This study examines how Finnish school communities’ practices reflect the professional agency and autonomy in staff members’ talk when discussing supporting of pupils with a migrant background in their school community. Diversification has increased in Finnish schools, and school staff members are facing new challenges. Finnish staff members are traditionally recognized to have strong autonomy in their work (e.g. Ropo & Välijärvi, 2010). Autonomy is seen to support for example their professional development, job satisfaction and commitment to work. However, there is also evidence that strong autonomy has strengthened individual work cultures at schools and thus created barriers for collaboration and shared school culture development (Vangriegen et al., 2017). In this study we will elaborate the relation between autonomy and agency in a context where old practices and school cultures are challenged and staff members are asked to develop and transform their shared practices. In developing and transforming the school cultures and practices the importance of professional agency has recently highlighted (Imants & Van der Wal, 2020). The concepts of agency and autonomy are partially overlapping, but they also have significant differences. In theory, staff members’ autonomy is more closely linked to freedom from control, while agency depends on the availability of resources to developing the capacity to act. (Erss, 2018). The research questions are: 1) What kinds of work practices appear in staff members’ talk when discussing support of pupils with a migrant background? 2) How these practices reflect the relation between agency and autonomy in the school communities? The data consists of 15 semi-structured theme interviews with staff members across various positions in two lower secondary schools. Based on qualitative content analysis (Braun & Clarke 2006) and data-driven approach, the results show that autonomy and norms around it appear as both enablers and barriers to staff members’ agency (e.g. implementation practices of inclusion, and tensions between staff members’ rights to make prioritizations according to their different work orientations and equitable division of tasks) and shaping of new ways of doing in school community (e.g. considerations about N-word, and collaboration practices). The results indicate that schools need more awareness about borders of beneficial autonomy and more resources to concretely support their coping with workload. Moreover, schools should be offered freedom to carry out experiments regarding to re-organizing work roles and duties.

Erss, M. (2018). ‘Complete freedom to choose within limits’ – teachers’views of curricular autonomy, agency and control in Estonia, Finland and Germany, The Curriculum. Journal, DOI: 10.1080/09585176.2018.1445514 Imants, J. & Van der Wal, M. M. (2020). A model of teacher agency in professional development and school reform, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52:1, 1–14, DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2019.1604809