Teachers on Swedish First Teacher Reform – Fairness and Management in the era of neoliberalism

Author(s):

Mikael R Karlsson(presenting / submitting)Peter Erlandson

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

19. Ethnography

Format:

Paper

Session Information

19 SES 02,

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-08

15:15-16:45

Room:

316.Oktatóterem [C]

Chair:

Geoff Bright

Contribution

This paper draws on ethnographical data produced at an upper secondary school in south of Sweden, Baxter High. The specific contextual lens we use as foci for the study is the implementation of the Swedish first teacher reform. With this as a starting point we will argue that the first teacher reform, and the policy behind it, is not only a change in administrative categories, but also a change in ideology, intertwined with and embedded in the cultural and social life of the school.

The new teacher reform follows the administrative steering logic of New Public Management that it is intertwined with, and is a part of. The effects of this logic in Sweden are well documented in ethnographical research, and its consequences for educational enterprises analyzed (Beach 2010; Beach & Dovemark 2011; Beach & Sernhede 2011; Antikainen 2010; Arnesen & Lundahl 2006). Ball argues that the policy technologies of education reforms “are not simply vehicles for the technical and structural change of organizations”, but they are also performativity technologies that appears to be “objective” and “rational” (Ball 2003). Analogously, in our study the first teacher reform appear to be an ideological revolution hidden behind an administrative evolution. Moreover, from our perspective, the teachers resistance against the first teacher reform seems to be multi-layered: in the same time as it contains unwillingness to change everyday work rhythm, it is also and even more, an ideological resistance against a change in the discourse about fairness – in what it is to be fair as teacher toward colleagues as well as pupils.

According to Bourdieu all development is an expression of social dominance (Bourdieu 1995). Policies, institutions, organizations, relations and communication are intertwined with organizational and cultural power. Changes within and between them are in the same time, an expression of and of the result of struggle for power. However, while Bourdieu’s project is to analyze the reproduction of social classes, we are explicitly interested in how a particular change in an educational system sets cultural and social life in motion, and how teachers make sense of themselves during such a change. Alexander who carries Bourdieu’s thoughts further argues that identity making and actions are embedded in external and internal symbolic structures (Alexander 2003). Even if relation between symbolic structure and meaningfulness unequivocally can have many expressions, there is no given content or outcome when both external symbolic structures and internal meaningfulness come visible as explanatory force (Alexander 2003). In a similar vein Willis stats that identity and cultural making is an on-going process that compromises production and reproduction of the investigated selves by social connections in structural contexts says (Willis, 2000). Everyday culture means mediation between individuals and structure. Production in the symbolic realm is in Willis words: “in part a result upon conditions, of the creative self-activity of agents, also thereby producing and reproducing themselves”(Willis 2000). Based on the results in this study it is probably neither desirable nor possible to avoid a Marxist analysis, but this is still an open question.

Method

The research process were inspired by Hammersley and Atkinson´s (2007) suggestion for introducing oneself as a researcher in a field. Dynamically we elaborating design and research focus in regard to context (See also Hammersley 2004). Time, place and objects where strategically selected (Troman 2004). One of us is familiar with the school and is also well known among the staff. When we started to collect data 2012 we had part of the purpose ready. We knew that we wanted to examine power, meaning and resistance connected to change in the school. After approximately a year and 100 hours of field observations, field interviews and formal and informal interaction we understood that the negative response and resistance against the first teacher reform was a lens by which we could examine a broad spectra of power that penetrates teachers everyday life. We choose to take the teacher´s perspective, and followed selected teachers and principals. We continue to participate in public meetings and other gatherings that focused on this particular reform. Altogether the data contains material from two years. The time on the field, so far, nearly is about 200 hours. The staff members were informed about the overarching purpose and terms of the research in two ways: in a staff meeting 2012 and every time we addressed them. We are quite sure that every single person that have been observed or interviewed was aware of that they could be part of a study. At every field interview we also informed the respondent that participation in the research was both confidential and voluntary. Active consent was obtained for interviewees.

Expected Outcomes

The expected outcome is two folded. The first has to do with methodological and ethical issues: we want to discuss which ethical considerations become relevant when performing the study in a workplace in which you are well-known. The second are substantial. It is doubtful if this reform and the administrative, and ideological change, it is intertwined with leads to a professionalization of teachers. In our view, it is a professionalization affecting organization rather than the teachers. Although we have no claims of being able to draw any general conclusions from our data we wish to contribute to knowledge concerning the ideological revolution that take place under a veil of administrational evolution, show how the teachers in our study is pushed into a kind of a new “Fordism”.

References

Alexander, J. C (2003). The Meanings of Social Life. A Cultural Sociology. New York; Oxford University Press Antikainen, A. (2010). The capitalist state and education: The case of restructuring the Nordic model. Current Sociology 54(4): 530-550. Arnesen, A.-L. & Lundahl, L (2006). Still social and democratic? Inclusive education in the Nordic welfare states. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 50(3): 285-300. Ball, S. J. (2003). The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of Education Policy, 18(2), 215-228. Beach, D. (2010). Socialisation and commercialisation in the restrucuring of education and health professions in Europe: Question of glocal class and gender. Current Sociology 58(4): 551-569. Beach, D. & Dovemark, M. (2011). Twelve years of uppser-secondary education in Sweden: The beginnigs of a neo-liberal policy hegemony? Educational Review 63(3): 313-327. Beach, D. & Sernehede, O. (2011). From learning to labour to learning for marginality: School segregation and marginalisation in Swedish suburbs. British Journal of Sociology of Education 32(2): 257-274. Bourdieu, P. (1995) Praktiskt förnuft, Göteborg: Daidalos. Hammersley, M. (2004). Action research: a contradiction in terms? Oxford Review Of Education, 30(2), 165-181. Hammersley, M., & Atkinson, P. (2007). Ethnography – principles in practice, London and New York: Routledge. Jeffrey, B., & Troman, G. (2004). Time for ethnography. British Educational Research Journal, 30(4), 535-548. Willis, P (2000). The Ethnographic Imagination. Oxford: Polity

Author Information

Mikael R Karlsson (presenting / submitting)

Dept of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

University of Gothenburg

Borås

Peter Erlandson

Göteborgs Universitet

Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies

Göteborg

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