| dc.description.abstract | This thesis explores how the teacher profession in Norway constructs and negotiates professionalism
when teacher professionalism is reconstructed in national policy. I am particularly concerned with the
increased policy emphasis on accountability and how accountability policies influence senses of
professionalism. There is limited knowledge about how teachers in Norway respond to accountability
policies. Moreover, existing international research on changes in teacher professionalism in the last two
decades largely rely on document analysis or interviews. In this study, the empirical data consists of
white papers, policy documents from the union, participant observation of teacher meetings, focus group
interviews, individual interviews with teachers, and in addition, 28 peer-reviewed articles. Theoretical
perspectives on policy enactment and professionalism are employed, and in what ways and to what
extent educational policy discourse intersects with teachers’ professional discourse are investigated
through a discourse-inspired approach. Taken together, these perspectives enable discussions around
relationships between constructions of professionalism made by different actors, how it is related to
more defining, substantial aspects of teaching, and in what ways language is used to create legitimacy
and relevance for teachers’ work.
In the first article, I investigate how policy makers and the teachers’ union have constructed teacher
professionalism over the last decade in particular. Both actors are increasingly being concerned with
professionalism, yet give different meaning to the term. While the policy makers place emphasis on
teacher accountability, research-based practise and specialisation, the teachers’ union emphasises
research-informed practise, responsibility for educational quality and professional ethics. The
constructions from the teachers’ union are, however, more closely related to classical professional ideals.
The union mainly resists accountability policies, but appears increasingly proactive in terms of how it
places emphasis on research as a way of enhancing professionalism, in combination with an emphasis
on taking responsibility for quality in education.
In the second article, I examine how groups of teachers locally give meaning to accountability. Through
using internal and external accountability as sensitising concepts, I attempt to ‘open up’ the concept of
accountability by studying how teachers themselves construct discourses around being accountable.
Being accountable for student learning, to the curriculum, to laws and regulations, and to principals and
parents, is highlighted as important, particularly by younger teachers. Veteran teachers are more
concerned with being accountable for broader aims of education and to professional knowledge and
experience, which are also used to de-legitimise accountability policies. However, in this tension
between internal and external accountability, an alternative legitimation discourse of being accountable
to research and scientific knowledge has developed.
In the third article, I elaborate on what takes place when accountability policies are implemented locally
and more precisely how teachers in meetings negotiate around the concrete and mandated practise of
national testing. Tensions that are created in interaction revolve around what is seen as internal (teachers’
everyday work) and external (policies and practises outside the main frame of teaching) to teachers’
work. There are particularly four issues that are found to be at stake for teachers with national testing:
professional knowledge, the curriculum, the formative aspects of teaching and loyalty to the students.
These aspects are mainly placed as internal to the participating teachers. However, even though national
testing mainly is placed as external to teachers’ work, teachers involve in boundary work and reshape
professional discourse to create relevance and maintain legitimacy following new expectations.
In the fourth article, I add an international perspective by reviewing what existing research reports on
possible changes in teachers’ relations to students and colleagues following accountability policies and
standardised testing in particular. This study provides knowledge about what might be social effects of
accountability policies as implemented in more high-stakes contexts. A greater focus on testing and
performance is reported to often lead to less attention to caring and relational aspects of teaching.
However, the same emphasis on positive social relationships might prompt teachers to resist such
developments. Relationships to colleagues are also affected, yet reported to be changing in both positive
and negative directions. These findings point to the importance of the organisational context of teaching
in terms of how accountability is realised.
The findings in this thesis contribute empirically to document shifts in discourses of teacher
professionalism among policy makers and the teachers’ union, and suggest that the profession in Norway
has become more proactive in terms of creating legitimacy for their work. Both the union and teachers
locally make forms of resistance toward external control, such as national testing. This is more strongly
articulated by the union whilst being more subtle and varied among teachers’ locally. First, younger
teachers seem to be more balanced over new demands. Second, an alternative legitimation discourse has
developed as the profession places more emphasis on what can be described as research-informed
practise. While accountability mainly is placed outside teachers’ value systems, research is more greatly
placed within. However, accountability policies such as national testing influence teacher work also in
a low-stakes context such as Norway. The thesis has shown different ways in which the profession does
legitimation and boundary work in this context, and how teachers create relevance and legitimacy for
accountability practices that are mandated (national tests) even though they challenge professional
knowledge and values. Therefore, an answer to the question whether accountability policies reshape
teacher professionalism is yes, partly. On the one hand, teachers have become more concerned with
evidence and justifying practise. On the other hand, they are more resistant in terms of outcomes and
more specifically the tools that are implemented to enhance outcomes. The ways that this is done, that
is, what is placed inside and outside of teachers’ main frame of teaching, is important knowledge for
politicians given the relatively strong belief in accountability as a policy theory of action.
Theoretically, the thesis can contribute to how including perspectives on professions and
professionalism adds a dimension to the study of accountability policies that can suggest possibly
interpretations of why teachers resist external accountability, and how this takes place through discursive
legitimation and boundary work. This discursive work can be interpreted in light of what I describe as
the ‘double-loop’ character of teacher accountability, that is, how teachers are accountable for what the
students in turn are accountable for. If policies intersect with teachers’ work in classrooms in ways that
they experience as decreasing rather than enhancing student motivation and engagement and
emphasising a more instrumental view on learning rather than a broader view, this creates tensions for
teachers that needs to be resolved to create relevance and legitimacy. How teachers attempt to resolve
such tensions that take place can be interpreted from a performative perspective, how teachers reshape
what they do or not do in their classrooms due to aspects of professional knowledge and values, or from
an organisational perspective, that teachers reshape professional discourse to remain in control over the
classroom. Methodologically, this thesis contributes to how analysis of language-use provides a useful
and fruitful lens into these processes. I have discussed how discourse analysis can be used to think about
the relation between policy and practise, yet in ways that combines attention to actors’ first-order
constructs and theoretical interpretations. | en_US |
