The research Teachers’ professional identity, knowledge and practice, which this presentation is based upon, addresses oral and written expressions about student learning and school diversity made by teachers and special educators. I am examining how teachers and special educators apprehend their mission and their management of student learning in secondary schools. The aim is to ascertain how they construct meaning and develop professional identity and preparedness, when students need extra support and assistance with their learning and education. In this presentation I will especially focus on teacher documentation practice when students need extra support.
Inclusion as an organizing principle is supposed to be provided for all students belonging to the learning community. Research however, shows an increasing amount of students in compulsory schooling excluded from the conventional learning environment in Norway ( Dobson, Eggen & Smith, 2009).
Teachers’ professional ambitions are construed according to expectations derived from the current education policy regime. In recent years the globalization of education has underlined comparisons as a central element, and student learning assessments have been given stronger recognition. The Norwegian educational system today is, like in many other countries, going through profound changes as a result of new political strategies to control, evaluate and indorse the new national educational system.
The official mandate for teachers’ responsibility to deliver competitive student results is in many countries extensive. At the same time there is a clear focus on developing the role of teachers as “educational caretakers” (Berg & Collin-Hansen, 2012) when students need extra support. The control regime has been elaborated to confirm teachers work to be effective in both those matters.
I have chosen a theoretical point of departure in Bakhtin’s (1981) theory, claiming that teacher utterances must be understood in the context of past and future discourses. They can be considered as part of already on-going dialogues. The analyses of file documents may show how expressions in different discourses of education, both political and public, are formulated and related to both institutional and professional environments and traits. By using a dialogical analysis I identify both academic and institutional functions structuring teacher practice.
