3rd European Conference on Curriculum Studies Abstract submission template Presenting author[s] Daniel Alvunger Title of presentation ‘First-teachers’: The Local Enactment of the Career Services for Teachers Reform in Sweden
Abstract During the last decade Sweden has undergone an intense educational reform period. Among recent reforms (2013) one particularly has caused debate: the reform on career services for teachers (the CST reform). The reform aims at promoting the status and career of teachers by appointing skilled teachers to “first-teachers” and granting a substantial salary increase. The aim with this paper is to explore and analyse the enactment of the reform in five municipalities: How are intentions with the CST reform in national/programmatic policy recontextualised and agreed by the local authority and school management? What strategies of enactment, communication and interactions between different agents and sub-systems can be distinguished? The theoretical framework of this paper is based on curriculum theory (Lundgren 1989; Wahlström 2009) and will draw from a social systems theory perspective (Vanderstraeten 2007, 2010) on schools as organisations. The paper builds on a perspective on the local school enactment arena as consisting of nested sub-systems on three intermediating layers – district, school and teacher level – where reforms are transferred, translated and negotiated (Resnick 2010). The sub-systems are internally related (i.e. loosely coupled) and may have a high degree of autonomy, perform different functions under their own logics and conditions (Orton & Weick 1990) and external interaction and exchange (Scott 2008). The methods used for collecting empirical data are document analyses, surveys and semi-structured interviews. The municipalities were given generous space for action for enactment, but the short timeframe presented problems to the school organisation like lack of co-ordination and communication between the local school authority and principals. In many ways this led to an uncertainty considering how the reform should be interpreted in terms of the first-teachers’ status, position and assignments. The general view on local authority and school management level was that first-teachers could be important agents for school improvement, but also that it complicated the collegiality of the teachers. Although facing similar challenges with integrating first-teachers as a new sub-system in the local school organisation, the municipalities have employed different strategies with different implications for communication and interaction between agents and sub-systems. In this respect it is possible to identify two principles of organising: 1) A differentiated organisation for first-teachers operating on different levels; 2) A decentralised organisation with school-based assignments for first-teachers and no close involvement from local school authority. Coordination and communication both internally and between the nested sub-systems, e.g. principals, teams of teachers, first-teachers, present a challenge for all municipalities, but one has a networked-based
organisation that seems to be a successful strategy for communication horizontally and vertically. Career pathways for teachers and advanced skills teachers are universal phenomena. By presenting a recent Swedish example this paper wants to make both a theoretical and empirical contribution to a larger discussion on the enactment of educational reforms and how we can understand and interpret such reforms and their implications on for instance school improvement and processes of teachers’ collegial work. Word length 483 Key words Curriculum theory; Enactment of educational reform; Advanced skills teachers; career pathways Conference theme (e.g. Curriculum-making) Curriculum policy and regulation
