This presentation will consider how extensive marketization policy reforms in two European countries have affected the work and professional identity of secondary school teachers. We shall explore the ways in which developments at the national level materialize in the context of school practice and offer a comparative analysis that takes into account both the discursive similarities of the reforms, but also the localized, and institutional dimensions that re-contextualise these reforms. We shall focus on two dimensions of change that frame contemporary policy and discourse on teaching: (1) the accelerated pace of privatization and marketization of schools in both countries; and, (2) the discursive framework of ‘inclusive education’ that has been defining teachers’ work. In both countries, post-war welfare state policies expanded public education and allowed access to previously excluded groups.

In recent decades marketization policies and the introduction of new private or semi-private actors have transformed education into a competitive school market, with increased interests for the business sector (Alexiadou, 2013; Bunar, 2010; Forsey et al. 2008; Junemann & Ball 2013; Lundahl et al. 2013). Parallel to these developments, a concern with combating social exclusion through education became a political priority in England since the mid-1990s, while in Sweden stronger versions of equality still reflect older established narratives that are now under strong pressures from privatization reforms (Allan, 2003; Beach & Dovemark 2011; Lundahl et al. 2010, 2013).

Even though teachers within both England and Sweden recognize these as overarching frames within which teaching is positioned, there are significant differences in how they affect professional identities and roles. The strong emphasis on performativity that has been dominating the English professional development, practice and assessment (Menter, Mahony, Hextall 2004) are not (yet) as dominant within the Swedish context (Hudson, 2007; Lundström & Holm, 2011).

Little is understood about the ways in which teachers negotiate the pressures of ‘doing inclusion’ in a marketised context, and how this affects their work practice and their professional identity in responding to the policy context. At the same time, English teachers in our data tend to conceptualise ‘inclusion’ in more minimal ways (to refer to all students mastering a basic level of knowledge/skill), whereas Swedish teachers employ wider interpretations of inclusion within the framework of “Education for All”.

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