Over the last two decades there has been a general transnational policy trend towards major emphasis on learning outcomes. In Sweden – like in many other countries – there is an on-going discussion about pupils’ academic achievement, not to mention due to Swedish pupils’ low results in different international knowledge comparisons (cf. Ball et al., 2012; Grek, 2009).

During the last years there has also been an extensive discussion on how research can help developing schools in terms of professional development for teachers and principals but also raising students’ achievement. School improvement combining scientific evidence and the proven experience is attracting a wide interest, especially in the international research. There are several attempts from different perspectives addressing questions related to professional learning and development for teachers and principals, school and teacher effectiveness, school improvement, curriculum innovation et cetera (cf. Day et al., 2012).

In Sweden the situation is more modest according to research efforts in the school development field, although there are important and interesting results from collaborations between school researchers and school improvement efforts (cf. Håkansson & Sundberg, 2012; Blossing, 2008).  

The Education Act of 2010 is part of a top-to-bottom curriculum reform in Sweden, which has put further pressure on municipalities and schools to implement new syllabuses, clearer goals and knowledge demands and a new grading system (cf. Utbildningsdepartementet (The Ministry of Education), 2008; 2011). At the same time there is still high expectations and demands on performance improvements and school-based development work. So what does it mean working with school-development under the external pressure? Our previous research shows that there is a differentiated picture appearing when it comes to local actors’ arguments of content areas of curriculum development. Howsoever the strongest arguments were the result and the inspection argument, there are also other motives for choosing specific curriculum areas as a starting point for school-improvement, for example previous development work adjusted to the new curriculum, lack of competencies, signals from the staff et cetera (cf. Sundberg, Håkansson, Adolfsson, 2013)

The starting point for this paper is an on-going three-year research project in six Swedish compulsory schools with the general purpose of exploring and developing theoretical, methodological and practical knowledge for school improvement. A vital question is how local actors (i.e. principals in this case) comprehend the parallel process of local improvement work and external pressure in terms of accountability and performance improvement. As part of this broader aim the purpose of the research presented in this paper is to elucidate principals’ understanding of the school improvement work after one year, in regard to estimated changes/results, chosen strategies and local conditions. The following research questions are addressed in the paper:

• In what way do principal understand school changes related to local conditions and strategies in terms of:

a)     content areas covered on teacher level?

b)    their own leadership and learning?

c)     capacity-building for school development?

The first theoretical starting point in this paper is a “classical” framework of curriculum theory (i.e. the frame-factor theory with its different levels of analysis – the societal/ideological level, the curriculum level and the teaching and classroom level, cf. Lundgren 1989).  In this context we above all use elaborations of the frame-factor theory describing pedagogical processes in terms of frames/conditions – processes – results (c.f. Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2000).  A second theoretical starting point used in this research is aggregated knowledge from the field of school effectiveness and improvement. During the last decades important empirical findings has emerged as well as theoretical models explaining and supporting successful school development and school leadership (cf Fullan, 2001; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012; Hallinger, 2011).

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