School development in tough times

Abstract

In schools in Sweden today, researchers are encouraged, through national polices that highlight the importance of research in the profession in relation to school development, to work with school teachers in local development projects. One way to implement school development is to use action research. For action research to be effective in supporting school development, a number of conditions need to be met. Drawing on an action research project in a municipal public-sector comprehensive school (Swe. Grundskola), I examine what happened to school development and ongoing action research when the school as an organisation was put under pressure from the impact of economic restructuring. I use the theory of practice architectures in the analysis to describe what enabled and constrained participation amongst teachers, the school principal, and the researcher. Culturaldiscursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements within the school, which were shaped by global and national economic factors, are shown to have played an important role regarding research possibilities.