The purpose of this study is to contribute insights into strategic work in an educational reform context. Empirical data were collected from four cases in Norway, where the national educational authority recently initiated a renewal of the national curriculum for primary and secondary education. The theory of strategy as practice was the…

During the last decade, the notion of norm-critique has had an impact on Swedish educational policymaking, including the gender-equality mission of the Swedish preschool. The aim is to better understand and problematize the relationship between gender equality, as formal curricular content, and norm-critique, as informal curricular content, in…

In this article I investigate how corporate Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) providers negotiate their position by contributing to a national ECEC policy development process. I discuss how their political engagement connects to changes in the institutional arrangements of the ECEC sector. The ECEC provider corporations' written responses…

During the last decade, the Swedish School-age Educare has been the object of multiple government-enforced reform initiatives in order to clarify its purpose and increase educational quality and equivalence. In 2019, a teacher certification reform was imposed on the educational programme, concretizing responsibilities between categories of staff…

In Norway, the national curriculum together with the Education Act serves as the foundation for teaching and learning in primary and secondary education and training. Local educational providers are given autonomy to develop local adaptations of the centrally given subject-specific curriculum competence aims. This article explores some structural…

Universal access to early childhood education and care (ECEC) has become a policy goal in many countries. In comparing and categorising national ECEC systems, Finnish ECEC has been presented as an example of a universal system. However, as municipalities are responsible for the provision of ECEC services in Finland, it is important to examine how…

In this paper, we theorize on local school governance through a multi-method case study of a large-sized Swedish municipality by drawing on neo-institutional theory. In light of a changing governing landscape in Sweden in terms of a 're-centralization', new conditions between the state, the local education authorities (LEA) and the schools have…

In 2012 the Danish Parliament passed legislation mandating that 96% of all students in compulsory public education attend regular classes. This target generally led to severe strains within local education authorities in Denmark. Civil servants, school principals, and teachers experienced inclusive education as a challenge rather than as an…

During recent years, we have seen an increase in the complexity of school leadership as knowledge work. The new forms of knowledge available to school leadership, such as performance data and survey-based data, raise the expectation that leaders make relevant use of these knowledge resources. Theory and policy claim that new knowledge is of…