Juridification of Swedish education – changing conditions for teachers’ professional work

• In this chapter, we take interest in a specific part of the extensive changes that have been made in the governance of Swedish education during the last two decades: the increase of legal regulations. This increase is a sign of what in earlier research is called juridification, which may lead to a variety of tensions that we currently know too little about. More specifically, the aim of this chapter is to study how juridification of education conditions teachers’ work on the knowledge and values expressed in national policy documents. The empirical material consists of Swedish national education policy texts produced from the early 1990s and onwards. Methodologically, we make use of two theoretical concepts that position teachers’ assignments and possible actions in different ways: management of placement and management of expectation. The results demonstrate that the increase of a juridical language clearly condition teachers’ professional work. In the worst case, the legal concepts may result in more instrumental relationships where teachers focus on their role as assessors and monitors. At the same time, it depends on how the legal concepts are interpreted and enacted by school staff. Here, there is a need of further studies on how different emphasises and combinations of a juridical vocabulary and a pedagogical vocabulary condition the relationships that are formed in local school practices.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

Keyword

juridification

education

knowledge

value

teacher

professional work

Education

Pedagogik

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)