National-authority-endorsed privatisation of teachers’ continuing professional development in Sweden

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article reveals national-authority-endorsed privatisation of teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) in the wake of a shift towards more centralised national interventions in Swedish schools. Drawing on data from the Collaboration for Best School (CBS) initiative, the context of the article is a recent state programme that encourages underperforming schools to collaborate with the Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE) to raise students’ achievement standards and thereby increase equality within and between schools. Guided by meta-governance theory, our analysis revealed that SNAE operates as a meta-governor on behalf of the state to replace university researchers as CPD providers with specific private-sector actors. The results provide evidence of SNAE-enabled substitution processes through three network governance strategies: 1) hidden and authorised substitution, 2) trust building and hybrid participation, and 3) collective reproduction and solutionism. Taken together, these governance strategies reflect national-authority-endorsed privatisation in action, suggesting that SNAE primarily operates as an ideology-driven conduit for private economic interests. The article concludes with a call for new collaborative and autonomous implementation strategies for teachers’ CPD that can further the interests of the teaching profession.