School principals as translators – examining Swedish school principals’ translations of the standards-based curriculum

ABSTRACT This study takes the policy idea of the standards-based curriculum as a point of departure. Drawing on discursive institutionalism and pragmatic institutionalism, the study’s purpose is to critically examine school principals empirically as translators, enacting Sweden’s standards-based curriculum into local schools’ practices. The data were collected through interviews with principals from four compulsory schools in different geographical regions of Sweden, selected through purposive sampling. Røvik’s ‘translator competence’ framework and Schmidt’s ‘sentient agents’ framework were used as analytical tools. In the empirical material, examples of school principals as knowledgeable, creative, patient and strong translators were identified, interpreted as their ‘background ideational abilities’. Discourses on ‘foreground ideational abilities’ also were identified in the principals’ experiences as translators through their critical and deliberative reflections on the standards-based curriculum. By integrating discursive institutionalism and pragmatic institutionalism into the study, ideas and discourse, as well as agency and contextual and normative experiences, were interpreted as important aspects of policy translation. This provided opportunities for a broader understanding of school principals’ translations of the standards-based curriculum, which hopefully also can help develop the theoretical and methodological discursive institutional approach within education research.