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The implementation and use of information- and communication technology (ICT) in education are high on the educational agendas of most countries. In principle, all western countries now have a policy or strategy for ICT in K-12 schools. Although countries may have similar economic preconditions, they often implement different ICT policies in school (Austin & Hunter, 2013; Ottestad, 2010).  ICT policies may also have different rationales and are often over-optimistic about ICT options (Convery, 2009; Egea, 2014; Jordan, 2011) and the use of ICT as a tool for teaching and learning in education (Hammond, 2014). Most research on ICT policies seems to focus on issues such as policy rationale or how policy is implemented in schools. However, few studies focus on the existing educational practices in schools as preconditions for ICT implementation. In this paper, the focus is on how policy implementation strategies, as they are understood in the recently proposed Swedish ICT policy, relate to already established educational practices in upper secondary school settings. Specifically, the aim of the paper is to discuss how policy implementation strategies relate to the existing local practices in three upper secondary contexts as preconditions for integration of ICT. We discuss whether the proposed strategies can be understood as supported or not by existing contextual factors as conditions for the policy implementation.

Traditionally, policy has often been viewed as a top-down process, where policy is formulated in one arena and then realized in another (Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2000). However, policy formation processes are rather more complicated than that and can be understood as processes of interpretation and enactment (Ball, Maguire & Braun, 2012). Acknowledging these processes of policy formation (Edwards, 2012) is to acknowledge processes of micro-political manoeuvring, power and negotiation in practice, and to relate the policy enactment processes to the existing preconditions, structures and activities of the contexts in which the policy is to be realized. Thus, understanding how the proposed policy implementation strategies relate to existing practices as preconditions in schools may help us to understand what kind of challenges an ICT policy may face and to formulate more realistic expectations for the use of ICT in education.

The kind of analysis that is suggested in this paper may also clarify why the implementation and use of ICT in school is so challenging and why there seems to be a discrepancy between expectations in the policy formulation arena and its use in the realization arena (Olofsson, Lindberg, Hauge, & Fransson, 2011; Tondeur, van Braak and Valcke’s, 2007). It has been suggested that national and political initiatives and governing have little impact on the use of ICT in school (McGarr, 2009). Rather, it has been emphasized that teachers want to see compelling reasons why they and their students should use ICT for teaching and learning (Howard, 2013; Lim, 2015). This might be related to ‘teacher culture’ and a reason why principals have been identified as key persons when implementing ICT. However, different leadership styles have also been found to give different results when it comes to implementing ICT (Hadjithoma-Garstka, 2011). Indeed, different leadership styles seem to fit different educational cultures. Implementing an ICT policy in local schools has been found to be a multifaceted phenomenon rooted in educational culture (Vanderlinde, van Braak, & Dexter 2012). If contextual matter is of importance for implementing ICT, it is therefore of interest to study how the proposed policy implementation strategies relate to existing educational practices in schools.