This study is a part of the Swedish research and improvement project “The best regional school system in the world, 2013-2015”.The partners in the project are Mid Sweden University, the main companies in the two regions in the middle part of Sweden, and three schools (one 1 -9, one 1-5 and one upper secondary school).The main goals for the project are to raise student results, develop the leadership, both the principal leadership and the teacher leadership and finally to develop the schools internal capacities for school improvement. Focus in this abstract is on the internal improvement capacities; collaboration forms, staff development and leadership, that in previous research are found to be important for principals and teachers, as a collective, within a certain school context, if they are to perform well, in order to create readiness for improvement, as well as to handle and lead the improvement  process (Björkman, 2008).The aim of this study is to capture, analyse and compare the principals´ and teachers´ views of the three internal improvement capacities in the three schools, in the beginning and at the end of the three year project. The research questions, captured by individual interviews,  to both principals and teachers are: How is your school managed? How do you collaborate in your school? How do you work with staff development in your school? The principal´s and teacher´s  views of the internal improvement capacities, are used as the unit for analysis to capture different modalities in order to understand, compare and communicate what is decided (the school  structure), and the realization of the decisions (the school culture). Views are here understood as overlapping principles for how we interpret and evaluate the world (Zetterström, 1988). The principal´s and the teacher´s views are analysed in the same model, developed for analysis, using the theoretical concepts of structure and culture, referring to the work of Bernstein (2000). Structure refers to the division of labour in a school. That is the power to decide about the internal improvement capacities, and where it is positioned and exercised in the school. The culture refers in this case to the distribution of work in a school. This is the modes of control about the internal improvement capacities and at what position in the school system. The structure and culture of a school can be described, theoretically, through four different positions of understanding in a local school system: the political and administrative position, the principal position, the teaching team position and the position of the individual teacher (Björkman, 2008). Next step for me, as a researcher, is to try to find the answers to what is the critical structural unit in the individual interview, and where is that critical structural unit positioned, in relation to the three internal capacities for school improvement in each school. The question of how the critical structural unit in the interview is realized, and where this realization takes place, is dealt with in the same way. Different combinations of the structure and culture of collaboration forms, staff development and leadership are then considered as qualitatively precise view types of the principals and teachers views on the three internal capacities for school improvement (Björkman, 2008, p.61).

Bernstein, B. (2000). Pedagogy, Symbolic control and identity – Theory, Research, Critique. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefields Publishers. Björkman, C. (2008). Internal Capacities for School Improvement – Principals´ views in Swedish Secondary Schools. (Doctoral thesis, Umeå University). Zetterström, B.O. (1988). Samhället som föreställning: om studerandes ideologiska formning I fyra högskoleutbildningar. [Society as a notion – On the ideological shaping of students in educational programmes of four different fields of higher education]. (Doctoral thesis, Umeå University).