To strengthen or to shatter? On the effects of stratification on professions as systems

The aim of this article is to contribute to the literature on how stratification affects professions. Our case study is the ‘first teacher reform’ in Sweden, which introduced a more prominent position for some teachers. In this article, we elaborate six different first teacher types and analyse how these affect the profession. While elites are generally described as hybrids, we conclude that several of our types rather led to a de-hybridization of roles, where managers became more administratively focused, and elites more anchored to professional tasks. We conclude that elite roles reveal various potentials in being strengthening/weakening or shattering/integrating to the profession, but, in contrast to other studies on professional elites, the majority of roles studied here are both strengthening and integrating to the profession. The study is qualitative and is based on 111 interviews, 12 weeks of shadowing and 53 observed meetings

Policy of suspiciousness – mobilization of educational reforms in Sweden

In this article, we explore the processes of transfer and translation ofeducation policy in a study focusing on the relationship betweenthe Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD) and Sweden. The purpose of the study is to investigatehow selective borrowing occurs both in terms of references todifferent types of knowledge sources underpinning the argumentsand shared discourse formations. The data were obtained fromtwo policy reports: an OECD review report of the Swedish schoolsystem and a Swedish follow-up report proposing actual schoolreforms. The method was twofold: first, mapping, categorizing,and counting all the textual references in the two documents;second, critically analyzing the discourses emerging in the twopolicy texts. The results show that international references play asignificant role in substantiating arguments for Swedish educationpolicy. Both policy texts share a policy discourse characterized bysuspiciousness toward the professionalism exercised by teachersand local education authorities.Bibliografiskt granskad</p