Organizing and managing quality- and improvement work in local education authorities

Developing schools is a shared responsibility between local education authorities (LEAs) and principals in local schools.

However, as research about the Swedish school system mainly has focused on the national level or the local school level, we lack knowledge about LEAs.

Based on an exploratory approach, the following project aims to develop knowledge about how LEAs organize and manage quality and improvement work, the officers involved in this work, how principals perceive the activities and processes that they are expected to take part in and carry out and how the relationship between LEAs’ quality and improvement work and the needs of local schools be described with regard to trust and control.

The project is framed by neo-institutional theory and designed as a comparative case study of six municipalities.

The selection is based on different municipality groups and the Swedish Schools Inspectorate´s regular review of LEAs´ quality and improvement work.

Data collection takes place through fieldwork and consists of three parts: analysis of written documents, shadowing and interviews with LEA officials and interviews with a selection of principals in local schools.

The project is significant as evaluations have shown large variations in LEAs’ capacity to conduct quality- and improvement work, however not targeting what makes a difference.