Institutional memories in school : Narratives from a closed school

This paper focuses on how educational policy changes take shape in alocal school-context. Specifically, the aim is to show how discursive frag-ments (Ball, 2007) and/or nested narratives (Linde, 2009) stand out inteachers' institutional memories. The new 'meta-narrative' about educa-tion is characterized by neoliberal's ideas about privatization & marketiza-tion. To catch and understand these changes, from the teacher's perspec-tives, we focus on institutional memories (Linde, op cit). These workingmemories are told & retold by teachers, & in times of change, they areguides to future actions. New versions of memories of past events are pro-duced & reshaped in the time of the telling. Empirically, this study isanchored in 15 life-history interviews conducted with 8 teachers who havebeen working at the same secondary high-school in a Swedish middle-sized town. The school was recently shut down. The narratives cover a 40-year period of school-history. All interviews have been transcribed &screened for institutional memories. Results show how versions of institu-tional memories, framed by different discursive fragments & nested narratives, form a new local mosaic of narratives about education