Institutions are social structures that “provide stability and meaning to social life” (Scott, 2014, p. 56). They have various forms and many institutions, including schools, can be conceptualised and analysed as organisations (Scott, 2014). Organisations and institutions have similarities but also significant differences. A key distinguishing feature of organisations that are institutions is the legitimacy of their organisational practices (Bunnell, Fertig and James, 2016a). Legitimacy is the sense that the actions of an object in the social world are proper, right and appropriate in a way consistent with socially created conventions, principles, and interpretations (Suchman, 1995). It is established by institutionalisation processes (Scott 2014). Bunnell, Fertig and James (2016a; 2016b) have analysed the institutionalisation of International Schools, which are numerous across Northern Europe, and concluded that providing an international curriculum is crucial in securing the legitimacy of schools that claim to be ‘International Schools’.

Scott (2014) argues for three institutionalising elements, which he refers to as pillars because they support institutionalisation: (1) The regulative pillar, which includes rule-setting, monitoring and sanctioning activities; (2) The normative pillar, which encompasses the expectations of an institution and comprises values, norms, customary practices that help to form of a distinct mode of operation; (3) The cultural-cognitive pillar, which is the shared understandings of reality and the jointly held sense-making schema that enable meaning-making and interpretation. Bunnell, Fertig and James (2016b) argue for a central place of the institutional primary task in institutionalisation in addition to these pillars, which is in essence is ‘what the institution is there to do’. This task must be legitimate to ensure institutional legitimacy and it shapes all the pillars of institutionalisation.

The three pillars of institutionalisation are communicated and made evident by carriers (Jepperson, 1991): (1) Symbolic systems: “the rules, values and norms, classifications frames, schemas, prototypes and scripts” (Scott 2014, 97); (2) Relational carriers: the widely shared patterns of interaction within role systems; (3) Activities: the range of practices that enact the pillars; (4) Artefacts: material objects, created under the influence of the cultural or physicalenvironment (Suchman, 2003).

The cultural cognitive pillar is of particular interest here. It promotes and engenders a particular thought-style (Douglas, 1986) - the way institution members/actors think about institutional phenomena. This institutional thought-style influences the way individuals to think and behave similarly, almost irrespective of whether they agree (Rytivaara, 2012). Rules develop, which have a specific institutional rationale and a collective consciousness is created (Douglas, 1982). Over time, institution members become institutionalised (Bunnell, Fertig and James, 2016b) as the multiple logics associated sets of practices and constructions provide frames of reference that effect individuals’ behaviour choices (Friedland and Alford, 1991).

We consider that these institutionalisation processes are powerful and significantly affect teacher behaviour and identity. Conceptualising teacher identity is problematic (Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009). It encompasses various concepts including agency, emotion, sense-making and context. Nonetheless teacher identity has significant implications for teacher education and development (Beauchamp and Thomas, 2009). Our experience as teachers, teacher educators and International School researchers indicates that the institutionalisation of International ‘IB World Schools’ – International Schools authorized by the Geneva-registered International Baccalaureate (IB) to provide their programmes – powerfully affects the identity of the teachers who teach those programmes. It was to analyse those effects that the research we report here was carried out. 

The research questions are:

1. How is institutionalisation experienced by teachers?
2. Does institutionalisation configure a teacher’s identity?

The objectives of the research are:

1. To analyse how institutionalisation is experienced by teachers
2. To analyse how institutionalisation configures a teacher’s identity.

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