Parallel lines–tensions in teachers’ enactment of the vision of a newly established school in Sweden

Abstract

This paper aims to share new knowledge about tensions in establishing a new school in a marketised educational landscape, with a special focus on teachers’ experiences of enacting a highly profiled vision. The paper is based on a single case study using observations, surveys, interviews and document studies. To cover the complex enactment process, we have created a multilayered enactment triangle to analyse the enactment process of the school and strategies the teachers use to realise the vision. To be able to hold on to the vision when the first generation of students arrive, the teachers in this study connect the vision to a more abstract ‘future school’. Meanwhile, in the daily practice in the ‘present school’, they perceive difficulties in working in line with the vision. The relations between teachers and vision and the relations between teachers and students, respectively, become parallel lines. It seems then, that for visionary work to function from the start in a newly established school, all the relations in the enactment triangle, i.e. between the vision and the teachers, the vision and the students, and the teachers and the students, need to be there.