Pupil Responsibility in the Context of School Changes in Sweden: Market Constraints on State Policies for a Creative Education

Abstract

Sweden's present school curricula emphasise personal flexibility, creativity, responsibility for learning and suggest new understandings of quality in learning, where individual freedom of choice is meant to help produce creative, motivated, alert, inquiring, self-governing and flexible users and developers of knowledge. These curriculum changes relate to similar changes in the relationships between the state, professional agencies and market interests in education planning and delivery. In this article I discuss these new developments and their effects from the perspective of different students in school. The article is based on ethnographic studies and student interviews that suggest that whilst rituals that previously indoctrinated individuals into submissive behaviour in school, through the mechanical memorisation of other's facts, have been replaced by outwardly self-monitored activities and self-determined learning, some things remain the same. Students are still graded, separated and characterised by teachers in terms of being weak or superior products and students adopt these labels in their self-understanding. Furthermore, the curriculum that is meant to stimulate creativity and inclusiveness dampens creativity and positive involvement for many students.