While Sweden has become unique on the international education scene, by becoming the mostmarket-oriented education system in the world, the transnational standards-based reform movementcannot be considered to have been driven that far. Right now, a National Professional Program (NPP)is in the making, including a structure for preschool teachers’, teachers’ and school principals’continuing professional development and a merit system. NPP can be considered as part of the‘standards movement’, which in recent decades has become a key component of educational reformsin many countries (Berkovich & Bogler, 2020; Goodwin, 2021). As policy tools, professional standardsand standardisation can be used for planning and directing professional learning and to improveeducation, but also for regulative, performative, and benchmarking purposes (McMahon & Torrance, 2023). Standards and standardisation also risk limiting professional autonomy (Evetts, 2011; Nerland& Karset, 2015). Follow Timmermans and Epstein (2010), there is a need to problematise and give indepth account of the complexity of standardisation. From a Nordic perspective, it is important to gaina deeper understanding of how the global standard movement is translated to and intertwined withlocal contexts.Based on a critical curriculum theory perspective, this study draws on Schmidt’s (2008) discursiveinstitutionalism. The aim of is to identify and critically explore the ideas of NPP, oninstitutional/societal and programmatic levels (Wahlström & Sundberg, 2018), and the discoursescommunicated by the policy proposal. Official policy documents constitute the empirical data.Preliminary findings indicate neoliberal ideas, i.e., global competition and accountability, but alsoideas about alignment to already existing reforms. A crisis discourse and the lifelong learning25discourse is communicated, but also competing discourses about balancing professionalization‘from above’ and ‘from below’, and tensions between individual or collegial training programs. Thereare also context specific discourses about the Nordic school model, and equality.

References:

Berkovich, I & Bogler, R. (2020). The relationship between school leadership standards and schooladministration imperatives: an international perspective, School Leadership & Management, 40(4), 321-334.

Evetts, J. (2011). A new professionalism? Challenges and opportunities. Current sociology, 59(4), 406-422.

Goodwin, A. L. (2021). Teaching standards, globalisation, and conceptions of teacherprofessionalism. European Journal of Teacher Education, 44(1), 5-19.

McMahon, M., & Torrance, D. (2023). Standards for school leadership and principalship. In I. Menter(ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Teacher Education Research, 665-686. Springer.

Nerland, M., & Karseth, B. (2015) The knowledge work of professional associations: approaches tostandardisation and forms of legitimisation, Journal of Education and Work, 28(1), 1-23, DOI:10.1080/13639080.2013.802833

Schmidt, V. A. (2008). Discursive institutionalism: The explanatory power of ideas and discourse.Annual review of political science, 11(1), 303-326.

Wahlström, N., & Sundberg, D. (2018). Discursive institutionalism: Towards a framework foranalysing the relation between policy and curriculum. Journal of education policy, 33(1), 163-183.