The aim of the study is to analyse the first teacher arrangement between principals and first teachers in Sweden. The theoretical perspective used is the distinction responsibility between accountability.

Public administration is a complex phenomenon characterized by a diverse interaction between different actors and institutions. This is the case within the educational system and schools, where, amongst others, politicians and public officials on different levels (international, national, and subnational), private companies, principals, teachers, and students act in order to gain and maintain influence. The political steering of the educational system and schools is best described as somewhere between traditional government (top-down or vertical) and regulatory governance (interactive); different actors and institutions exercise political power over the field. The complexity within the educational system and schools is only partly reduced when considering only official government regulations and the implementation of them by public officials such as teachers, our area of focus on in this study. Thompson (1980) formulates the complexity as ‘the problem with many hands’:  

"Because many different officials contribute in many ways to decisions and policies of government, it is difficult even in principle to identify who is morally responsible for political outcomes. This is what we call the problem with many hands". (Thompson, 1980, p. 905)  

Public officials like teachers, do, of course, always act within the intersection of being governed by formal and informal political regulations, such as laws and norms, and autonomy (Alvehus et. al., 2021; Bengtsson et. al. 2018; Högdin & Urbas, 2021). In the Swedish political framework, this is manifested by the idea of ‘trust-based steering’ (Bringselius, 2017) meaning a focus on, amongst others, trust, citizen-orientation, collaboration, delegation and openness within the political and legal framework (Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, 2022).  

The characteristics of the Swedish public administration raises, in accordance with Thompson’s description of the problem with many hands, and, what Bovens (2007) calls the problem with many eyes – i.e., to whom is account rendered to? the question of both responsibility and accountability. Responsibility is moral and future-oriented, meaning that an actor should act in order to achieve positive outcomes or at least avoid negative ones. Accountability is social and backward-looking, implying expectations that someone’s actions will be evaluated by somebody else, and that the evaluation will be followed by sanctions or rewards (Hall & Ferris, 2011). Accordingly, accountability requires that X is appointed a certain task by Y, that Y knows whether the performance of X is satisfactory, which means that some sort of evaluation, follow-up or scrutiny of the performance, and that Y can enforce positive or negative consequences on X (cf. Ahlbäck Öberg, 2018). 

The aim of the study is to explore the first teacher arrangement between principals and first teachers in the light of responsibility and accountability. It is based on assignment descriptions for 172 first teachers all working in the same municipality in Sweden. Given that the first teachers individually and explicitly are appointed certain tasks and expected to achieve specific goals in the assignment descriptions, the question to be answered the study: How is evaluation of first teachers’ performance, and the possible consequences of that evaluation, handled in assignment descriptions? 

The point of departure in this study is that a governance arrangement needs both some sort of evaluation, and the possibility for consequences based on that evaluation to qualify as an accountability (backward-looking) arrangement (cf. Bovens, 2007). An arrangement that consists of, amongst other things, tasks and goals but lacks the characteristics of accountability is an arrangement that fulfils the criteria of responsibility, i.e., moral, open and forward-looking (without evaluations and possible consequences).

The data analysed in this study contains of 172 assignment descriptions for first teachers from one Swedish municipality with a population of approximately 150, 000 inhabitants located in south Sweden. Four questions structured the analysis: 1. To what extent do the assignment descriptions contain an explicit evaluation or follow-up of the first teacher’s performance? 2. What kind of evaluation or follow-up do the assignment descriptions contain? 3. To what extent do the assignment descriptions contain a the possibility for consequences or sanctions? 4. What kind of possible consequences or sanctions do the assignment descriptions contain? Related to the questions, an assessment of expressed thoughts about evaluations and consequences in the assignment descriptions were made, i.e., if whether such thoughts existed, as well as if whether they were relevant in content and of reasonable quality. Moreover, the identified expressions were qualitatively categorized. In total, the analysis consisted of an in-depth qualitative and quantitative analyses of the assignment descriptions using the theoretical perspective of responsibility and accountability as a lens. We have translated the quotes that are used to illustrate the content of the assignment descriptions.

The result of the analyses of first teachers’ assignment descriptions is unambiguous. The arrangement as a contract is characterized by responsibility, rather than by accountability. Firstly, the assignment descriptions do, not include any discussion of positive or negative consequences related to the performance of first teachers. Secondly, the question of evaluation is touched upon in a majority of the assignment descriptions; however, the content is scarce and consists either of only a mention of the word evaluation in the template or of a couple of words and phrases that do not describe the evaluation at all or in a clear manner. Differently expressed, it does not seem as if evaluation and its possible consequences has been at the forefront when the assignment descriptions were discussed and finalized. It is rather the opposite; the question of evaluation and its possible consequences is quite carelessly treated in a majority of the assignment descriptions.

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