Skolkvalitet : En studie om samhällskunskapslärares uppfattning om skolkvalitet 

The aim of this essay is to highlight and examine the understanding and perceptions of school quality on social studies teachers. This study will therefore investigate how teachers perceive the understanding of how quality is applicable and works in educational teaching. Quality has been a key target in the Swedish government for school improvement over the last decades. The background material will consist of national texts written by Swedish national school authorities written after 1994 to 2012. The empirical material is based on interviews of three social studies teachers. The teachers were asked questions about their conceptions of quality in school and how it affects their teaching in social studies and the analysis is based on a new institutional theory which include normative and cognitive perspectives. Furthermore three tools can be found to be used to investigate the teacher’s perception of quality. These are rules, values and routines. The results will therefore examine how teachers in some way act and think of quality through these tools. Rules, values and routines can be understood as set by the Swedish school system as an institution. From the analysis it can be discovered that the teachers share a united understanding on the concept of school quality. The teachers also experience differences between rules and values which they mean affect their education. This might create an understanding on how formal and informal values interact with each other based on new institutional theory.