Principals in Sweden are responsible for improving their schools in line with the ideas in the national education act. This paper focuses principals´ possibilities to do so. Both Swedish and international research argue that it is hard for principals to motivate, initiate and lead school improvement. Principals are often constrained by both local politicians (Nihlfors & Johansson, 2013) and teachers (Fullan, 2007; Hallerström, 2006; Leo, 2010).

One suggested way for principals to be able to overcome the challenges mentioned above has been to come together for collaborative reflections and to support each other (Leo, 2010; Senge, 1995). Dialogue has been suggested as a strategy to learn from each other and learn together (Hord, 2004; Stoll et al., 2006; Tiller, 1999). Anyhow, important questions are how principals´ practices in improvement work are formed and why it might be hard for principals to do what they are expected to do according to policy documents.

The research questions presented in this paper are how principals´ practices in an improvement work are formed and how the practices that are formed affect principals´ possibilities to work with planned change. The study took its departure from principals working with an improvement work concerning enterprise education. One question in educational systems in European countries, including Sweden, is how to develop young people´s entrepreneurial skills to prepare them for life. Enterprise education is emphasized in the policy documents for Swedish schools and principals are responsible to initiate and implement the ideas about enterprise education.

The study rests on Kemmis´ and Grootenboer´s (2008) definition on practice and on their theory of practice architectures. According to Kemmis and Grootenboer a practice is formed by sayings, doings and relatings. Sayings, doings and relatings that hang together are called a project. A project is what a practice is aiming for. Furthermore practices have individual as well as extra-individual features. These extra-individual features, cultural-discursive, material-economic and social-political arrangements, shape and constrain the practice. So how a practice turns out is dependent on cultural-discursive, material-economical and socio-political arrangements. To understand and to be able to change a practice these extra-individual features has to be taken into consideration.

Analyses of the projects in the principals´ improvement work show what situations principals are trying to uphold and what dilemmas they are trying to solve in their practice. Analyses o the arrangements show why some projects overshadow other projects.

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