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An educational research and school development project in the 2000s, of the
kind I participated in myself, can be seen as an example of both „advanced
liberalism‟ and „inclusive liberalism‟, that is to say a kind of control philosophy
with connections to both the EU directives and various policy texts by the
OECD (Dahlstedt, 2009; Walker, 2009). Perhaps it is also possible to apply
Cardinis (2009) expression „post-welfare‟ on this sort of liberal governance
philosophy. One can hardly be mistaken of that the active local citizenship, selfregulating,
committed, responsible and, in a lifelong perspective, learning citizen
is made to an ideal person in the studied practice. That constitutes the image -
not only of the useful and respectable citizen - but also the useful and
respectable school developer.
School development as a discursive practice is partially produced as a synonym
for a real organization of the environment. Today several professionals within
schools - including its largest group of workers, the teachers - are confronted
with texts, in which it is assumed that school development is something both
obvious and correct, which has to take place. It is also quite expected that as a
teacher one should have a positive attitude to all this. One of the things that
have surprised me in the process of this thesis is the discursively seen
widespread acceptance of and the relatively limited questioning of school
development as a discursive practice. The acceptance of the unexpected and, in
several respects ideological implications of this practice, which can be seen as
less admirable is also surprisingly. This seems to fit into an attitude, which
according to Dahlstedt (2009) characterizes an „advanced liberal‟ welfare
regime. Dahlstedt (2009) describes the ideal partnering subject, one that goes in
to ally itself with the problem formulation in e.g. a partnership, that is to say,
one who does not challenge or contest the assumptions or descriptions of
problems or proposals on their solutions. As Dahlstedt (2009) points out, the
ideal partnering subject may turn out to be in conflict with the idea of school as
the place of critical and democratic education. Perhaps it is a conflict that even
school development as discursive practice may prove to contribute. If so, it
would be a somewhat paradoxical ideological implication.
Several texts (e.g. policy texts, scientific papers, media scrutiny) associate
schools to a kind of deficiency, which means that school never really lives up to
the vision or the image of itself. Therefore, school appears to be an enterprise
considered in constant need of intervention and a sort of perpetual revision. In
other words, school development considered as a kind of Sisyphean work.
What is somewhat remarkable is also that the proclaimed revisions do not seem
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