In this article, the assessment practice known as the “grade conference” is analysed using an interactionally oriented narrative approach. The aim is to explore the grade conference and what it entails for students when executed in their fourth year of compulsory school, as part of a trial of an educational reform where students receive grades from year four instead of year six. Two cases illustrate the way that students are positioned and ascribed different paths and prospects in and through stories located within the grade conference. Findings show that students are ascribed individual responsibilities and their positions as students are largely evaluated by individual characteristics in these stories. It is concluded that the grade conference is a practice that may influence the students’ views of their potential in school, as the narratives about their paths and prospects discursively make different routes more or less viable.

I den här rapporten redovisas en kvalitativ studie av försöksverksamheten med betyg från årskurs 4. Syftet med studien är att beskriva hur bedömningspraktikerna ter sig och formas på fem av de skolor som deltog i försöksverksamheten mellan år 2017 – 2020, samt på två referensskolor som inte deltar i försöket. I följande sammanfattning ges korta svar på studiens frågeställningar samt hänvisningar till de delar av rapporten som behandlar respektive frågeställning. Först ges en sammanfattande bild av skolornas bedömningspraktiker, därefter pekar vi på några förändringar i försöksskolornas bedömningspraktiker och avslutningsvis presenteras de viktigaste skillnaderna i bedömningspraktikerna på försöks-, respektive referensskolorna. En del av dessa skillnader motsvaras av förändringar i försöksskolornas bedömningspraktiker. Det är viktigt att beakta att samtliga försöksskolor som ingår i studien, förutom en, är friskolor och att elevernas meritvärden på de skolorna överlag är höga (se Metodval och studiens genomförande och Resultaten i förhållande till studiens urval i denna rapport).

The purpose of the work presented here was to study how the Swedish compulsory school, identifies and acts relative to the social problem of children living with domestic violence. More specifically: how do the various professional groups in school and professionals within the child protection services (CPS) describe and understand their own and other professionals’ responsibilities and tasks with respect to children living with domestic violence? The study consisted of 10 focus groups whose members were taken from five professional groups in schools and the CPS in Sweden. The results show that professionals in school lack knowledge about living with domestic violence, one example of which is child abuse. They navigate through the large open space that exists between the pedagogic and psychosocial missions of schools, and use different strategies to interpret the child’s symptoms of maltreatment. They point at an unclear distribution of responsibility between different professionals in school, which can be interpreted as a tension between domains within the institutional school domain. They also point at a “gap” between the school and CPS domains, and find confidentiality to be an obstacle to collaboration. Furthermore, the article sheds light on the complexities, the conflicting understandings, and the different priorities of the different professionals and institutions working with children living with domestic violence. It also discusses practical implications of the results.

Orosanmälningar till socialtjänsten hör till en av de arbetsuppgifter som upplevs som svåra i förskola och skola. I ett aktuellt forskningsprojekt har fokusgruppssamtal visat sig vara en fruktbar metod för att tillsammans i grupp bearbeta, diskutera och reflektera över hur man i förskola och skola kan identifiera och stödja barn som bevittnar i våld i hemmet. Detta projekt har väckt frågan om en bredare användning av fokusgruppssamtal som pedagogiskt verktyg i förskola och skola.

The overall aim of this article is to investigate Swedish preschool teachers’ perceptions of the interaction between home and institution in relation to children’s introduction to preschool. The focus of this article is on their talk about how they manage the gap between home and preschool in the introduction process. A discourse analysis is carried out, based on focus group interviews with seven preschool teacher teams that have started to use a more parent-active approach during the introduction of children to preschool. The results show that a parent-active introduction positions and governs parents to take a more self-regulative role in preschool from the beginning. The construction of the parent-active introduction discourse/practice produces new subject positions for the parents (and teachers) and creates expectations of intensified parental involvement in this institutional practice. Furthermore, the results indicate that the parents’ active introduction also changes the teachers’ own role and their attitudes toward the parents. The boundary work between the home and preschool seems to consist of negotiations and of the construction of an intermediate domain between home and preschool that draws on discourses of responsibility, performativity and efficiency.