Homework has traditionally been, and still is, a common practice in Swedish and Norwegian schools (Karlsson et al, 2019; Rogde et al, 2019; Westlund, 2004), serving as one of the key links between home and school (Borgonovi & Montt, 2012; Karlsson et al., 2019). Nevertheless, this practice is currently not regulated on a national level and is not even mentioned in curricula in neither Norway nor Sweden. Instead, every school, or even every teacher, has its own policy regarding homework.

The absence of national regulatory frameworks on homework may have to do with uncertainty about its effect on students’ learning (Skolverket, 2014). While some researchers argue that homework has a positive effect on achievement (Cooper et al, 2006), others have questioned that conclusion. For example, Hattie’s (2012, p.13) meta-analysis of factors that reinforce academic achievement indicates "...that homework has a much more positive effect for high-achieving secondary school students, but low or even negative effect on younger children". Furthermore, research shows that homework can also widen social segregation as it tends to favour students from families with high economic, social, and education capital (Nilsen & Bergem, 2016; Rønning 2011).

Yet, according to recent amendment proposals in both Sweden and Norway, state regulation of homework, or at least regarding homework support in schools, is likely to change. For example, from 2010, Norwegian municipalities were imposed by law to offer homework support to students from grades 1-4 and from 2014 this was extended to grades 1-10. A proposal for a new Norwegian education law suggests giving schools the option of mandating school assignments outside of school hours (homework) (Høringsnotat, 2021). Similarly, the Swedish Education Act, amended in 2022, stipulates that schools are obliged to offer students in grades 4-9, who wish extra help with their schoolwork, teaching time outside of regular school hours (SFS 2010:800). Moreover, after the latest parliamentary elections and the power shift in Sweden, proposals have been made to make extra school hours and vacation school mandatory for students and that the latter should be offered in lower grades than at present (proposition 2022/23:1; Tidöavtalet 2022).

In this paper we will situate the developments outlined above in historical and contemporary perspectives. By tracing how and why these law amendments came about, we want to explore what knowledges, assumptions and beliefs are embedded in them. Or put differently, if extra school hours and mandatory homework support is a solution, what problem is it intended to solve?

To address this question, we draw on Foucault’s notion of problematisation, by which he meant a “set of discursive or nondiscursive practices” (Foucault, 1988, pp. 456) through which previously unproblematic things, conducts, phenomena, and processes become a problem (Foucault, 2001, p. 171). Crucial for Foucault is an understanding of problematisation as a creative, rather than a strategic, process (Foucault, 2001, pp. 172–173) in that it initiates new ways of taking care of things and requires (new) techniques and solutions to be developed in order to govern them. For that, it is necessary to create a story about the “true” cause of the problem – a “diagnosis” – which entails a particular solution (Bacchi, 2009). Furthermore, this paper elaborates on the wider implications of these problematisations and the solutions they have produced.

Echoing Foucault, Bacchi (2009) argued that “we are governed through problematizations” (p. 263). From her perspective, there are no given problems to which the government must respond; rather, problems are shaped by policies or policy proposals (Bacchi, 2018). Hence, to understand how governing takes place, we need to inquire into problematizations on which policies are based. For that, Bacchi (2009) developed an analytic scheme for policy analysis – What's the Problem Represented to be? (WPR) – which guided our analysis. For the sake of clarity, however, in this paper we focus mainly on the questions concerning the genealogy of policy problems. To achieve the stated goals, we first identified key policy documents regarding homework, homework support and extra school hours (SFS 2010:800; Høringsnotat, 2021; Endringslov til opplæringslova og privatskolelova, 2010). These documents define what has to be solved and how, making the ‘diagnosis’ of the problem to appear natural and given. More precisely, at this stage we examine the new wording regarding the obligation of both countries' school systems to provide, or even mandate, students with homework support/extra school hours. After that, in line with WPR, we “worked backwards” and examined the preparatory work of the Education Acts to explore what assumptions, facts, truths, knowledges and beliefs are involved in the construction(s) of (a) particular problematisation(s). By that we illuminate how this problematisation came about and what conditions made it possible and intelligible. To answer these questions, we have analysed parliamentary hearings, propositions, and white papers (e.g., Prop 2021/22:111; SOU 2021:30; Prop 95L 2009/2010; NOU 2019:23). Finally, we discuss what effects are produced by specific problematizations. We focus primarily on discursive effects. Studying these effects means, according to Bacchi and Goodwin (2016), paying attention to the specific vocabularies (terms, concepts, binaries, classifications) established by a particular problematisation and to the limits they impose on what can be said and thought. Specifically, we examine how shifting terminology – from homework support (läxhjälp) to extra school hours – constrains our thinking of the nature of the ‘problem’ and how it should be resolved.

The preliminary results indicate that the solutions proposed in both countries are related to the Nordic logic of equality (Forsberg et. al, 2021), yet the problematizations on which these solutions are based have changed over time. Moreover, the political debates in these countries have taken different paths to arrive at these solutions. In a Swedish perspective, for example, we can see that the new formulation is a consequence of political decisions regarding the private market of homework support, combined with low school results and inequality. In Norway, the argument used to require local authorities to offer homework support in the Education Act of 2010 (Prop. 95 L 2009/2010, 2010) was one of strengthening the school’s role as a means of social equalization. This argument, however, has been later questioned and does not appear in the current amendments. Overall, our initial analysis reveals that in both countries homework support and extended schools hours have in some ways become a given solution to problems that are no longer clearly defined.

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