In this article, we present a comparative research project on municipal school policy in Sweden 1950Á2010 which in our view contributes to the research fields of education policy and curriculum theory. Our project which started in 2014 links to a line of international research on education policy concerned with the tensions between decentralisation and globalisation and comparative research investigating transnational transfers of education policy ideas. In this article, we provide some preliminary findings which display municipal school policy dealing with national and transnational school initiatives and affecting local school actions. Most of the findings in this article concern the time period 1950Á1975, during which the present two Swedish school forms, Grundskolan (a 9-year comprehensive school) and Gymnasieskolan (upper secondary school), were introduced and established. We compare local policy, through six interrelated indicators, in two municipalities with different structures and origins. On the basis of our findings, we conclude that municipal school policy research in a comparative and historical perspective is an important field of research as it reveals the complexity of school governance. Historical studies of municipal school policy and practice are crucial for exploring different dimensions of curriculum theory, including the transnational dimension.
A third level of educational research is emerging, in addition to original research and secondary‐level reviews. Whereas most third‐level research syntheses focus on rather restricted topical areas, this study introduces a comparative and integrative overview of prominent second‐order research on teaching, including many different types of reviews and aspects of teaching. The purpose of the study is to illuminate patterns in a second‐order research topography in the widespread and multi‐faceted field of research on teaching from 1980 to the present, in order to discuss its implications for research and review‐making. The overview encompasses 75 most‐cited reviews of research on teaching published in international, refereed journals from 1980 to 2018 in the Web of Science. The overview utilised a specific coding procedure covering methodology, review topics and context. The study shows that several research traditions have contributed to advances in the research on teaching over time. Reviews have become more formalised, but the distribution of different types of review formats and research traditions is relatively constant. The single most established review format is meta‐analysis, but it is less dominant than might be expected in an era of evidence‐based education. The reviewers mainly belong to educational psychology, applied linguistics/research on language teaching, or research on science teaching. Whereas most reviews of research on science teaching are qualitative, reviews performed by psychologists and language‐education researchers are mainly quantitative or based on mixed methods as a way to rationally and cumulatively summarise and downsize unmanageable amounts of research.
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the importance of compilations of research being both systematic and reflective. The general point about the importance of reflection is illustrated by describing how a specific approach to compiling research, SMART (Systematic Mapping and Analysis of Research Topographies), has been used. SMART is based on a pragmatic perspective. This entails an openness to different scientific research traditions. The pragmatic starting point also means that compilations of research are linked to questions about how society and democracy can be developed. In this article, we describe how the approach has been used to compile research on 1) inclusion and 2) teaching, respectively. Finally, the article discusses 1) the importance of compilations of research being both systematic and reflective 2) the question of how we should understand the increasing number of research reviews in the field of education science and 3) implications of the reasoning in the article for policy and practice.
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