In the open session of Network 27 in ECER2021 a fascinating discussion took place in trying to define what the realm of didactics as a field is (Almqvist, Ligozat, 2021). In this collective effort, we went back to the idea of the triangle ‘teacher-learner-content’ as defining the ‘space’ of didactics, still, in today’s changing educational world.

In this contribution we discuss a practice-oriented Flemish-Belgian documentary study (Tamassia, 2022), considering the collaboration between subject matter teachers as envisaged by policy implementation documents in an effort to modernise secondary education. The picture of teacher team collaboration emerging from these documents will be brought into discussion in relation to the didactics core of a teacher's practice, identifying possible forms of pressure on it.

In the European discourse about modernising education, a key change-element is the breaking of the ‘isolation’ of the teacher (Gajda & Koliba, 2008) inside and outside the classroom in favour of a more team-based organisation and implementation of teaching in schools (Eurydice & Crell, 2015; European Political Strategy Centre, 2017).

Today’s society is described as becoming more complex and schools as having to face more complex challenges. It is argued that individuals cannot attack complex issues alone, and the conclusion is drawn that teachers will have to collaborate more and more in teams, see for instance (Vangrieken, 2018). At the level of the curriculum the need for more collaboration between teachers is often associated with the introduction of 21^st century skills (Griffin et al., 2012).

A second perspective arises from looking at schools as organisations. Results are applied originating from non-educational fields – management, organisational psychology - to schools. See for instance (Senge, 2000).

Schools are described as organisations being traditionally loosely coupled, with teachers working independently and being as a result difficult to assess on performance and to manage (Somech, 2005). This resulted in a push from this ‘traditional concept of school’ to the school as a contemporary ‘professional organisation’, while the general trend of moving to more ‘horizontal’ organisations is realised in schools through teacher teams, see for instance (Larock, 2015).

Strengthening teacher team dynamics is expected to have a positive effect on teacher well-being (Torrente et al., 2012). This is considered important in relation to the increasing lack of teachers and teacher drop out, particularly acute in Flemish Belgium (Udave et al. 2014; European Commission, 2020).

In Flanders, these trends have led to local policies aiming at strengthening the ‘vakgroep’ (group of teachers teaching the same subject in a school) and ‘vakgroepwerking’ (the ‘working together’ of such a group of teachers) in secondary schools, see for instance (VVKSO, 2009). ‘Vakgroep’ and ‘vakgroepwerking’ have been considered more and more important in Flemish secondary schools in recent years.

In this study, we have traced the Flemish concepts ‘vakgroep’ and ‘vakgroepwerking’ in the online public space. We have analysed the retrieved online documentation by making use of the mapping categories WHO, WHAT and WHEN. Who speaks about ‘vakgroep’ and ‘vakgroepwerking’? What is said? When was this said?

In particular, we have collected information concerning what the ‘vakgroep’ must do according to a diversity of educational policy-related documents and artefacts, including concrete documents of schools with internal rules and requirements, and reports of the ministerial inspection.

Since ‘vakgroepen’ are groups of subject-matter teachers in schools, what is required for their members actually translates into a list of concrete tasks for teachers. A detailed description of these tasks, based on keywords and typical expressions from the retrieved online documents, describes the change in the teachers’ practice as a consequence of the way teachers’ team-work is envisaged in the retrieved documents.

Context This study originated during the corona crisis, when planned field work with schools and teachers was cancelled, and we had to look for other ways to do practice-oriented research in education. Mapping methods based on online data-taking were a feasible option at a moment when we had to work from home and our window to the world was a computer screen. We decided to experiment with an online exploration, looking for meanings and interpretations of the Flemish ‘subject-matter teacher-groups’. This approach allows an exploration of practice as far as educational practice actors post material openly on the internet. Concept - Documentary study of online public records. - Underlying idea: the online space is a public space where actors speak in relation to something that is at stake. Online data collection based on specific terms and data-analysis in the form of mappings allow a rich description of what these terms ‘mean’. - Limitations: actors not active in the online public space are not visible; results of Google Search are not exactly reproducible (but the focus is not the exact list of hits, rather the multi-perspective picture one achieves). Data collection - Google Search as main tool for practice-oriented data collection. - Focus on the local, educational practice related terms ‘vakgroepwerking’ and ‘vakgroep’. - Added focus on the recent reform of secondary education in Flanders (we were aware that ‘vakgroep’ plays a role there). Data analysis 3 mappings based on the categories WHO, WHAT and WHEN. - WHO: Who speaks about ‘vakgroep’? The actors associated with the retrieved material are collected, and further organised in 10 type-actor categories (i.e. school, researcher, inspection…), whose interplay is also analysed. - WHAT: What is said about ‘vakgroep’? Fragments from the retrieved documents including ‘vakgroep’ and ‘vakgroepwerking’ are collected, keywords, expressions and images are highlighted. This is typically about what the ‘vakgroep’ must do and how its members must behave. The material is then organised in 11 ‘roles’ of ‘vakgroep’, illustrated by keywords, expressions and images. - WHEN: When was this said? and WHEN-WHO visualisation: The documents’ publication year is identified and marked with the WHO category. Events in recent Flemish history of education mentioned in the documents are collected and dated. A visualisation in the form of a multiple timeline is constructed, giving a chronological perspective on the Flemish ‘vakgroep’ in relation to educational actors (WHO-categories) and historical events related to educational policy.

The main result of this study is the description of 11 roles of the teacher team as appearing from the retrieved documents. These roles are associated with concrete (new) tasks for teachers, for example: writing meeting agenda’s and reports, filling in self-evaluation forms, doing team-psychology exercises, giving scores to the own school in relation to the educational reform, making suggestions on how these scores can be improved, writing a team-vision document… While these tasks appear to be time-consuming, teachers’ still have to teach their normal hours in the classroom and prepare their lessons. In our contribution we will present the teacher-team roles and tasks, together with the societal expectations they arise from, and discuss them from the point of view of didactics, seen as the space teacher(s)-learner(s)-content. The study also traces back an evolution of the last 30 years, changing the way of thinking about educational quality in Flanders. It appears that teacher team processes have become central in the evaluation of the quality of a school. We will bring this concept of quality into discussion from the point of view of quality of didactics. Teacher professional development focusing on team processes has taken place in Flanders from 2015. It appears that systematic team-learning of teachers, professional behaviour in meetings and meeting skills, displaying group-behavioural features - like being future-oriented, constructive, engaged – have been considered a goal in themselves. We will bring this into discussion from the point of view of the appreciation of teachers’ (didactical) work. As already mentioned, in Flanders the lack of teachers and teacher drop out assume dramatic proportions. While strengthening teacher teams is considered to be positive for teachers’ well-being, we raise the issue of possible countereffects due to an impact of teacher-team policy implementation on the didactics space of teachers.

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