The changing nature of autonomy: Transformations of the late Swedish teaching profession

ABSTRACT

This article discusses teacher autonomy in the case of the Swedish teaching profession since the 1980s. It is argued that deregulation, decentralization, and marketization reforms of the 1990s have indeed increased teacher autonomy, but in some respects also led to a increase of complexity in the Swedish school system. In order to handle this complexity, the state intensified a standardization of schooling, which restricts teacher autonomy today. Relevant the paper's understanding is that teacher autonomy is always about control, exerted internally by the profession itself and facilitated externally by state standards. The article argues that the restriction of teacher autonomy in recent times is also related to a simplified understanding of the phenomenon in the reforms of the 1990s.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher autonomy
• teaching profession
• teacher professionalism
• educational reform
• school governance
• Sweden

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Wieland Wermke http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3699-8610

Notes

¹This model presented here has been elaborated before in Wermke (2013) and Wermke and Höstfält (2014).

²The dichotomous terms “institution” and “service” are taken from Hoyle (2008). For a more elaborated description of the terminology development, see Wermke and Höstfält (2014).