Reconsidering school politics: educational controversies in Sweden

Abstract

School politics in Sweden has recently moved in a conservative direction, emphasising the importance of conventional school subjects, stronger teacher authority and more discipline in the classroom. At the same time, consensus on the utility of such measures is lacking in the school debate. The conservative approach is often criticised as misleading and behind the times in relation to contemporary knowledge demands. This article examines and discusses the relevance of this critique. The main argument is that the conservative approach has a better matching with a previous phase in the history of Swedish school politics and that conventional schooling is difficult to combine with two of the major goals of schooling today À the diffusion of democracy and multipurpose skills. From this perspective, the political notion of schooling seems decoupled from the broader domain of public demands on education. To alleviate this problem school politics should draw less on the pedagogical ideas of essentialism and more on the historical legacy of progressivism in the Swedish education system.

An Exploration of School Organization Metaphors and Their Contribution to School Change

“…The advantages of the community metaphor include professional development, sharing and exchanging information, emotional bonding, and community of life, setting multiple goals, establishing a learning community with diverse educational tasks and practices, and providing adequate support (Philpott & Oates, 2017). Only by using these advantages can principals strengthen the achievement of school goals, stimulate departmental leadership, strengthen the professional operations of the learning community, promote the professional growth of teachers, and ensure that professional learning can meet the needs of multipurpose practices (Carpenter, 2017;Fredholm, 2017). Furthermore, the above measures taken by principals can also promote teachers' practical momentum for new tasks so as to achieve concrete results.…”

“…Senior teachers, due to vanity, may even aggressively dominate the direction and content of professional learning despite their outdated knowledge, which may delay or distort the professional growth of other teachers. Therefore, the principal should strengthen mutual confrontation, promote the maintenance of balance, encourage mutual supplementary growth, and insist on the mutual stimulation to use of political metaphors to encourage stakeholders, including principals, administrative staff, teachers, and parents, to participate actively in the distribution of benefits, as well as to reflect on the suitability of multiple goals while gathering public opinion (Fredholm, 2017). This both establishes mutually acceptable goals (McGann, 2018) and promotes the legitimacy of subject matter related to school change (Filippakou, 2017).…”

Converging cultures? A comparative analysis of South Korea and Sweden’s national curricula, 1980–2018

“…Similarly, Imsen [28] underline that the Nordic model went from social democracy via progressivism to neoliberalism. Fredholm [23] stresses a conservative response to progressive and horisontal teacher-student relations associated with decreased discipline which have occurred during a period of deepened neoliberalisation since the 1990s. These changes have paved the way for a hybrid model of centralisation and de-centralisation of the Swedish education system [11].…”

“…Regarding curricular texts it is important to underline the normative character of such discourses as they are the result of parliamentary decision-making processes and current pedagogical trends and ideals [23,40]. Because education policy documents partly reflect the current state of the national culture, the authors stress that it is pertinent to discern themes (patterns) which may demonstrate convergence (i.e., homogenisation), divergence [77], or hybridisation (i.e., merging of Western/global ideas with local or regional features, such as Korean nationalism and moral education) [7].…”

Converging cultures? A comparative analysis of South Korea and Sweden’s national curricula, 1980–2018

“…Regarding curricular texts it is important to underline the normative character of such discourses as they result of parliamentary decision-making processes and current pedagogical trends and ideals (Lappalainen & Lahelma, 2016;Fredholm, 2017). Because education policy documents partly re ect the current state of the national culture, the authors stress that it is pertinent to discern themes (patterns) which may demonstrate convergence (i.e., homogenisation), divergence (Wahlström, 2016), or hybridisation (i.e., merging of Western/global ideas with local or regional features, such as Korean nationalism and moral education) (Boman, 2021).…”