This study is a part of the Swedish research and development project “The best regional school system in the world, 2013-2015”.The partners in the project were Mid Sweden University, three main companies in two regions in the middle part of Sweden and three schools (one grade 1 -5, one grade 1-9 and one upper secondary school). Each school was connected to one company during the project period. The overall goals for the project were to raise student results and to develop the schools internal capacities for school development; collaboration forms, staff development and leadership (both the principal leadership and the teacher leadership). These internal capacities for school development, has in previous research been 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 development, as well as to handle and lead the development  process in their specific school context (Björkman, 2008).

Focus in this study was on one of the internal development capacities; Internal and external collaboration forms. The aim of this study was to capture, analyse and compare the principals´ and teachers´ views of the internal and external collaboration forms in the three schools, at the beginning and at the end of the three year project. The research question, captured by individual interviews, with both principals and teachers in the three schools was: How do you collaborate in your school and with the world outside the school house? The principal´s and teacher´s  views of their internal and external collaboration forms, were used as the unit for analysis to capture different modalities in order to understand, compare and communicate what was decided (the school  structure), and the realization of the decisions (the school culture). Views were here understood as overlapping principles for how we interpret and evaluate the world (Zetterström, 1988). The principal´s and the teacher´s views were 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, in this study the internal and external collaboration forms in the school, 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 and external collaboration forms in the school 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, was 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 internal and external collaboration forms in each school. The question of how the critical structural unit in the interview was realized, and where this realization takes place, was dealt with in the same way. Different combinations of the structure and culture of internal and external collaboration forms were then considered as qualitatively precise view types of the principals and teachers views on internal and external collaboration forms (Björkman, 2008).

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).