Seven Teachers in Upper Secondary School Coping with Their Role as Teachers and Leaders of Teaching Learning Communities

Author(s):

Mikael R Karlsson(presenting / submitting)Peter Erlandson(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

01. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations

Format:

Paper

Session Information

01 SES 04 A, Professional Learning for Change

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-11

09:00-10:30

Room:

B-202

Chair:

Contribution

In a broad sense this papers concerns with matters of school development, or more exactly of teachers experiences about school transformation. As pointed out by for example Hargreaves (2004; Fullan, 2001) transformation, i.e. change in schools provokes emotional responses of different kinds, positive as well as negative. These responses have considerable impact on how successful developmental project tends to be. However, the emotional responses in turn are too a large degree dependent on how the developmental projects are implemented, but also dependent on where in the organisation the projects are initiated. Projects that are viewed as workplace generated, not surprisingly, tends to provoke considerable more positive emotional responses in the teaching groups then projects that are viewed as initiated from external instances.

This paper concerns a project that was initiated by the political leadership in a City and carried out in the schools via headmasters down to the actual every-day school practises. Our main interest is a group of key-figures in this school developmental attempt, namely local school based teachers and developmental project leaders in some newly created Teaching Learning Communities (Sigurdardóttir 2010). These teachers/leaders have the responsibility of lead seminars twice a month that the teaching staff is obliged to attended to. However, in the same time as these leaders have a clear responsibility, they have no actual organisational power (they have no privileged position in any other way then being just leaders for these seminars) and they still also have their ordinary teaching work to attend to. The consequence of this is that the leaders/teachers work has an ambivalent structure that calls for both leadership like and collegial communicative bindings. These leaders/teachers experiences of ambivalences and their way to address and cop with these ambivalences are the focus in this paper.

The theoretical framework of this study could best be described as a reinterpretation of existence philosophical positions, adapted on the thematic field of school development and educational work. The reason for our choice of theoretical tools is the fact that strong line of reasoning of existence philosophical–even if it actually deals with questions very close to the ones formulated in contemporary research (for example Hargrevas, 2004)–is still underused, and for these kinds of applications, underdeveloped. We think that the research community therefore may benefit greatly of analytical points that can be made on the behalf of this line of reasoning. In more specified terms we explore and develop theoretical tools based on existence philosophy by Marcel (1948), Jaspers (1963), Merleau-Ponty (2002), (see also Erlandson, 2006). From this theoretical position we develop a theoretical framework for conceiving educational work as a meeting place between life and work, between pedagogical ambitions and the demands and limitations of a social educational practice, between colleagues, students and school-leaders, and between local school project and policy doctrines. Additionally, we suggest a way for professional empowerment as well as an alternative way to reflect upon –and cope with– ambivalences in professional practice and a way to handle emotional responses on school development.

Method

In this paper we wish to contribute to knowledge concerning how teachers experience ambivalences in their professional life, and to previous research on teachers responses to change and school development. In the project that his paper is a part of we use an ethnographical approach (and more exactly linguistic ethnography Creese, 2008, Erlandson & Beach 2013). In this particular paper, however, our data is based exclusively on semi-structured interviews with seven teachers in three different Upper Secondary Schools in southwest of Sweden. The interviews were conducted with the teachers in their working environment. We analyse how – and with the help of which conceptual strategies – they produce meaning about their work as teachers and as developmental project leaders. We analyse the different ways that these teachers/leaders handle with their work and how they view the possibilities and limitations in their life, work, but also the continuing developmental project as a whole.

Expected Outcomes

Our data suggests that experienced ambivalences can relate to so different matters as concerns about career opportunities, the choice to be a project leader, coping with the colleagues resistance, degree of commitment and the role as a professional/private person at work and at home. The data also suggests that these experiences have great affect on matters like self-image and self-confidence but also on life-choices in a broad sense. Therefor, of course, it is important for the teachers to cope with these ambivalences. In this early stage of our analysis the teachers’ strategies for coping seems to fall into four different categories: avoidance, intellectualization, professionalization and extended understanding. Our so far tentative interpretation is that the teachers who uses professionalization or intellectualization as primary coping strategies tend to view themselves as more of a leadership person, while the teachers who uses avoidance or extended understanding as primary coping strategies tend to view themselves as more of a teacher-colleague.

References

Creese, A. (2008). Linguistic Ethnography: Unpublished, www.ling-ethnog.org.uk. Erlandson, P. (2006). Giving up the ghost: the control-matrix and reflection-in-action. Reflective Practice Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 115–124. Erlandson, P. & Beach, D. (2013). Ironising with Intelligence. In Press Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass). Hargreaves, A (2004): Inclusive and exclusive educational change: emotional responses of teachers and implications for leadership, School Leadership & Management: Formerly School Organisation, 24:3, 287-309 Jaspers, K. (1963). General psychopathology. Manchester. Manchester University Press. Marcel, G (1948). The philosophy of existence. London. The Harvill Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Phenomenology of Perception. Padstow, Cornwall. Routledge Classics. Sigurdatóttir, A. K. (2010). Professional Learning Community in Relation to School Effectiviness. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research vol. 54, No 5, October 2010, pp. 395-412.

Author Information

Mikael R Karlsson (presenting / submitting)

University of Gothenburg

Dept of pedagogical, curricular and professional studies

Borås

Peter Erlandson (presenting)

University of Gothenburg

Vastra Frolunda

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