"Du måste vara våglig som skolledare" : En kvalitativ studie i rektorers åtgärder för att höja andelen elever med gymnasiebehörighet

Sammanfattning: The aim of the study was to investigate what measures principals take in order to raise the amount of students who finish secondary school with a leaving certificate. Furthermore, it was intended to investigate why these methods have been successful. The selection of respondents consisted of principals at four different schools in southern Sweden. Data was collected through four semi-structured interviews. In the study we used two theories and two terms to understand the collected data. The first theory was Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory followed by the terms intercultural communication and the pygmalion effect. The second theory was Lipsky's street level bureaucracy. The study shows that many principals consider socioeconomic factors such as poverty or low level of education within the family to be an obstacle for a student to succeed in school. If the student has recently immigrated to Sweden it also proves difficult for that student to attain grades. The study also showed that principals use various measures to improve the results at school, such as bridging communication barriers with immigrant parents as well as having high expectations on all students. In summary, the principals try to implement things that ultimately will counterbalance for the different social risk factors many students face and may lead to them leaving secondary school without a certificate. In order to do so, the study concludes it is vital that principals use their scope of action to implement measures pertained to the specific risk factors they have identified at their respective school.