Simply Quality? State Governance of Swedish Preschools’ Work with Children in Need of Special Support

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Author
Palla, L., & Sjögren, H.
Year
2022

Purpose

The purpose of the study is to provide more knowledge about the decisions made by the educational authorities in Sweden, and which have an advisory and normative role for kindergarten education at the operational level. The study focuses on work involving children who require special needs assistance. The research question is: How is quality expressed and understood in the documents used in the Swedish Schools Inspectorate’s quality audit of work involving children in need of special needs assistance in Swedish kindergartens?

Result

The results show that the discussed documents can be understood as discursive expressions of a truth regime, in which power influences which norms and values take precedence in the operationalisation of qualitative special needs assistance. The analysis further shows that the Swedish Schools Inspectorate’s quality audit focuses on instrumental and measurable understandings of quality, and that the quality audit emphasises similarities rather than differences by downplaying the ethical and pedagogical aspects of special needs assistance.

Design

The study used qualitative text analysis of documents produced by the Swedish Schools Inspectorate during a three-year quality audit. Data were collected from audit reports, project plans and decision documents for 35 randomly selected kindergartens. By analysing these documents through a discursive framework, a close reading was conducted to investigate how terms such as quality and special needs assistance were operationalised.

References

Palla, L., & Sjögren, H. (2022). Simply Quality? State Governance of Swedish Preschools’ Work with Children in Need of Special Support. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research66(6), 1093–1107

Online year: 2021

Issue year: 2022

Review year: 2022