Umeå University's logo

Private international education is on the rise, but we still have limited knowledge on how different commercial actors operate in this field and how it affects local teachers and their work in the schools abroad. Swedish school companies have been active in exporting schooling in the international arena, including “Swedish” education models. In this article, we examine one company and their operations in India. We explore the interpretations of the company education model by teachers in the Indian schools, and how this affects their professional capacity. Mixed qualitative methods of interviews, on-site school visits and documentary reviews, were used to examine the possibilities for teachers to exercise professional agency within their working environment. Our findings show that teachers operate within a highly structured pedagogical environment characterised by a given curriculum, a centralised learning platform and training programme, and a set of dominant discourses around values and teaching practices. Teachers are expected to embrace a new professional identity in a process of discarding past experiences and adopting the new professional language given by the company's particular education model. In willingly embracing the company discourses and expectations, teachers’ agency tends to be constrained.

The education sector has been increasingly affected by legal discourse, new managerialism, litigation, burgeoning regulation and accountability involving inspections and audits, and rises in lawsuits. These processes have been described as juridification and have complex effects. In this paper we focus on juridification’s impact on preschool governance during times of increased privatisation in Sweden. We aim to unpack links between juridification and privatisation by analysing the multifaceted issues of how law, litigation and legal discourse become manifested and are navigated by various actors in local preschool quasi-market governance. The results show how intricate connections between juridification and privatisation tend to make public and private relations more legalistic, contract-based and competitive. Juridification and privatisation also increase conformity in terms of, for instance, pedagogical profiles, practices and organisational structures. In addition, these inter-related processes promote and largely benefit corporate group formation and expansion as legal knowledge and economic resources to navigate local preschool quasi-market governance become increasingly essential. This starkly contrasts with the core ostensible objectives of privatisation and marketisation reforms – to promote diversity, pluralism, and a wide range of preschool options for parents.

This chapter explores the confluence of the (myths of) the so-called Nordic model through the commercialisation of Nordic education abroad. We investigate education export in Finland and Sweden to uncover the various aspects of the multifaceted Nordic model in education. Our research enquires the ways the policy rhetoric on education export in Finland and Sweden represents the Nordic model in education. Acknowledging that the term ‘Nordic’ has been employed not only as a rhetorical device for political purposes but also for business objectives, our analysis highlights substantial differences in education export approaches in the two countries. In fact, both national contexts have offered opportunities for private edu-business actors to flourish, thereby sustaining the global education industry. Education exports are strategically positioned rhetorically in relation to both the national and Nordic contexts in diverse ways, which has implications for how Nordic education is framed within the globalised economy. By examining education export and the representation of the Nordic model, we offer empirical and analytical insights into the processes that shape, exploit, support, and challenge specific depictions and interpretations of the Nordic model in education.

Research topic/aimIncreasing health issues among school children is a critical concern, given its profound and far-reaching implications across multiple domains. As principal organisers, the 290 Swedish municipalities are responsible for student health provision in theirschools. Still, they often struggle with the complexities of various health promotion strategies and preventative measures,addressing problems such as bullying, absenteeism, and low academic achievements, as well as hiring staff to implementsuch measures. In this context, commercial entities offer a range of student health resources to municipalities. Still, we knowvery little about which and how such commercial resources are purchased, used, and experienced in schools and municipalities. This paper, therefore, aims to undertake an initial exploration of experiences associated with the sale,procurement, and utilization of commercial resources in student health, from the perspective of Swedish municipalities.

Theoretical frameworkAnalytically, we use the notion of projectification (Fred & Godenhjelm, 2023), encompassing the increasing reliance in thepublic sector on projects, seen as ‘temporary organisations’ (Sahlin-Andersson & Söderholm, 2002). Located in the widerliterature on Scandinavian institutionalism (Czarniawska & Savon, 2005), projectification is used as a lens to “scrutinise thelogic, politics and power behind temporary (or temporalities of) initiatives as well as their practices, contexts andconsequences” (Fred & Godenhjelm, 2023, p. 8).

Methodological designThis study is part of the project Student health as a market (VR 2022-03782), and we draw on interviews from 30 municipalstudent health officers (or equivalent) from municipalities with varying demographic and socio-economic conditions. Thesampling was based on Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions’ categorisation of municipalities. The interviews,lasting around 60 minutes, included questions on purchases and motives, but also more generally on the organisation andexperience of municipal-private actor interaction in the context of student health services.

Expected conclusions/findingsThe analysis shows that for instance staffing, different forms of consultancy and digital systems often are purchased fromprivate actors. There are certain and important variations in the interview data, relating to contextual and geographicalcharacteristics in the studied municipalities. Still, certain commonalities are also to be found, for instance on the rise ofdigitally based solutions marketed by private companies argued to resolve challenges that Sweden’s municipalities arefacing. The informants identify both challenges and benefits in relation to the commercial school health solutions, which weseek to unpack and problematise.

Relevance to Nordic educational researchThe paper sheds light on the evolving commercial landscape of student health, and thereby contributes to the broaderdiscussion of the many faces of public-private interactions in education – issues of central relevance to all Nordic countriesand beyond.

This study explores the quest for preschool quality and the ideational foundation it builds on through the work of a Swedish edu-business operating preschools internationally. We analyse associated flows and uses of (global) ideas on preschool quality to understand how such businesses draw on, remould and ‘move’ certain ideas on quality and quality assurance. For this we use data obtained from visits to, interviews with representatives of, and various documents produced by the business and two of its subsidiaries, one Swedish and one Norwegian. The analysis highlights important aspects of three dimensions of ideational power: the power through, over and in ideas. The results show how the business acts, particularly through the Norwegian subsidiary, as a pioneering ideational leader of preschool improvement. In this position it conveys an acclaimed state-of-the-art quality system to the policy domain, thereby legitimising large-scale private preschool provision in policy contexts where it is increasingly questioned.

Under de senaste decennierna har frågor om marknadisering alltmer kommit i blickfånget i den offentliga debatten om skola och utbildning. Ofta har diskussionen rört grund- och gymnasieskolan, men denna utveckling rör också i allra högsta grad förskolan. Detta kapitel behandlar hur förskolan som marknad styrs och hur detta tar sig uttryck med ett fokus på kommunens centrala roll som marknadsorganisatör. Därigenom vill vi ge läsaren en referensram och en begreppsapparat för att beskriva och förstå förskolans marknadsutsättning samt att stimulera till vidare reflektion och diskussion om hur denna situation i förlängningen kan påverka förskoleverksamheten och de yrkesverksammas arbete.

This article focuses on a Swedish school company and its operations in India, examining how setting up and operating schools in another national place forge particular spatial imaginaries. It contributes to literature on the Global Education Industry by focusing on international moves of commercial non-Anglo-Saxon actors. Drawing on interviews and extensive fieldwork in India, we show how the ‘marriage’ between the global (represented by the Swedish company) and local (the ‘Indian’) are manifested in the spatial imaginary of the ‘glocal school’, encompassing hierarchical otherings rooted in discourses of both globalisation and colonialism.