Attempts to raise educational standards and to improve opportunities for all children to learn have accelerated and proliferated, over the last 20 years in many countries so also in Sweden.  International test results, for example PISA, make the politicians and policymakers look for a changes in education in order to meet challenges in their educational system. Evaluations and inspections have unintended and undesirable consequences for teaching practice. This has generated an unrelenting flood of change, initiatives and reforms which need to be implemented in the schools. A lot of attention has been given to evaluating to what degree policies are actually realized in practice; i.e implemented. Less attention has been paid to understanding how schools actually deal with these multiple, and sometimes contradictory, policy demands in the process of interpreting the texts. In other words; how they are enacted (Ball, Maguire, Braun, 2011).

Less attention has also been given to teachers’ understanding of policy text and policy demand. This paper will address the tension which appears when exploring the transformation of national policy text into practice. What will happen when teachers interpret and develop an understanding of what the policy text means in relation to their own experience and knowledge? The aim of this study is to explore the transformation of policy text into teachers’ practice as plans and routines, as expressed in teachers’ organized conversations. Apple (2011) identifies a lack of connection with the realities of schools and classrooms in educational critical studies, calling for a more thorough connection to the every day life of educators and pupils. This study’s intention is to focus on this act of balance and place this tension in the middle of the analysis. It is important to identify the mediating position which teachers hold between policy and practice in order to understand what teaching entails under increasing influence of assessment, standards and testing etc, in schools. 

The study takes its theoretical point of departure in relational curriculum theory and in Englund’s (1986)  curriculum theory research where policy documents and education policy texts are problematized as interpretable compromise texts. The study will also lean on Ricoeur.’s works (Ricoeur, 2007). It is argued that his discussion of the concept of practical reason can be used to depict teaching as existing in a field of tension between the regulatory and reflective dimensions of the practice. (Kristensson Uggla, 1994, Ricoeur, 2007). 

References: Apple, M. W. (2011) Democratic Education in Neoliberal and Neoconservative Times. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 21(1), 21-31. Ball, S.J, Maguire, M, Braun, A. (2011), How schools do policy, Policy enactments in secondary schools, England; Routledge. Coburn, S. E,. (2001). Collective Sensemaking about Reading: How Teachers Mediate Reading Policy in Their Professional Communities. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis; Vol. 23, No. 2 pp 145-170. Cohen, D., & Ball, D. L. (1990). Relation Between Policy and Practice: A Commentary. Educat-ional Evaluation and Policy Analysis; 12, 331-338. Englund, T. (1986). Curriculum as a Political Problem.Changing Educational Conceptions, with Special Reference to Citizenship Education. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Kristensson Uggla, B. (1994). Kommunikation På Bristningsgränsen : en studie i Paul Ricœurs pro-jekt [Communication at the Bursting Point: The Philosophical Project of Paul Ricœur]. Diss. Lund University. Stockholm/Stehag. Ricœur, P. (2007a) Explanation and Understanding. In P. Ricœur, K. Blamey and J. B. Thompson (Eds.), From Text to Action: essays in hermeneutics II (London: Continuum), 121-139. Ricœur, P. (2007c) Practical Reason. In P. Ricœur, K. Blamey and J. B. Thompson (Eds.), From Text to Action: essays in hermeneutics II (London: Continuum), 184-203.