In the mid 19th century Europe, an increased belief in a democratic, equal education for all was ground for extensive educational reforms. In the Nordic countries, the Welfare model, with ideological as well as pedagogical interconnections to parliamentary democracy, shaped the development of the Nordic school systems (Ydesen & Buchardt, 2020). The overall purposes of education within these systems were to offer equal education, free-of-charge for all, as well as to form a welfare state mentality within the population. The main idea was that this uniform and free education for all children, regardless of background and social conditions, would lead to equality, justice and social cohesion (Arnesen & Lundahl, 2006). With the implementation of the nine year compulsory and comprehensive school, enhetsskolan, the Swedish school system brought about a school-for-all, where all children entered the same school form, where no ability - or intellectually based differentiation were to take place until after the fourth or fifth grade, and then only in terms of second language choice. Many European countries implemented early educational choices and concentration, and well as early grades. In Sweden, it was argued that a later point for differentiation would benefit the students, specifically the ‘less pronounced academic talents’. It is thus a common understanding that in Sweden, as well as in other Nordic countries, educational differentiation took place relatively late in a school child’s life (cf. Tveit & Lundahl, 2022). 

We suggest, however, that comprehensive methods for early differentiation of students were used already at the time of school entry. Testing for school readiness was a pronounced form of sorting, which took place in most Swedish municipalities between 1946 and 1975. These tests were motivated as help for the individual child, and as means to identify the right time to start school and to receive educational content. At the same time, there was a widespread ambiguity concerning the concept of school readiness, with different connotations and uses, on national as well as international levels (Ljungblad, 1965; Winter & Kelley, 2008). We here try to understand precisely how the ambiguities of the concept can be seen as a prerequisite for the implementation of the tests. We argue that the concept of school readiness, and the political debates and decisions behind the tests, can be understood as a way to reframe early differentiation to work better with the overall political ambition of the comprehensive school reform.

In order to better understand processes of educational reforms, and in particular the seemingly contradictory positions concerning sensitive topics like diversity and differentiation, we will look at various motives, arguments and actions when it comes to testing for school readiness. Our study is delimited particularly to the political debate in Sweden between 1946-1975, when school readiness was debated in the parliament and put into use through various reforms, to finally become abandoned. Our overarching questions concern how school readiness was conceptualized and put into use, despite it seemingly being in conflict with the idea of a diversified comprehensive school for all. In this respect we treat school readiness as a boundary object.   

Theoretically we argue that the concept of school readiness, and different attempts to understand and apply it, became a way to ‘make sense of the world’, but, and this is the main point here, with a fair amount of ambiguity (Strang & Meyer, 1993, p. 499; see also Lundahl & Waldow, 2009). This ambiguity actually contributes to the attractiveness of ‘school readiness’, as advocates of different positions can unite behind it. Analytically we will treat school readiness as a boundary object (Star & Griesemer, 1989).  

In order to understand the shifting conceptualizations and uses of school readiness we have designed a study based on government documents and protocols from the Swedish parliament. These data are available through an advanced search engine called Riksdagssök (riksdagsdata.oru.se). Riksdagsök has been developed by one of the applicants, integrating data from The Swedish parliament and the National Library (KB) in a joint database of parliamentary records ranging back to the year 1521. This database includes transcripts of parliamentary debates, roll-call voting records, as well a wide range of documents from parliamentary proceedings. Riksdagssök is a user-friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI) for searching, filtering, exporting and analyzing data from the Swedish parliament. This GUI makes it possible to conduct advanced searches of all open data from the Swedish Parliament and export data in different formats. From here we can easily extract all mentions of school readiness during the selected time period, and also connect them with different political actors and processes (cf Lundahl & Serder 2020). Our searches give us appr. 150 uses of school readiness in various government texts such as bills, investigations and propositions 1944-1975, that we will base our analyses on. In broad terms, the data searches is followed by data reduction and a content analysis (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2007, p. 466ff), which we use as a point of departure for a further analysis where we look in particular at who said what about school readiness.The basic principle in the content analyses is to find statements in which school readiness is used. Each kind of usage is then classified, using NVivo 12. The findings will be analyzed departing from the concept of boundary object in that we will look for 1), is there an interpretive flexibility: does school readiness have different meanings among different political actors, and 2) are these meanings negotiated over time (Van Pelt et al. 2015, 2). 3) Is there a standardization of concept, methods and measures as the object moves between political settings and over time, 4) Is there a dynamic between ill-structured and more tailored uses (Star and Griesemer 1989).

The comprehensive school reforms, that incrementally developed across Europe and the US after WWII, were intended to strengthen values of democracy and equal rights through equivalent education for all. This mass schooling often required that children started school at the same age. Even though this entry age could vary between the age of 5-7 between different countries, the arising questions around children’s different “developmental stages” actualized new discussions around diversity. Although Sweden, like other Nordic countries, chose a strategy with late differentiation, our results show a widespread debate on school readiness, and suggestions of testing all children at age 6-7, with the results making it possible to hold back and/or reposition some children. This testing was politically contested from the start, but the ambiguity of the concept of school readiness allowed various actors to use it with flexibility, avoiding both conflict with each other, and the risk of opposing the overarching ideals of the school reform. There may be many different ways of understanding and using the concept of school readiness and the apparatuses, such as the tests, it brings forward (e.g. Neuam, 2016; Snow, 2006) ). This makes policy work easier since various actors do not (think they) need to decode it. It therefore works perfectly well as a boundary object (Star & Griesemer, 1989). In our data, we see tendencies to use school readiness in arguments both for and against early differentiation. Since the multifaceted understanding of school readiness has led to different practices in different national settings, we suggest that the view of school readiness as a boundary object is useful in international discussions of early differentiation. In the political engineering of the tension between diversity and differentiation, our historical analysis shows that the vagueness of certain concepts becomes necessities in reform processes and implementations.

Arnesen, A. & Lundahl, L. (2006). Still Social and Democratic? Inclusive Education Policies in the Nordic Welfare States. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(3), 285–300. Cohen, L., Manion, L. & Morrison, K. (2007). Research methods in education. London: Routledge. Crnic, K., & Lamberty, G. (1994). Reconsidering school readiness: Conceptual and applied perspectives. Early education and development, 5(2), 91-105. Ljungblad, T. (1965). Skolmognad. Lund: Uniskol. Lundahl, C. & Serder, M. (2020). Is PISA more important to school reforms than educational research? The selective use of authoritative references in media and in parliamentary debates, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 6:3, 193-206. Lundahl, C. & Waldow, F. (2009): Standardisation and ”quick languages”: The shape-shifting of standardised measurement of pupil achievement in Sweden and Germany. Journal of Comparative Education, vol 45, no 3, 365-385. Neaum, S. (2016). School readiness and pedagogies of competence and performance: theorising the troubled relationship between early years and early years policy. International Journal of Early Years Education, 24(3), 239-253. Snow, K. L. (2006). Measuring school readiness: Conceptual and practical considerations. Early education and development, 17(1), 7-41. Star, S., & Griesemer, J. (1989). Institutional Ecology, 'Translations' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39. Social Studies of Science, 19(3), 387–420. Strang, D., & Meyer, J. W. (1993). Institutional conditions for diffusion. Theory and Society, 22(4), 487–511. Tveit, S. & Lundahl, C. (2022). The struggles over grading and testing in Norwegian and Swedish basic education. Tröler, D., Hörmann, B., Tveit, S. & Bostad, I. The Nordic Education Model in Context: Historical Developments and Current Renegotiations, Routledge, 217-235. van Pelt, S. C., Haasnoot, M., Arts, B., Ludwig, F., Swart, R., and Biesbroek, R. (2015). Communicating climate (change) uncertainties: simulation games as boundary objects. Environmental Science and Policy 45:41-52. Whitebread, D., & Bingham, S. (2011). School readiness: A critical review of perspectives and evidence. TACTYC Occasional Paper, 2. Winter, S. M., & Kelley, M. F. (2008). Forty years of school readiness research: What have we learned?. Childhood Education, 84(5), 260-266. Ydesen, C. & Buchardt, M. (2020). Citizen Ideals and Education in Nordic Welfare State School Reforms. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.