One Step Forward and One Step Back. State regulation of environment and sustainable development through the use of the Education Act, school curricula and syllabuses (1990-2010)

The aim of this sociology of law-orientated article is to analyse and describe legislative and regulatory processes concerning the task given to schools focusing on environment and sustainable development. We are describing the policy-making processes in this field from 1990 to 2011. The study involves key interviews and content analysis of national policy documents as well as legal sources, in order to describe and categorize legal norms that society, through its political and administrative institutions, highlight in school activities. The article takes a starting point in a model developed by Lindensjö and Lundgren, who used the terms arena of formulation and arena of realization, to illustrate what is happening with policy at national level. The policy-making processes and their results are in the end interpreted and understood through a perspective based on the concept of inertia and path dependence. It is evident as a result that the legal changes on the national political level are not hindering the continuing policy-making development and enactment of sustainable development on the professional administrative national arena

Rektorer bör och rektorer gör

The purpose of the thesis is to study whether any special professional norms exist with regard to principals’ leadership of the democratic mission which is presented to the schools. The aim is to identify norms in order to be able to later analyse and understand them. Norms exist in groups of various types, and by using the term “norm” I am addressing the actions of principals, rather than their individual personal characteristics. It is what principals should be doing according to the Swedish School Act, the Swedish Compulsory School Ordinance and their curricula – that serves as the point of departure for the study, and from there I proceed to study what principals are doing based on the interpreted mission. The first research question is: How do principals interpret the democratic mission presented to the schools? I interpret the responses of the principals regarding their actions as follows: they do not distinguish the democratic mission as a separate one, but rather view it as part of the whole process of leading the school. Most of the principals describe their management style as one that involves numerous dialogues, and they speak more about listening to others than about talking themselves. The principals also talk more about working with democratic processes that involve large numbers of people than about making quick decisions by themselves. The second research question is: How do principals translate this mission into concrete actions? This question reveals that physical presence and different types of dialogue are central to how the mission translates into democracy in practice. The final research question is: What professional norms for leadership are inherent in the principals’ concrete actions? This is the central issue in this study, and I have used the essential and accidental attributes of the norms in order to identify and to understand them. The step-by-step method, two rounds of one-by-one interviews and two rounds of focus group interviews with 14 principals, has led me in two directions. One has led toward action instructions that can also be viewed as general norms for a democratic principal. The results point to the complexity of the mission. The items are intertwined, and they can also find themselves on a collision course, with the result that principals have to choose to follow the norm that fits the specific situation in question. The other direction goes into greater depth in six identified dilemmas or problem areas in the context of the democratic mission. In general it has been difficult to identify clear signs of any separate professional reproduction of norms among or for principals. The norm perspective, used in the thesis, has to do with understanding schools and, in this case, the leadership provided by principals. Social and professional norms are formed and changed in the contexts in which they exist, and the norm perspective offers one of a number of possible ways of understanding the actions and patterns of actions of which the principals’ activities consist. One of the identified norms is that principals should have self-awareness. The principals speak about the importance of reflection for greater self-awareness. Applying a norm perspective could enable the principals to acquire the linguistic terms and concepts to allow them to reflect on their own actions and those of others. Through reflection, the principals could become more highly aware of their own actions. They can then choose whether they will be governed by a social norm, a norm for teachers or a separate norm for principals, or if they wish to act in their own individual way. Should principals be norm followers, norm breakers or change agents? Which is in the best interests of the pupils

Ett steg fram och ett tillbaka... Statens styrning av miljö och hållbar utveckling genom skollag, läroplaner och kursplaner

Syftet med denna rättssociologiskt inriktade artikel är att beskriva och problematisera lag-stiftnings- och regleringsprocesser av skolans uppdrag med fokus på miljö och hållbar ut-veckling, och samtidigt beskrivs den historiska bakgrunden för denna tematik 1990-2011. Vi tolkar de rättsliga och politiska skeendena och de involverade institutionerna i ett teoretiskt, historiesociologiskt perspektiv som bygger på begreppet path dependence. Att vi här gör en fördjupad studie av skeendena på den politiska, nationella nivån beror på att den typen av beskrivningar ofta saknas i samhällsvetenskapliga studier av hur en lagtext växer fram och vilka motiv som kan finnas för olika beslut och inriktningar. Studien ansluter till den tradition som benämns ”genetisk rättssociologi”. Artikeln tar sin utgångspunkt i och bygger på den modell som utvecklats i ett antal forskningsprojekt över tid av Lindensjö och Lundgren, som utvecklat och använt begreppen formuleringsarenan respektive realiseringsarenan. De rätts-liga förändringarna tolkas mot bakgrund av tröghet (inertia) och stigberoende (path depen-dence). Studien sker genom nyckelintervju och analyser av nationella och rättsliga styrdo-kument och rättskällor för att på så sätt kunna beskriva och kategorisera vilka rättsliga nor-mer som samhället genom sina politiska och administrativa institutioner finner vara av värde att lyfta fram för skolans verksamheter. Detta ser vi som en av grunderna för de normstödjande strukturer för en hållbar utveckling, som ska skapas samt utvecklas i svensk skola givet de trögheter och stigberoenden som gör sig gällande inom fältet

Summing up - Batch 20 : Change Projects from the International Training Programme - Batch 20

Lund University has offered the Sida-financed International Training Programmeon Child Rights, Classroom and School Management since 2003. Theprogramme targets those in a position from which they can initiate processesof change in the education sector in their countries. During the programmeall participating teams initiate a change project in their respective countriesaiming at the realization of the intention of the Child Rights Convention inpolicy as well as in practice. This book contains the final reports from Batch20 with change agents from China, Colombia, DPR of Korea, Indonesia, Malawi,Mozambique, Namibia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, Viet Nam, and Zambia

Child Rights, Classroom and School Management : Change Projects from the International Training Programme Batch 14 - 2011a

Lund University has offered the Sida-financed International Training Programme on Child Rights, Classroom and School Management since 2003. The programme targets those in a position from which they can initiate processes of change in the education sector in their countries. During the programme all participating teams initiate a change project in their respective countries aiming at the realization of the intention of the Child Rights Convention in policy as well as in practice. This book contains the final reports from Batch 14 with change agents from Cambodia, China, Colombia, Egypt, India, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia

Child Rights, Classroom and School Management : Change Projects from the International Training Programme Batch 13 - 2010b

In 2003 Lund University Commissioned Education was given the task, after publictender, to create and administrate a programme on “Child Rights, Classroom andSchool Management” following the provisions and principles contained in the UNConvention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), Sida’s development policy on Education and other internationally ratified instruments in the areas of child rights and education. The programme was oriented to target persons holding a position from where they could initiate processes of change in their home countries. During the years 2003-2009 the International Training Programme (ITP) on Child Rights, Classroom and School Management was arranged 11 times with 330 participants completing it. Most of them are still working for child rights in their countries and have formed national and regional networks. In 2010 Lund University Commissioned Education won the contract in a new procurement for arranging the programme twice a year 2010 - 2012 with an option for another two years. In 2010 the 12th and 13th batch started the redesigned programme and this book is one of the results of batch 13