Construing teachers’ quality work : a principal view
Teachers are the most important school based factor for students’ learning outcomes and educational success. Whereas teachers’ pro-spects of enhancing their students’ development and study results, are significant for their work satisfaction and wellbeing. This suggests that the endorsement of quality teaching will improve student results and teacher wellbeing. Many teachers have difficulties performing in accordance to their professional standards, sick rates are alarmingly high, and several teachers leave the profession. This calls for a re-search approach where teachers’ prospects of performing quality teaching, are related to their options to perform quality-driven profes-sional teacher work, i.e. the work performed to support quality teach-ing. Such an approach take into account factors related to local school leadership, and the organisation of teacher work. This paper aims to bring together teachers’ and principals’ perspectives on quality-driven professional teacher work, in order to gain new knowledge and give implications for praxis. The principals and teachers construe teachers’ options to perform quality-driven professional work in relation to the implementation of a new curriculum and a new grading system, quali-ty certification processes and an ongoing work hour project, and to some extent also to the teachers’ personality and ambitions. The teachers’ also mention factors related to local oranisation processes, and the relations to pupils and fellow teachers.
Den effektiva läraren : om konstruktionen av den goda läraren på en internationell utbildningsarena
Intresset for lararen som foreteelse och begrepp inom internationell utbildningspolicy grundar sig pa antagandet att lararens yrkesutovning ar av avgorande betydelse for att eleverna ska na de inte ...
Talet om ansvar i förskolans styrdokument 1945-1998 : en textanalys
With the overall aim of "analysing and comparing the language that was used during the period 1945-1998 in pre-school documents with regard to the duty of promoting the development of children into responsible persons and citizens", the thesis studies seven authoritative government texts for pre-schools. The goal documents form an intertextual chain whose first link was published under the auspices of the National Swedish Bord of Health and Welfare, when the number of institutions for the care and education of the youngest children was still very limited. The goal document which make up the latest link in the chain serves as an indication of the altered status of pre-schools caused by their becoming a part of the educational system. - Starting out from curriculum theory the thesis makes a text analysis where the methodology has been inspired by Quentin Skinner's histiorical-pragmatic and intertextual approach and by John Austin's speech act theory. The source texts are contextualised by means of parliamentary reports, government bills, and other contemporary texts. - Since 'ansvar' ('responsibility') is a contingent concept, the context has a decisive importance for the meaning. The analyses of the pre-school goal documents reveal certain differences from the usual lexical definitions of 'ansvar' ('responsibility'), which are 'punishment', 'answer' and duty, and which are used in law, moral philosophy and political science. The authority and adulthood implied by the standard meanings, and the weight, seriousness and negative axiological sense associated with these, are changed when in a "new" context, the pre-school context, the issue is children's development of responsibility. - When the goal documents refer to the youngest members of society as having the ability to take and show responsibility, this indicates not only that the sense, reference and speech act potential of the word have changed, but also that the underlying perception of children has changed. - "New", positively axiological senses of 'ansvar' ('responsibility') appering in several of the pre-school goal documents are that the children are expected to "respond to" other people and "show consideration" and a "democratic responsibility" - an interpretation which has been caused by the advocacy that children should participate and share the responsibility and also have a real influence on the everyday life of pre-schools.