Functional coordination between present teaching and policy reform in Swedish science education

ABSTRACT

Major policy changes make teachers reconsider how they teach. In Sweden, a new curriculum, a grading system, and national tests were introduced in science education in Year 6 (Y6) for the 2012/2013 academic year. After two years, the national tests were made voluntary, and they ended the following year. In this interview study, we investigate what implications these reforms had for teachers’ teaching and assessment practices in science education. Interviews with 10 teachers over four subsequent years were analysed by applying Dewey’s notion of habits in order to explore how teachers coordinate between their teaching habits and new policies. The result show that teachers work to adjust their teaching practices in order to; make teaching transparent, deal with the experience of increased levels of stress, develop professionally in collective practices, and reconsider the teaching content and methods. However, in the last round of interviews, it was evident that, after the tests were taken away, teachers downplayed the significance of the national tests as a factor that changed their teaching and changed what they consider as good science education.

KEYWORDS:

• Educational reform
• teachers’ habits
• science education
• coordination work

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council under Grant UVK 2012-5769.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. At the beginning of the project, 16 teachers were interviewed, but, unfortunately, some of the teachers dropped out in the third or fourth interview round due to retirement and sick leave.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [2012-5769].

Notes on contributors

Eva Lundqvist

Eva Lundqvist is associate professor of Curriculum Studies at the Department of Education, Uppsala University, Sweden. She has conducted research mainly on learning and socialization in Science Education. Besides the research interest in sociocultural studies of classroom interaction, her research has been focusing on educational reforms and the potential impact on teachers´ practices. In her current research she is focusing on research based development of teaching, a work that is done in close collaboration with teachers.

Malena Lidar

Malena Lidar is associate professor of Curriculum Studies at the Department of Education, Uppsala University, Sweden. Her field of research is teaching and learning, mainly within Science Education. Recent studies deal with how knowledge, values and power relations are linked in the classroom and teaching-developing research.