Lærere i nye roller som oversettere: Hvilket handlingsrom har de for utvikling?

This article contributes to considerations about the development of the teaching profession. The study focuses on teachers in new roles – teachers who practice in the school while also being responsible for school development in their subject field. The empirical material in this longitudinal study includes interviews with three groups of teachers; from the project Matematikk i nord (2007–2011), from the national initiative Ungdomstrinn i utvikling (2013–2017) and from Lærerspesialistordningen (2015–dd). In order to study the development of the profession, we have chosen to focus on any changes in the profession’s autonomy. We examine the degrees of freedom teachers in new roles have in their work, especially related to school development, and the path from adopted reforms to the individual teacher’s practice in the classroom. Our analytical framework is translation theory (Røvik, 2007). The topic of the article is: What opportunity structures do teachers in new roles possess in order to translate general reform ideas into practice, and how can this affect the development of the teacher profession? From our findings, it may seem that teachers are increasingly accepting increasing national professionalism. Our main argument is that as long as translation skills are not in demand and developed, desired results are very likely to fail, which can lead to even stronger management