Principals’ enactment strategies: enacting education based on scientific foundation and proven experience in Swedish adult education

Purpose The aim of the study is to examine how principals in Swedish municipal adult education (SMAE) interpret and translate the 2010 Education Act’s mandate to lead education based on scientific foundation and proven experience. By analysing enactment as a locally situated process shaped by organisational and marketised conditions, the study offers new insights into policy work within this marginalised sector. Design/methodology/approach The study revisits data from a previous study and employs a qualitative approach. Data were collected through ten semi-structured interviews with SMAE principals and qualitatively informed by Ball et al.’s (2012) policy enactment framework. Findings Principals in SMAE enact the mandate for a scientific foundation and proven experience through four distinct strategies: an information/qualification-based strategy, a symbolic/outsourced strategy, a model-driven strategy and a reflexive and inquiry-oriented enactment strategy. Research limitations/implications The study is limited by its small sample and its reliance on interview data collected in 2020, and the findings should therefore be interpreted as exploratory and contextually situated. Consequently, the results are not generalisable but serve as a critical case study with international relevance, given the shared challenges facing adult education systems globally, underscoring the need for further research into principals’ enactment strategies across diverse adult education settings and contexts. Practical implications Principals can extend their agency within enactment processes by deepening their engagement with policy and embracing their pedagogical leadership role. This enables them to act more deliberately in interpreting, recontextualising and transforming policy into practice. Social implications A central contradiction emerges within the policy–governance system: principals are mandated to lead education based on scientific foundation and proven experience while lacking access to research produced within the SMAE context. Closer alignment with the Marrakech Framework for Action, which calls for research processes directly linked to adult education (Rhodes and Tuama, 2025), could help strengthen the sector’s research base. Likewise, professional learning programmes enabling principals to lead locally situated improvement work using scientific approaches (Carr and Kemmis, 1986) would support greater leadership agency. Originality/value The study contributes to educational leadership research by extending policy enactment theory into the adult education context. It reframes leadership agency in marketised systems and advances understanding of how policy on education based on scientific foundation and proven experience enacted in practice. It highlights how structural and organisational conditions shape principals’ agency and indicate the need for stronger sector-specific research, professional learning and governance support to enable sustained, research informed improvement.