Teachers' Knowledge Work in the Context of Diversity at School: The Many Faces of Standardization as a Quality Assurance Reform in Norway

• In Event: 56.080 - Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: 56.080-12 - The Impact of Testing on Teacher Identity

Abstract

This paper examines how teachers collaboratively engage with interpreting existent and producing new knowledge within the complexities of an urban school settings and in the conflicting agendas of performativity and measurement and increasing demands for quality and sophistication of professional practice. The study gives an ethnographic account of a yearly life cycle of a 6th grade teacher team in an urban school located in Eastern Norway. The findings based on extensive observational and interview data point to several dilemmatic themes that frame teachers' knowledge work in teams: conflicting mandates of individualization and standardization, shift from coherence in curriculum to subject-specific outcomes, tendency to see professional problems as messy rather than complex and weak links to abstract knowledge.

Author

• Galina Shavard, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences