Global processes are reshaping the educational systems of the Western world. Higher standards, benchmarkings and ranking lists bear witness of increasing competition (Resnik 2008). The relationship between teacher quality and student achievement is a common argument in international reports (see Barber & Mourshed 2007; Natale et al. 2013). Another aspect is that expert organisations exert a growing influence and play an important part in legitimating transnational curriculum governance and policy-making aimed at raising standards and increasing school achievements through measurement and external accountability (Ingersoll 2011; Nordin & Sundberg 2014).

Transnational trends effect national educational policy. Ideas and values on the society/ideological level influence and shape the curriculum level and in the end trickle down to district and school levels with the classroom context and the teaching (Wahlström 2009; Sundberg & Wahlström 2012). In this case Sweden is no exception (Adolfsson 2013; Englund 2012). A very recent example that I will present in this paper is an extensive reform called the career services for teachers reform (CST), launched by the government in 2013 (Skolverket 2013). It is unprecedented in the history of educational politics in Sweden and was part of a larger ”package” of restructuring the national curricula and school system. What makes this reform particularly interesting is that it has introduced and formalised "first-teachers" as a new category involved with school improvement without any thorough consideration or analysis of implications for the management of schools, development processes and professional relations. Furthermore, the municipalities have been given relatively free hands to design the roles of the first-teachers.

My paper explores and analyses the implementation and impact of the CST reform in a local and municipal context with focus on school improvement and the relationships between actors on different levels in the school organisation. Since the reform is new – and in fact still in the process of being rolled out – my work is largely exploratory where I seek to answer two main questions:

• In what ways does the implementation of the reform influence and shape the structure and organisation of school improvement? On what levels do the first-teachers operate and what does this mean for the professional relationships within the organisation?
• What is the impact on the direction and content of school improvement through the introduction of first-teachers? Which issues, areas, qualities and content-related aspects are at the heart of their work?

The theoretical framework that will be used for the analysis consists of Lauren B. Resnick's (2010) concept of ”nested learning systems” and Lee Shulman & Judith Shulman's (2004) frame for conceptualising teacher learning and development with four different kinds of ”capital” as resources for school reform and improvement: moral capital, curricular capital, technical/instructional capital and venture capital. Shulman & Shulman’s (2004) framework highlights the content-related and qualitative aspects of school improvement, providing a perspective on directional strategies, principles and values but foremost allows a discussion of what forms of capital first-teachers primarily are concerned with. Resnick's (2010) model of the three intermediating layers in the school organisation – district, school and teaching level – where reforms are transferred, translated and negotiated – is helpful for charting the structure and organisation of school improvement as well as relationships and communication between different actors. On each level there are nested sub-systems – e.g. teams of teachers, the classroom, the school management team – and due to various contexts, interests and relations, these systems use different strategies and make meaning out of policy in their particular way (Resnick 2010). 

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