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Compulsory school in Sweden consist, since 1962, of 9 years, divided into 3 stages with no formal divide between primary and secondary school. Despite the reform for a cohesive compulsory school, a gap between the previously separated primary and secondary school were identified (as problematic), and several changes in curriculum and teacher education followed, e.g. removing the stages divisions. But since 2011, the curriculum and teacher education were again based on the 3 stages and new paragraphs concerning transitions were added to national steering documents. School organizations today bears historical traces, meaning that the transition between stages can entail different things – e.g. sometimes a change of school, sometimes not. 

This paper presents part of an ongoing project with the overarching aim to study how the transition between stages equivalent to primary and secondary school (in Sweden between year 6 and 7) is constructed and how these constructions might affect teachers’ possibilities to create continuity through the pupils schooling. Drawing on Bacchi’s (2009) “What’s the Problem Represented to be” (WPR) approach, the part presented in this paper concerns: How is the transition between year 6 and 7 represented as a problem in policy and teachers talk, and what aspects are left unproblematic in the representations? Assuming that representations affect how schools work with transitions and by extension the students’ experiences and learning possibilities. 

National steering documents and local (municipality and school) level policies were collected for the analysis, and individual interviews have been conducted with teachers in year 6 and year 7. When collecting local policy and doing the teacher interviews, the goal was to get a variety of contexts (different school organizations, urban/rural, socioeconomic areas). 

The problem representations visible in policy are mainly related to transfer of information between schools – what information should be transferred and how. The overarching problem representation being that some students struggle with the transition, and the solution for that is seen as transferring information about individual students’ deviations from the norm, to ensure continuity in support and hence their academical development. This is also a part of the teachers’ representation, but the teachers do not always agree, with policy and each other, on what information is necessary – resulting in distrusting the information given and the teachers giving/receiving it. The teachers also describe discontinuity in relationships as problematic, causing worries by students, and more work for teachers, at the same time new relationships are also described as positive. Left unproblematic in these representations are, among others, group aspects of teaching. The curriculum is interpretable and may not give enough information on where to continue teaching the group. Focusing transition mainly on the individual, and deviations, risk labelling students and shifting focus from the main work of teachers – teaching groups of students. Conclusions from these tentative results is that policy and teachers both represent discontinuity in support for individual students as a main problem, and information as the solution, but there is no joint view of what information is required to do that.