Study and career counsellors: the hub of Swedish adult education

ABSTRACT

This article explores how the Swedish policy of municipal adult education (MAE) is interpreted, translated, and enacted in study and career counselling. The data consists of semi-structured interviews with adult education leaders and study and career counsellors. Swedish MAE is characterised by extensive marketisation, with many different providers, which makes the education system complex. The findings show that a study and career counsellor is characterised as a key person for both the students and the organisation, with a role as a marketer and ‘map reader’ for applicants, in addition to responsibilities in admissions, the validation and mapping of students’ knowledge, and quality work. The counsellor becomes a hub in a system that applicants and students find difficult to navigate and fulfils a vital function in the marketing of adult education and quality work. Thus, this complex system requires more resources for counselling to function to the benefit of the individual student. However, there is no clear regulation for how counselling should be organised, which means that counselling is organised in different ways in different municipalities with different providers. This in turn means that the availability of adequate counselling may depend on the municipality in which you live.

KEYWORDS:

• Adult education
• Sweden
• marketisation
• policy enactment
• study and career counsellor

Introduction

Sweden has a free and accessible education system for all ages, with adult education being a key factor in enabling inclusion and providing opportunities for lifelong learning (OECD 2020). Participation in adult education is extensive, with 7% of the adult population aged 20–64 having studied in municipal adult education (MAE) in 2021, a total of 414,000 students, more than the number of pupils in upper-secondary school (Swedish National Agency of Education [SNAE] 2022a, 2022b). The focus of this article is on the study and career counselling that takes place in the context of formal adult education in MAE, which includes general and vocational courses corresponding to compulsory and upper-secondary school, as well as Swedish for immigrants (SFI).

In the last decades, there has been a strong trend of marketisation of the Swedish educational system in compulsory and upper-secondary school, and formal adult education. Many external, private actors have established themselves in the Swedish education market. There is also an internal marketisation with a more business-like management of public institutions (Andersson and Muhrman 2022a; Dahlstedt and Fejes 2019; Lundahl et al. 2013; Muhrman and Andersson 2022). Verger, Fontdevila, and Zancajo (2017) identifies a ‘Nordic path’ to privatisation, with neo-liberal reforms of the welfare systems. This trend towards marketisation has been particularly strong in MAE. Many municipalities choose to contract private companies to provide courses in place of – or alongside – their internal, public providers (Fejes and Holmqvist 2019). In 2021, 51% of MAE was organised by publicly funded, independent institutions, mainly owned by private companies (SNAE 2022b). However, regardless of provider, the municipality is always responsible for the quality and accessibility of its citizens’ adult education. The education companies are hired on contracts through procurement, usually for 3–5 years. This differs from compulsory and secondary schools, where educational companies operate schools without time-limited contracts (Andersson and Muhrman 2022a; Muhrman and Andersson 2022).

MAE is characterised by a flexible, course-based system, where individuals combine different courses in their own study plan. Due to the large number of providers, students often need to combine courses from different providers. Many applicants and students in MAE are foreign-born and unfamiliar with the Swedish education system. Besides SFI, which explicitly targets immigrants, 94% of the adult students studying at the compulsory school level in 2021, as well as 46% at the upper-secondary level, were foreign-born (SNAE 2022b). The large number of immigrants who came to Sweden during the 2010s has meant an increased demand for adult education, firstly to learn the language and secondly to facilitate further integration into society. MAE has a flexible design with different courses that start at different times and are organised in different ways, sometimes school-based, sometimes at a distance. In combination with the large number of organisers that the students must choose from, while they often have little knowledge of the Swedish school system, this means that the need for study and career counselling becomes crucial for applicants and students within MAE.

The Swedish Education Act (2010) outlines a three-part mission for MAE to support adult learning: to cultivate personal development and a strengthened position in society; to enable further studies; and to facilitate a strengthened position in working life. The Act also stipulates that MAE must form the basis of a national and regional skills supply for working life. In addition to the Education Act, there is also a regulation (Adult Education Regulation [AER] 2011) and a national curriculum for adult education (SNAE 2017)¹ enacted within the local organisations and policies established by the municipalities. The focus of this article is on the enactment of policy through study and career counselling in adult education, as governed by the priorities set by both national and local policy decisions. There is a high degree of freedom within national policy, hence local political decisions might have a major impact on what is enacted in MAE. The data consists of semi-structured interviews with adult education leaders and counsellors, which are analysed in relation to documents presenting relevant national policies for adult education. The article will answer the following research questions:

• How is the organisation of study and career counselling enacted in different ways in the marketised adult education in Sweden?

• How is the role of counsellors interpreted and enacted in municipal adult education?

Context of the study

There are no tuition fees for MAE and there is a system of grants and loans for students to support themselves and make it possible for adults to study. Adults are eligible to participate in MAE from the year they turn 20, if they are judged to meet the conditions necessary to pass their course. The municipalities are obliged to offer all eligible applicants a place in compulsory school level-, SFI-, and university-eligibility upper-secondary courses; however, there is no requirement to offer a place to everyone who applies for other general or vocational courses. If there are more applicants than places for the latter courses, those who are considered to have the greatest need for training will be given priority. The supply of courses should be flexible in terms of study pace, distance course options, and continuous admission (AER 2011).

In Sweden, compulsory schooling is nine years. Most young people also complete a three-year programme (general or vocational) in upper-secondary school, with MAE as an alternative for those who later need supplementary university eligibility or vocational training. The courses included in MAE have the same syllabi as courses for compulsory and upper-secondary school. However, MAE has its own curriculum and other requirements regarding individual adaptation and flexibility for the students. This, together with the extensive marketisation with a large number of private providers and short-term contracts, means that there are big differences in how the courses are organised in MAE compared to compulsory and upper-secondary school. The courses in MAE are often short, usually 5–10 weeks, the corresponding time in upper-secondary school and compulsory school is often 20–40 weeks, i.e. the study pace is higher in MAE. Another difference is that many MAE courses are taught at a distance. There is also a requirement for continuous admission within MAE, which means that in many classes there are students who start and finish their studies all the time (Andersson and Muhrman 2022a; Muhrman and Andersson 2022).

Worth mentioning is also that in recent years you can see an increasing labour market focus in MAE, with large investments in vocational training. MAE offers so-called course packages with shorter vocational training (in 1–1.5 years compared to upper-secondary school programmes that are 3 years). The vocational courses in MAE are often possible to combine with SFI courses, which has made MAE a fast track for many immigrants to enter the labour market (Autor a, b).

Previous research

Empirical studies of such contexts, i.e. marketised adult education practices, are sparse. However, in Sweden, where this study was conducted, the marketisation of education is widespread, and there are several studies that focus specifically on the marketisation of MAE (e.g. Bjursell 2016; Bjursell et al. 2015; Fejes and Holmqvist D 2019; Fejes, Runesdotter, and Wärvik 2016; Holmqvist, Fejes, and Nylander 2021). Earlier in the current research project, we (Andersson and Muhrman 2022a) provided an overview of how municipalities in Sweden combine internal and external MAE organisers. There are many different constraints on participation in adult education, which influences the conditions for counselling. Even though it is the individual’s decision to participate, changes in the labour market and political decisions concerning resources have a significant impact on opportunities and limitations regarding the provision of education. Career-related issues have been of special interest in counselling for adults, and Haug et al. (2019) point out a focus in Sweden on the outcomes of counselling that targets migrants. They identify three central themes in Nordic research on counselling: the outcome of counselling, the process of counselling, and critical approaches to counselling. The critical approaches research discusses the governance of counselling from a governmentality perspective (e.g. Bengtsson 2016; Kjærgård 2012) and the social representations of careers and career counselling, where the meaning of the concept ‘career’ has certain implications for career counselling (Bergmo-Prvulovic 2015). A particular dilemma in the work of counsellors is the tension between the professional approach to supporting individuals in developing their plans during the process of choosing a career and representing society and its needs, e.g. the need for labour in certain vocational areas (Bergmo-Prvulovic 2014; Kjærgård 2012). The asymmetrical relation between counsellor and counsellee is also discussed, highlighting the tension between inclusion and exclusion in counselling. Even with inclusive ambitions, an asymmetrical relation might contribute to exclusion effects. This is particularly discussed in relation to the target group of migrants (Hertzberg 2015, 2017; Hertzberg and Sundelin 2014; Sundelin 2015). For example, an asymmetrical relation could be perceived when migrants have limited knowledge about the national educational system and need help to ‘navigate through’ it (Hertzberg and Sundelin 2014, 97). This target group has also been considered in relation to other aspects of guidance that could be significant for social inclusion, such as career guidance and development, and the recognition of prior learning and qualifications (Fejes, Chamberland, and Sultana 2022).

Our focus here is on the organisation of counselling in an adult education context and the counsellors’ different roles. Raschauer and Resch (2016) describe three central aspects or functions of educational counselling: counselling for learning, with a focus on the learning process; career or educational counselling, focusing on choice and plans; and financial counselling, focusing on grants, etc (cf. Käpplinger and Maier-Gutheil 2015). Counsellors’ tasks are thus diverse and complex, but the key elements have been identified as informing, explaining, activating, facilitating, analysing, and (not least) counselling as such (Raschauer and Resch 2016). However, as this description focuses on one-to-one counselling, other aspects of the counsellor’s work might be missing. Andreassen et al. (2019) have analysed Nordic education programmes for counsellors. They conclude that these programmes mainly focus on the counselling and education of individuals, while there is less focus on the organisational, institutional, and community levels, which are also relevant to the work of a counsellor. Relevant competences for further development include, for example, management and leadership, contracting and marketing. This broader perspective on the role of the counsellor is of particular interest for the present study in the complex context of adult education in Sweden. Earlier studies of counselling in Swedish schools have identified a situation with lack of steering and a rather high level of professional autonomy for counsellors (e.g. Lovén 2020; Lundahl and Nilsson 2009; Nilsson and Hertzberg 2022). However, counselling in adult education is less researched than in secondary schools (Lovén 2020), and the present study will give new insights into counselling in MAE.

Policy enactment in adult education

This study will proceed with an analysis of policy enactment (Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012; Braun, Maguire, and Ball 2010) in Swedish adult education (Andersson and Muhrman 2022a, 2022b; Holmqvist, Fejes, and Nylander 2021; Muhrman and Andersson 2022), with a focus on educational and vocational counselling. From our perspective, the connection between education policy and practice is not a rational process of implementation, but a complex process of enactment that includes the interpretation and translation of policy into local practice (Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012). Maguire, Braun, and Ball (2015, 487) expressed it as follows:

Policy is not ‘done’ at one point in time, it is always a process of ‘becoming’. It is reviewed and revised as well as sometimes dispensed with or sometimes simply just forgotten. There will be multiple subjectivities and positions that will shape how policies are understood, and differences will occur in enactments over time and in different spatial contexts. Enactment then is messy, incomplete and a form of interpretation and intersubjectivity in action.

Policy enactment is about how different actors connected to an institution interpret, reinterpret, and use institutional policies, within the existing degree of freedom. In the contexts of local schools and local authorities, multiple actors are involved in these complex processes: for example, politicians, school leaders, principals, teachers, and counsellors. Here, policies are interpreted, translated, and enacted in local contexts in certain ways. The actors who work directly with the institution are not the only ones who are important for policy enactment; the context around the education system is also important. This context includes, among other things, influences from society as well as cultures and historical traditions that are embedded in the organisation. This means that policies are interpreted and reformulated in different ways in different environments and contexts. According to Ball, Maguire, and Braun (2012), the relationships with society and local culture that prevail in an environment can both enable and hinder actions. Different policies might be contradictory, and their enactment within a local educational context might, therefore, be messy and incomplete. Furthermore, less prescriptive, general policies include a certain degree of freedom for local translation and enactment. In this article, policy enactment is examined with a focus on the work of study and career counsellors in MAE.

Policy for adult education includes, in this case, the Education Act (2010), the AER (2011), and the national curriculum for adult education (SNAE 2017). In policy texts governing adult education, counsellors’ work and function are only briefly described. Policy states that all students who apply for courses at MAE on the basic level or in SFI have the right to counselling in connection with the application. An individual study plan covering the aims and extent of the studies, information about further study opportunities, competence needs in the labour market, and financial conditions for the studies should be established by the study and career counsellor at the time of the admission and should be revised, when needed, during the studies (AER 2011; Education Act 2010). With a changing working life, study and career counselling is described in the national curriculum as being of great importance for informing the student about current and expected future competence needs. It also states that the counsellors must work to counteract restrictions in students’ choices based on notions of gender and social or cultural background. However, it is not stated how the municipalities are to organise access to counsellors. Nevertheless, the principal is responsible for ‘study and career guidance being organised so that students receive information about and counselling before the various choices that adult education offers and before choosing future education and profession’ (SNAE 2017, 13)

The brief description of the counsellor’s role and organisation provides an extensive degree of freedom for interpretation regarding both the organisation of counsellors and the role they should play. This means that local actors within the municipalities can interpret and translate policies around counselling to fit them into their own models of adult education.

In Swedish adult education, individualisation and flexibility have been identified as two central policy discourses. However, the main discourses that define Swedish adult education address employability, skills supply, integration, and (not least) marketisation (Andersson and Muhrman 2022a, 2022b; Muhrman and Andersson 2022). These discourses focus on the labour market and integration when the policy is being interpreted, translated, and enacted in the practice of adult education. The marketisation of MAE, with its many external providers, together with the requirement for flexible and individualised opportunities involving different study paths, indicates a need for counselling within MAE.

Methodology

This article is part of a larger study of policy enactment, examining the organisation of MAE in Sweden beginning with political decisions via the procedures to enrol external providers; the work with quality assurance, admissions, and counselling; and how all of this affects the adult students, teachers’ work, and the classroom situation. Here, the focus is on how adult education is enacted within the career counselling provided for applicants and students.

The data employed were generated in two steps. Firstly, qualitative interviews were conducted with MAE leaders in a sample of 20 municipalities. These were selected based on information gathered from a nationwide survey that was distributed to adult education representatives in all 290 Swedish municipalities in an earlier part of the larger study (with responses representing 69% of the municipalities) and from official statistics on Swedish municipalities. The information was used to obtain a sample covering different types of municipalities and different ways of organising MAE (e.g. small and large municipalities, different models for hiring external providers, different political governance) (cf. Andersson and Muhrman 2022a). Secondly, six municipalities were selected from among the 20 for in-depth studies based on the same variation criteria as before, but also interesting phenomena that had emerged from the interviews with MAE leaders related to the study’s overall purpose of examining the marketisation of adult education. The latter part also includes classroom observations, analysis of local policy documents and interviews with people linked to adult education at various levels such as politicians, school leaders, those responsible for procurement/authorisation/quality work, teachers, and students. During the in-depth studies, 12 counsellors from the six municipalities were also interviewed, with the intention of gaining a deeper understanding of how counselling in MAE is organised locally. In both steps, principals and school leaders in MAE were asked about their views of the counsellor’s role. Their answers, which represent 20 municipalities, are included in the data for this article.

The qualitative data consisting of recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed thematically (Braun and Clarke 2006). Braun and Clarke’s model for thematic analysis includes six steps that involve finding initial codes in the data that can be categorised and combined into themes that capture phenomena in relation to the study’s purpose and questions. All interviews with school leaders from the 20 municipalities and the counsellors from the six municipalities were analysed together, which resulted in six themes, one concerning the organisation of counselling and five which describe the ways in which the role of counsellor is interpreted and enacted in MAE. Quotations from the interviews are used to illustrate the qualitative findings. All interviews were conducted in Swedish, and the selected quotations have been translated into English.

We have handled all data confidentially and have been careful to ensure that it is not possible to trace the empirical examples in the article to individual municipalities. To ensure confidentiality, all information in the quotations that can be traced to individual municipalities or individual persons has been removed. We have also chosen not to use any fictitious names in the quotations so that these cannot be derived from a municipality.

Findings

The role of a study and career counsellor in MAE includes many different tasks, with extensive freedom in the policy to interpret counsellors’ assignments. Political decisions about resource allocation affect how many counsellors there are in a municipality, and politicians and/or managers within the municipality can also decide how the counsellors are to be organised.

The organisation of counselling

The organisation of study and career counselling reflects the marketised organisation of MAE, which can be enacted in different ways. The school leaders describe how counsellors can be situated in different ways within the local adult education structure. There can be central counsellors who, above all, play an important role prior to admission to adult education, counsellors located at the education providers’ premises, or counsellors located both centrally and at the providers. Typically, municipalities are responsible for counsellors, independent of whether they are located centrally or at the premises of the internal or external providers. However, there are some municipalities that require external providers to ensure access to counsellors at their schools.

One problem, as described in the interviews, is that at external providers’ premises, the requirements for counsellors are not always properly followed up, which means that there may not be sufficient access to counsellors for the students. In some cases, external providers have counsellors who work for the organisation in general and are responsible for many different schools across several municipalities. This makes it difficult for students to get in touch with counsellors. In other cases, there are requirements for access to counsellors at the external providers’ premises without any clear specification or following up of requirements for formal counselling training. In fact, some counsellors said that, on occasion, ‘anyone’, including those without formal qualifications or career counsellor training, could act as a counsellor.

Study and career counsellor: a key person for both the students and the organisation

The findings show that counsellors in MAE play an important role in easing students’ paths through adult education, from marketing it to attracting students, helping them gain admission, mapping their knowledge, drawing up study plans, following up their studies, guiding them during their education, and – as students approach the end of their education – assisting them by issuing a diploma and establishing contacts with the public employment office to enable them to get a job. In addition, counsellors often play an important role in the quality assurance of adult education.

Some of the principals described counsellors as playing a central role as a hub of adult education. One principal described the counsellor’s role in the following way:

The counsellor has a very important role, is a key person. I’ve worked in different parts of primary school before and never seen the importance of this, here it’s absolutely crucial. […] One of the cornerstones.

It thus appears clear that counsellors play an important and decisive role; however, several counsellors described their role as complex and said that it was often difficult to manoeuvre and find the framework for it. It is often left to the counsellors to control the design and layout of their work themselves, and one counsellor described how the work is very unregulated in both policy and job descriptions from managers.

So I feel a little like this that no one has ever told me what … what’s expected of me as a study and career counsellor. […] Yes, and if you look at the Education Act for adult education, there are probably two lines about what a study and career counsellor does.

The various tasks included in the counsellors’ responsibilities offer different challenges in relation to the policy enactment that prevails in MAE at both a national level and local level. We have identified five different themes that, taken together, describe the ways in which the role of study and career counsellors is interpreted and enacted in MAE.

Study and career counsellors as marketers

Although MAE is extensive in Sweden, it is relatively invisible compared with compulsory school and upper-secondary school. To fulfil the task of MAE and reach citizens who may have an interest in or need for adult education, policy is interpreted and translated into an enactment where marketing is central and counsellors take on the role of marketers. Counsellors described spending a significant part of their working hours participating in outreach activities such as fairs and other events aimed at adults.

The counsellors who work for the municipality primarily advertise adult education as a whole and describe, for example, the range of different vocational programmes. In the marketing of MAE with many external providers, however, there is also competition for students between the institutions within a municipality, which is visible through the extent of advertising from different providers about their particular courses. Through the contacts that counsellors have in their networks and those they make with prospective applicants at trade fairs and events, their function is also enacted as part of organising, offering, and marketing ‘the right’ education based on the demands and needs of the labour market, as well as demand from applicants. One principal described this function as central to MAE:

I would like to say that the study counsellors have a very central role. Because it is very much affected by the information they receive concerning what’s in demand, what are the needs? They’re the ones who, as it were, sit on the first-hand information there.

The role of study and career counsellors in admissions

In addition to attracting students to adult education, counsellors play a central and often crucial role in deciding which students will be admitted. The priorities in policy must be translated into an enactment of admission. It is often the counsellors who take care of the actual selection and admission of students by mapping their knowledge and assessing their needs and ability to complete their studies, even if they do not make the formal admission decision. In some municipalities, counsellors provide a complete list to the person who makes the formal admission (often a principal) that only needs approval or entering into the system:

Interviewer: What is your role in the admissions process?

Counsellor: We review applications, so all applications that come in my area, I go through each one […] and prioritise them. And then we have an admissions secretary who does the actual admissions with the head of education who clicks in.

In many cases, all applicants can be admitted, as the number of places has been generous in recent years. Nevertheless, there are popular courses where a selection must be made. As mentioned, the selection of students for MAE must proceed on the basis that the applicant who is considered to have the greatest need for education, and meets the conditions necessary to pass the course, is given priority. It often becomes the counsellors’ task to decide this. One principal said:

Principal: It’s our study and career counsellors in the first place who take care of it. Then in some cases it can be, since we’re not allowed to have prior knowledge requirements for adults, so there will sometimes be discussions with the counsellor, do you think this person has the ability to complete the education? […] So you must try to have a discussion with the student individually and try to assess, do you have the prerequisites to pass the course? Then you have contact with the counsellor, otherwise it’s the counsellor who decides.

Accordingly, counsellors are described by both principals and themselves as gatekeepers to adult education. It is often they who decide whether students are eligible for various programmes and courses and which students should be accepted. A counsellor is often the first person whom applicants meet in their contact with MAE, and they are therefore also described as playing a very important role in applicants’ first experience of adult education.

The role of counsellors in the validation and mapping of students’ knowledge

An important part of the enactment of admissions into adult education is to map and validate applicants’ prior knowledge. Here, counsellors have a crucial role to play in helping applicants to end up on the right courses. Part of the mapping may involve students taking level tests that are assessed by teachers to identify the appropriate level for them in different subjects. Determining the level of applicants, especially if they come from education systems outside Sweden, is described by counsellors as extremely difficult:

Then we do mapping […] Okay, you have this and this and this with you. You need to supplement with this and then you can get there. […] What level they should start at can be extremely difficult to determine.

Counsellors do not usually work with the validation of professional knowledge. Regardless, applicants first turn to counsellors with questions about validation, and they then help applicants with contacts and advice on where to turn to conduct it. The actual validation is handled by professionals or vocational teachers in the profession for which the applicant wants to validate their skills. Validation generally comprises both theoretical and practical tests. Counsellors also help applicants with previous, foreign, higher education experience to submit their grades for validation by the Swedish Council for Higher Education.

Thus, a policy enactment emerges whereby counsellors play a crucial role in mapping the applicants’ previous education and professional experience, so that they can give advice on studies, help them further into the education system and make the right contacts with people who can conduct testing. In addition, for those numerous MAE applicants who do not require any validation, the counsellors have an important function in mapping their knowledge based on the grades they provide from previous education, placing them on MAE courses of the right level.

The counsellor as a ‘map reader’ for applicants to adult education

As mentioned above, MAE is extensive in Sweden, catering to many students with a foreign background and many others with neuropsychiatric functional variations. The marketisation of MAE, with its many external providers, makes it difficult for these students to navigate the complex system. This means that, to be able to handle individualisation and flexibility, there is great demand by applicants for help from counsellors to orientate themselves within the system. Thus, policy is also translated into and enacted within this role of the counsellors as map readers for students who apply for adult education. In some municipalities, it is generally mandatory for those applying for MAE to first meet a counsellor who then conducts a survey designed to avoid mistakes in the application. One counsellor who had previously worked in primary and secondary school saw a big difference in the demand for counselling in adult education:

There are many who ask for us. And I’ve thought about that, I’ve worked in primary and secondary schools in different constellations, and I’ve never experienced the demand for counselling in the same way as in adult education.

An organisation with many external providers makes it difficult for students to orientate themselves within the range of courses. One principal explained that counsellors are given an important role in guiding students correctly in terms of different providers, start times, and ways of studying (on-site teaching, distance, semi-distance, etc.):

Thus, for a student to find out how to apply. Because there is such an incredible range of courses. You can try and go into one of the […] municipalities’ catalogues about the course offerings. There are millions of starts. [of courses]

It is difficult even for counsellors to stay up to date with all the different providers and alternatives that exist in municipalities with many external providers, and this can consequently create problems. One counsellor described the difficulties of informing people about the differences between the alternatives:

All schools have different ways of setting up their studies, it’s difficult to know the difference between the providers and be able to inform [students] about it. Many people ask, like, ‘Well, what kind of experience do you have with these schools?’ or ‘What do you know?’ And we should be neutral, of course, but it’s very difficult to inform [students] about how they differ.

Since MAE systems are complex, both in their form, with different variants of courses and programmes, and in the variety of education providers, it is relatively common for slightly larger municipalities to have counsellors who specialise in certain areas, such as SFI, vocational education, general subjects, or on-site studies and distance studies, respectively.

Counsellors’ complex role as map readers is also apparent in relation to the heterogeneous group of people who apply for adult education, with their backgrounds in different education systems from different countries and different eras. Many of them have little or no insight into the Swedish education system, and an important part of the counsellor’s work is therefore to help applicants orientate themselves within that education system to find the right educational path. Thus, map reading also becomes an enactment of integration into MAE:

It’s complex to work as a study counsellor … because we span so many different areas here, so we meet everything between, yes, sometimes 18-year-olds up to 65-, 70-year-olds. And we don’t always know that much about them before they come here, yes, foreign-born, academics, illiterates, that is, yes, everything. So it’s very complex in that there are different education systems.

An important part of students’ orientation into the Swedish education system concerns how they finance their studies via student aid and student loans. Students in adult education are eligible for economic support from the Central Student Aid Board (CSN), and counsellors also play a central role as map readers when it comes to guiding students through the regulations surrounding financial support and how to apply for it.

The role of the counsellor in quality work

The findings reveal a policy enactment whereby, in many cases, counsellors play a central role in the quality work of adult education. The interviews with school leaders show that a part of the quality control in MAE is based on student surveys and statistics on throughput and grades. However, the counsellors describe having close contact with the students, which gives them transparency concerning how well the students thrive in a way that cannot be obtained through surveys. They also frequently work with following-up students’ study results via the individual study plans, which provides a more nuanced picture of quality than statistics on throughput and grades. The counsellors explain that they have a key role in the quality work in that they constantly promote adult education and are the ones who ensure that students come to MAE:

Because it’s we who meet the students first, it’s we who are out in different arenas and meet the students and get the students to us, it’s we who work for adult education all the time, it’s not the teachers or the principal or someone who gets the students here, but it’s a lot thanks to us.

The study shows that some municipalities that hire external providers do not make any systematic site visits to them to evaluate the quality of the education. In those municipalities, however, counsellors sometimes make site visits to the external providers. As already mentioned, those external providers do not always have their own counsellors, but there are municipal counsellors who do travel around and spend a few days a week with various external providers. By doing this, counsellors gain very good insights into the external providers’ quality, and they also become an important factor in improving quality, partly by being able to report the problems they identify with the education to the municipality, and partly by being able to provide support to students and teachers.

One counsellor described how the opportunity to make more visits to external providers has been a quality-enhancing factor for adult education in the municipality:

And I think that’s so important. When I started here 11 years ago, we didn’t really have the opportunity to be out that much. It’s increased every year, but we see that the quality is improving because we’re out in the business [with external providers] a lot, and meet managers, staff, and students on site.

School leaders and principals also described the important role that counsellors play for the entire institution’s quality work, through their contact with both students and teachers. One principal argued that the whole school should work with a study and career counselling method and that counsellors play an important role in leading this work. This principal also believed that counsellors are important in helping students increase their motivation to persevere with their studies in a way that is not possible for teachers:

Interviewer: Do the study counsellors have a role when it comes to quality work?

Principal: Yes, we want the whole school to work with study and career counselling. A bit like a special educator, even though you’re a study and career counsellor. To lead teachers and staff in study and career counselling. It’s one leg. And the other leg is to actually provide study and career counselling to individual students or to different groups of students. To really make sure that we weave study and professional life into our courses and programmes and prepare our students for work.

The counsellor’s role in quality work is thus enacted both as an inward-looking approach in the form of supporting teachers and students in different ways and by gaining good insight into how adult education works with respect to the way students thrive and perform. In many cases, counsellors also play an important role in quality work related to society beyond school in terms of being knowledgeable about the needs of the labour market, which they gain from various external contacts, including the employment service.

Discussion

This article has focused on how adult education policy is interpreted, translated, and enacted in local practice in different municipalities in Sweden (cf. Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012) and how this affects the organisation and work of study and career counsellors in adult education. In the laws governing adult education, only a short paragraph relates directly to study and career counsellors’ work (see AER 2011). This brief description in the policy documents of counsellors’ work within MAE allows for a large degree of freedom regarding how both the organisation of counsellors and their roles within MAE can be interpreted and enacted in local practice. This degree of freedom has been identified in other parts of the Swedish school system (Lovén 2020; Lundahl and Nilsson 2009; Nilsson and Hertzberg 2022), and our findings show that it is also present in the enactment of counselling in MAE.

Bengtsson (2016) and Kjærgård (2012) discuss the governance of counselling from a governmentality perspective, which is of interest for this study. Our findings show that the organisation, resources, and different roles of counsellors look different in different municipalities. Municipalities that hire external providers sometimes require that those providers have their own study counsellors. However, in many cases this seems to be questionable with respect to both the availability of counsellors for students and the counsellors’ formal education. According to the policy, only those who have an adequate study counsellor education may receive a permanent job as counsellor. However, counsellors interviewed describe that this rule is not always followed by the external providers. Some training companies also employ counsellors with responsibility for many schools, which means that the availability of qualified study counsellors may differ depending on which provider a student is studying with.

Quality assurance systems are important for the ability to maintain control over the marketised adult education system with its external providers (cf. Andersson and Muhrman 2022a; Bjursell 2016; Fejes and Holmqvist D 2019). In many municipalities, municipal-employed counsellors are also responsible for the counselling of students studying with external providers. In these cases, the counsellors enact an important role when it comes to the quality inspection of these external providers.

The different policy enactments also reveal differences between the municipalities in terms of resources invested in study and career counselling. In some municipalities, there are many counsellors at different levels who can share the assignment and responsibility for different roles, e.g. for admissions and counselling during students’ studies, or the responsibility is divided between different types of education or ways of studying (on-site vs. distance learning). Mainly in smaller municipalities, a small number of counsellors may have many different roles in adult education and perform tasks in everything from marketing, admissions, counselling, and follow-up of study results to work with quality assurance and so on.

This study shows that counsellors often play a complex role that is crucial for adults’ study plans and career choices (cf. Raschauer and Resch 2016), and that the need for counselling in MAE is extensive and far more comprehensive than the available resources can provide. This is partly due to the complex organisation of adult education, which is governed by both its marketisation – leading to many external providers – and the policy discourse of Swedish adult education with its demands for flexibility and individual adaptation, which involves continuous admissions and opportunities to study courses in different ways (cf. Andersson and Muhrman 2022a, 2022b; Muhrman and Andersson 2022). The complex organisation of MAE makes it difficult for applicants to orientate themselves within the educational landscape; together with its individualisation and flexibility, this means that the policy of counselling is to a large extent enacted and interpreted by counsellors acting as map readers to help people navigate their way through the system (cf. Hertzberg and Sundelin 2014). The marketised system with many courses at different providers means that the counsellors, instead of using the already scarce resources they have for counselling, must spend a considerable amount of time reaching out to prospective students by acting as marketers of various courses. The strong promotion of education for professions that have a shortage of labour in the municipalities also risks becoming an obstacle to professional counselling (cf. Andersson and Muhrman 2022a; Fejes and Holmqvist D 2019).

A significant proportion of those who apply for MAE come from countries other than Sweden, with different education systems. Fejes, Chamberland, and Sultana (2022) have described how the migrant group has been the focus of research in relation to aspects of counselling, such as career counselling and development, and recognition of prior learning and qualifications. The counsellors in this study describe how they meet a very heterogeneous group of people from different parts of the world with different educational backgrounds. The requirement set out in the policy text to guide such applicants towards education and work and establish a study plan (see AER 2011) is largely interpreted and enacted in local practice as entailing a role that involves explaining the Swedish education and labour-market systems (cf. Haug et al. 2019). Counsellors are also given a crucial role in mapping applicants’ knowledge gained from previous education and deciding which of them have the prerequisites to complete different courses in MAE and thereby gain admission (cf. Fejes, Chamberland, and Sultana 2022). The policy states that those with the greatest need for education who have the prerequisites to pass their studies must be given priority in admission to MAE, and this policy is in many cases enacted as a task for the counsellors to translate and interpret. The counsellors are often the first to meet prospective students and those who create a basis for deciding who to admit to courses. In this way, they act as gatekeepers to studies within MAE. The organisation of adult education in Sweden and its main target groups thus demonstrate that study and career counselling is crucial for adults’ study plans and career choices.

Conclusion

The marketised nature of Swedish adult education, with its many external providers in combination with a policy that sets requirements for individual adaptation and flexibility, makes MAE a difficult-to-navigate system for those applying. The only formal requirement for study counsellors in policy is to draw up individual study plans that must be revised when needed (AER 2011). However, in reality, counsellors are needed for so much more than this! A policy enactment emerges whereby counsellors constitute a hub that plays a central and complex role. They provide support for students’ trajectory throughout their adult education, from mapping their previous knowledge through to helping them apply for the right courses and financial aid. They also establish study plans and assist students during their education, helping them acquire qualifications, and finally, find contacts in order to apply for jobs.

In addition to this, the centrally located counsellors in this market-oriented education system are also part of the hub responsible for the quality control of adult education provided by external organisations. Counsellors are also involved in the marketing of adult education within a system that positions the student as a customer who needs to be attracted (cf. Andersson and Muhrman 2022a).

A central conclusion we draw from all this is that the complex education system that emerges requires considerable resources to be invested in study and career counselling for MAE to be able to function for the benefit of each individual student. The work of a counsellor in MAE entails organisational, institutional, and community levels, and counselling as well as leadership, contracting, and marketing (cf. Andreassen et al. 2019), all of which are central aspects of a marketised adult education system.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council under Grant number 2017-03603.

Notes

1. A revised version of the curriculum was introduced in 2022, after this study was conducted. However, the paragraphs concerning counselling were not revised.