Development and Change in Swedish Municipal Adult Education: Occupational Life History Studies and Four Genealogies of Context

Abstract

This article is based on the author's dissertation work on development and change in Swedish municipal adult education (MAE), investigated through occupational life history studies of four teachers in different municipalities who have worked in MAE since the mid 1970s. Three periods of development – three ‘eras’ – in MAE have been identified in terms of its relationship to the state, comprising two restructuring shifts: (1) from centralization to decentralization in the early 1990s, and (2) the establishment of quasi-marketization of adult education in the late 1990s, with a variety of adult education providers, municipal boards and procurement processes. Comprehensive analysis of the four teacher trajectories and their genealogies of context has been carried out relating to the three eras, and concepts on mechanisms for institutional isomorphism have been used for analysis on why and how the different MAE organizations that the four teachers work in have developed in similar or homogenous ways. In the article, tensions and contestation in development and change in the local context are made explicit, and are analysed and provide the basis for problematizing late national reformation and restructuring efforts.