Projekt som strategi för skolutveckling – en fjärils färdväg, men ingen dagslända…

The Use of Projects as a Strategy for School Improvement – the Flight of a Butterfly…

School is an important institution charged with the task of contributing to the economic, cultural and social development of the community, and of nurturing democratic citizens. Countless state-sponsored measures have therefore been initiated in order to affect the quality of schooling. One example is a state-financed school development project, which is the focus of this thesis. The overall purpose of the study was to improve awareness of whether, and if so how, using projects as a strategy for improving school contributes to sustainable changes, as well as what has been both advantageous and disadvantageous to this end. Two projects were studied with a focus on the participant’s perceptions of and experiences from this project. A number of headmasters and educators were interviewed on two occasions, once in connection with the final phases of the projects, and then again three years later. The analysis of the empirical data was guided by The Frame Factor Model (Lundgren, 1994, 1999), and by Hoy and Miskel’s (2008) organisational model. In summary, the study shows that the ambitions of both of the school projects were greater than the sustainable results. Moreover, it was clear that the conditions placed upon the school organisation by the outside world constituted both promoted and encumbered the results of the school projects. State funds contributed to the improvement of schools, while at the same time, other state regulations delimited what the sustainable changes were. The desirable changes were also affected by processes within the organisation and can be connected with structures, cultures and individuals. Above all, current structures within the organisation need to be changed so that the employees have an in-depth involvement in a project and for a protracted period of time. Changed structures allow for common expertise and values to be improved with regard to venturing into a project. Furthermore, the various skills of the employees, as well as their attitudes toward projects within the organisation, were also significant to the sustainable changes. One suggestion for continued research is to improve the knowledge on how structures can be changed within a school organisation so as to enable the organisation’s employees to be engaged in such a way as to make collective learning possible.