In Norway, the authorities are aiming at improving the quality of teaching in lover secondary schools by emphasizing school-based development. This involves focusing on classroom management to adapt the teaching to the students’ abilities and aptitudes and improving students’ numeracy and literacy across curriculums. The aim is to inspire students feeling a sense of mastery and thus become motivated to learning (Ministry of Education, 2012). The national teacher education institutions are all involved in this developmental project. Being a provider towards several lower secondary schools, gives me an opportunity doing research. This study ispreliminaryon the sketch, andwill be included in a cluster of projects within a learning community group located at my university, NTNU. Fromcollectedexperiences the research designwill be further developed. By now I see aconcentration on research questions divided in two divisions, 1-2: focus on the teacher’s learning, and 3-4: focus on teachers practice.

1. How do teachers reflect about their learning management?

2. How do teachers experience their colleagues and leaders as supporting forces in developing learning management for their own sake and for the students?

3. How do teachers motivate and vary their teaching practice to include all students?

4. How do teachers communicate and facilitate a robust learning environment ?

    

Theoretical lenses

According to several researchers, the school is an arena in which teachers and school leaders can learn together, meaning that the teaching can be improved and consequently the students’ learning as well (Postholm 2012, Timberley et.al, 2008). Classroom management is considered as an integrated teacher competence (Nordenbo et.al, 2008). The theoretical framework for the project cluster in general is based on social-constructivist theories, with focus on knowledge and learning in interaction with social and physical environments. Multiple theoretical and empirical perspectives of teacher classroom management have pointed at the complexity of student learning management (Doyle, 2006). I have chosen an ecological approach, emphasizing a system- and relational-oriented perspective on how the learning environment may contribute to wellbeing and learning. The relational perspective on learning management is including approaches of encountering, like communication practices, strategies of establishing confidence and recognition and building robust learning areas of cooperation and engagement in learning and social encountering (cf. Avalos, 2011). In Norway Junge (2012) has found in a study of four teachers in lower secondary school that they often use narratives to share experiences from their classrooms, and that narratives play a central role in communication and the teachers’ learning processes.

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