Session Information
10 SES 11 A, Conceptualising Teacher Educators' Knowledge and Identities I
Symposium, Part 1
Contribution
In Finnish research-based teacher education teacher educators are considered as academic professionals who have considerable autonomy in implementing and developing their work and the teacher education curriculum. However, recent global adoption of neoliberal principles and new public management with tightening accountability has lead to increasing external control over teacher educators’ work in Finland. Although new management principles have been widely adopted in educational organisations, we do not have a great deal of evidence of what this implies for teacher educators’ work and learning. This paper presents a qualitative study that was conducted in one Finnish teacher education department. The aim was to understand possibilities and obstacles pertaining to teacher educators’ professional learning and organizational change. The interview-data were gathered at time when the management of the department was realized through loosely coupling principles, meaning that the department operated via “flat” management culture. Findings showed that this kind of loosely-coupled management supported teacher educators’ professional learning and strengthened their commitment to their work and organization. However, the teacher educators’ identity as a researcher was subjugated and conflicting. Also work-community level transformations (e.g. adopting new work practices, boundary-crossings between groups) and organizational level changes were found to be slow and difficult processes.
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