School reform and the teacher : The construction of a professional and assessing teacher in policy and teacher interviews

This doctoral thesis investigates the interrelatedness between school policy and practice. In the thesis, the construction of “the teacher” is analysed in school policy documents and teacher interviews. I am particularly interested in the relation between school policy and school practice in light of the two latest curriculum reforms 1994 and 2011 and the teacher accreditation registration reform of 2011. The analysis focuses on two topics: grading and the professional teacher. In fact, an analytic link is made between the emphasis on grading and the discursive construction of the teacher in Swedish education policy. The theoretical framework is positioned within institutional theory within which I combine curriculum theory and the sociological new institutionalism with discourse theory. The analyses of policy documents reveals three types of different discursive constructions of “the teacher”. In the period of deregulation and decentralization, a professional teacher is constructed and the need for an autonomous teacher for school quality is expressed. By the 1990s -2000s an unprofessional grading teacher is constructed. In the period signifying the teacher accreditation and registration reform, a quality assured teacher is constructed. It is a teacher who is formally authorized and in need of continuing evaluation. In the focus groups interviews teachers constructs two types of professionalism. One is in line with the professionalism articulated in the policy texts and is about control and formal regulation and the other is about autonomy. Furthermore, the teachers relate to grading and teachers' ability to act in accordance with their overall teaching assignment. Grading were often constructed opposed to teaching. Demands for documentation, quality reports or the requirement of teacher accreditation is described as institutional practices defined from above. These practices make it difficult for teachers to complete their teaching assignments. The study indicates that teachers' ability to operate in an increasingly regulatory schooling culture has, through the types of requirements for transparency in teachers’ work, resulted in the decline of autonomy in their professional practice