Prestationsbaserad stimulansersättning inom sfi-utbildningen – ett incitament för snabbare studier?

Abstract

The aim of this study is to analyze the justification of a financial incentive that rewards students who rapidly finish their studies within the language education ‘Swedish for immigrants’ (sfi). Thereby, we want to see what assumptions are made about the students, and relate this to experiences of the education at a local level. We applied a text analysis on a government bill about the incentive, which showed that the deficiencies in the education are said to be caused by the students’ lack of effort. This assumption, in combination with the government’s belief in the incentive as a solution, reveals an ideology with a focus on the student as a rational economic agent. To see whether the incentive actually had an effect on the students motivation, we also carried out participant observations and semi-structured interviews with students and teachers at a sfi-school in Gothenburg. We discovered that neither students nor teachers found the financial incentive an appropriate measure to stimulate the study pace, as they rather emphasized that the studies are affected by factors such as health and family situation. These methods, in combination with theories of exclusion, structure and agency, and an analysis of the use of the concept “immigrant”, showed that the government bill has a distinct top-down perspective, and that the students’ perspective is not taken into account. Therefore, it has also been made visible that by merely introducing a financial incentive, the government is disregarding important aspects of the problems in the educational system.