Kaoskompetens och gummibandspedagogik en studie av karaktärsämneslärare i en decentraliserad gymnasieorganisation

Sammanfattning: The thesis focuses on a group of programme-specific subject teachers working in the upper secondary school child recreation programme. The aim has been to study who is appointed to these positions, and ways in which their work is affected by national and local requirements. An additional aim has been to examine the factors which affect the teachers' professional identity, and the position which they have acquired at upper secondary school. The theoretical frameworks used are profession theories, discourse theories, Bernstein's curriculum theory, Bourdieu's cultural-sociological concept, and gender theory.The study is qualitative in nature and the empirical data consists of the written accounts and diary entries of ten teachers. The teachers and three school principals were interviewed in autumn 1998. In addition to government reports and guidelines the data also include questionnaire responses from 184 upper secondary teachers.The results indicate that decentralisation has caused many of the tasks and responsibilities generated by the upper secondary reform of the 1990s to become invisible. The teachers, who form a heterogeneous group, are responsible for both a broad multi-disciplinary subject area and work-place teaching for which none of them has been fully trained. The complexity of the student groups, with many students experiencing study difficulties, has imposed considerable demands on the teachers, who have developed approaches and pedagogical techniques for dealing with the students' needs. The teachers' work with students and their experience of cooperation, team work and alternative working methods in line with government aims has proved successful, according to National Agency for Education reports and statements by school principals. Their care-oriented approach has also fitted in well with the government aim of a school for all. In this respect they are clearly professional. However, the teachers do not appear to have established a particularly prominent role for themselves in the upper secondary school system. They are very much seen by others and themselves to occupy a low-status category and to have developed their professional identity within a generalist ideal, whereas the norm at upper secondary school is still characterised by a specialist ideal.