Facing School Inspection - Swedish School Leaders' Utilization of the Room for Discretion

Author(s):

Judit Novak(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

21. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

ERG SES D 12, Management and Leadership in Education

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-09

13:30-15:00

Room:

A-207

Chair:

Lejf Moos

Contribution

The development of European systems of school inspections is an emerging policy issue throughout Europe. The number of inspection activities is rapidly increasing, revealing a movement toward intensified political efforts to audit and exercise control over education (Dahler-Larsen, 2012; Power, 1999). Previous research on education governance in Europe, including the agenda-setting and policy-learning capacities of the Standing International Conference of Inspectorates (SICI), suggest that school inspection offers a resource for trans/intra-national policy learning within and across education systems. This renders education policy increasingly homogenous and develops a global field of education policy (see e.g., Ehren, 2012; Grek, Lawn, Lingard, Varjo, 2009; Lawn, 2006; Ozga, Dahler-Larsen, Segerholm & Simola, 2011; van Bruggen, 2010). In the light of theories of travelling and embedded policy (Ozga, 2005), concepts of national school inspection policy in Sweden may therefore provide significant issues to be discussed within the context of European education policy research.

National inspection was reintroduced in Sweden in 2003 and was further intensified and strengthened in 2008 by the establishment of the Swedish Schools Inspectorate. The political motives for restoration and bolstering of Swedish school inspections during the periods 2001–2003 and 2006–2008 stressed the necessity of sufficient state involvement in order to retain and ensure nationwide educational quality and equivalence (Rönnberg, 2012). Since the reinstatement of school inspections, additional political efforts have been put in place to intensify and strengthen school inspections and exercise national control over education. The Swedish School Inspectorate now regularly supervises all Swedish schools in all municipalities, focusing on the fulfillment of national objectives, students’ achievement levels, students’ safety, equal access to education for all students, and the legal rights of the individuals’. The inspectors’ assessments regarding the schools are made public and include active measures from the schools to rectify the shortcomings observed by the inspectors. On the first of July 2011, the audited operations of the School Inspectorate were given enhanced legal support in a new Education Act. For example, the authority now has the means to impose fines in order to exert pressure on schools to take action.

In the light of the increased demands for accountability from the schools being inspected, the aim of this paper is to explore and analyze how school principals perceive the room for discretion in their schools’ encounters with regular supervisions conducted by the School Inspectorate. In the analysis of this research, opportunities and constraints in reference to taking action and fulfilling the inspection criteria are of specific interest.

Method

The empirical basis consists of telephone interviews with 18 compulsory school principals whose schools have been inspected by the Swedish School Inspectorate after the inspectorate’s audited operations gained enhanced legal support. Methodologically, the analysis is informed by O’Connor’s (1995) “continuum of agency.” Within this framework, narrated acts can be understood as ways of claiming, deflecting, or problematizing agency. In this sense, the same narrated acts can also be understood as means to claim, deflect, or problematize the room for discretion at the local level. The interviewees’ ways of ascribing to themselves different “positions” (Harré & van Langenhov, 1999) in the narratives of conducted inspections can also reveal aspects of social structure (such as roles, rules, hierarchies) in the schools’ encounters with the School Inspectorate. As the interviewees locate different actors involved in the process in time and space, describing both what enables and what constrains responses from the schools, the narratives point to the opportunities and the limits of agency and discretion within the inspection context.

Expected Outcomes

Given that school inspections are consistently prioritized in the Swedish education policy debate and emphasized as important tools to ensure education quality and manage education policy challenges, it is worth noting that the primary findings point out a close relationship between conventionalized structures of school inspections and acts of resistance to those same inspections. Furthermore, different acts of self-formation by the schools being inspected, whether of resistance or adjustment to commands from legal authority, work within and through the techniques and structures of governance already in place. Given the idea that conflict is inherent in power relations (such as evaluations and inspections), the specific configuration of power and legitimacy that is embedded in the inspection structures can be compromised by the inspected schools using the very same structures which maintain the relationship.

References

Dahler-Larsen, P. (2012). The Evaluation Society. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Ehren (2012). Impact of School Inspections on Teaching and Learning, Retrieved 2012-11-02 from http://schoolinspections.eu/summary-of-year-1-comparative-results-isi-tl-study-impact-of-school-inspections-on-teaching-and-learning/ Grek, S., Lawn., M., Lingard, B., & Varjo, J. (2009). North by northwest: quality assurance and evaluation processes in European education. Journal of Education Policy, 24, (2), 121-131. Harré, R., & van Langenhove, L. (eds.) (1999). Positioning theory: Moral contexts of intentional action. Oxford: Blackwell Publisher Ltd. Lawn, M. (2006). Soft Governance and the Learning Spaces of Europe. Comparative European Politics, 4, 272-288. O’Connor, P. (1995). Speaking of Crime: `I don't Know what Made Me do it'. Discourse & Society, 6: 429-456 Ozga, J. (2005). Travelling and embedded policy: The case of post devolution Scotland within the UK. In D. Coulby & E. Zambeta (eds.), Globalisation and nationalism in education: The world yearbook of education. London: Routledge, pp. 117–127. Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen, P. Segerholm, C. & Simola, H. (red.) (2011). Fabricating Quality in Education. Data and Governance in Europe. London: Routledge. Power, M. (1999). The Audit Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rönnberg, L. (2012). Justifying the Need for Control: Motives for Swedish National School Inspection during Two Governments. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. Segerholm, C. (2009). "We are doing well on QAE": The case of Sweden. Journal of Education Policy, 24 (2), 195-209 van Bruggen, J. C. (2010). Inspectorates of Education in Europe; some comparative remarks about their tasks and work. The Standing International Conference of Inspectorates (SICI). April, 2010.

Author Information

Judit Novak (presenting / submitting)

Mid Sweden University

Department of Education

Sundsvall

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