Learning, coping, adjusting: making school inspections work in Swedish schools

Abstract

School inspections involve multiple forms of governing. Inspection activities are regulative, inquisitive and meditative and correspondingly initiate different forms of ‘inspection work’ in schools and governing bodies. The aim of this paper is to explore the inspection work in Sweden carried out before, during and after inspection events. This paper is based on interviews with professionals who perform inspection work, such as head teachers and responsible key actors within municipalities and independent school chains; documentation analysis of forms and accounts sent to the Swedish schools’ inspectorate; and observations of inspection events. The results show that inspection work is rendered possible by transparent inspection schemes that govern in advance. Inspection work is geared towards internalising routine evaluative thinking and documentation. Quality assurance, or ‘systematic quality work’, has become the new panacea in the ‘evaluation society’. The inspectees turn their organisations inside out and learn to cope with inspections through adaptation or even strategic behaviour. Coping with inspections also involves the translation of bureaucratic demands and negative feedback into organisational learning.