In a Danish context, this paper reports on some of the preliminary findings in my PhD-project regarding how a municipality’s top-down strategy of implementing a learning management system (LMS) affect teachers working wellbeing. The starting point is that in 2014 the Danish Government and the Danish associations of municipalities (KL) agreed that all primary schools should start implementing a learning platform from the 2016/2017 school year. That means that all primary schools in Denmark have to buy and work with an LMS.  From teachers view an LMS is a system, where he/she can plan, organize teaching, give feedback to students and receive feedback from students, parents, colleagues and the school management – in short, a digital platform there has the potential to change teachers working settings radically.

The municipalities I have investigated have a clear top-down strategy, and the school management has followed that top-down strategy. That strategy was in the beginning based on the assumption that using an LMS will rationalize teaching and make teaching more visible and goal orientated. Both aspects can be seen as embedded with the political discourse in Denmark, where the Danish parliament has increased teachers lesson hours and want to direct the teachers towards more goal-orientated teaching.      

The literature about the implementation of an LMS in schools is sparse. Nevertheless, I have the opportunity to draw on some studies.

First that the LMS encourages the teachers to teach in a standardized best practice teaching instead of supporting the teachers to development of professional autonomy and judgment. Secondly that the learning management system experienced as a heavy workload (Selwyn 2011, Underwood and Stiller 2014, Lochner, Conrad et al. 2015).

Regarding how the school management best implement the learning management system the literature points out that it is central that the school management organizes the work so that the teachers can see a particular purpose with the use of the system (De Smet, Bourgonjon et al. 2012). In a Danish context, it besides the specific purpose of the use it is also essential to involve the teacher in the implementation process (Gynther 2017).

In that context, it is interesting to investigate the fact that the political goals for implementing an LMS and the concrete implementation strategy points in another direction than the literature stresses is important for the teachers and investigate if that affect teacher working wellbeing.

Working wellbeing is in this paper defined from three different perspectives.

First, from Sennetts argument that man in the modern world has to be flexible and that working condition, in general, is uncertain (Sennett 1998). Then Karaseks theory that the more demands a worker exposed to then the probability increase that the worker can´t cope with the demands and develop stress (Karasek 1979, Karasek and Theorell 1990). Finally, Skaalviks studies about Norwegian teachers wellbeing and work conditions (Skaalvik and Skaalvik 2017, Skaalvik and Skaalvik 2017).

I related those three approaches to each other and from that, I argue that the five factors, meaning, time, values, autonomy and social support as essential factors for teachers working wellbeing.

This paper addresses the fact that a top-down implementation strategy leads to a lack of ownership of the tool, which means that teachers use the system because they are told to and only on an absolute minimum basis. Even though the teachers feel alienated by the system, the implementation does not affect teachers working wellbeing.

The overall methods in my PhD-project is a Mixed Methods design. The PhD-project has an exploratory sequential design. In an exploratory design the work phases are as follows (Creswell and Plano Clark 2018). The findings I report in this paper is based on the qualitative part and is still a work in progress. The empirical material consists of a hermeneutic interpretation (Winkle-Wagner, Lee-Johnson et al. 2019) of the political documents related to the political agreement of implementing an LMS in all Danish primary school and of 31 in-depth semi-structured interviews (Kvale 2007). In Denmark, there are 5.7millon inhabitants (2017), 98 municipalities, 1083 primary schools, and 46.136 permanent teachers. The material is collected in 3 different municipalities. The three municipalities cover in theory the diversity in Denmark. The biggest municipality has 345.000 citizens in 1 city and 46 primary schools, the second largest has 48.000 citizens distributed in 6 cities and 13 primary schools. The smallest municipalities have 38.400 citizens distributed in 59 cities and 11 primary schools. The interviews have been collected at 4 Danish primary schools – two from the large municipality. The size of the four schools is between 400-799 students, which is within the average school size in Denmark. • 3 Municipalities consultants all male • 4 primary School leaders 3 males and 3 over 60 years • 4 Schoolteachers with special IT-knowledge all males • 4 Schoolteachers there also represent the Teachers Union 2 males • 16 Schoolteachers 9 males (has not finished all of the interviews) The informers are strategically selected on criteria’s such as specialized knowledge about it, working wellbeing and leadership strategies. They vary in teaching experience, gender, and age. In 2014 71,4% of the teachers were females, that means my data can be a little skewed because of the overrepresentation of males. In the interviews, though, the male and female have more or less the same perception and experience of the implementation. The differences are in teaching experience and it-skills. The interviews were on average about an hour, has been analyzed in Nvivo and coded in themes around implementation strategy, use of the LMS, communication about the benefits of using an LMS and finally divided in for the teachers working wellbeing and for leaders and consultants their perception of own management style.

One important finding is a combination of the top-down strategy developed by the Danish municipalities, and the rollout of the LMS before it was fully developed leads to the consequence that neither school managers nor teachers feel ownership to the LMS. The school management at the beginning of the implementation process saw the LMS as a way to rationalize and support teaching, but the LMS did not match those expectations. Three reasons were crucial. First, without fitting the top-down strategy to their school context, they followed the strategy as told to. Secondly, the technical difficulties the system had in the beginning. Thirdly, that the management perceived the communication from the municipalities as erroneous communication about the possibilities the LMS offers. The consequence of those three reasons lead to the lack of ownership, and that had two unintendedly connected consequences. That the school manager’s expectations and demands to the teacher’s use of the system stopped and that means, that the teachers only use the LMS on a minimum basis. That use on a minimum basis leads to an instrumental use of the system. The instrument use of the LMS means that the teachers use the systems as they are told to, but they do not see the system as support for their teaching, which says the instrumental use is perceived as frustration in their working life. However, even though, that the teachers see the LMS as frustration, I do not see that the top-down implementation strategy has a strong affect neither positive nor negative on the teacher's wellbeing. The most robust relation on teachers working wellbeing and implementation of an LMS is the social support given to the teachers by the management. The connection is seen in the teacher's trust to the management’s intention with the system.

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