SKOLAN GÖR SKILLNAD - DiVA

Summary
the staff’s actions, reasoning and argumentation often are taken for
granted and manifested in a common-sense knowledge that is not always
accessible for reflection.
The book consists of eight chapters; the first two devoted to what has
been outlined above. Five empirical chapters then follow, of which the
first, Chapter 3, Everyday Life at Centrum School [Vardag och villkor i
Centrumskolan], describes the context of the school personnel’s conversations
and actions. In examining the restructuring of the Swedish school
system, and how these reforms have affected local work, it becomes clear
as to how ethnicity as a category has been woven into the remodelling of
the school, has led to changes in governance and now frames the everyday
life of the school.
Today the Swedish school is influenced by the idea of competition, in
which the school’s reputation, number of pupils and grade statistics are important.
In this context, two pupil categories in particular stand out as central:
“Swedish” pupils and “immigrant pupils”. The former student category
is regarded as highly desirable by the school’s staff and is seen as a guarantee
for the upkeep of its good reputation. The latter category, on the other
hand, is regarded as a cause for concern in that “Swedish” pupils are not attracted
to the school if the number of “immigrant pupils” is too high.
School personnel deal with this by developing strategies for how they
speak about and categorise their school in different situations. When it
comes to requesting money for activities, the designation “large number of
immigrants” is considered suitable, as this immediately gives the impression
that the school has a number of problems in relation to these pupils
and is therefore in need of extra resources. The term “international”
school, on the other hand, comes across as something positive, where one
imagines exciting and future-oriented activities taking place. Such a concept
thus appears in information brochures designed to market schools
and attract potential pupils and parents. This different ways of talking
about and describing the school has been developed into a routine and obvious
way of presenting one’s own school in order to meet different needs,
and illustrates how the school’s practices are institutionalised. The tension
that arises revolves around the school being confronted with the need for
“Swedish” (middle-class) pupils in order to retain its good reputation, at
the same time as “immigrant pupils” provide the school with more teaching
resources.
The four subsequent chapters are devoted to an examination of how differences
are created and recreated in the school’s everyday life through focusing
on four differentiating practices.
Chapter 4, Differences that Divide [Skillnaden som tudelar], examines
how differences are created with the aid of culture and how the school’s
students and personnel are differentiated as “Swedes”, “immigrants” and
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