Understanding Teacher Agency in the Swedish National Standards-Based Curriculum Reform

• In Event: 47.077 - Teacher Agency as a Complex and Emergent Phenomenon: International Perspectives

Abstract

1. Objectives or purposes
This presentation explores and analyses teacher agency in the context of the Swedish curriculum for compulsory schooling, introduced in 2011. It follows a standards-based curriculum trajectory as part of an international education policy movement, which becomes evident through the introduction of explicit standards in terms of ‘knowledge requirements’ (KR) that align content, abilities and assessment criteria. The presentation seeks to understand in what ways the curriculum, according to the teachers, affects and shapes teaching practice.
2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
The analysis builds on a conceptualisation and understanding of teacher agency inspired by Priestley, Biesta and Robinson’s (2015) ‘ecological approach’ to teacher agency. It involves the interaction between individual capacities and environmental conditions. Three main questions guide the analysis: How do teachers experience their room for action? What contextual factors impede or promote their agency? How do they seek to achieve agency in terms of means, resources and strategies?
3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry
The study uses a combination of qualitative methods, where complementary types of data are collected (Creswell, 2010): Semi-structured interviews, document analysis and classroom video recordings of lessons.
4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials
The empirical data build on interviews with 15 teachers teaching in grade 6 and 9. They also include four cases comprising curriculum documents, teaching materials and 48 classroom observations through video recordings, collected during a full school year.
5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
Teacher agency in recontextualisation of the curriculum is understood through three different ‘spaces’: a collective space, an individual space and an interactive space in the classroom. The KR compel teachers to include and assess a lot of content in each ‘curriculum task’. Teachers collaborate through the construction of pedagogical plans that seek to align aims, content and assessment criteria. It is possible to identify a recontextualisation process of ‘borrowing’ content from curriculum tasks across the different subjects by bringing together the KR. This offers opportunities for teachers to cope with contextual factors and gives them room to act. By linking abilities between the school subjects, teachers seek synergies for assessing their students’ abilities.
6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work
By using Sweden as a case, this study contributes to an understanding of how teachers act, deliberate on curriculum matters, make use of different repertoires and decide on future actions. The ecological approach to teacher agency provides insights in how teachers respond to standards-based policy, how they make use of individual capacities and contextual factors that may be resourceful or complicate how teachers engage curriculum practice.
References
Creswell, J. W. (2010). Mapping the developing landscape of mixed methods research. In A. Tashakkori, & C. Teddlie (Eds.), Sage handbook of mixed methods in social & behavioral research.

Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency. An ecological approach. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Author

• Daniel Alvunger, Linnaeus University