Aktørskap hjå norsklærarar i vidaregåande skule : Ein sosiokulturell intervjustudie

Abstract

This thesis is an interview study with the aim of exploring upper secondary school teachers’ experiences with giving direction to their own practice. These experiences can be understood and explored as expressions of teacher agency, a phenomenon at the core of teacher professionalism. As a phenomenon, teacher agency has received increased attention in recent years, but research in the Norwegian context is lacking. Aided by the concept of teacher agency as a theoretical lens, this thesis contributes with insight on teachers’ experiences with influencing, making choices, and taking stances in their pedagogical practice and in questions of what kind of teacher they want to be. In the thesis, however, teacher agency is not understood as an isolated capacity of the individual, but as a phenomenon shaped in interplay between teacher and sociocultural resources and constraints in the teachers’ context. The thesis is therefore taking a sociocultural approach to teacher agency, founded on the works of Lev Vygotsky and Mikhail Bakhtin.

Because the thesis aims for a deep and holistic understanding of teacher agency, one type of teachers, Norwegian language arts teachers, and one specific school level, upper secondary school, is chosen as an empirical example. The thesis is exploring the following overall question:

How is teacher agency among Norwegian language arts teachers in upper secondary school shaped?

The thesis explores three contextual resources and constraints that shape teacher agency. These are: perceived professional space, teachers’ subject visons, and teachers’ subject identities.

The empirical material in the thesis is based on interviews with 10 Norwegian language arts teachers, recruited from eight different upper secondary schools. The material is analysed both thematic and interpretative.

The thesis’ article 1 explores how teacher agency is socioculturally shaped by analysing how different conditions mediates the Norwegian language arts teachers’ perceived professional space. Article 2 explores how the phenomenon of subject visions, meaning conceptions and images of ideal practices can contribute to giving teachers direction in their own pedagogical practice, and thus be a resource or exercising agency. Article 3 uses a dialogical perspective to analyse the relationship between subject identity and teacher agency through investigating an example of a Norwegian language arts teacher’s identity negotiations.