Research topic/aim: 

By examining how Local Education Authority (LEA) officials interpret and implement systematic quality work (SQW), this study contributes to research by illuminating the sensemaking processes through which national policies are incorporated into daily SQW practices. Drawing on sense-making and organization theory (Czarniawska, 2004, 2006; Weick, 1995), the present study aims to adhere to the existing body of research on LEA quality work, by focusing on how LEA officials, as intermediators within the local organization of quality management, try to make sense of the quality system when constructing and executing SQW.

Theoretical framework: 

Our conceptualization of SQW is grounded in the theory of sensemaking (Weick, 1995; Weick et al., 2005), which frames SQW as a continuous process of action embedded within social contexts and collective structures, where actors share time, space, and meaning-making practices. As Czarniawska (2006) argues, such actions are inherently interconnected and situated within specific organizational settings. Theoretically, this study also draws on Czarniawska’s (2004) concept of story-telling in organizations. With inspiration from Weick (1995) and Czarniawska (2004; 2006), we understand SQW as an ongoing enactment – something that LEA officials, together with principals and other school actors, actively engage in to make sense of in trying to respond to the question “What is going on?”

 Methodology/research design: 

The study is based on a three-year investigation conducted from 2020 to 2023 across five Swedish municipalities, drawing upon data from semi-structured interviews with 16 LEA officials (e.g. quality and development managers, operations controllers, municipal lecturers), participant observations at SQW meetings (n=7), and analyses of internal policy documents from each of the five LEAs.  

Expected results/findings: 

Sensemaking takes place in the complex, ambiguous and uncertain situations under which LEA officials operate when attempting to translate the national SQW policies into meaningful, everyday organizational practice. As these policies are broad, visionary and lack direct relevance to specific, practical contexts, LEA officials face challenges in enacting them meaningfully – making the sensemaking process particularly difficult (cf. Weick, 1995; Weick et al., 2005). Grounded in Weick’s sensemaking theory, the research identifies three primary processes by which LEA officials are making sense of national SQW policies: professional sensemaking of SQW in an ambiguous environment; sensemaking as adapting to prevailing societal norms and values; and sensemaking as reducing complexity of SQW. 

Relevance to Nordic educational research:

By focusing on how LEA officials make sense of the quality system when constructing and executing SQW, this study contributes to Nordic educational research by highlighting sense-making processes through which national policies are translated into daily practices. We herewith supplement existing research, focusing on the intermediate role LEA officials have in relation to other school actors, and by theoretically showing the significant role sense-making plays in conducting SQW in educational organizations. 

This study aims to understand and analyse the complex performativity involved when local education authority (LEA) officials implement systematic quality work (SQW). The article is based on a 3-year co-operative study with LEA officials in five Swedish municipalities, including observations of local SQW in action, interviews with LEA officials, and analyses of SQW documentation. Inspired by Goffman, we understand LEAs’ SQW as a performance conducted frontstage and negotiated backstage. We did discern four different and partially overlapping roles that LEA officials were engaged in frontstage: as experts, colleagues, guardians, and directors of SQW. Backstage, the LEA officials shared critical reflections and negotiations concerning their frustration, self-critique and feelings of disillusion related to SQW. While the SQW as a governing system continues to be produced and reproduced, LEA officials also continue to struggle to find proper measures for identified problems.

While research on pedagogical leadership usually starts from an ideal idea of what this form of leadership might be, or from governing documents, in this article we add to the understanding of how preschool principals themselves comprehend, practice, and develop their pedagogical leadership. This is done, firstly, by recounting and problematizing how principals position themselves vis-à-vis their organization and employees; secondly, by generating metaphors to capture the essence of preschool principals’ own understanding, enactment, and progress of their pedagogical leadership. The study is based on 78 texts written by preschool principals, texts that each explicitly or implicitly relate to four crucial parts of the principal's assignment, with special focus on the pedagogical leadership: the principal's 1) image of the ideal leadership, 2) interpretation of the pedagogical leadership assignment, 3) individual leadership practices, and 4) leadership development. The texts analysis is followed by a metaphorical approach, where metaphors are established and then used to develop the understanding of preschool principals’ pedagogical leadership. We argue that five metaphors can represent the principals’ understanding, enactment, and progress of their pedagogical leadership: firstly, in four subordinate metaphors – sing-along leader, conductor, dissonance, and jam session – secondly, in an over-arching metaphorical concept: the ensemble.

Over the last 20 years systematic quality work has become the main tool for developing Swedish schools (Håkansson & Adolfson, 2022). According to the Education Act (2010:800), quality work – at the local educational authority level as well as in the schools themselves – should be conducted in a systematic and continuous way, with respect to planning, follow-up, analyses, and actions taken to develop education. By continuous assessments and evaluations, the goal of the systematic quality work is to identify and address issues that need improvement for students to achieve the educational goals (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2012a). A review of the literature reveals the problematic aspects of evaluation practices and quality management, such as the risk to focus on what is measurable rather than what is desirable as well as the diverse definitions of quality (Lundström, 2015). However, what the local quality systems consist of, how they have been designed, and what practices and perceptions of quality they entail is less understood.

Previous research has primarily focused on individual schools’ quality work (Håkansson, 2013; Jarl, et al., 2017) , while less attention has been paid to the way the local educational authorities conduct systematic quality work. Thus, the aim of this study is to fill this knowledge gap by investigating how the ideas of systematic quality work in the Swedish Education Act's requirements are interpreted, translated, and materialized at the local education authority level.

The following research questions will guide our study:

1. How do local educational authorities interpret and translate the systematic quality work regulations and requirements in the Education Act?

2. How do these interpretations och translations materialize in the local quality work practices?

Theoretically we approach the phenomena of systematic quality management within the Swedish school sector from an organizing (Czarniawska, 2014) and practice-oriented perspective (Gherardi, 2019; Nicolini, 2009; 2012). These theoretical perspectives provide us a framework to analyse how the institutionalized ideas (as mental images that are well spread within the society) of systematic quality management - through authorities, policies, regulations, and quality models - are translated and materialized (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996) into the local quality work organization and practices. The latter refers to the practices of doing and saying something related to the ideas of systematic quality management in different social contexts and time (Gherardi, 2019; Nicolini, 2009; 2012). Although the national guidelines involve the entire school system, these are interpreted, translated, and materialized by actors operating in a local context, which means that quality is understood in different ways and that the systematic quality work is conducted in different ways. An organizational perspective also includes aspects related to the tensions that arise when different interests and logics collide (for example between political, administrative, and professional interests and logics; see Czarniawska, 2014).

Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn this project five Swedish municipalities have participated in a study of what systematic quality work means at a local education authority level and what practices materialize from the national regulations. At the heart of the study is the recognition that quality systems are locally designed to meet the national requirements, thereby allowing diverse interpretations and translations to occur.

The local education authorities can be understood as mediators, partly between state and municipal control, partly between needs and agendas at different levels in the chain of command. This understanding also characterizes the design of the study. The empirical data has been collected through three complementary methods: document studies, observations, and interviews. The document studies consist of analysing different central documents, e.g., quality reports, provided by the local education authorities covering the past two years. We have also observed meetings related to the systematic quality work (so called “quality-dialogues”). Besides the local education authorities, the key actors in these meetings were the principals, assistant principals, and teacher representatives of the school being followed up. 

The interviews were conducted with key persons in five different local Swedish education authorities individually by the authors. The duration of the interviews was approximately one hour, and they were conducted either face-to-face, via Zoom, or telephone. The interviews were based on an interview guide including questions about the participants’ role, their experiences, and activities in relation to the systematic quality work, the expected and actual effects, as well as challenges and potential for improvement of systematic quality work. The interviews were recorded with informed consent and were later transcribed verbatim.

All the research material described above is now gathered and will be analysed during the Spring 2023. As a tool for data analyses, we will apply Bacchi´s (2012) method “What is the problem represented to be?”.

Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsEqual education for all is includes three fundamental aspects: equal access to education, equal quality of education and the compensatory nature of education (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2012b). All students should receive an equivalent education, regardless of the area they live in, the socio-economic conditions they come from, or their functional variations. But study after study shows that Swedish students' schooling is not equal, and that who you are and where you live play a decisive role in the quality of the education you receive. Many of the last decade's school policy reforms and targeted initiatives have had as their overarching goal to address this lack of equality, so far with few concrete results. In order to break this trend, there has been an increasing focus on the local educational authorities’ responsibility for the individual school's shortcomings, quality, and development. Furthermore, lack of equality is a problem within rather than between different local educational authorities. Although there is paucity of research, the limited results show that schools are often isolated with their problems and that there is a lack of supportive structures and a functional systematic quality work (Jarl, et al., 2017; Swedish Schools Inspectorate, 2021).

The paper will present results from the ongoing study, results that we believe will have relevance both in the Swedish, Nordic and in a wider European context. Through our investigation we will contribute knowledge regarding how the National Educational Act's requirements for systematic quality work are interpreted, translated, and materialized at the local level, and how this in turn shapes, promotes or hinders the quality work of individual schools.