Ansvar utan makt? : En kritisk diskursanalys av gymnasieskolans styrdokument ur ett professionsteoretiskt perspektiv

The teacher's situation in upper secondary school today is strongly influenced by several factors, both inside and outside the school's walls. One of these factors are the national steering documents that are designed to regulate the educational activities: school law, curriculum and other regulations. The professionalism in the knowledge-based work has changed from being regulated within the profession to be used as a tool for controlling service personnel by the organisation (Evetts 2009, 2013). Based on a professional theoretical perspective and with critical discourse analysis as a method, this study focuses on: 1. To investigate how the teachers’ assignment appears in the steering documents, and what kind of professionalism that is emerging. 2. To investigate the ability of a professional teacher to act based on what appears in the steering documents regarding the characteristics of a profession. 3. The various regulatory documents’ content and formulations linked to previous research, i.e. if it is possible to connect the analysis of control documents with national research on the teacher's professional role and assignment. The result shows that signs of the teacher's autonomy, discretion, self-control and expertise - characteristics of a profession - are not present in the steering documents, and instead the discourse of control used by the organization seems to have taken a clear place. With documentation requirements, grades based on standardized knowledge requirements and focus on goal attainment, the governing documents seem to limit and shrink the teacher's discretion, which leads to the assumption that the teacher demands greater responsibility, but is given less opportunity to act as a professional