1. Research topic/aim 

The global education reform movement has enforced a decentralized reform environment that promotes evaluation and external monitoring towards student achievements in local educational practices (Sahlberg, 2016). Prior studies on evaluation in school-age educare (SAEC) practice have revealed a wide array of logics and institutional factors shaping these processes within the Swedish context (Ackesjö, 2022, Lager, 2024). The present study adds to this line of research through a managerial perspective by exploring principals and deputy principals' sensemaking of assuring quality of teaching within the Swedish SAEC. The study also contributes a complementary perspective to prior research by highlighting how institutional logics does not necessarily translate to the logics and conditions of the local organization.   

2. Theoretical framework 

The theoretical point of departure of the study is grounded in Alvesson & Jonsson (2022) conceptualization of how the path between external pressures of legitimacy and conformism and internal organizational logics can be paved with lack of meaning, friction and illogics. The lack of (or inconsistent) shared meanings and mutual sense of logic within and between organizations is here understood as organizational dischronization, where institutional logics might be transformed to organizational illogics.            

3. Methodology/research design 

The study was carried out as a qualitative interview study with a selected sample of 10 principals and deputy principals responsible for managing the Swedish SAEC. The present study is part of a larger research project on the Swedish SAECs´ potential and possibilities in contributing to students goal fulfillment.  

4. Expected results/findings 

The results show that certain measures of quality assurance in SAEC make sense to the school leaders in relation to structural, processual and service oriented aspects of quality in the educational program. Perceptions of illogics and nonsensemaking does however appear in relation to quality as results or outcomes of SAEC-teaching, often following hardships related to measurability and evaluative methods in practice, as well as an expressed lack of personal knowledge concerning what SAEC-teaching actually entails. The fragmented and lack of shared meaning expressed here illustrates the organizational dischronization between external pressures and local organizational logic.   

5. Relevance to Nordic educational research 

The international reform movement and succeeding national policy initiatives towards quality monitoring and evaluation similar to the research object of the present study is present in other nordic countries and might therefore be of interest to research being performed in these contexts. 

References

Ackesjö, H. (2022). Evaluating the practice in Swedish school-age educare: Issues and contradictions. Journal of Childhood, Education & Society, 3(1), 60-73.  

Alvesson, M., & Jonsson, A. (2022). Organizational dischronization: On meaning and meaninglessness, sensemaking and nonsensemaking. Journal of Management Studies, 59(3), 724-754.

Lager, K. (2024). Children’s experiences: The institutional grip of evaluation in Swedish school-age educare. Journal of Childhood, Education & Society, 5(1), 61-71.

Sahlberg, P. (2016). The global educational reform movement and its impact on schooling. The handbook of global education policy, 128-144.