The idea of building professional practice on evidence has been debated internationally for decades in various societal sectors, not least in education (Eryaman & Schneider, 2017). Within education, a discourse gradually emerged about the integration of research and practice-based knowledge with the aim of, among other things, improving student learning. Aligning with such discourse, Sweden, as the first country, legislated in 2010 that education in the public school system must rest on a scientific foundation and proven experience (Rapp et al., 2017). To facilitate teachers' interpretation and implementation of this Education Act, educational authorities such as the Swedish National Agency for Education assist with operational support,i.e., with how research-based methods and routines can improve teaching. In sum, this policy is something all teachers within compulsory and upper secondary schools, as well as municipal adult education, have to adapt to. However, one form of adult education in Sweden, the folk high schools, is governed by a different legislation. The folk high schools are instead based on the ideal of "free and voluntary" popular education(Hallqvist et al., 2020; Laginder et al., 2013). This means they can develop their courses independently of the Act that governs the rest of the Swedish school system. Such freedom provides opportunities to develop courses and possibilities to organize teaching differently. At the same time, the freedom might pose challenges to teachers when interpreting the teaching mission in the folk high school, particularly concerning central pedagogical concepts (Harlin,2014). Although independent in a wider sense than the regular school system, folk high schools are still embedded in and thus influenced by general societal ideas as well as by discourses within education more broadly. For example, within specific folk high school courses, such as the youth recreation leader program preparing for work in the leisure sector with young people and children, the schools via the program’s member organization have decided that the education must build on a scientific foundation and proven experience (deleted for anonymity). Thus, these schools exert their freedom by governing themselves through policies closely aligned with key legislation that governs the regular school system. In this paper, we specifically analyze the processes through which the policy of education based on a scientific foundation and proven experience is taken up and interpreted within the youth recreation leader program. How is the policy of education based on a scientific foundation and proven experience formulated within the youth recreation leader program at folk high schools in Sweden? To carry out such an analysis we draw on curriculum theory as developed by Lindensjöand Lundgren (2014). They illustrated the movement of policy in interrelated arenas linking the national with the local: from policy formulation to policy transformation, to policy realization. This theoretical framework enables the identification of how national policies and their content are locally organized, elucidating the relations between them. To our end, the focus is strictly on the policy formulation arena which encompasses the ways policy is interpreted by different actors. The data to be analyzed consists of 33 policy documents divided into 3 types, totaling 2200 pages. They provide significant narratives from 1976 to 2017 that in various ways address the research question. The documents include the national curriculum for the youth recreation leader program; government bills and inquiries focusing on popular education or the folk high school; and finally reports by the Swedish National Board of Education alternatively the member organization Fritidsledarskolorna. The preliminary results indicate that the initial formulations of education based on a scientificfoundation are shaped in ways emphasizing Fritidsledarskolorna’s various collaborations withhigher education institutions and researchers. Later formulations instead emphasize teachers’ use of research-based literature in classroom practice which indicates a shift in meaning. The result also indicates that the initial formulation of education based on proven experience focuses on teacher collaboration and teachers’ further education. This paper contributes knowledge to the field of work and learning by identifying the specific ways that vocational education based on a scientific foundation and proven experience at folk high schools in Sweden is interpreted in policy documents. Such knowledge informs which conditions of meaning are made possible through policy, which in turn shapes some of the possibilities for how teaching and learning might be organized in professional practice.