Educational Reforms In Sweden Research Articles

Neoliberalisation and educational reforms: impacts on teachers in a single school context

ABSTRACT Similar to many countries in the Western world, educational reforms in Sweden have dramatically changed the educational system in the last few decades. The two reforms that we address in this paper concern “The Career Services for Teachers Reform” and “Teachers Salary Boost” which were implemented at the national level in Sweden in 2013 and 2017, respectively. In this ethnographic study we focus on the design features of these two contemporary reforms and how they impact on both the social and educational life of teachers and school leaders at a secondary high school. However, this change in organisational logic was not only a major digression from the academic tradition and its traditional character of “merit before birth”. Due to design features within these reforms, the door to nepotism, real or imagined, was now wide open. Moreover, in the same way as these reforms represent something new to Swedish education, and to the teaching profession in particular, it is just one more step on a road already mapped out via the ongoing neo-liberalisation of society at large.

Unity lost. Negotiating the ancient roots of Pedagogy in Sweden, 1865–1971

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to investigate attempts to safeguard classical humanism in secondary schools by appealing to a cultural-historical link with Antiquity, voiced in the face of educational reforms in Sweden between 1865 and 1971.Design/methodology/approachBy focusing on the content of the pedagogical journal Pedagogisk Tidskrift, the article highlights a number of examples of how an ancient historical lineage was evoked and how historical knowledge was mobilized and contested in various ways.FindingsThe article argues that the enduring negotiation over the educational need to maintain a strong link with the ancient past was strained due to increasing scholarly specialization and thus entangled in competing views on reform and what was deemed “traditional” or “modern”.Originality/valueFrom a larger perspective, the conflict over the role of Antiquity in Swedish secondary schools reveals a trajectory for the history of education as part of and later apart from a general history of the humanities. Classical history originally served as a common past from which Swedish culture and education developed, but later lost this integrating function within the burgeoning discipline of Pedagogy. The findings demonstrate the value of bringing the newly (re)formed history of humanities and history of education closer together.

Policy of suspiciousness –mobilization of educational reforms in Sweden

ABSTRACT In this article, we explore the processes of transfer and translation of education policy in a study focusing on the relationship between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Sweden. The purpose of the study is to investigate how selective borrowing occurs both in terms of references to different types of knowledge sources underpinning the arguments and shared discourse formations. The data were obtained from two policy reports: an OECD review report of the Swedish school system and a Swedish follow-up report proposing actual school reforms. The method was twofold: first, mapping, categorizing, and counting all the textual references in the two documents; second, critically analyzing the discourses emerging in the two policy texts. The results show that international references play a significant role in substantiating arguments for Swedish education policy. Both policy texts share a policy discourse characterized by suspiciousness toward the professionalism exercised by teachers and local education authorities.

Does more general education reduce the risk of future unemployment? Evidence from an expansion of vocational upper secondary education

This paper investigates whether acquiring more general education reduces the risk of future unemployment. I study an educational reform in Sweden which prolonged the vocational programs in upper secondary school and gave them a considerably larger general content. The research design exploits variation across regions and over time in the implementation of a large-scale pilot which preceded the reform. I examine the students’ labor market experiences during the 2008−2010 recession, at which time they had reached their late 30s. I find no evidence that having attended a longer and more general program reduced the risk of experiencing unemployment. Among students with low GPAs from compulsory school, attending a pilot program seems instead to have led to an increased risk of unemployment. This pattern is strongest among male students and the effect is likely to be explained by the increased dropout rate which resulted from the change of the programs.

Causes of educational segregation in Sweden – school choice or residential segregation

ABSTRACTThe aims of the study were to examine changes in school segregation across different types of municipalities between 1998 and 2011 in Sweden, and to explore the extent to which these changes are the consequences of school choice. Multilevel models were applied to register data using a counterfactual approach. The results showed that school segregation with respect to migration background and educational achievement had increased over time, while social segregation remained rather constant. The degree of school segregation varied largely across different municipality types, and it was concluded that school choice was a determinant of school segregation. The findings have strong policy implications and are discussed in relation to the recent educational reforms in Sweden.

Religious diversity in the neoliberal welfare state: Secularity and the ethos of egalitarianism in Sweden

Sociologists interested in religious change and state–church relations have, by and large, ignored how regimes of religious diversity and secularism interact with factors that are seemingly external to religious dynamics such as cultural notions of the welfare state and its neoliberal restructuring. This article fills this lacuna by exploring the social dynamics around secularity and religious diversity as they emerge in contestations around educational reforms in Sweden. The authors show that the language of ‘consumer choice’ that pervades discourses around public service provision in many late capitalist societies coalesces with human rights driven legal demands for greater religious freedom in justifying religious pluralism in education. These arguments, though, run up against Swedish understandings of egalitarianism as chiefly implemented through unified schools that are widely, but especially in governmental bureaucracies, viewed as a Swedish ‘tradition’. Theoretically, the article develops and builds the concept of ‘Multiple Secularities’.

The Swedish Superintendent in the Policy Stream

During the last several decades, educational reform in Sweden has been at once contentious, fast paced, and uneven as control of Parliament and educational policy shifted between left- and right-wing political factions. These political power shifts within Parliament created tension between national and local municipal governments and provoked reactions by educators and local school boards. Passage of the Education Act of 2010 turned emphasis to improving educational quality and academic quality, which had a significant impact on how schools were governed, structured and administered, and required superintendents to navigate through a complex system of national control and municipal support functions.

Education policy and early fertility: Lessons from an expansion of upper secondary schooling

This paper studies the effects of education policy on early fertility. We study a major educational reform in Sweden in which vocational tracks in upper secondary school were prolonged from two to three years and the curricula were made more academic. Our identification strategy takes advantage of cross-regional and cross-time variation in the implementation of a pilot scheme preceding the reform in which several municipalities evaluated the new policy. The empirical analysis draws on rich population micro data. We find that women who enrolled in the new programs were significantly less likely to give birth early in life. There is however, no statistically significant effect on men's fertility decisions. Our results suggest that the social benefits of changes in education policy may extend beyond those usually claimed.

Re‐Forming the School: Taking Swedish Lessons

In the context of government decentralisation and integration of services, over the last 15 years Sweden has been developing an all‐day school based on inter‐professional teamworking and adopting a holistic approach to working with children. The article describes these recent educational reforms in Sweden, which have sought to re‐structure the school and develop new ways of working, offers some evaluative comments on this process and considers possible implications of these reforms for other countries. It compares Swedish school reforms with recent English policy developments intended to make ‘extended schools’ a universal provision by 2010.

The Effect of Education Policy on Crime: An Intergenerational Perspective

The intergenerational transmission of human capital and the extent to which policy interventions can affect it is an issue of importance. Policies are often evaluated on either short term outcomes or just in terms of their effect on individuals directly targeted. If such policies shift outcomes across generations their benefits may be much larger than originally thought. We provide evidence on the intergenerational impact of policy by showing that educational reform in Sweden reduced crime rates of the targeted generation and their children by comparable amounts. We attribute these outcomes to improved family resources and to better parenting.

Förskoleklasslärare som gästarbetare: Gränsmarkeringar via sociala stängningar

The preschool class is an educational programme that has been created through an educational reform in Sweden in the late 1990s. The purpose was to construct a bridge between preschool and primary school, where the two institutions together would create a "new pedagogy". My study of teacher identities in preschool class shows that the teachers are using strategies to mark their differences to other teachers. One strategy is to enhance in-groups and out-groups. These strategies also construct the preschool class as a security zone where the teachers distance themselves from other teachers, in contrast to the educational reform.

Toward an Equal Level of Educational Attainment Between Deaf and Hearing People in Sweden?

Various educational reforms in Sweden have resulted in a formally equivalent educational system for deaf and hearing pupils. Has this resulted in equal levels of educational attainment? This article compares 2,144 people born between 1941 and 1980 who attended a special education program for the deaf and 100,000 randomly chosen individuals from the total population born between 1941 and 1980. Data consist of registered information about the individuals in the year 2005. Results demonstrate that the deaf population has a lower level of educational attainment than the reference population. Women have a higher level of educational attainment than men, and younger people have a higher level than older people in each population. Neither sex, age category, nor immigrant background accounts for the variance in the level of educational attainment between the populations. The educational reforms have not been sufficient to reduce the unequal level of educational attainment between deaf and hearing people.

The Educational Reform in Sweden : Mainly About the Swedish Vocational Education

The Educational Reform in Sweden : Mainly About the Swedish Vocational Education

Strategy and Instruments of Educational Reforms in Sweden

[T]wo of the most typically Swedish reform instruments [are] government-appointed commissions in their role as creators of reform policy, and centralized administrative agencies as the bodies responsible for implementing these reforms.

Educational Reforms in Sweden.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook NotesEducational Reforms in Sweden.Philip G. AltbachPhilip G. Altbach Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Comparative Education Review Volume 26, Number 1Feb., 1982 Sponsored by the Comparative and International Education Society Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/446284 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1982 The Comparative and International Education SocietyPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Educational Reforms in Sweden

Abstract In 1967 the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] completed its first major review of Swedish education at a time when educational expansion was in full swing and when Sweden had already acquired its deserved reputation of being the pioneer in the national planning of education towards egalitarian ends. That review aroused a great deal of interest because of the broad sweep of Sweden's educational reforms and the meticulous planning of administrative structures and monitoring of processes that went into their implementation.

Process and Problems in Educational reform in Sweden

[1] I am particularly indebted to Leon Boucher for discussion of an earlier paper and for this provision of documents which I had not previously obtained.

A Case Study of Higher Educational Reform in Sweden

(1975). A Case Study of Higher Educational Reform in Sweden. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 35-39.