Description: This paper is about recognition/accredication of prior learning, or 'validation', in Sweden. Validation, in themeaning synonymous to recognition of prior learning, is a central part of the Swedish policy on adultlearning and adult education. Validation is also a matter of new ideas when it comes to what learning andknowledge that 'counts'. The domination of formal education is challenged when validation provides newpossibilities of valuing learning and knowledge from informal and non-formal learning contexts.In the paper I analyse the current Swedish policy concerning validation, and its historical background. Thefigures of thought expressed in official policy texts are traced in and compared to what is expressed in the(discursive) practice of local policy and development initiatives. The objective of the analysis is to see howthe policy in official texts is reproduced and transformed on the local level. The analysis starts from theFoucauldian concept of 'governmentality', and validation is seen as a technique of governing adulteducation, adult learning and the adult learner.A policy ethnographic approach has been used before in the analysis of (Swedish) adult education (see, forexample, Beach and Carlson, 2004), but not in the analysis of the specific phenomenon 'validation'. Thedevelopment of validation of vocational competence in Sweden has been described by Andersson et al.(2004), and validation as a technique of fabricating the adult learner in Swedish adult education policy hasbeen analysed by Andersson and Fejes (2005). Generally, the idea of validation is under-theorised in currenteducational research, but there are attempts made to re-theorise validation, or recognition of prior learning(see, for example, Andersson and Harris, 2006). Methodology: The data used in the analysis are partly official documents, partly texts produced in an ethnographic study ofthe development of validation in a Swedish municipality. The ethnographic approach means that interviewsand observations are made, and different documents are collected. All this material is used in the analysis. Conclusions: The analysis will show how the national policy is governing the local policy and practice concerningvalidation. The national policy could be seen as a technique of indirect governing, in accordance with thegovernmentality that, from a Foucauldian perspective, is signifying the advanced liberal society. Thus theresults will show how the indirect governing results in both reproduction and transformation of the nationalpolicy. Some figures of thought are reproduced, some are transformed, and some are not present on the locallevel.