Cooperation with local community and businesses: quality negotiations in upper secondary education

Abstract

This article explores how quality is negotiated and challenged when two Norwegian rural schools cooperate with the local community and businesses. The article builds on three sub-studies on two upper secondary schools in the process of merging in the areas of follow-up services, physical school environment and leadership. Several methodological access points for the field are utilized, including interviews, shadowing and document analyses. By questioning quality in these local settings, we found that both schools and local business took a pragmatic and pupil-centred approach to quality. We discuss how quality is understood locally, how different quality practices are conducted and their significance for the schools.