Collaboration for Attendance: A Comparative Case Study of School–Social Teams

This project investigates the consequences of a new government grant for establishing school social teams, in which schools and social services collaborate around students with, among other things, problematic school absence in order to improve school attendance. The aim of the project is to map and analyse the forms of collaboration that emerge in the work of selected school social teams with absent students, and thereby contribute to knowledge about the conditions for and forms of collaboration on school attendance across institutional boundaries.

Problematic school absence affects students at the individual level, with potentially major consequences for their education and future prospects, and in this way poses a challenge to both equity in education and the legitimacy of the school system. Knowledge about the consequences and actual outcomes of the initiative is therefore important in relation to the intentions and expectations associated with school social teams.

The project draws on neo-institutional theory and is designed to study the work of school social teams in three municipalities. In three phases, it examines: (1) how the work within the school social teams is shaped in relation to different professional roles and external conditions; (2) how the work is carried out between the school social team and the selected students’ schools and schooling; and (3) what the emerging forms of collaboration mean for the students involved in the project, as well as what consequences the work has for the school social teams in relation to the intentions of the initiative.

Project leader

Martin Harling

Other project participants

Ola Strandler