Lärares samarbete - en verksamhet på två arenor : studier av fyra arbetslag på grundskolans högstadium

Sammanfattning: Around 1980 some important decisions were made regarding the Swedish comprehensive school, which in various ways influenced teachers' work. The school was to be divided into smaller units, so-called work-units. A work-unit was to contain two or more classes of students. As a consequence of this new organisation the teachers were to co-operate in a so called teacher-team, that was responsible for all activities in a work-unit.The aim of this thesis is to study teachers' work as regards their participation in and conceptions of collegial co-operation. Focus is on describing and analysing the meeting between external demands on teacher co-operation and the traditional freedom of the teaching profession to plan and carry through teaching individually.Four teacher-teams were studied during one year by means of participating observations of their planned conferences. Three teachers from each team were then interviewed about their views on and conceptions of work in teacher-team and of their tasks as teachers. All teachers in the four teams were also asked to keep a diary for one week where all collegial meetings were noted.The results indicate that when imposed collegial co-operation was introduced in the school it led to teacher collaboration being distributed into two separate arenas: conference co-operation (the formal arena) and other types of co-operation with colleagues (the informal arena). All teachers use the formal arena to introduce discussions about student welfare. otherwise they are moderately interested in the work in this arena. In the informal arena some teachers act as initiators of ontent, closely related to well-known interests among teachers; instruction and student welfare.Teachers express a need for collegial co-operation and they take the opportunity under certain circumstances.