Representing and intervening in Swedish education—Mediating and adjudicating by grading numbers. (18th August 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hasselbladh, Hans; Bejerot, Eva
• Is Part Of: Financial accountability & management. Volume 36:Number 1(2020:Feb.)
• Page Start: 20
• Page End: 32
• Publication Date: 2019-08-18
• Subjects: educational reform -- governmentality -- grading -- management control -- system -- the functions of accounting; Finance, Public -- Accounting -- Periodicals; Accounting -- Periodicals; Managerial accounting -- Periodicals; Public administration -- Periodicals; 658.159
• DOI: 10.1111/faam.12213
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0267-4424

Abstract

Abstract: Educational reforms are attempts to transform and reconstitute conceptions of knowledge, the practice of teaching and the forms of subjectivity associated with being a teacher, pupil, and parent. We will investigate a particular aspect of the extensive changes that have swept across the landscape of Swedish education over the last decades. We will show how the grading system has come to fulfill a mediating role between progressivist educational ideas and neo‐liberal notions of individual choice and entrepreneurship, by way of adjudicating and mediating educational performance for individual pupils, schools, and the education system at large. The aggregated output of the grading system is used for instrumental purposes such as performance management, quality management, and bench marking in the school system. Grading and its associated practices extend throughout the entire school system, defining success and failure from individual classrooms to the national level as the dominant form of representing school performance. The grading system was initially intended to reshape the inner workings of education in Sweden but subsequently became the "gold standard" deployed in various managerial practices. Our analysis demonstrate the performative powers when seemingly innocent techniques are put to use in public sector reforms and new worlds are made and unmade by complex constellations of seemingly mundane techniques and ideational frameworks.