A relatively unexplored area within the field of school improvement is if and how entrepreneurship contributes to capacity building for school improvement in schools. The on going research and school improvement project "The world's best regional education system" (2012-2015) aims to increase the goal fulfilment among pupils in the Mid Sweden Region, as well as increase the number of pupils who enrol in university. The project also aims to contribute new knowledge about school leadership at different levels and knowledge on how school improvement possibly is developing the school's results. The project is run within the framework of the partnership between one university, huge companies in the region and three selected schools in Mid Sweden. Each school is connected to one supporting company during the project period. One available focus in the project is to look more deeply into how the participating schools is cooperating with the supporting companies and how the schools perceive the cooperation with the companies from a school improvement perspective. The aim of the study is to describe and analyse if and how entrepreneurship contributes to capacity building for school improvement in three schools. The research questions that frame the study are: does entrepreneurship, in terms of the cooperation between supporting companies and schools, have any impact on school improvement? Can entrepreneurship, in that sense, contribute to capacity building for school improvement in schools? If so, how? What differences and similarities can be seen at school level in terms of cooperation between the supporting companies and schools? Capacity building for school improvement Within the setting of school improvement capacity can be seen as the ability to make it possible for all students to achieve higher standards (Harris, 2002). Effective school improvement involves building the capacity for change and development. This necessitates pressure and support from both external and internal sources (Harris, 2001). School improvement could be seen as a systematic, on-going effort aimed at educational change (van Velzen et al., 1985) and many researchers claim that successful school improvement must be related to the day-to-day life in school with colleagues and owned by those involved in the improvement process (e.g. Bredeson, 2003; Dahlin, 1995; Ekholm, 1989; Fullan, 1993, 2001; Harris, 2002). According to Harris (2002) all successful school improvement involves some form of change and schools needs to manage and implement the change process and a school with internal capacity can take charge of change as it is adaptive (Stoll, 1999). The key influences on internal capacity are threefold according to Stoll (1999): the individual teachers within the school; the school’s social and structural learning context; and the external context. One way of developing capacity from within is to work more between and beyond schools and increase connections with the local community and businesses and other organisations (Stoll, 1999, Hargreaves and Fullan, 1998). Stoll argue, with support from school improvement studies, that schools require external support to become and remain successful and underlines ‘critical friends’ as one aspect that are invaluable to capacity development (p. 522). Harris argues that the single most important factor in leading successful system-level improvement is capacity building (Harris 2011; Harris, 2012). According to Björkmans (2008) analysis of earlier research on effective school improvement and capacity building in school points out three internal improvement capacities that proved to be very important for the school improvement process: internal and external forms of collaboration, staff development and leadership. A conceptual theoretical framework from research of capacity building and school improvement is built and used in the analyses.

The methodology used is a case study design in which aspects of school improvement and capacity building are twined. The argument to choose a case study design is based on that context also is taken into account to create a better understanding of why it is as it gets (Stake, 2006), and that case studies are appropriate to examine what happens here and now (Yin, 2007). As Stake puts it: “The real business of case study is particularization, not generalization” (1995, p. 8). Arguments that speaks for a case study design is that a case study can be defined as a holistic description and analysis of a single entity or phenomenon and case studies as a research strategy based on wanting to explore an area in depth, focusing on how and why (Yin, 2007). In line with Yin (2003; 2007), the logic for running this study as a case lies in its possibilities of revealing something that was previously inaccessible. A weakness of the case study design is the difficulty to draw general conclusions from one single case, however case studies can have general importance (Bryman, 2012; de Vaus, 2001; Stake, 1995; 2006). The collected data is collected over a period of three years (2012-2015) and consists of interviews and several follow up interviews with headmasters, teachers in focus groups and documents concerning the participating schools and the Swedish school system. The interviews were conducted at the beginning, middle and end of the project (in total 9 semi-structured individual interviews and 9 semi-structured group interviews). The interviews were semi-structured and concerned among others areas about: school organizations, distribution of labour and job sharing, priorities concerning the project, how and why the school works with school improvement, how the schools and the companies cooperates, other external cooperation’s between the schools and the surrounding community, relations to other areas of work within the school. A description of the schools and the school contexts is additionally provided in order to create a wider understanding of the study. An analysis matrix is to be developed for the analysis using Björkmans (2008) three internal improvement capacities for school improvement. The empirical data will be analysed using within-case and cross-case analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1994 & Watt Boolsen, 2009).

There are some preliminary tendencies, but as it is still research in progress, I hope to give a more complete picture in the paper at the conference. Implications for further research will be considered. For Nordic educational research this is one essential matter as it can be seen as a contribution to valuable knowledge about key factors for schools work with school improvement and capacity building in a Nordic context.