The Expertification of Educational Care - Negotiating School Development and Attendance Work

• The school's expansion in modern and late modern times have institutionalized and increasingly integrated two forms of educational care – acare for students’ knowledge development and a care for students’ well-being. That is, the two forms of care have been assumed topresuppose one another - well-being is assumed to be a prerequisite for knowledge development and positive knowledge development isassumed to be a prerequisite for well-being both during and after schooling (Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004; Cornelius-White, 2007; Roorda,Koomen, Spilt & Oort, 2011). These assumptions are at the heart of schools’ work with student attendance since efforts and solutions toabsenteeism so clearly involves both forms of care. Schools’ work to support attendance thus not only have to consider the problems andconsequences associated with missing out on schooling; but also, how students’ well-being affects their ability to be in, or come to school, and,conversely, how schooling affect students’ well-being. Differently put, work with student attendance can neither avoid a concern for students’knowledge development, nor for their well-being. In this study, we examine a school's institutionalized work with students' knowledge development and well-being in relation to issues concerningstudents with problematic absenteeism. The presence of absent students "stress tests" a school's ability to integrate the two forms of care.Their absence break with some of the most basic and preconceived premises for how knowledge development and well-being can beintegrated in schoolwork - physical presence and active participation in continuous, class-based teaching practices. In addition, the work withthese students is particularly challenging, since it often requires a coordinated effort that span over a number of actors (e.g. teachers, studenthealth team, school management, external actors and networks), contexts (classroom teaching, special needs units, different forms ofhomeschooling) and various efforts to promote students’ knowledge development and/or well-being. Furthermore, the work (with absentstudents but also in general) is always conditioned by available resources (e.g. money, time, physical/digital infrastructure, materials) andinstitutionalized rules, norms, considerations, traditions and expectations about what needs to be done by whom, when and why. We present results from a case study where a school’s work with problematic absenteeism is analyzed in relation to development efforts thatare channeled into a specific didactic model for subject teaching. The school management estimates that, on average, five students in eachclass have a problematic absence. The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze communication, negotiations and tensions that arise inthe interface between the school's institutionalized work with absent students, their well-being and the school’s systematic work with the didacticmodel to develop students' knowledge development. We believe that the design and prospected result can shed light on more generaldilemmas and tensions that arise in schools' institutional work. Our overall understanding of the phenomenon is based on neo - institutional theory, since it can explain relatively stable patterns of socialactions based on norms in groups or in society (March & Olsen, 2006). We thus choose to investigate how absenteeism and schooldevelopment efforts are perceived and handled within the school as an institution, e.g. the rules (formal and non-formal), routines andexpectations that influence what is, and is not, possible to do - that is, how institutional logics condition different action repertoires (Friedson,2001; March & Olsen, 2006). We approach our study object via questions on how actors (eg teachers, special needs educators, student healthstaff, school management) are involved in professional boundary work (Gieryn, 1983), “translate” (Czarniawska & Jorges, 1996; Alasuutari,2015), negotiate and give meaning to problematic school absenteeism in relation school development, and vice versa. Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used The data used in this study comes from a case study of a school’s work with students with problematic school absenteeism. The school is asecondary school situated outside of Gothenburg where absenteeism is regarded as a central and growing problem. The case study wasinitiated by teachers and school leaders and is designed as a collaborative project that involve teachers and student health team members fromthe school and researchers from the University of Gothenburg. The project was initiated in autumn 2020 and will be finalized at the end of2022. Data collection has been organized around four students with problematic school absenteeism in school year 7 and 8. Documents, observationsand interviews have been used to map actors involved in the school’s work with absenteeism, including e.g. special needs teaching groups,pediatric psychiatry, student health team members, school management and mentors. Beside mapping different actors’ work with absentstudents, we have paid special attention to actions that involve the students’ knowledge development and/or well-being. All in all, the designaims at collecting data bout the (partly different) institutional logics and action repertoires that inform different actors’ work with students withproblematic absenteeism. Departing from each case, interviews and document collection are ways to map the different actors’ perceptions of absence work; what is done,wished for and what are the expected outcomes. Next to concrete documents and perceptions, the exploration focuses on recurring patterns asthe basis for analyzing different institutional logics and action repertoires which govern and influence the various actors in their work onabsenteeism (Alasuutari, 2015). This can, for example, touch on controversies, measures, explanatory models and assumptions about absence,and how absence-work is related to more general approaches to school development. Our material is coded and categorized using the qualitative analysis tool Nvivo, which allows for in-depth analysis with the support of the study’sneo-institutional conceptual apparatus. We focus on questions about which actions and perceptions appear to be possible and problematic in the work of the various actors, not only onthe relationship between actors and the absent student, but also, given the project's neo- institutional approach, on relations between actorswithin their institutional context. Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings In our preliminary results, we see how the integration between the two forms of care (knowledge development/well-being) in the school’sinstitutionalized attendance work is under renegotiation. To be more precise, we see how the integration does remain at the school level (i.e.that the school's work with absent students includes both forms) but is characterized by boundary work at the actor level (i.e. that differentactors’ action repertoires within school tend to be delineated to either form). The work with absent students is primarily organized via experts(e.g., student health team-members), and is separated from the ordinary teachers’ everyday work and school development which revolvesaround a specific didactic model to support subject teaching/learning. We refer to this as an increased “expertification” of education where, onthe one hand, health-team members with specialized knowledge on well-being – special needs, neuropsychiatric diagnoses, pupil’s social andmental life in and outside school, etc – work with students with problematic absenteeism in separate facilities, schedules and didactic repertoires; on the other hand, teachers work are underpinned by the dominant didactical model to primarily focus on teaching and knowledgetransmission, thus becoming experts on teaching in a more narrow sense. For instance, this model of teaching assumes active studentattendance and participation within the physical classroom. Thus, the model, with its subsequent action repertoires, does not take the absentstudents into consideration. Consequently, in our data it appears that teaching is rarely adapted to the specific needs of absent students. Whatwe see in our case-school is that absenteeism crystalizes a contemporary key issue of schooling, where the professional logics of educationalcare appears to be in transition. The process of expertification is underpinned by a general policy trend to unburden teachers from tasks notimmediately associated with teaching (School inspectorate, 2021). References Alasuutari, P. (2015). The Discursive Side of New Institutionalism. Cultural Sociology, 9(2). Bingham, C., & Sidorkin, A. M. (2004). The pedagogy of relation: An introduction. Counterpoints, 1-4. Cornelius-White, J. (2007). Learner centered teacher-student relationships are effective: A meta-analyses. Review of Educational Research,77(1), 113–143. Czarniawska, B. & Joerges, B. (1996) Translating organizational change. Berlin: de Gruyter Gieryn, T. F. (1983). Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies ofscientists. American sociological review, 781-795. Freidson, E. (2001). Professionalism, the third logic: On the practice of knowledge. Uni. of Chicago press. March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (2006). Elaborating the “new institutionalism”. The Oxford handbook of political institutions, 5, 3-20. Roorda, D. L., Koomen, H. M., Spilt, J. L., & Oort, F. J. (2011). The influence of Affective teacher-student relationships on students´ schoolengagement and achievement: A meta analytic approach. Review of Educational Research, 81(4), 493–529. School inspectorate (2021). Läraravlastande tjänster. Fokus på grundskolans årskurs 7–9.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Utbildningsvetenskap -- Pedagogiskt arbete (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Educational Sciences -- Pedagogical Work (hsv//eng)

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

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

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

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

Nyckelord

School absenteeism

neo-institutional

case-study

school development

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)