A Stakeholder Analysis of the Development of a Large-Scale Professional Development Program

Ola Helenius

doi:10.1163/26670127-01010009

Abstract

Abstract The development of a large-scale professional development project for Swedish mathematics teachers is retrospectively examined. By referring to documentation produced by stakeholders in the development process, the stakeholder’s design recommendations and underlying assumptions on teacher development are described. Seeing the development as a co-determination process explains how research-based principles appearing early in the process gradually change to become something different in the end, without the reasons for this shift ever being explicitly discussed in stakeholders’ documentations. It is discussed whether the distributed way of constructing the program might cause difficulties in sticking to an explicit theory of change. The impact sheet to this article can be accessed at 10.6084/m9.figshare.16610113.

Highlights

Sweden was the first country to stipulate by law that education must be research-based (Bergmark & Hansson, 2021)
I examine the development of a Swedish national-scale professional development (PD)
Helenius program for mathematics teachers entitled Boost for Mathematics1 (BfM). This case is interesting from an implementation perspective because of the multitude of stakeholders involved in the development of the PD

Summary

Introduction

Sweden was the first country to stipulate by law that education must be research-based (Bergmark & Hansson, 2021). It is not a far-fetched idea that professional development programs should be research-based, when initiated by the government. Helenius program for mathematics teachers entitled Boost for Mathematics (BfM). This case is interesting from an implementation perspective because of the multitude of stakeholders involved in the development of the PD. In simple cases of implementing educational innovations, the only professional stakeholder groups might be researchers and teachers.

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion