21^st century schools find themselves in a complex and conflicting nexus of both emerging and eroding expectations, traditions and realities. Processes of economization and globalization have altered the conditions for education policy and practice, and new and high expectations have been placed on the shoulders of educators (Blossing, Imsen & Moos, 2014; Imsen, Blossing & Moss, 2017; Rönnström, 2015). Efforts has been made to clarify goals, set standards, boost outcomes and to make clear the roles and tasks of professionals. This global tendency is part of the new public management movement, and it is primarily about reducing gaps between expectation and performance in public schools by replicating private sector models and practices (Hood, 1995; Rönnström, 2015). Consequently, 21^st century schools have been grappling with their ability to meet new expectations, embody goal-orientation, effectiveness, quality, equity and improving outcomes.

At the same time schools are also expected to address gaps and pressing societal problems related to poverty, health, inclusion, citizenship, equality, working life and even planetary survival. Schools are growing in complexity and they express difficulties with regard to the many trying tasks they are assigned. Under such demanding conditions, policymakers and scholars have suggested it wise to identify problems, share experience and find ways or solutions in collaboration (SOU 2018:19; Stoll, 2009; Handford and Leitwood, 2019). Stakeholders, who share common concerns and represent relevant experience and knowledge, are asked to come together, set priorities and work in concert in order to deal with challenging tasks that no party can manage on their own.

This pilot study focuses on collaborative partnerships between stakeholders in Sweden dealing with pressing problems in education. The Swedish Government reform project Collaboration for Better Schools (CBS) started in 2015 (The Government remit U2015/3357/S, 2015-06-04) closely related to an alarming OECD (2015) review. The review concluded that the Swedish school system was in need of a nationwide commitment for school improvement. The purpose of the CBS is toimprove outcomes and increase equity in Swedish schools, and specifically to target schools deemed to be facing difficulties with school improvement on their own. In January 2021, more than 500 schools and pre-schools are subject to the CBS. Thousands of people from the National Agency of Education (NAE), universities, local education authorities (LEA) and schools are now engaged in collaborative school improvement.

We can discern an optimistic orientation towards collaborative partnerships in recent policy and research (SOU 2018:19) and we claim that there is ground for more critical studies of collaborative practices with a healthy distance from the ideals and expectations stimulating such practices. Stakeholders are not only coming together as problem solving individuals; rather, they represent different organizations and interests, they are molded by different traditions and they are influenced by the agendas and logic of the institutions to which they belong. In this study, we approach collaborative partnerships informed by sociocultural theory, and more specifically activity theory (Engeström, 2009) since it enables us to move beyond many widespread (economic) assumptions of collaboration and to pay scientific attention to sociocultural dimensions of collaborative partnerships.

The aim of this paper is to develop knowledge of the CBS as a case of collaborative partnership. Departing from recent developments within activity theory (Engeström and Sannino, 2020), we critically examine collaborative practices and how different parties describe and appropriate their work. Our research questions are:

1) What characterizes the intentions and actions of different parties in the CBS?

2) What artefacts are used by different parties in the CBS and how do they enable or disable collaboration?

3) How do belonginess to different activity systems influence collaboration in the CBS?

The purpose of this paper is to develop knowledge of the CBS as a case of collaborative partnership aimed at school improvement. In order to frame fertilely this pilot study and to make it possible to answer our research questions, we need a theory that analyses collaboration historically, organizationally and with a focus on intention and actions. We want to frame the research in such a way that it enables us to recognize the importance of practices and how different structures, artefacts, contexts, loyalties and frameworks intermesh and interact behind the backs of and through the acts of the parties involved, that is, representatives from schools, LEA’s, universities and the NAE. We turned to CHAT (cultural-historical activity theory) since it makes it possible to frame research with a practice orientation and a socio-cultural awareness, and with a healthy dis-tance to well-intended ideals of collaboration. In short, CHAT constitutes a theoretical framework suitable for analysing relationships between parties involved, actions performed, artefacts used and activity systems entangled in different practices, and to what extent and in what ways the parties involved orient themselves toward shared objects or not, or to what extent practices stimulate ruptures, tensions or expansive learning. In this pilot study, we sampled 4 different LEA’s chosen for the CBS by the NAE, but dealing with different kinds of problems and involving different universities in the collaborative work. For each LEA involved we have collected a number of documents and artefacts produced by the parties involved in the course of the collaborative work from the start in 2016 to the end of the collaboration in 2019. The data consists of inspection reports, formal agreements, evaluation reports, field notes, school analysis documentation, improvement plans and memorandums when needed, but also assumptions of governance and school improvement policy and flowcharts developed by the NAE. The data used in the paper was also produced by the different parties in the collaborative partnership in different phases of the three-year long process. The data was primarily analysed within the framework of CHAT and the three research questions elaborated above.

The preliminary findings are as follow, and they will be further developed in the full paper. Firstly, the CBS departs from an ideal and a design of collaboration in which the parties are expected to play quite prearranged roles in the collaboration process. The expected roles are mainly drawn from school regulations, visions of a stable chain of governance, and school improvement policies and flowcharts developed by the NAE. However, the data reflecting actual collaborative practices show how the parties have different and divergent views of one another and of their own work, intentions and actions. The realization of collaborative partnership seems to be far more complex compared to assumptions central to the CBS. Some essential assumptions regarding the importance of working together towards shared objects are in many cases undermined by quite ordinary conditions and facets of collaborative practice. Secondly, the collaborative partnerships established are supposed to be essentially dialogical and reciprocal. However, one party, the NAE, is responsible for designing the overall work in the CBS and the artefacts used by all other parties in critical phases of the CBS. This procedural dominant power seems to be a two-edged sword. On the one hand, the design and the artefacts enable collaboration and guides vital processes in the CBS work, but, on the other hand, the procedural power of the NAE can also disable adequate collaboration depending on how the artefacts and procedures are used by the different parties, including representatives from the NAE. Thirdly, a socio-culturally informed view of improvement oriented collaborative partnerships can offer insights into the nature of the CBS, and by adopting such a view it is possible to avoid some unfounded hopes of collaboration that seem to disable well-intended hard work with a potential of making difference in schools that need it the most.

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