For over a decade, Swedish teachers have voiced their frustration over the increasing demands for documentation, which they feel detracts from valuable teaching time. Despite various governmental efforts to alleviate what they refer to as a "burden of documentation", the issue remains unresolved. Freja Morris’ doctoral thesis in sociology delves into this persistent problem by foregrounding the role of documents in teachers’ work. Specifically, she explores how documentation comes to be understood as both a solution to problems and a problem in and of itself within Swedish compulsory schools.
Multiple purposes of documentation
The thesis uses fieldwork and interviews with school staff to understand the role of documents in schools. The thesis finds that the same document frequently aims to serve multiple purposes. However, these purposes are not always aligned and may sometimes be in direct conflict with one another. This has become especially prominent with new digital technologies that allow for documents to travel and become compiled and shared in increasingly complex ways. This has many implications for how teachers experience their documentation practices.
Deeply rooted phenomenon
The thesis concludes that the tenacity of the “burden of documentation” is not just a bureaucratic issue but a deeply rooted, socio-material phenomenon. Documents exist in an unresolvable tension between being tools for realizing democratic ideals such as transparency, accountability and equity, and being tools for control, dominance and bureaucratic oversight. It is important to keep in mind that this tension plays out in everyday ongoings of schools and in teachers’ documentation practices.
Faculty opponent Kristin Asdal, University of Oslo, summarised the thesis and concluded by saying that it is well written, rich, well-read, interesting and curious thesis.
A unanimous examination board approved the thesis.
About the thesis
Freja Morris has written a thesis entitled “Tenacious Documents: Exploring the Allure of Documentation in Swedish Compulsory Schools”. Supervisors were Malin Åkerström and Axel Fredholm.
The thesis in the Lund University Research Portal (opens in a new window)