the image that emerged in the previous sections. Teachers imagine threats related to the day-to-day environment of the school. Threats span from antagonistic, un-known, external strangers with the purpose of inflicting indiscriminate harm – to known pupils at the school itself. However, the pupils are not pictured as potential terrorists with a political, extremist or religious agenda – but rather as confused pupils in need of support. The respondents do not once at their own initiative mention their role in the context of the national counter-terrorism strategy. In between the antagonistic stranger and the pupil are parents and gangs from other schools that may enter the school premises and inflict harm. In this latter case, the target is thought to be a particular pupil or teacher that has a connection to the perpetrator. These threat perceptions correspond to the narratives regarding security that have been analysed. The perceptions do not connect to the national security discourse except in the case of school violence. However, this threat perception concerning school violence is – it is implied – the most unlikely to occur.

Conclusion

Previous research led us to expect that teachers might contest or embrace national security discourses, in particular those that give them a role in counter-terrorism. In the Swedish context studied, the most striking result is that teachers do not relate very much at all to the themes of the national security discourse; at least not counter-terrorism and civil defence. However, they are concerned about school violence. Although the picture is not entirely homogenous, they do talk about security. The conclusion is that teachers’ views of security in relation to schools are largely disconnected from the national security discourse.

Most apparent is the silencing of the national security concept that frame centralised connections between security and education. Teachers are found to embrace individual, human security conceptualisations at the local level. This goes through all the research questions analysed. This finding is in line with the focus on education and the transformative power of learning, as noted in previous research (Elwick and Jerome 2019). Taking a stand in this is a way for teachers to reassert the autonomy of the profession. Teachers are well aware of the efforts to extend the security field to their domain, but they largely refrain from adopting the national security discourses in their reasoning. Given the institutional differences in regulations of security tasks (compared to the UK) and the institutional conflict that has taken place at the strategic level concerning these tasks, this avenue is available to teachers in the Swedish context.

The treatment of the problem of school violence as a potential threat is the only part of the national security discourse that is considered by the teachers. The narrative of school violence is clearly present in the material, although the teacher’s understandings of their profession do not permit it to alter the social order in fundamental ways. This is due to the materialisation of a clear dilemma: the risk of a threat to security is considered too low to be allowed to create a feeling of hostility and unsafety among pupils at the school.

Despite the disconnect from central parts of the Swedish national security discourse, teachers talk security. Indeed, the respondents show a high degree of awareness, initiative, and critical reflection in relation to the concept. However, some of the discussions suggest that there are paradoxes and complexity in the teachers’ relation to agency in security. They do not contest agency in relation to security as such, but claim that they do not have the education necessary to be security actors. At the same time, respondents argue that the tools pursued in creating a secure environment are related to the traditional work of teachers. Some dissonance may be noted here, and it should be recognised that there are ambiguities in the material – in particular regarding the relationship to security as a concept.

It could be argued that it is difficult to analyse Swedish teachers as a single audience. There are so many, that one should rather speak of teacher audiences. This article has collected individual narratives, there are very few references to the collective occupational group. Still, common threads are noted in the reflections of these individuals, which constitute small collectives at the local level. The analysis of teachers’ narratives regarding the extension of the security field to their domain shows very clearly that the extension of the security field – from the national security discourse to the local level, involving new security actors – is a complex endeavour indeed. This article shows that the extension of security to new fields and actors cannot be taken for granted, and that the reactions of audiences may be diverse.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Aida Alvinius, Jennifer Hobbins and Charlotte Wagnsson for helpful comments on previous versions of the manuscript. Thanks also to Özer Özkan who provided excellent help with the research overview, to Miranda Holmberg for research assistance and to Malin Karlsson who helped with language editing.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arita Holmberg

Arita Holmberg (Ph.D., Stockholm University, Sweden) is associate professor and senior lecturer in political science at the Department for Security, Strategy and Leadership at the Swedish Defence University. Her current research concern social and political challenges for the military organization, teachers as new security actors and children, security and climate change. Her recent articles appear in journals such as Defence Studies, Childhood and Gender Work & Organization.

Notes

1. Here it could be noted that since the conduct of the interviews, there have been media reports of ‘accommodation’ exercises in Swedish schools.

2. The interview guide refers to a larger project, involving several researchers, than covered in this article. Not all aspects of the questions are relevant for the analysis conducted here.

Appendix A.

Interview guide.²

Table

How do these concepts relate to your work? Do you think about these issues in your everyday work? Why/why not? How? Do you act with this in mind? How do you conceive of the concepts security and crisis? Security and Crisis Your own experiences? Describe an event. How do you manage security-related events and crises? What expectations do you feel upon you? Is there a difference for men and women? What responsibility do you have in your role? Are there dilemmas in relation to these concepts? How do you and your colleagues speak about security and crisis?

What do you think about the teacher profession’s relationship to security, risk and crisis? What opportunities and challenges are there? Is it possible to learn how to manage security, risk and crisis? What plans and exercises are there, and in what ways do you collaborate with other actors? Do you get any education in managing security, risk and crisis? Profession, Organization and Leadership What experiences are there within the organisation? Do leadership matter? How is knowledge transferred in these situations? Do you think that teacher’s experiences differ from other profession’s? How do you think that this work should be organised? Have you been in a threatening situation, and if so, how was it managed? Do you as teachers get any education in managing risks? What? How do you perceive of the recent incidents with violence in schools, both in Sweden and abroad? Have they affected your view of risk as a teacher? Do you work with riskmanagement at your workplace? Specific areas? Risk and risk-management How does you contact with the pupils look like? Do you feel that they confide in you? Do you have an action plan for how to act in relation to specific students? Do you talk about risk management among colleagues? In what way? Have you experienced any differences in understanding of risk in these discussions, for instance based on gender?