Swedish Educational Reforms in Retrospect: The Impact of Educational Research on Policy Formation

INTRODUCTION
Recently, Sweden's education system has received intensive discussions and evaluations within journals and books at both home and abroad. The summary of those conclusions given to the focus on the Swedish education system shows that Sweden is among the best in the world, especially, in the area of information technology. Sweden owes much of its educational development and achievement to the numerous researches, which have taken place in its educational research departments at the various universities in the country. These researches, pioneered by its professors, associate professors, research fellows, and doctoral students, have contributed greatly to policy development in Swedish universities and Swedish educational model as a whole.

This paper is intended to discuss some of the main issues in the Swedish educational system, particularly, the discussions that concern reforms in Swedish educational system. In particular, questions that deal with how the different kinds of reforms that took place in recent years especially in the compulsory and secondary education, will be discussed. What specific reforms took place, and in what areas of the education system did these occur? We shall also discuss how research activities, which were initiated in the universities research departments, influenced reforms and policy development of the education system in Sweden.

BRIEF BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Problems regarding social class and immigrants
When it comes to reforms in the Swedish education system, certain factors could be mentioned as had accelerated the need to embark on these school reforms. These factors were also seen as had orchestrated the changes that occurred in the society as a whole in the last century. These were the same factors, which provided a means to embark on further developments in education.

Swedish history of industrialization informs us that Sweden for so many years ago had been dependent on agriculture as means of industry. Nearly 70% of the population had their livelihood on agriculture. Sweden's dependence on agriculture, therefore, continued for several years until 1935 when many different industries emerged rapidly and took over from the agricultural sector. In 1960, the manufacturing industry reached its zenith, as it was able to feed over 40% of the Swedish population. However, during the 1980s, industry diminished to the level of 32%, and so was agriculture, which was 5% while trade and other private and public services increased to 63%. According to statistical information, already in the early 1960s, Sweden could be said to have ushered in into the post-industrial stage of development.

Another factor, which is also connected with the feature of the Swedish society, is the way industries were distributed over in the countryside. Only about 30% of the Swedish population were living at the three metropolitan areas of the country, which included Malmö, Stockholm, and Gothenburg. In recent years, the forest and mine industries had been well rationalized and this had augmented internal migration from the interior to the major cities and its surrounding areas.

A third factor concerns the vital change of increased in women's participation on the labor market. This had a tremendous increase in the 1980s, as many of the people who had earlier on been supported by agriculture (76%) had lost their jobs or livelihood. The work force therefore received many women, especially those older than 18 years about 65% joined the work force. A factor related to the increase of population in the work force was the qualification level within work sector, which obviously increased quite dramatically. Engineers, for example, were in great demand in the industries, as there were shortages of qualified ones to keep the industries going (Dahllöf, 1986:11).

The final changes in Swedish society, which called for educational reforms, concerned the high immigration of foreigners into the country. Statistical information has it that “the mean number of newcomers from abroad every year corresponds roughly to about 30 per cent of a year cohort of newborn infants.” (Ibid., p.12). This saw the migration of minorities whose influx into the country "enriched the Swedish life, but also put special demands on the education system e.g. in terms of some instruction in the different home-languages.” (Ibid.)

According to Elgqvist-Salzman and Opper (1981), the social contexts of reforms were ripe to have called for any major changes or reforms in the education system. These authors see reforms as connected with the formation of the Modern Welfare State. The whole idea of reforms was to promote internationalization of the Swedish society. Foreign trade had successfully generated tremendous profits to the country, and these profits were utilized to further domestic expansion “to support economic and social reform- not least of all educational “ (Ibid., p6). Development assistance to developing countries was one way in which Sweden manifested its international contacts and this supported and led to trade expansion around the globe. At the same time, the liberal immigration policies of Sweden meant that people other than Swedes had to be integrated into the Swedish society. This meant that new languages other than Swedish language had to be integrated into the Swedish education system to enable immigrant's children use their native and mother tongues.

MAIN ISSUES IN REFORMS
There have been quite a number of books and articles that have dealt with reforms in the educational system in Sweden. The main issues of the Swedish reforms, which occurred in the compulsory education or the comprehensive school and the secondary education and later in the tertiary education, seem to concern the promotion of equality in schools, the internationalization in compulsory education, and the attempt of the education reformers to introduce measures that would generate effective measures in schools. Yet, to others it was the freedom and opportunities that they thought it would bring to people in the society that motivated these reforms. These issues are well discussed in Elgqvist-Salzman and Opper (1981), Wallin (1983), Stenholm (1984), Dahllöf (1986), Eurydice Swedish National Unit (1997) as well as in the work of Lindblad (1999). I would like to present them, but first let me briefly mention something, which is characteristic with Swedish approach to policy formulation.

According to Elgqvist-Salzman and Opper, there is a special way that concerns the manner policies are enacted or formed in Sweden. First, there is a process style and second, there is a content style of approach. The former approach, which concerns the manner policy is decided upon, is characterized by its highly rationalistic, consensual, deliberative, and comparatively centralized nature. The latter approach, which refers to the content of the policy, that is, the content style on the other hand, is often radical in terms of breadth and organizational change. It is described as often short-sighted “in that its speculations as to consequences for neighboring sectors do not go far enough, but at the same time it is prone to base recommendations upon commissioned or otherwise available research.” (1981:12). Another feature of the content style is the way it stresses on the goals of solidarity, equality, democracy, and efficiency which reveal saliently in nearly every social and economic sector in the Swedish society. The slogan of equality in education, and the objective of internationalization that makes the ground principles of educational reforms, became a success. This success can be attributed to the fact that already there was the existence of social and economic conditions in the country, which also have similarities in the same direction as the reforms.

I shall now move on to the main issues in the school reforms. Here, I intend not to make a detail presentation of what took place as many researchers have already examined and documented these in numerous articles and literature. I shall only give a summary of the results or policy outcomes.

Compulsory education
The school reforms began with the organization of compulsory schooling along comprehensive line. The aim was to facilitate equality of participation for all social groups. A nine-year comprehensive school for compulsory education was instituted by the Education Act of 1962, after a twelve-year period of a series of try and error, which commenced in 1950. This reform (see Figure 1.) was characterized with its stress upon an important goal of formal schooling, which was designated as “social upbringing.” Every student, according to reform strategy, had to be given the chance to have general education in order to create a “common foundation in cultural and political knowledge and values.” (Elgqvist-Stalzman & Opper, 1981:13) The government also had in mind the need of every student to be able to participate in democracy, which was felt to be imperative. There should be no more elitism in education, which was seen as the major cause of social stratification in the labor market. This will not be allowed. Among other things, there was the illumination that called attention to the employment of student-centered teaching methods. The objective was to attract students to actively be engaged in their own learning. Training students to employ collaborative group work and communicative skills were to be encouraged and motivated on similar “democratic” grounds.

The reformers also wanted to be assured that the time spent on other subjects, such as natural and social sciences had to minimized so that extra hours could be spent on communication skills classes, English (from grade four pupils onwards), home economics, mathematics, and Swedish language.

Figure 1. School structure in Sweden (Adapted from Wallin 1984:np)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Pre-school Basic comprehensive school Upper-Secondary School

Age 0-6 Age 7-16 Age 17-18

Or 17-19

Or 17-20

Compulsory
Though the organizational style was to be maintained, that is, discouraging any form of differentiation, the new comprehensive school was expected to differentiate pedagogically. Students who manage to reach the final (third) stage of the compulsory school have some choices to make. A student could, for example, select different electives in mathematics, music, drawing, crafts, and languages such as English or a second language. But these systems of electives (which concerns subject's categorization) were later changed by the government during 1969 and 1978 revisions made of the compulsory school curriculum. What resulted from the 1969 reform was that it empowered students to choose English at grade three and made English compulsory for students at grades eight and nine. In the following, I shall list some important reforms made in the compulsory school:

• 1969 reform imposed some limitations on the total number of choices from the electives. Students could spend more time on subjects of their own choices.

• Compulsory courses in natural and social sciences were no longer divided into separate subjects. Students could study them in blocks such as civics.

• Students of ninth grade were to participate in classes that featured practical occupational orientation

• Teachers of comprehensive school were expected to carry off all-sided, neutral and objective presentation of the subject matter at hand. Students were not to be compelled to take stands on particular issues.

The SIA-Commission
This commission is important in the study of comprehensive school because of the role it played in the school reforms. The SIA-commission, which was appointed in 1971, was entrusted with the internal work of the school. Following their work, there emerged some parliamentary decisions in 1976 and 1978, which recommended the transfer of educational planning and certain responsibilities from the central government to municipalities and to schools themselves. But power transfers were not to be carried out without constant checks from the central government. To ensure this, the local planning was still to be carried out within the framework or parameters of a nationally built curriculum, which to some local people presented some confusion. It could be mentioned that other social sectors had already received decentralization and therefore to do the same thing to compulsory education was not new. Decentralization of authority did more to encourage local authority members to get involve actively “in the expectation that this would better answer the unique requirements of target groups and would cut down on central watch dog activity, thus reducing bureaucratic redtape.” (Elgqvist-Salzman & Opper, 1981:15)

Internationalization issues
The Commission on Education, which was appointed in 1946, pinpointed the vitality of language instruction for the society's members, without restricting it to the elite class, future academics, or civil servants. The purpose was quite clear; to stress the need of internationalization of the education system since it was understood that the ability of a student to speak and read a foreign language would enable him/her to deal with opportunities and things around him in the world.

Secondary education
The reforms that took place in the secondary schools could be said to have taken place between 1950 and 1980. There are some authors, who simply discard the idea that the process of reform was quite as well ordered as accounts present it. However, there is a general agreement that changes in the reforms occurred simultaneously on several levels. Furthermore, the whole reform work, according to different analyses by researchers with the employment of graphs and so on, both compulsory reform and secondary reforms; the tertiary and teacher education could be placed around 1940-1980, a period of 40 years.

Reform in the secondary school stressed on the social relevance of education. Equality was at the forefront of the reformers' minds, as their aim was to minimize the differences in status between theoretical and practical subjects taught at schools. A great deal of effort was put on the idea to amalgamate “what were formerly extremely segregated versions of academic and vocational secondary schools.” (Elgqvist-Salzman & Opper, 1981:18) A minor theme was also to see to it that both practical subjects and theoretical ones were socially relevant. Since the labor market needs workers from all disciplines, the demand was put forward to train and balance skill workers in technical, natural sciences, economics, humanities, and social sciences. In particular, the number of students pursuing courses in economics and technical disciplines had to be raised above certain level. There should be equality between the sexes; women must be encouraged to pursue courses in the natural sciences.

The birth of the new gymnasium
Prior to the integration that saw the birth of the present gymnasium, the following three options existed for those who wanted to pursue studies in the secondary education: the Continuation School, the Academic Gymnasium, and the Vocational School.

The Continuation School functioned in the Swedish society up till 1964. Subjects that were offered included mercantile trade and technology, humanities, economics, and social sciences. A characteristic of this school is that those citizens with work experiences or other vocational training without formal training from the compulsory school could be admitted.

The Academic Gymnasium offered courses such as German, French, Statistics and probability theory, civics, business administration, and psychology.

The Vocational School was the third choice of post-compulsory studies. Around 800 courses were taught at these schools all over the country. A characteristic worthy of note is that the local people have control over the curriculum. This explains why course length varies according to the needs of the students.

These three categories of secondary education were in existence until 1969, when the government amalgamated them into one gymnasium featuring 21 lines of study. These programs of study became three broad categories:

• 3- and 4-year theoretical programs
• 2-year vocational programs
• 2-year theoretical programs
Parliament through deliberations accepted the above proposal. At the same time since in 1968 a suggestion had been made to abolish the examinations that students graduate with during their final year, a new class grading system was then introduced. The class grades were nationally calibrated by standard achievement tests given to students whilst they study at the last two secondary school years.

The promotion of internationalization in the gymnasium followed that of the compulsory school. Students at the gymnasium have to study at least two foreign languages. This could be seen as a continuation of the school system to introduce students and other citizens to respect people of other foreign origin and their culture as a whole.

POLICY STUDIES AND ITS TWO ARGUMENTS
We will now turn to the discussion that concerns the influence of Swedish educational research and its impact on educational policy. The study of policy and evaluation in the field of social sciences are not old, in fact, this is an area that is gaining popularity at present. Policy studies of late are geared towards the studying of various social sectors, such as welfare system, economics, and education. It is after World War Two, or the period that is considered Post-World War period that policy research emerged in the educational sciences, and when it emerged on the scene, it was intrinsically connected to the campaign of state expansion. This period was characterized with reforms or strategies of reforms, which “was a social engineering approach to social change.” (Vislie et al., 1997:26). Reform strategies and the evaluation of schools, which characterized this period, were the practices that had the purpose of carrying out the social engineering goals of the state. Swedish research community gained its source of inspiration from this period, as it began to embark on studies that pertained to policy.

There were two arguments that policy research and evaluation studies debated around. The first is that scientific knowledge should be instrumental. Schools' studies were thought to augment peoples' comprehension of the way policies could be more effectively pursued in order to generate desired school, classroom processes, and outcomes. Methods such as descriptive and correlation were utilized in most of these studies that were concerned with what they termed “effectiveness” studies. The second argument of policy and evaluation studies “was to organize the investigation of reforms through theoretical and historical questions, rather than to focus solely on specific and instrumental questions of program implementation.” (Ibid.) This latter argument contends that a conceptual exploration of the results of state policies would give interpretations that are generalizable concerning the “assumptions, implications, and possibilities of State practices.” (Ibid.).

Sweden's pedagogical tradition, which was predominantly initiated in the 1960s and 1970s, employed the latter argument as its building blocks, that is, the historical and the theoretical concern of the studies of policy, and evaluation studies. This pedagogical tradition, which is widely appraised home as well as abroad is, called “frame factor” theory.

FRAME FACTOR THEORY
Already in the 1960s, we acquired the glimpse that educational research in the universities has a strong influence on policy development. The large-scale survey research, which took place during this period, emphasized the question of equality. The research community was a vital national actor in this project of comprehending the implications of policy on problems of equity and justice in the school arena. But the development of the frame factor theory even ushered in a much intensive period of the research community as national actors. Frame factor theory, simply put, purposes to comprehend how school internal organizational factors and external socio-political restraint come together to provide direction and a lead to the pedagogical practices. The theory was propounded by Dahllöf (1967), and further developed and expanded by Lundgren (1972) and his associates at the University of Stockholm.

Lundgren's theory is built on the concept of frames, which consist of the constraining and directing conditions, which are inherent in the teaching process. These constraining and directing aspects are external, that is, outside the control of teachers and students. The theory recognizes distinctions between frame concept and curriculum and also between these concepts and formal obligations of teachers. In frame factor theory's terminology, the frame system is intrinsically connected to the administrative apparatus of education and this constrains the teaching system. Curriculum, which is also known as the goal system governs the teaching system, while the formal rule system otherwise known as the judicial apparatus, regulates the system of teaching.

Lundgren also added an element of psychological conceptual distinction in the model; but this conceptualization of the psychological concepts is not well developed as compared to the main concepts, which make the first part of the theory. This lower level of frame factor theory concerns the conceptualizations of interplay between learning context and the individual's capability to interpret this context” (Vislie et al, 1997:27).

The model utilizes three main concepts that are worthy to be noted: FRAMES—PROCESSES—RESULTS. Its importance is that it is used as a tool in the classification of probable relationships in a chain of events. Vislie et al comment on frame factor is worthwhile:

The idea of frame factor/curriculum theory approach … to the study of teaching processes (also including the evaluation of such processes), is not only to recognize the existence of a certain set of constraining conditions, but also to trace in some detail their influence on the chain of events forming a variety of different outcomes (didactic process analyses/classroom interaction studies). The basic idea of the frame factor theory is to explain any educational process by linking the macro and micro levels of analyses. The main emphasis is, however, on education as a societal process, focusing on the role of the state (i.e., the welfare state) as the mandatory power in the educational sphere, and more specifically, the role of the curriculum as an instrument for steering and control, as well as for innovations, and reforms in Swedish (welfare) society (Vislie et al, 1997:27).

Frame factor theory has played a significant role in international research (both in journals and literature). But the role it has played and still plays in domestic research is very important. Lundgren, his research associates, as well as his students' used this theory to contribute to numerous researches that became beneficial to the Swedish educational system. The emergence of the frame factor theory also unveiled the fact that psychology is limited as a discipline in matters regarding school reforms. What frame factor theory did, according to some authors, was it paved the way for Swedish educational research to be developed into a broad theoretical interest into what is known today as “curriculum theory”. By “tying together epistemological (linguistic and social) theory with pedagogical theory”, frame factor theory received the extension it needed, which later became practical in its use and interpretation in the educational field (Ibid., p28). For example, the ideas of Frenchman Pierre Bourdieu and the British sociologist Basil Bernstein were incorporated in to further the shift of emphasis and focus in educational studies. As noted by Vislie, the employment of frame factor theory and other related theories, which were fused together, made it possible that “the political field of curriculum and school change became differentiated into the arenas of policy formulation and policy realization.” (Ibid.)

POLICY DEVELOPMENT: PEDAGOGY AND ITS RELATION TO THE POWER STRUCTURE

We have discussed earlier on how school reforms took place; and it has been shown that there is some connection between educational research in Sweden and school reforms, and also the implementation of the latter. It could be asserted that Swedish researchers provided the scientific basis for the educational reforms in Sweden (cf.Vislie et al, 1997:32; Eide, 1993:49-62). The formulation of policy or making of policy has strong relation with Swedish research. There is therefore an essential interplay between pedagogy and policy–making in Sweden.

What become salient as one reads research papers and reports regarding Swedish educational system are that there is the awareness concerning the government's involvement in the form of providing research funding to researchers. Swedish educators, likewise their politicians, have played outstanding role in the reforms that took place during the last five decades. Researchers in education were often called upon at the initial stages to participate in the process of reforms. A case in point is the major reforms, which we have discussed above, the ones, which took place in 1950s and 1960s. These, which were often named as Royal Commissions, saw to it that many outstanding researchers from their famous universities provided contributions in a tremendous way to help the implementation of these policies. The School Commissions that were established in 1946, 1957, and the 1960 commenced and funded large research projects. Apart from the effect these Commissions had on policy making, they also influenced pedagogy as well. Vislie et al were right when they point out the fact that School Commissions were regarded in some quarters as a research training school for Swedish educational researchers. As for this he may be right so long as he considers the fact that many young researchers, postdoctoral students as well as doctoral students become involved in these educational researches. The close relations between researchers and politicians is very encouraging, in fact, as mentioned already, most of the professors were members of the Social Democratic Party, and as a result they found it congenial to work together on several issues of the reforms. An account of one reformer during those periods of intensive reforms goes like these: “many of the projects were also professionally very demanding, requiring new approaches and methodological skills, and – not the least –the handling of research in a frontier field between (traditional) scientific ethics and political interests.” (Vislie et al, 1997:33)

The work of the Commissions and the numerous researches, which took place during the period of reforms, that is around the 1960s, according to my understanding, paved the way for education policy analysis. “The commissioned research also improved the competence and further stimulated and broadened the already existing interests in fields like testing and assessment with links to studies on intelligence and skills, student achievements, interests and attitudes, and school recruitment.” (Ibid., p.33) In the University of Stockholm, Husén established the IEA studies in the 1960 and this gained international recognition. Curriculum research was one of the legacies that the Commissioned research left behind, including new research approaches to teaching and instruction otherwise known as process—oriented–research.

CONCLUDING REMARKS
Education in Sweden has gone through many reforms, and still the authorities continue to find ways to make it much better by looking further for appropriate ways to make more changes. It shows that reform never ends especially in this present world, where research usually undertaken unfolds better or appropriate ways for dealing with sundry problems. The government's desire and responsibility in utilizing commissions to study situations in school system and suggest new ways to tackle problems, is something that many countries abroad admire about Sweden as a country. This has been possible due to the efforts researchers employed by the commissions to investigate situations and report their findings to the government brought about. These styles of process and content that policy makers employ have their weaknesses as well as their strengths. At the same time critics have also realized that there is always a way to make corrections when new commissions find better ways that surpass the previous ones. They discard the old approaches or strategies and instead accept the new appealing strategies in dealing with the situation. This is one of the strengths we find in the government commissions appointed to investigate problems in the education sector.

The impact of research on policy development is something that cannot be overlooked when one studies Swedish education system. Sweden, therefore, continues to invest huge sums of money in their research granting bodies appointed and controlled by the state. The success of their education system and the reforms that have been carried out enlighten us on a very important thing. That Sweden's positive attitude to research makes it imperative and also sounds the urgent need that researchers be given the chance to study the new situations and recommend their ideas and new ways to the government. The relationship between the politicians, that is, the power structure and the researchers who sit at the board of the commissions is so nice that it will enhance the research work in the country. The Swedish society will benefit from these investments made regularly through the direct co-operation between these two groups.

The issues we have discussed in this essay are that of reforms in the education system in Sweden, especially, that of the comprehensive school and the secondary school, and also educational research impact on the formation of policy in the education sector. Reforms will always be initiated when the authorities feel the need to review the present system and look for a better system than what they have at present. We should therefore expect more changes in the school sector as population changes occur in the society. Politicians will never be satisfied so long as citizens demand a better system that will meet the challenges of the future. Swedish education has gone very far, but still the golden years of reforms are still with us. What we look forward to is the period when the slogan of equality will be firmly established so as to eliminate the inequality that still exist in some quarters of the present-day school system. Furthermore, the inequality that prevails on the labor markets that which absorbs the student when she manages to complete her educational program successfully.

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