The purpose of this study is to explore principals and deputy principals’ perceptions in relation to the concept of quality teaching in the policy-context of the Swedish school-age educare (SAEC), and through this exploration contribute further knowledge to how the concept might be characterized and what implications these perceptions could have for quality assurance (QA) in the educational program.
The study was conducted as a qualitative interview study guided by informed grounded theory methodology. The study was executed as part of a larger research project on goal fulfillment within the Swedish SAEC. Study participants consisted of principals and deputy principals responsible for Swedish SAECs.
A key conclusion following the results of the study is that teaching in the Swedish SAEC appears to be characterized as qualitative based on its lateral properties, meaning complementary toward goal fulfillment and QA external to the SAEC program and contributing side-to-side with the “main object” (being school- or future societal goals).
The study contributes additional perspectives and terminology to the study of quality teaching and QA within SAEC. It also highlights potential challenges of QA in practice, not earlier explored in prior research – as well as important suggestions for future research on the subject.
Introduction
The concept of quality has been used in different contexts over time, but during the 1980s, in connection with increased globalization, quality as a concept became important in the public sector (Brown, 2013). What followed was an increased need for public organizations to emerge as competitive, which has resulted in demands to measure and compare quality within different organizations. Quality assurance (QA) in education has become highly significant in discussions concerning global challenges and educational systems are expected to equip students with knowledge, values and skills that may become essential and desirable in a future world (Snyder, 2023). The focus on quality in education as inspired by the business and industry sectors, has formed the basis for the goal- and results-oriented governance of the Swedish school system in the 1990s (Andersson, 2020). This was followed by several reform-changes such as the decentralization of the school system as well as increased demands for local QA within Swedish schools-programs (Adolfsson, 2024).
The Swedish school-age educare (SAEC) is a voluntary educational program available for students between 6 and 13 years old. The purpose of the SAEC is to complement the compulsory school by offering students an enjoyable leisure before and after school hours (Skolverket, 2024). The SAEC-program has traditionally been associated with a socio-pedagogical tradition (Memišević, 2024; Rohlin, 2001), i.e. social, relational abilities and democratic values, so-called “soft abilities” (Gardesten and Ackesjö, 2024). The educational program has however not been an exception to the latter decades reform-changes. Instead, such a form of governance has guided the SAEC-program toward an educational pedagogy in which the school day and leisure time are increasingly seen from a holistic view of children’s learning in closer association with an educational pedagogical tradition (Rohlin, 2001). This development has not been entirely unproblematic, as it has encountered resistance due to concerns about how such a shift in focus might threaten the intrinsic value of the SAEC (Gardesten and Ackesjö, 2024). SAEC teaching therefore finds itself in a borderland between policy and practice, creating new demands regarding what constitutes quality teaching within the SAEC program (Andersson, 2023; Lager, 2019; Lager, 2016; Memišević, 2024).
In similarity with the Swedish compulsory school, the SAEC is today obligated to implement systematic quality work within the educational program (Skolinspektionen, 2010). When implementing changes within the SAEC-practice, principals have shown to be an important actor (Jarl, 2018). The principal’s role has earlier been more closely connected to the teaching profession but has recently shifted to an increasingly strong managerial assignment (Skolinspektionen, 2010: 800 kap 4 § 4). Since the 1990s, principals have been given increased responsibility for conducting development and changes within the organization at the school level (Jarl, 2018), and in the latter decade the implementation and management of systematic quality development. However, previous studies indicate that it is problematic to measure and ensure quality in the SAEC, partly because SAEC-programs do not engage in individual assessments and evaluations, and partly because the more unique areas of the SAEC program (the socio-pedagogical contents), are difficult to measure (Hjalmarsson, 2019; Haglund, 2016) as they, unlike qualities related to subject knowledge, lack concrete assessment criteria (Bergh, 2010). This proposes a challenge for principals responsible for SAECs’ in Sweden, having to face external demands for QA and development within a practice which lacks current internal logics enabling its implementation.
The increased demands for QA in the SAEC (Skolverket, 2023) in relation to the integration of the program with the compulsory school and the field of tension between the social pedagogical tradition and the educational pedagogical/compulsory school orientation that the program must navigate between, raises questions regarding what characterizes qualitative teaching in the SAEC and its implications for the realization of QA. The present study, following prior studies highlighting principals as key actors in the implementation of new school reforms (Jarl, 2018) and responsible for ensuring that SAEC provides qualitative teaching (Skolinspektionen, 2010), focuses on how they perceive and characterize quality and QA in SAEC.
Purpose and research questions
The purpose of the study is therefore to explore principals and deputy principals’ perceptions in relation to the concept of quality teaching in the policy-context of the Swedish SAEC, and through this exploration contribute further knowledge to how the concept might be characterized and what implications these perceptions could have for QA in the educational program. The research purpose is operationalized through the following research questions:
What characterizes quality teaching in the Swedish SAEC according to principals and deputy principals?
What possible implications might the characterization of quality teaching in SAEC have for possibilities and challenges related to quality assurance in the educational program?
Conceptual framework
In this section, the present study’s utilization of the concepts of quality and QA are defined and delimited. The study is informed by a broad conceptual frame regarding quality and QA with less focus on detailed assessment criteria and preheld, standardized evaluative properties. This is motivated by prior studies highlighting the lack of and problems associated with defining and implementing such criteria in the Swedish SAEC (Ackesjö, 2022; Lager, 2019), which further motivates an explorative approach where the meaning of these concepts, as they are understood by key actors (principals in this study), emerge as a result from the study. The limitations and obstacles related to QA in SAEC will be thoroughly explained in the coming section of the literature review, while the studies methodological section further details its explorative approach.
Quality is a multifaceted and relative concept with a number of meanings depending on its context, point of perception and theoretical perspective (Elassy, 2015). Quality teaching (or teaching quality) as a concept for determining “good” teaching or teaching that pertains to certain standards displays similar challenges of demarcation in prior research (Wang et al., 2011). This includes a vast array of quality concepts that is determined by factors such as teacher credentials and competencies (i.e. teacher quality), student achievements and classroom performance. Others have criticized the more technical-rational approach to understanding quality teaching (and educational quality in general), proposing alternative conceptualizations that focus on political or symbolic research approaches (e.g. Blanco Ramírez, 2013). As explained above, the meaning of quality teaching in SAEC is in this study derived from the explorative and iterative approach to practice – adhering to the contextually dependent and relative dimensions of the concept. This also entails that the quality concepts are derived from peculiarities related to the educational program, its reform context and perceptions of its principals – encompassing a variation of theoretical and empirical potentials that might be found in (but are not determined by) prior research on the subject.
QA, as a concept, faces similar challenges as quality in regard to its multiple and sometimes vague meanings depending on contexts and stakeholders (Elassy, 2015; Williams, 2016). The present study takes its point of departure in two conceptualizations of QA in the exploration of the Swedish SAEC: Biggs (2001) separation between retrospective and prospective QA, and Cheong Cheng’s (2003) division between waves of internal, interface and future QA in education. Biggs (2001) defines retrospective QA as management-oriented, bureaucratic and summative in evaluating practices against externally formulated standards and goals in retrospect. According to Biggs, retrospective QA is inherently concerned with finding quantifiable indicators for evaluation and is not concerned with the actual quality of teaching and learning. Prospective QA, on the other hand, is concerned with the quality of teaching and learning in the present time for future purposes and quality enhancement (QE) of the institution. The kinds of quality, or quality teaching as focused within the present study, being assured is therefore dependent on temporal- and content-oriented aspects when viewed from Biggs (2001) distinction – which assists in studying how principals’ perceptions of quality teaching in the SAEC might be conceptualized.
To further explore quality teaching and QA within the wider reform context of the SAEC, the study uses Cheong Cheng’s (2003) division between three reform waves (or paradigms) in regard to QA. “Internal quality”, the first wave, pertained to quality as goal fulfillment, educational effectiveness and QA in terms of how well teaching and learning processes assists in achieving planned goals. The second wave, “Interface quality”, viewed quality as pertaining to preferences from different stakeholders and the public, with QA making sure that the educational institutions meet these preferences and are held accountable. The third and last wave is defined as “Future quality” and pertains to quality in education that serves the future needs of society and its individuals. QA in relation to this wave ensures that purposes, contents and outcomes from practices within current educational institutions meet the needs of future societal aims and challenges. These waves of QA can, in turn, be connected to different sets of models of QA used in practice. The combination of Biggs (2001) and Cheong Cheng’s (2003) distinctions and variations of QA as a conceptual framework is here used as a lens to exploring the principals’ perceptions of quality teaching in their individual organizational settings, as well as how these relate to the wider reform context. This, in turn, provides analytic tools to further explore the implications of their conceptualization of quality teaching to QA.
Quality and quality assurance in the context of the Swedish school-age educare
As explained in the introduction, the Swedish SAEC is an educational program that encompasses students’ leisure and extended time before and after school hours. Following this, the SAEC derives from a different tradition and operates under a different set of circumstances than those of the Swedish compulsory school (Memišević, 2024). It is an educational complement to compulsory school teaching, while not having the curricular purpose of assessing or measuring individual student results (Hjalmarsson, 2019). Instead, quality management within the SAEC is based on documentation and systematic follow-ups in regard to the educational practice itself (Lager, 2015). This marks a significant difference in relation to the goals and purposes of the compulsory school, and (in light of the changing reform landscape) raises questions regarding how quality should be assessed and assured within the educational program (Ackesjö, 2022; Lager, 2019). Simultaneously, the SAEC faces similar reform demands of QA as the compulsory- and preschool, which leads to challenges in practice due to these demands incorporating a more school-like logic, while being implemented in a practice that lacks this tradition (Memišević, 2024). Quality in SAEC-teaching, when described by its professionals in their documentation of practice, tends to be defined heavily in terms of social-oriented qualities (Fischer et al., 2022; Lager, 2016). These qualities are often linked to the curriculum’s section for foundation of values and, in comparison with school-oriented qualities, lack clear assessment criteria that can be used in practice (Haglund, 2016; Hjalmarsson, 2019). Furthermore, even if such criteria were to be developed, there is still a risk that QA is equated to documenting the qualities that are possible in practice – rather than assessing whether these are performed in a qualitative manner (Pettersson, 2017).
The SAEC’s movement toward a more school-like and goal-oriented practice has been problematized by prior research. The increased demands for goal fulfillment run the risk of the educational program losing parts of its traditional foundation to the result-oriented culture that traditionally has defined the compulsory school (Memišević, 2024). This, in turn, positions the SAEC within the wider paradigm of a results- and measurement society (Holmberg, 2017). In Swedish preschools, with a similar positioning outside of the compulsory school system and with different pedagogical traditions, principals have been shown to struggle with finding and implementing methodologies for quality management in their specific educational practice (Bäckström et al., 2024). This movement has also been studied from the point of view of principals in the SAEC – illustrating how their sensemaking and realization of quality-related reforms appears to be shaped by the ways in which principals identify with traditional or reform-aligned aspects of the educational program (Andersson, 2023, 2024). Others highlight that even though SAEC-practice, in terms of quality teaching, is more difficult to assess, does not entail that it is un-measurable (Hjalmarsson, 2019) but rather lacks effective instruments for assessment. This further divides the question concerning what types of quality the SAEC as practice should embrace and focus on. From the point of view of professionals working in the educational program, systematic quality management processes tend to focus on traditional, social- and value-based aspects of practice (Ackesjö and Dahl, 2022; Ludvigsson and Falkner, 2019), while the school- and goal-oriented aspects are advocated by recent government reforms and school principals (Boström et al., 2023; Glaés-Coutts, 2023). This division of perception in regard to the priority of different sets of quality related to the educational program appears to be an area of tension that spans across different actors and positions – requiring further exploration to understand its peculiarities and consequences for QA within the educational program.
Methods
Methodology and study context
The study was conducted using a qualitative research approach guided by methodological points of departure from informed grounded theory (Thornberg, 2012). This implies adhering to an abductive logic within the research process, as well as a constructivist understanding of grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014), using a set of sensitizing principles for sampling, data collection, data analysis and the use of prior research. This will be further elaborated within the separate headings of the methods-section. The constructivist approach to grounded theory also underscores the use of theory “to understand meanings and actions and how people construct them” (Charmaz and Thornberg, 2021p. 315) and the quality of abstract understanding (rather than explanation) in research – placing more emphasis on credibility, originality and resonance rather than generalizability. The study was executed as part of a larger research project on goal fulfillment within the Swedish SAEC, funded by the Swedish independent research institute Ifous (abr. innovation, research and development in schools and preschools). The overall research project was performed as a cooperative research process involving school actors (municipal leaders, principals, deputy principals, teachers, etc.) from four Swedish municipalities (2023–2026).
Participants
Participants were recruited from those involved with the larger research project. A judgment sampling strategy (Marshall, 1996) was applied following the purpose of the study, resulting in a selection based on professional role where principals and deputy principals were approached through emails for participation in the study. The sample was motivated based on the principal’s key role and responsibility for the organization and development of local quality management in SAEC (Skolinspektionen, 2010). Furthermore, the sample was motivated based on prior studies highlighting how principals’ perceptions regarding peculiarities of the SAEC (such as identity and profession) highly influences the outcomes of implementing external initiatives in the educational program (Andersson, 2023, 2024). The final sample consisted of ten participants (five principals and five deputies) from a variety of municipal sizes and school organizations in Sweden.
Data collection and data analysis
Data collection was carried out during the spring semester of 2024 between the months of February and May. The purpose of the study was to explore principals and deputy principals’ perceptions in relation to quality teaching and its implications for QA in SAEC. This motivated qualitative interviews as the method of choice for the study, as it enabled the researcher to gain access to experiences and reasoning of the respondents. Following this, the interview technique applied was that of intensive interviewing (Charmaz, 2014) with open-ended questions that enabled emergent themes to be constructed in the interaction between researcher and respondent. The questions revolved around the principals and deputy principals’ perceptions of teaching in the SAEC, what can be regarded as valuable or qualitative within the practice and content of this particular teaching and peculiarities related to culture or professionalism within the educational program. Data analysis was highly informed by strategies and methodological considerations from grounded theory and the constant comparison method (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Thornberg, 2012; Charmaz, 2014), resulting in data collection and analysis taking place between interviews. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed using strategies of initial to more focused coding to construct explanatory categories (Charmaz, 2014), which, in turn, was repeated throughout the study until a sense of theoretical saturation was reached. The final stage of data analysis took place in the final stages of data collection, involving a more holistic analysis of the individual focused categories to construct a wider theoretical understanding. Throughout the study, several data sensitizing strategies (such as peer debriefings and searches for alternative theoretical approaches) were applied to “stay grounded” to the empirical data (Charmaz, 2014) and approach this data with theoretical sensitivity (Thornberg, 2012).
Research ethics
The study was executed in accordance with the guidelines stipulated by The Swedish Ethical Review Authority (CEPN, 2023). All participants were informed both in writing and orally at the time of the interview of the contents and purpose of the study to receive informed consent. The interviews were performed over Zoom and the study’s overall purpose, ethical framework for recording interviews and contents were verbally communicated and ensured in relation to the participants, as well as information regarding their rights involved with consenting to participation in the study.
Findings
Presented below are the results of the study divided into two main themes:
quality teaching as complementing (and determined by) school contents; and
quality teaching as complementary to school-content (and determined by SAEC-content).
Quality teaching as complementing (and determined by) school-content
Principals/deputy principals describe how the SAEC should complement compulsory school teaching with the purpose of contributing to overall goal fulfillment and act as support for students who run the risk of not reaching school-related goals. This, in turn, could be understood in terms of Biggs (2001) concept of retrospective QA – in that teaching within the SAEC can be considered qualitative if it provides resources and methods that enable evaluation and assessment against externally formulated standards. The nature of “complement” to school-related goals is here conceptualized in terms of A resource-based complement and A method-based complement.
A resource-based complement.
Quality as a resource-based complement can here be conceptualized in terms of internal QA that, according to Cheong Cheng (2003), implies that there are concrete goals, specifications or guidelines in the education plan in relation to what is being implemented. Quality, in this sense, is defined by the level of which the results correlate to these goals in the compulsory school, and the purpose is to assure that the educational goals are fulfilled. Teaching within the SAEC is described by principals/deputy principals in terms of it being a complement and an important factor in making up for inadequacies in teaching during school hours:
(P4): On the one hand, during the time when it is the class teacher who is responsible for teaching and assessment we must become efficient at using each other’s abilities and resources during that time. Partly based on what I said, that we don’t have that many extra resources - we are who we are and we have to use it in the best way.
In part, it concerns that teaching which occurs outside of school hours during the SAEC-practice should support the schools teaching objectives, where the content is also processed during the students’ time in the SAEC:
(DP1) It is difficult to answer what it must contain more exactly. It should become part of the school’s goals, so we see what you need help with to reach the school’s goals - it is a collaboration there.
Teaching that occurs outside of school hours in the SAEC can therefore be understood as a form of extension or expansion of compulsory school education. It appears as the collaboration between school- and SAEC-teachers is important in enabling the complementary education to contribute to student achievements in school subjects:
(R5): What I want the teaching to lead to are two things. In part, I want the teaching that takes place at the after-school center to act as support and supplement so that we get increased goal fulfillment. This applies to Swedish and mathematics, I think, above all. And that you gain an understanding of how we can complement each other in different ways. The requirement for this is that there is close cooperation between teachers in after-school centers and teachers.
The complementary teaching of the SAEC is not solely resource-based in terms of additional personnel, it is also complementary based on what is described as a particular SAEC-pedagogical competence that the compulsory school can use for its advantages. The complementary SAEC-teaching is here described as something that is only possible through SAEC-teaching and not during ordinary school settings – therefore acting as a contribution to goal fulfillment. Here, SAEC-teaching is not described in relation to any educational content, but it is implied that SAEC-content should relate to the content of compulsory school teaching with the purpose of complementing it:
(R1) What should it contain? It is the supplementary, that which cannot be offered or obtained at other times, in order to complement the school. Our goal is that the school receive help from the SAEC-staff to develop, so that they reach a higher goal fulfillment.
Quality in SAEC-teaching can therefore be understood in terms of being a resource-based complement to a school-oriented content with the purpose to increase goal fulfillment in school subjects. Here, SAEC-teaching should contain areas of knowledge that can be coupled and foremost planned according to the goals of the compulsory school.
A method-based complement.
Quality as a method-based complement can be understood in terms of internal QA (Cheong Cheng, 2003) which means that the (different forms of) processes of the institution decide whether goals can be achieved. QA from this point of view is equated to assuring and developing the efficiency of internal processes and outcomes in terms of rewarding learning activities. This is evident through the principals and deputy principals’ perspectives in regarding SAEC-teaching as complementing school teaching through specific methods. Yet again it is the contents of the compulsory school that is in focus – while the SAEC can provide this content through methods specific to the educational program with the aim of improving students’ school achievements:
(R4) The teacher presents, and the SAEC-teacher is involved, then you divide the class into smaller groups and work with the students based on the SAEC-mission as well as the teacher’s mission in compulsory school.
The pedagogical competencies requested by the SAEC-teachers in complementing school teaching appears to be connected to teaching methods that can be regarded as particular to the SAEC and essentially separate from the methods of the compulsory school. The SAEC in this sense applies school-related content to a wider, leisure-oriented context during SAEC-hours. Here, the role of the SAEC appears to be to anchor the content of the compulsory school in a less abstract reality:
(DP4) Yes, but qualitative teaching in SAEC is teaching that, in the best of worlds, could be connected to the teaching part from within the ordinary school. So that the classroom teaching can be implemented and transformed or make it relevant for the student even during free time.
The methods appear as an important part of the SAEC’s role in the overall educational mission by working with school-related content but through alternative methods. This is further described as contributing with supplementary ways of teaching and perspectives, and through this enabling learning for additional students. The methods described are often formulated as integrated with play and creative expressions. Above all, this is described in practical terms, where classroom teaching is applied in practice:
(R4) It has been a culture that still exists, that the teachers plan in some way and that the SAEC carries out some kind of compensatory, perhaps practical activity that is connected to what the teacher has planned.
Quality in SAEC-teaching can here be understood as embedded in the teaching processes, where it is methodically unalike or “different” compared to the teaching processes of the compulsory school. Quality teaching in SAEC, regardless of providing a complement of resources or methods, is primarily defined in terms of its ability to assist goal fulfillment in compulsory school. This, in turn, can be conceptualized as a form of retrospective QA (Biggs, 2001).
Quality teaching as complementary to school-content (and determined by Swedish school-age educare-content)
SAEC-teaching can, as seen above, be described as a complement of resources and methods while determined by school-objectives. The present section highlights how SAEC-teaching should, according to principals and deputy principals, be complementary by contributing with a different set of contents than that of the compulsory school. This content can instead be described in terms of being determined by the SAEC. Objectives with this set of characteristics seem to have a more indirect approach to complementing school achievement and appear to be more long-term complementing and connected to value- and care-related goals.
In the context of the SAEC, these can be understood based on the individual’s needs for development and learning, and how teaching can result in a desire for lifelong learning. It can also be understood based on the social and relational values present in SAEC-teaching, with the aim of shaping future citizens, which is connected to Cheong Cheng (2003) concept of future QA. Although these areas have a close connection to the specific curricular goals of the SAEC, and reaching these goals could be understood as a contribution to students’ school achievement, in terms of Cheong Cheng’s conception of internal QA (2003), they do not appear to be conceived in terms of being measurable or used for short-term goal fulfillment as present in the school-related content. This appears to tie in to QA being understood in terms of prospective QA, as described by Biggs (2001). Here, these areas are regarded as qualitative based on the SAECs’ ability to offer them to students to support them in the present and the future. Three central themes emerge in relation to the teaching content:
social and relational abilities;
recreation and meaningful leisure; and
educating future citizens.
Social and relational abilities.
Social and relational abilities are highlighted by principals and deputy principals as a central part of what makes teaching in the SAEC qualitative. Teaching toward these abilities concerns supporting and educating students in how to build and handle relationships, as well as developing social and empathic competencies. The abilities are not described in terms of being teaching qualities that are measurable or are meant to contribute to some particular result or goal. Instead, they are described in terms of necessary abilities for students to develop that can be understood in terms of “soft abilities”:
(R2) I think that maybe you could see that with this social stuff and so on, you need to have it in school as well to succeed. So you also need to have the social skills, or soft skills, as we now choose to call them.
These abilities are coupled with compulsory school teaching by being complementary through content, while this complement lies beyond (or beside) school teaching. The soft abilities also seem to perform an important function in supporting students in everyday life situations. The SAEC-teaching’s contribution to students’ ability to create and handle relationships is described as an important part in students’ experience of safety and meaningfulness. Meaningfulness can here be understood as being closely related to the social aspects of schooling, their feeling of belonging and being listened to:
(R5) What I also think can be considered high quality is that the teachers in the SAEC have a good ability to create good relationships with the students. That they listen in so that the students feel that it is meaningful. […] After all, we have children who feel that meaningfulness and security that you as a teaching create. You get to learn empathetic skills, how to be with each other. All those parts, I think, are where the SAEC has a huge importance.
The social and relational abilities also seem to contribute with a future-driven purpose to students. Here, these abilities can be understood as SAEC-contents that can develop students’ future endeavors, which can be conceptualized as something which is separated from other contents and complementary teaching practices.
Recreation and meaningful leisure.
Another area of qualitative teaching in the SAEC expressed by principals/deputy principals’ concerns teachers’ capacity to consider students’ needs for recovery and offer recreation as part of their well-being:
(DP4): I see that there is also a great need, that we may not always be able to supply, in the form of recreation. It should be a bit quiet and I notice that some students have a great need to sit down and listen to a book, to sit and make a bead plate, draw or whatever it may be. But I think it is something that also symbolizes some kind of quality for students. It is, after all, our responsibility to create those conditions.
Recreation, similar to social and relational abilities, is described as a content-area that is controlled and processed within the SAEC – and not the compulsory school. In particular, it is underscored that the students should be given recreational relief from school objectives which, in turn, supports students’ development and learning:
(DP3) I imagine that it is to strengthen the student’s abilities and feelings - as well as emotionally and knowledge-wise. You have to get to know yourself in a different way. Scale down the requirements compared to school, that you get to practice things. And then also rest and recovery. They have been at school for a long time. They are quite tired around 2-2.30 pm. - teaching them what rest and recovery are.
Recreation, as expressed by the principals, here seems to be perceived as an individual ability connected to the students’ emotions and needs. It is also perceived as a practical ability that needs to be developed with the purpose of complementing the demands of the ordinary school – and needs structure and planning to be realized in practice. Other principals describe recreation in SAEC as students, on their own terms, getting a “relief” or “paus” from not just ordinary school practice – but structured teaching in general:
(P2) Yes, but then, I’m thinking two tracks there. For one thing, I think that the children who have long days, they should still get some recovery during the after-school hours, so that they can be a little more free and so on.
Regardless of if recreation is perceived as structured practice or students preferred activities, principals appear to conceive it as in need to be given prerequisites within the SAEC, in addition to goal fulfillment within the compulsory school. This, in turn, could be conceived as what Biggs (2001) refers to as prospective QA, in that the principals do not view the quality of SAEC-teaching retrospectively through goals outside of the educational program, but rather in terms of content and processes being performed in the present, having qualitative outcomes for students.
Educating future citizens.
The content-based areas of teaching in SAEC are, as seen above, primarily described by principals in terms of social and relational abilities, as well as recreation and meaningful leisure. Both areas can be understood in terms of complementing students’ school achievement. These areas also seem to have an even more long-term purpose in terms of what Cheong Cheng (2003) describes as future QA and can be understood in a wider, societal perspective, where the contents of SAEC-education contribute to educating a future generation of citizens:
(DP2) It is also important because it is about strengthening them in the knowledge they need to get out and become a citizen of society afterwards.
In this area an important role of SAEC-teaching appears to be to equip and develop students’ abilities for future endeavors. In part this involves abilities encapsulated by SAEC-teaching that are useful for students as individual adults, but also abilities that can be of use in society as a whole. The principals’ understanding of these aspects of quality teaching in SAEC can be further understood through Cheong Cheng’s (2003) concept of future QA – where future aims of society and its citizens are taken into consideration and planned within the educational institution. One example of the individual abilities perceived by the principals is the students’ future, individual driving force to future development and learning throughout their lifetime – long after they leave the compulsory school system. Another important aspect involves students’ future role in society:
(P4) To try something, which I have not done before, to dare to challenge myself and become this democratic citizen of society that we desire. Today, it’s not easy with everything that affects us in different ways. But I think that quality is both finding strategies and training our students to their own mentalization and their own insight.
Here, principals perceive qualitative SAEC-teaching to contribute to students finding their role as a democratic member of society. This is achieved through supporting students in self-development through abilities such as challenging oneself, developing self-awareness and self-esteem and through this being better equipped to engage in different forms of societal influence and demands that might face students in their future lives.
Discussion/conclusions
In this section, the research questions are answered and discussed in relation to the results of the study and prior research. Limitations to the study, as well as suggestions for future research, is also discussed in this section.
As seen in prior research, there appears to be an area of tension between different actors and contexts regarding how quality in SAEC-teaching can (or should) be conceptualized. This tension spans traditional and value-based aspects of SAEC-teaching (Ackesjö and Dahl, 2022; Ludvigsson and Falkner, 2019), and school- and goal-oriented aspects that stems from the recent reform context and managerial perspectives (Andersson, 2022; Boström et al., 2023; Glaés-Coutts, 2023). The results of the present study nuances and adds an additional dimension to these prior results connected to school principals’ perceptions. Quality teaching in SAEC, from the point of view of principals and deputy principals of the study, is primarily defined in relation to its ability to provide complementary resources, methods and content that enable student achievements and curricular goals outside of the educational program. This is particularly apparent in how principals perceive quality teaching through the logic of internal QA (Cheong Cheng, 2003), where goals are complemented through SAEC-teaching and retrospectively evaluated and assessed based on curricular standards and objectives belonging to the compulsory school. This external evaluation is also apparent in relation to content conceived to be inherent to SAEC, providing alternative or different aspects of qualitative teaching prospectively (Biggs, 2001) in relation to both internal QA (compulsory school goals) as well as future QA (toward democratic and functioning citizens). Although dissimilar in relation to the temporal aspects related to QA and quality when compared to quality teaching as determined by school content, both categories share a distinctive qualitative property in its capacity of being complementary toward goal fulfilment and QA external to the educational program.
The characterization of quality teaching, from the point of view of principals, in this sense also acknowledge the peculiar position and tradition of the SAEC in comparison to the compulsory school (Memišević, 2024), while echoing the professionals’ perspective of a value- and social-based foundation of SAEC-teaching (Fischer et al., 2022; Lager, 2016). Following this, a key conclusion is that teaching in the Swedish SAEC appears to be characterized as qualitative based on its lateral properties, i.e. its content-oriented and temporal qualities contributing “to the side” of, or “in regard to”, the “main object” (being school- or future societal goals). Regardless of the principal’s perceptions related to retrospective or prospective QA (Biggs, 2001), the SAECs’ lateral qualities in being complementary, compensating and providing alternatives to traditional teaching and its ability to provide and facilitate these qualities, appears to be central defining factors. This conclusion further adds to earlier studies highlighting the internal foci of quality management in the educational program (Lager, 2015) and might indicate a shift in perception toward a more goal-oriented and evaluative understanding of quality. Through a lack of internal assessment and assurance criteria (Ackesjö, 2022; Lager, 2019), principals appear to underscore the lateral qualities of teaching, where the SAEC provides and complements, (primarily the compulsory school) with qualitative and complementary content and methods. This characterization of qualitative teaching, in turn, provides additional perspectives to understanding and problematizing QA within the educational program.
The results of the present study, and the conclusion regarding qualitative teaching in SAEC being defined as “lateral” by school principals, ties in to prior research highlighting the reform-driven changes to the Swedish SAEC and the educational system at large (Holmberg, 2017; Memišević, 2024), navigating its internal practice and quality management toward a logic of goal fulfillment and measurability. Principals play an important role in the interpretation and enactment of reform-driven demands for change in SAEC-practice (Andersson, 2023, 2024), while simultaneously facing challenges in finding applicable methodologies for quality management in an educational practices that lacks a tradition and curricular foundation for quantitative measurability in relation to teaching objectives (Ackesjö, 2022; Bäckström et al., 2024; Lager, 2019). The principals’ characterization of quality teaching in SAEC as inherently “lateral” in relation to the compulsory school and future societal goals appears to imply that the methodology for QA is guided by the logic of it being prospective (Biggs, 2001), complementing connected practices in present time for future quality (Cheong Cheng, 2003) and QE in school practice as a whole. Retrospective QA (Biggs, 2001), as guided by the logic of measurability and quantifiable goals, is instead perceived to be primarily at the hands of the compulsory school being complemented by the lateral qualities of the SAEC. This QA-methodology from the principals appears to recognize the obstacles of assessment and evaluation facing the SAECs’ practice, while simultaneously not adhering to the discrepancies within the tension between the internal, traditional values connected to the SAECs’ educational practice (e.g. Ludvigsson and Falkner, 2019) and the school- and goal-oriented aspects of reform- and school leader objectives (e.g. Boström et al., 2023). Instead, these discrepant practices and traditions appear to be perceived as having a symbiotic relationship, where the SAEC laterally provides qualitative contents and methods in complementing the compulsory school’s objectives – while the compulsory school adheres to the externally mandated demands for (and logic of) measurability and fulfillment of quantifiable goals in school-related QA.
The lateral quality characterization related to SAEC-teaching, although providing some clarity to the possibilities of QA in SAEC as seen above, also renders some potential challenges. Although principals’ perspectives are at the center of the present study and provide an additional perspective to the area of study, they provide one set of perceptions from their position. Lateral quality as a characterization might not only constitute a bridge in the area of tension between professional and reform-/school leader perspectives as seen in prior studies (Ludvigsson and Falkner, 2019) but instead add to this tension by categorizing qualitative teaching in SAEC as “lateral”. As discussed above, the “lateral” characterization appears to at least partly be a result of a lack of formal quality standards and assessment criteria connected to teaching in the SAEC – motivating an understanding where QA is performed in institutional areas where these standards and criteria exist (and the “lateral” quality adds to “from the side”). The results of this study do however encompass only the perceptions of a set of sampled principals, and although a key group of actors in relation to the realization of QA in SAEC, there is (following the methodological points of departure of the study) limitations to generalization of the study’s results. Following this, future studies might want to further investigate how this characterization of quality teaching is perceived and coupled between other professional groups in school organizations – such as in SAEC-teachers, schoolteachers, municipal organizers and other stakeholders. Furthermore, the lack of assessment criteria in SAEC (Haglund, 2016; Hjalmarsson, 2019) and the risk of documentation of possible quality indicators providing a false sense of QA (Pettersson, 2017) constitutes challenges for how to assess and evaluate lateral qualities in practice. The internally prospective and externally retrospective QA encapsulated by the lateral quality characterization within SAEC described in this article does not provide an explicit map for evaluating the processual elements of QA in practice. Future research might therefore want to investigate collaborative/cooperative structures between interconnected practices and professionals (such as SAEC and the compulsory school) to further understand how qualitative teaching in the lateral sense is conceived to act complementary toward retrospective QA in other practices. Future research could also, based on the conceptualization of quality teaching and possibilities of QA in SAEC presented in this study, investigate how lateral qualities are assessed and evaluated within the SAEC – further adding to the understanding of quality criteria tied to the educational program.
