The Conception of Quality as a Foundation for Curricular Analyses of Educational Programmes at Upper Secondary School1

This article consists of two parts, one a theoretical background study based on related literature and the other empirical and exploratory findings from focus group interviews. The second part is a phenomenographic project describing the qualitative variation regarding how phenomena in the relevant field are perceived by professionals (headteachers/deputy headteachers and teachers) and users (pupils) at five different upper secondary schools and study programmes in the author's home city of Linköping in Sweden. When studying the focus group interviews from an overarching perspective, the author has found three basic categories concerning the pedagogic work's requirements, didactic processes and results/outcomes. After analyzing his empirical material from both an enumerative and a relational perspective, the author among other things comes to the conclusion that it's highly fruitful to look upon the concept of quality from a more value-based and holistic approach.