Change as technology in a Swedish secondary high school

Abstract

This article addresses the fact that local school practices in Sweden today seem to be under constant change as a consequence of the ongoing and forceful neoliberalisation of society that has been going on for about three decades. The pressure on teachers and school leaders has increased due to school rankings and quality assessment has become an important instrument for administrators and evaluators. In this ethnographic study, we describe and analyse school change; the reactions on change and the initiatives to employ school change within a secondary high school. Moreover, we develop our thinking on how this situation of constant school change may be viewed in the larger social scheme of things. Or to be more precise, this study focuses on school change that seems to have become one of the central features of the neoliberal educational system.