Anneli Frelin

Negotiations left behind : In-between spaces of teacher-student negotiation and their significance for education

This paper argues against a view of curriculum as a means for moulding students into, and making teachers accountable for, something pre‐determined and singularly governed by qualification demands of the labour market. It makes a case for the value of inter‐subjective teacher–student relationships in education and addresses the significance of negotiations and their open‐endedness. This paper draws its empirical material from case studies for which interviews were the main source for gathering data. The data analyses were made using the AtlasTi software designed for qualitative analysis. In the empirical material were found instances of negotiations in which inter‐subjective relationships are established and maintained; negotiations that are rendered obscured or even invisible from a qualification purpose but that influence the educational processes. The results show that teachers and students creatively use potentials within contextual conditions to attain relationships which sometimes constitute a precondition for education.

Doing good? Interpreting teachers’ given and felt responsibilities for pupils’ well-being in an age of measurement

The purpose of this study is to theoretically discuss a specific aspect of teachers’ responsibilities: their responsibility for pupils’ or children’s well-being. We ask two interrelated questions: firstly, how might (Swedish) teachers’ sense of responsibilities for their pupils’ well-being be understood in relation to ethical theory? Secondly, what does this insight bring to the discussion of teachers’ professional responsibility within the global discourse of educational policy that increasingly stresses accountability and efficiency in an ‘age of measurement?’ Education can be described as an intervention in a pupil’s life, motivated by the idea that it will somehow improve it. When one implements this intervention, from a legal/political perspective, it boils down to a series of responsibilities assigned to teachers, as expressed in current policy documents. However, an exploration of empirical examples in a Swedish context of teachers’ sense of responsibility for their pupils’ or children’s well-being, expressed in everyday situations, indicates that the matter is complex. In order to find tools with which to better understand such expressions, we turn to the field of ethics. A thorough inquiry into the various reasoning regarding responsibility reveals that responsibility as socially defined and given is not sufficient to capture the intimacy and relational uncertainties of the teachers’ stories, which is why we turn to the writings of Lévinas and his ethics of responsibility. His ethical language helps to capture relational processes that cannot be predefined and that are based on an infinite sense of responsibility for the other person. We continue by discussing and problematising the increasing demands for measurability and accountability in the field of teachers’ professionalism. Here, we illuminate risks involved with the movement towards the fixed and calculable, since it overlooks the intricate ways in which teachers’ given and felt responsibilities are woven together.

Professionally present : highlighting the temporal aspect of teachers' professional judgment

Novice teachers need to develop their professional judgment. Teaching is performed in the face of imperfect, complex but above all continuously emergent situations. These matters have not received adequate attention in theories relating to professional judgment and professionality in teaching or in the contemporary discourse of education policy. The purpose of this conceptual article is therefore to contribute to the understanding of teachers’ judgment. By discussing empirical examples that indicate how sensing and knowing guide judgment, concepts are introduced that are intended to further the understanding of teachers’ professional judgment; something that will hopefully benefit teacher education as well as practicing teachers.

Studying relational spaces in secondary school: Applying a spatial framework for the study of borderlands and relational work in school improvement processes

This article introduces a theoretical framework for studying school improvement processes such as making school environments safer. Using concepts from spatial theory, in which distinctions between mental, social and physical space are applied makes for a multidimensional analysis of processes of change. In a multilevel case study, these were combined with task perception analysis, where all categories of personnel and management in the school were studied. The results indicated the significance of borderlands in the school for helping students, of organizational transgressions aimed at ‘making things work’ and of social spaces created in the borderlands that contributed to the necessary social glue in the school. This theoretical framework offers alternative and fruitful lenses which can enrich studies of school improvement processes.

Highly Committed Teachers: What Makes Them Tick? A Study of Sustained Commitment.

Abstract This article focuses on teacher commitment, and particularly on teachers displaying sustained high levels of commitment throughout their teaching careers (over 15 years). Graduates from one Teacher Education programme responded to an open-ended questionnaire conducted on 10 occasions concerning their work as teachers, from graduation in 1993 to 2013. Out of the 72 who responded on all nine occasions, eight teachers stating high levels of commitment throughout their careers were selected for additional interviews. A framework containing four commitment factors was used as the point of departure. Content analyses of the interview and selected questionnaire data then resulted in a revised framework of five factors: personal, teaching, school context, system context and professional development. Accounts from eight teachers with sustained high commitment illustrate the framework. The article offers an extended framework for understanding and categorising the factors that contribute to teacher commitment.

Direct and indirect educational relationships: Developing a typology for the contribution of different categories of school staff in relation to students’ educational experiences

This article presents results from a research project exploring the relational interplay between school staff and students, its functions and complexity in the secondary school context. School relationships (between students and different kinds of staff) are more or less indirectly related to educational content: subject matter as well as norms and values. In the teacher–student relationship, the teaching and learning of subject matter largely defines the relationship, whereas for school support staff, the relationship to such content is fairly distant. However, they all have in common that these assigned functions are created for the purpose of enabling the education of our youth. In this article, a case study from a secondary school is used to develop a typology for understanding the relevance that content may have in these different types of relationships. We also explore the sometimes unpredictable ways in which content can emerge as relevant. A year-long case study was conducted during the 2012–2013 school year at a secondary school that had recently been renovated and in which work had been done to improve the educational environment. Multiple data sources were used, including document analysis, mapping, contextual observations and interviews. Official statistics, newspaper articles and school quality reports were used to contextualize the case. In this article, interviews with different categories of school staff and students formed the main source of data. The different assigned functions of the staff were categorized as: educators, education professionals (e.g. counsellors) and education support professionals (e.g. caretakers). Although the latter were often indirectly connected to content, they could also have relevance through the relationships that they developed with students. Here, there is a point in separating the staff’s assigned function as officially described and their relation to students as played out in practice. Two examples illustrate how members of staff diverge somewhat from their assigned functions in informal places and spaces to facilitate the educational experience of the students. It is argued that in a school for all students, this flexibility in school relationships can improve students’ relations to content and school success.

The production of present and absent presences in education

Abstract Drawing on the distinction between absent and present presences, this article contributes to our understanding of how new managerial and performative discourses are played out in a secondary school context in Sweden. The consequences of numerous educational reforms during the last 20 years include a surge of new independent schools and increased segregation between students due to individual school choice. Following international trends, a yearly national municipal school ranking is published, drawing much attention both in the media and on the policy level, intensifying pressure for results at the municipal level. A case study was conducted in one bottom-ranked Swedish secondary school over the 2012-13 school year, focusing on how relationships between students and staff were negotiated in informal spaces and places. The results illustrate how absent presences and present presences are produced in the practice of schooling. The present presences were publication of results, raising merit scores and grading pressure, and the absent presences were the role of the media in the self-image of schools, increased workload for teachers, the misuse of statistical data and demoralization and determination. The results contribute to the understanding of a) the challenges that teachers and schools are faced with as a consequence of the new managerial and performative discourses in educational settings, and b) the means they draw on to face and resist them in their everyday practices.

Navigating Middle Ground

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 2000, § 28) not only states rights to education, but also that “[d]iscipline in schools should respect children’s dignity. For children to benefit from education, schools must be run in an orderly way – without the use of violence”. To this end, the benefits of positive teacher-student relationships are well established (see e.g. Evertson & Weinstein, 2006; Wentzel, Battle, Russell, & Looney, 2010).

Four components that sustain teachers’ commitment to students – a relational and temporal model

Abstract Teacher commitment is a key factor for explaining how and why teachers care about their students’ learning and well-being, and it is a well-known fact that teachers invest emotionally in their work and their students. The purpose of the article is to contribute to the conceptual underpinning of commitment in relation to the teacher-student relationship and to suggest a conceptual model based on empirical material. Eight teachers were selected for interview, all of whom had been in the profession since 1993 and had reported high commitment throughout their careers. The content of the teachers’ accounts were analysed, with attention to how commitment to students manifested itself in their stories. The analysis resulted in a model consisting of four temporally related components of teacher commitment to students: moral, action/motivational, knowledge/self-confidence and reward/self-esteem. Understanding teacher commitment is important for preventing teacher attrition. Rather than applying general measures to boost commitment, this model provides conceptual bases for addressing deficits in particular components of teacher commitment.

Spaces of student support : comparing educational environments from two time periods

This article sets out to explore how and whether the physical, social and conceived conditions in schools facilitate or disrupt support work aimed at improving student learning and preventing social exclusion. This is accomplished by comparing student support practices in the common areas of two newly renovated secondary schools built in two different time periods. The focus is on the student support staff’s (exemplified by student welfare officers and school hosts) enactment of support for students’ learning and well-being. This enactment takes place in a designed school environment, where teachers and support staff appropriate spaces for educational purposes in various ways. The interview and observational data come from two qualitative case studies. A spatial analysis perspective is used to investigate the physical, social and conceived aspects of space. The case schools, located in two municipalities, were originally built in the 1910s (Maple Grove) and the 1960s (Pine Bay). Both schools serve mixed to low SES (socio-economic status) communities and have organized student support functions in the schools’ corridors, cafeterias, recreation areas and other common spaces. These functions include the school host, the student coach and the student welfare officer. The ways in which the support staff claim the locales show that they transcend the initial design functionality by appropriating spaces for their everyday practices. Their task perception thus delineates a certain professional territory, a task perception that is taking place, so to speak. The results show that this professional territory can vary, even among those in the same profession. The support functions expand their professional territory by being mobile in the school building and thereby creating more and larger surfaces for social interactions with students and other support functions.