Internal marketisation and teachers defending their educational setting – Accounting and mobilisation in Swedish upper secondary education

The article shows how, today, internal marketisation processes are intrinsic to Swedish educational municipal managerialism, and how accounting practices are continual, frequent and dispersed and part of teachers’ professional work. A case study is presented as an outline of a teacher teams’ response to an accounting request and their mobilisation to defend their pedagogic activity for pupils ineligible for regular upper secondary education. The accounting response involves translating, collective editing and inscribing the pupils and the pedagogical activity. We show how teachers have become skilled practitioners of accounting practices. Our case provides an empirical example in line with research on performance management: there is no possibility for teachers not to involve themselves in the techniques in use and employing the right signifiers when defending their pedagogical activity. As accounting practices are dispersed and teachers have acquired accounting skills, the practice of accounting is continuously reinforced and strengthened.

Författare: Ingrid Henning Loeb och Karin Lumsden Wass

Internal marketisation and teachers defending their educational setting – Accounting and mobilisation in Swedish upper secondary education

Education Inquiry, Vol 2, No 4 2010