This article offers a contribution to the current debate about knowledge and the curriculum, especially initiated by social realist writers. The enacted Swedish subject-based curriculum for compulsory schooling is examined and is also used as a significant case with the aim of discussing practical implications of social realist claims regarding knowledge and the curriculum. Video-recorded lessons from grade six in six different Swedish schools, in combination with teacher interviews, are explored within the scope of a curriculum theory framework with the purpose of illuminating dominant patterns of knowledge boundaries and knowledge conceptions. The study shows how the Swedish subject-based curriculum frames teaching in a direction where a disciplinary knowledge conception with fixed knowledge boundaries predominates over other knowledge forms. The subject-based curriculum also appears to produce an 'overloading' of content, which implies that pupils' questions and experiences are avoided and dismissed in the teaching practice.

In this paper, we theorize on local school governance through a multi-method case study of a large-sized Swedish municipality by drawing on neo-institutional theory. In light of a changing governing landscape in Sweden in terms of a 're-centralization', new conditions between the state, the local education authorities (LEA) and the schools have emerged. The aim of this study is to examine what policy actions the LEA employ for governing the school and in what ways that principals respond and handle these policy actions. The results point to the fact that the LEA uses a bench-marking strategy through its quality assurance system and intervene if results are poor. Principals seek support from the LEA, but are anxious that their autonomy will be diminished and therefore function as 'gate-. The system for quality assurance is appreciated by principals, but standards aimed at framing discursive communication on quality are criticized. Principals turn to managers below the superintendent, which creates a tension between managers. The study shows that different levels and actors must be taken into account in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the multilayered field of local policy enactment.

In school systems around the world, there is an increasing focus on students’ academic achievement. The challenge of how to improve schools is an important issue for all levels in the school system. However, a central question of both practical and theoretical relevance is how it is possible to understand why (or why not) school-development efforts are successful. The purpose of this article is to explore the ecology of local school development through the case of a medium-sized municipality in Sweden, based on empirical data from two follow-up research projects. The analytical framework draws from organisational theory and new institutional theory, where focus is directed towards how different sub-systems of the school organisation interact with and respond to aspects of development work and the implications for outcomes of school-development initiatives. Findings show that great investment of resources from the central level in the local school organisation necessarily does not lead to changes in teaching practice. School-development initiatives are unlikely to be successful unless they engage and re-couple the involved sub-systems. Finally, we discuss how the introduction of Expert Teachers as a new sub-system has the ability to work as a link between other sub-systems and to promote school development.

The purpose with this article is to conceptualise and present what is referred to as a critical dialogical model for vocational teacher education that takes into account the interaction between theory/research and practice/experiential knowledge. The theoretical framework for the model is based on critical hermeneutics and the methodology of dialogue seminars with the aim to promote the development of a 'critical self' among the vocational teacher students. The model enacts an interface between theory and practice where a number of processes are identified: a reflective-analogical process, a critical-analytical process and an interactive critical self-building process. In order to include a theoretical argument concerning the issue of content, the concept of 'learning capital' and its four sub-categories in terms of curricular capital, instructional capital, moral capital and venture capital is used. We point at content-related aspects of student learning and how a critical self has the potential to promote various kinds of 'capital' and capacity building that may be of importance in the future work-life of the vocational teacher student.

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