School is maybe the institution that concerns the most part of the residents in a community. However, during the last decades has the conditions of governance of school changed and with that also its relation to families in the nearby area. Sweden, like many other post-industrial countries, has adjusted to a neo-liberal policy where the welfare system is governed by the influence of new public management (Beach and Sernhede 2011). This development has also affected education, creating what has been described as a quasi-market. This marketization has opened up schools for a wide range of private companies selling their services and to non-Government organizations offering/selling their service. Those organization claims to sell school improvements offering schools ways of accommodating themselves to the different kind demands, often presenting themselves in terms of commitments to the public good (Lunneblad et al 2017). This marks a clear shift from a public bureaucracy discourse to a market discourse, expressed through concepts such as ‘calming the customers’, ‘being inventory’ and ‘quality’ (Ball 2007).

In this project, I plan to follow the process of establishing a community school through ethnographic fieldwork. Research questions are; what kinds of needs among students, parents, and families in the community are identified? How are the “solutions” to these needs negotiated and employed?

In question of design, I planning to use a selective intermittent time mode, approximate plan to spend a year in the field. The frequency is depending on selecting of particular relevant events, as meetings when the concept of community schools are discussed as well as day to day school activities, but also more informal meetings as lunches and coffee breaks with the employees. According Jeffrey and Troman (2003) this type of research process is open to scrutinize different events during fieldwork, using respondents' interpretations and respondent discussion and conversation as part of the analytic processes. However ethnographic data do not speak for itself, nor can it be presented through abstract theoretical categories (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007). Taking this approach, the ethnographic material is analyzed in relation to the theoretical concepts, with the aim of producing a concrete sense of the social as internally sprung and dialectically produced (Willis and Trondman 2000, 395). Once in the field, we plan to engage concepts and theories indicated by our findings. Our approach to the application of theories and concepts embraced the logic espoused by Willis (2000, xi; see also Willis and Trondman 2000 ). First step is to use broad ethnographic techniques to generate observational data from real life, recorded with inputs from subjects themselves and with sufficient finesse that able to register something of the employee’s practices and concerns. Second step is then to bring our findings in to contact with outside concepts, inspirationally chosen.

The school-community partnership has become a market where different actors can offer their services to the district of Southfield. As a result, the activities that are undertaken within the school-community partnership are not always based on the challenges that have been defined. Instead, the choice of activities has become governed by the services being offered by different stakeholders.

Ball, S. J. (2007). Education plc: Understanding private sector participation in public sector education. Routledge. Beach, D., & Sernhede, O. (2011). From learning to labour to learning for marginality: school segregation and marginalization in Swedish suburbs. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 32(2), 257-274. Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography: Principles in practice. Routledge. Jeffrey*, B., & Troman, G. (2004). Time for ethnography. British educational research journal, 30(4), 535-548. Lunneblad, J., Odenbring, Y., & Hellman, A. (2017). A strong commitment: conforming a school identity at one compulsory faith school in a disadvantaged area. Ethnography and Education, 12(1), 112-126. Willis, P. 2000. The Ethnographic Imagination. Cambridge: Polity. Willis, P., and M. Trondman. 2000. “Manifesto for Ethnography.” Ethnography 1 (1): 5–16.