Skolors krisberedskap som praktik : Det pedagogiska ledarskapets villkor i ett framväxande fält

In recent years, issues related to crisis preparedness have gradually assumed a more central role within the operations of Swedish schools. Incidents such as the school attack in Trollhättan in 2015, the school shooting in Örebro in 2025, and the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the need to maintain safety and security in primary schools, alongside their traditional mission of promoting knowledge and learning. Today, school principals face increasing expectations to integrate crisis preparedness into everyday school practice, while national guidelines for school-based crisis management remain limited and often require local interpretation and adaptation. This study employs the concept of crisis preparedness practice as an analytical tool, grounded in the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014), to explore how school leaders organize, reflect upon, and attempt to integrate crisis preparedness into the daily operations of primary schools. The theoretical framework is complemented by Thelin’s (2024) extension of the theory of practice architectures, introducing emotions as a fourth dimension – "feelings" – alongside sayings, doings, and relatings. Crisis preparedness practice is thus understood as an interplay between linguistic expressions, actions, social relations, and emotional experiences, shaped within a context of cultural–discursive, material–economic, and social–political arrangements. The findings are based on interviews with principals and key stakeholders from four Swedish primary schools. The empirical material has been systematically coded and organized in a matrix, where the theory of practice architectures has served as a theoretical lens to structure the data across four dimensions – the semantic, the physical, the social, and the emotional – in order to illuminate how crisis preparedness practices take form through language, actions, social relationships, and emotional expressions within everyday school life. Through this structure, the study identifies patterns and variations in how schools approach and engage with crisis preparedness within the school context. Consequently, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of how leadership practices, organizational conditions, and emotional expressions interact in the emergence of crisis preparedness practices in Swedish primary schools, and provides insights into how such practices may be taking shape.