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fact they are historically specific offers of certain ways of thinking, which could
have “been thought of differently” (Börjesson, 2003, s. 20, own translation).
For example, many of the perspectives on school development refer to
democratic ideals and invoke also social improvement and a humanistic and
liberal discourse.
Wetherell and Potter (1992) mean ideology to be something that occurs also in
scientific contexts and that science must for that reason be made accessible for
critical attention. Such critical attention can be understood as some sort of
deconstruction of the processes and discursive practices, which help to fixate
some claims and to ascribe them authority as neutral fact and truth.
Background
School development, as a branch or discursive practice, serves both as a kind of
entrance to this thesis and as a general description of the empirical approach.
The thesis is based on a heterogenic empirical textual material which debates
school development in one way or another, directly or indirectly linked to a
specific collaborative school research development project. The project took
place between 2003 and 2008. Participating partners in the collaboration were
the Swedish National Agency for School Improvement, Karlstad University,
Dalarna University and 13 municipalities in Sweden. The project was thus part
of the discursive practice roughly described above. When I use the concept
school development it is referred to a combination of school development and
research on school development (school development research). I participated
myself as a graduate student in the project mentioned above and in that respect
contributed to the discursive practice.
Framework and reservations for this study
This study has not been performed with the intention of claiming that all the
talk about school development does not have any relevance or to suggest that
the strategies and perspectives on school development that are offered as part
of that talk, would not have the qualifications to work just so. The study is
based on an idea that the ideological potential of arguments occurs, develops
and changes in discursive practices and not anywhere else or at any abstract
level. Therefore the ideological potential of arguments should be studied where
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