Delighted to be governed : Teachers’ experiences of moderation as an expression of a more delimited but sharper professionalism?

• The interest in this paper is directed towards teachers’ experiences of collaboration, in particular of moderation when marking national tests. The purpose is to describe and discuss these experiences as expressions of a teaching profession in change.The point of departure is that the now extended national testing in Sweden also increases the demands on moderation as the teachers are supposed to mark the tests together.  The National Agency for Education stress that the tests are intended to "support equal and fair assessment and grading", and delivers samples, instructions and examples on how the tests should be marked. Teachers are also supplied with advisory texts on how to conduct moderation. This we regard as a part of a growing interest by the state to control and evaluate schools and teachers’ performances, and of parent’s claims on fair assessments and grades for their children.Collaboration is thus recommended in policy and what we might call professional tools for assessment is provided by the state. This development supports descriptions of teaching in terms of an organizational form of professionalism based on external control and accountability at the expense of a loss of a professional autonomy. However, we believe that teachers’ moderation when marking national tests also needs to be described as an expression of an occupational form of professionalism that is based on teachers’ collegial authority, self-control, ethics and trust. Interviews were conducted with teachers about their collaborative work in general and more specifically on their joint marking of national tests. Further, we have conducted observations of teachers moderation work when marking national tests. The interviews were audio recorded and fully transcribed.The results indicate that teachers use the state-provided tools with enthusiasm and express a commitment to their collaborative work. We argue that they develop a collective professional knowledge in their moderation work with national tests. In this sense, they express a kind of state-directed professionalism that we describe as sharp but delimited and definitely different from the wider kinds of professionalism that has been described as a result of a “chock professionalization”.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogik (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogy (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Moderation

Teacher collaboration

National test

Professionalism

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)