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Collaborative approaches are increasingly promoted to strengthen research connections between universities and school practices and indorse improvements. In Sweden, a national initiative launched in 2017 aiming to enhance the scientific foundations of teacher training and strengthen relevant research through a trial project creating sustainable structures for collaboration between schools and universities. Universities providing teacher education were expected to translate national ambitions into opportunities for collaboration with schools. This paper draws on an evaluation of six Swedish universities’ realization of this initiative, empirically based on survey responses and group interviews. Using institutional logics theory, we discern and interpret key elements of collaboration logics and characteristics of distinct identified logics. Our analysis identifies three configurations of logics: the Explorer, the Organizer, and the Competitor. We highlight the benefits and drawbacks of these logics and their relations with prevailing university logics. The paper contributes an institutional perspective on collaborative approaches between universities and schools, suggesting that links between organizational and field logics play important roles that have been largely neglected in much of the literature.

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.

Tax-funded private provision of welfare services in Sweden is among the most extensive in Europe. This paper focuses on a contradictory example of how discrepancies between neoliberal ideals and practice are embedded in the governance of Swedish preschool. Over time, national and local regulations in Sweden have become increasingly comprehensive and moved toward managerial systems. Using Alain Enthoven’s model of managed competition, and drawing on documents and interviews, this paper focuses on two right-wing, urban municipalities with a very high share of preschools operated by private actors, and their organization of local preschool quasi-markets in terms of so-called sponsors concerning five functions: establishing rules of equity, approving all participating private pre-schools, managing the enrollment process, creating price-elastic demand, and managing risk-selection. The findings show how instead of limiting bureaucratic power, municipal managers have been empowered to plan and optimize the organization of the preschool sector in ways discordant with neoliberal ideas.

Collaboration between universities and schools has been emphasised byboth governments and within educational development research in the Nordic countries. However, educational research has tended to focus onthe practitioners’ perspectives and experiences, i.e., researchers andteachers. Our intention is to contribute to the field with research from another perspective; that of organising for collaboration. This is done by focusing on the experiences of university representatives responsible for the organisation of collaboration within a Swedish nation-wide initiative,the ULF project. Our theoretical framework draws on the literature of partial organisation. The results indicate that the different approaches and solutions used by universities could not only potentially strengthen schools’ opportunities to participate in educational collaboration with universities but also lead to different opportunities, reinforcing previously existing differences between school organisers. The results are discussed in relation to governmental intentions and guidelines.

This article focuses on experiences of private preschool operators (with varying sizes and profiles) of the governance and organisation of ECEC delivery in Sweden. The aim is to analyse how these private providers relate to, interact with and perceive their relationships with municipal authorities. These private-public governing relationships are analysed by paying particular attention to their affective dimensions through the notion of ‘market care’. The empirical data consists of interviews with 20 private preschool providers, which are analysed through a two-dimensional grid where predictability and conflict serve as analytical focal points. The findings highlight how experiences and perceptions are enabled, provoked and felt differently depending on their embeddedness in diverse local ‘affective atmospheres’. Moreover, they show that interpersonal exchanges and relationships play important roles in the performance and experience of market care. The study contributes empirical insights into the role of local affective atmospheres and market care (or lack thereof) in local Swedish ECEC governance and delivery. It thereby illuminates central aspects of the governance of privatised ECEC that complements the predominantly national and state-focused literature on quasi-market organisation.

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.