During later years a number of new actors have emerged in the field of education; “edu-preneurs” who offer a multitude of products and services to schools such as e.g. digital solutions, evidence-based teaching models, teaching material and teacher training.
Through a combination of ethnographical investigations and a historicizing of the present, we aim to study how private actors and logics change the conditions for what counts as good education. The purpose is to study under what conditions, in what forms and with which consequences ‘edu-preneurial’ actors engage in Swedish schools.
This will be accomplished through interview and observation studies on 1) companies selling services and products; 2) school leaders who are responsible for contacts with edu-preneurs. Furthermore, the phenomenon will be historicized with help from different kinds of archive material and previous research.
The project will contribute with knowledge about the consequences of the outsourcing of essential parts of Swedish education into a private market external the educational system.
This phenomenon is a blind spot in research – nationally and internationally. Even though, the marketization of Swedish education is one of the most rapid and extensive processes in the world. The project will inform research as well as ongoing political discussions on how Swedish school best can be organized in a public/private market.