Abstract
Recurring reforms and national initiatives to develop competence and promote learning and change in schools have created new conditions for teachers. Earlier chapters in this volume have mainly focused on the content and effects of such changes. The aim of this chapter is to highlight and discuss the change processes needed to accomplish the intended improvements. We start with a short presentation of some national initiatives in Sweden for professional and organisational development of schools. These examples include initiatives to create learning organisations, competence development programs, implementation of information technology as a tool for school improvement, and initiatives to develop learning dialogues for school leaders.
We will present a short case description from one Swedish municipality, to show how the national initiatives are locally translated and implemented. Finally, we discuss results and experiences form our research on the local projects and reach some conclusions concerning the problem of organising competence in schools.