Literacy and multimodality for all. Swedish educational policy for reading and writing in the age of global assessments

This article focuses on policy implementation in the age of global educational assessment. Its object of study is a large Swedish, governmentally initiated professional development programme for teachers, called the Reading Lift. The programme was developed during 2014–2019 against the backdrop of steadily declining results in the global literacy evaluations, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). This study explores the Reading Lift, via content analysis, in relation to both the government’s instruction and the global assessment frameworks of PISA and PIRLS. Results show that the government’s instruction was only partially met. What was intended as a programme on reading and writing for teachers in L1 became, in the hands of the Swedish National Agency for Education, first and foremost a high lift for all teachers in literacy perspectives, and a lift in multimodality, primarily in line with the PISA educational framework.