Administrating existence: teachers and principals coping with the Swedish ‘Teachers’ Salary Boost’ reform

ABSTRACT

This article is a part of an on going ethnography project that run over six years in an Upper Secondary School in the south of Sweden. In this particular article we shed light over the implementation, enactment and reactions from the staff of one of the latest of a series of reforms that has been launched into the Swedish educational system: The Teachers’ Salary Boost reform (TSB). The reform rewarded especially excellent teachers – with raise in their monthly wage with 200–300 €. 40–50% of the teachers at the school did not get any raise at all. We produced our data using ethnographical methods with focus on participant observation, formal and informal interviews. From our data we draw the conclusion that while the leadership at the school executed the reform as a question concerning administration, the teachers receive the reform as a question concerning existence. The embedded trivialisation of teachers’ skilfulness remodelled the teachers professional positioning and made them questioning their professional lives and professional selves.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnography
• policy enactment
• Teachers’ Salary Boost
• teachers’ and school leaders’ cooping strategies

Introduction

This article is based on a six-year-long ethnography that is being carried out in an upper secondary school in the south of Sweden. The research project has particularly focused on teachers’ work and the institutional practice surrounding it. The ethnography has so far resulted in several publications. In this particularly study, we try to shed light on how change in schools unavoidably not only concerns teachers’ professional life but is interwoven with their private life as well. We examine the gap between, on the one hand, the school management strategies, expectations and intentions and, on the other hand, the teachers’ reactions and resistance (Kelchtermans 2005). We concentrate our analysis on how the school management and the teachers struggle to ‘make sense of’ a governmental reform, but also on how power relations are challenged during a process of school change. The data that this particular paper is based on was mainly collected and produced during spring 2016 and autumn 2017.

The particular reform we address in this paper is the Teachers’ Salary Boost (TSB)¹ that was introduced by the new Social Democratic/Green Party government in 2016. It was intended to reward qualified teachers and raise their wages through governmental grants – but also to increase the ‘pay gap’ between teachers (RIR, 2017:18). The local authorities were given a relatively free hand to choose how they wanted to implement the reform, but the average raise was supposed to be €250 a month (at most €350). At our ethnographical site, which we will call ‘Baxter High’, this meant that 50–60% of the teachers got €200–300 extra. The rest got nothing. We focus our research on the impact this reform had on the everyday practice at the school.

In a broad sense, this study can be seen as a part of the research field that analyses the transformation of Swedish education. It is also connected to the field of teachers’ working conditions in relation to policy implementation (Goodson and Numan 2002; Furlong et al. 2008; Stillman & Anderson, 2015). More specifically, however, it can be seen as a contribution to the field of policy enactment studies (see for instance Ball 2003; Ball, 2013; Ball and Bowe 1989; Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012; Beach 1995; Braun, Maguire, and Ball 2010; Lipsky 1980) and the ongoing international discussion about how reforms evoke emotions and lead to micro-political actions in local practice.² From the perspective applied in this study, local events are deeply situated in the macro-level context. Therefore, the dramatic changes that the Swedish educational system has undergone in the three last decades provides the backdrop for this ethnographical study (Ringarp 2011; Lindensjö and Lundgren 2012; Dahlstedt 2007).

Empirical and theoretical framework

The transformation of the Swedish educational system share similarities with the development in other countries even if Sweden has ‘gone a long way on the road of external and internal marketization’, as Lundahl (2016) states. When Daun (2004) compared the scope of educational restructuring in five European countries (the Czech Republic, England, France, Germany and Sweden) he concluded that the transformation had been most radical in Sweden and Czech Republic. What ‘radical’ transformation exactly refers to is, however, a complicated question. While many studies try to answer this question by focusing on external privatisation, new managerialism in education, measurement, ranking and quality assessment (Lundahl 2016), we are more interested in how these external factors affect the Swedish schools’ internal work; especially in terms of new forms of control, and changes in cultural and social life (Erlandson and Karlsson 2018; Karlsson and Erlandson 2018; see also Daun 2004 Strandler 2015; Strandler 2016; Strandler 2017). Even in this respect the transformation of the ‘internal working life’ in schools (as a result of a neoliberal influenced reforms) is in no way unique for Swedish conditions. As an example – in a research that has a lot in common with ours – Jacobsen and Buch (2016) show that professionals, teachers as well as principals, are under great pressure also in Denmark (see also Jacobsen 2014 in this journal). It is obvious that teacher have to cope with tensions in ambiguous organisational contexts as a result of reform initiatives in many countries (see for example the comparison by Houtsonen et al. 2010).

Keeping focus on the Swedish example, Jarl, Fredriksson, and Persson (2012) concludes that Swedish principal gradually become subject too closer scrutiny and evaluation. Also, the principals’ roles have changed from a being a pedagogical leader to be a manager with the responsibility to see that the school (and the teachers) perform, produce, and deliver. The focus on assessment, accountability, standards, audits, benchmarks and international comparisons has become more and more important (Lundahl 2016).

How did it become this way? The road to marketisation was paved with reform eagerness, liberal ideology and decentralisation intentions. In the early 90s, after an initiative from the socialist government, the responsibility for the Swedish schools was transferred from the government to the municipalities (Proposition 1988/89:41; Proposition 1990/91: 18). After the election in autumn 1991, the new conservative government introduced a school choice reform that opened the way for private actors and a voucher system (SOU, 1991/92:95; SOU, 1992/93:230). A school market was established. Today, approximately half of Swedish students, from pre-school to upper secondary school, attend private schools (Skolverket 2011). The marketisation has led to increased freedom of choice for students as well as to a greater variation between schools. Educational institutions became competitors in a market and the schools’ names became brands. School rankings and quality assessment became important instruments for administrators and bureaucrats (Lindensjö and Lundgren 2012, 117). In the mid 90s, the old system of tariffs, where the teachers’ salaries depended on how many years they had been working, was replaced by ‘individual salaries’, which meant that teachers had to negotiate their own salary. This is still the situation today. A consequence of this new order is that the local leadership had increased power to punish and reward institutional behaviour (Rothstein 2002, 313–315).

A central aspect of the transformation of the Swedish educational system that has had long-term effects and has changed the conditions for both school management and teachers, is the introduction of the administrative logic called New Public Management (NPM). NPM can be viewed as a cluster of ideas and methods for directing and organising work, imported into the public service sector from ‘business’ (Hood 1991, 1995; Börjesson 2016; Erlandson and Karlsson 2018). NPM has increased the focus on precise and assessable goals, on outcome instead of input, and on efficiency and accountability (Olssen and Peters 2005; Bornemark 2018). A new regime of transparency, documentation, and formalisation of work and relations has gradually been established (Lewin 2014; Börjesson 2016). Discussions about requirements for documentation, pedagogical strategies, and didactical techniques for fulfilling demands from different stakeholders have become a part of everyday working life (Karlsson and Erlandson 2018; Ball 2006, 2008; Bornemark 2018) As has been pointed out many times, by many different researchers, market solutions have become a new performance-enhancing technology (Olssen and Peters 2005; Erlandson and Karlsson 2018; Strandler 2017; Börjesson 2016). However, Lundström (2015) argues that the transformation of the Swedish educational system also affects teachers in a more direct way. Teachers’ autonomy declined when New Public Management reforms and market logic entered the schools.

Often, in school changes, it is not only administrative and organisational matters that are involved. On the contrary, the everyday lives of teachers, principals – and of course – students are also at stake. Large changes in routines and social structure result in changes in individuals’ life-worlds as well as in their professional lives. New social structures, to paraphrase Ball, Maguire, and Braun (2012), are ‘written onto bodies and produce particular subject positions’. Change in schools, however, is done both by and to agents that are subjects as well as objects in discursive processes that are complexly configured, contextually mediated and institutionally rendered (Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012). As has been previously been pointed out, change is always value-laden (März and Kelchtermans 2013). Change is a vehicle for power and power relations. According to the French philosopher Michel Foucault, power relations form the prerequisites for exercising power (Foucault 1991; Hörnqvist 2012). Power relations are uneven, contentious and unstable (Hörnqvist 2012). Power relations during organisational and social change are not just questions of implementation of policy. They are never disconnected from the social context. They are in constant negotiation and often, as Dreyfus and Rabinov (1982) claim, the result of petty calculations, clashes of wills and tangles of individual interests. Different stakeholders, such as for example teachers, who find that their ideas or ideologies are non-consistent with a particular reform, or believe that their interests or inherent values are threatened, try to resist the consequences of the change (Schmidt and Datnow 2005; Muncey and McQuillan 1996). Also, when reforms challenge normative beliefs, for example when school leaders try to change working conditions, this evokes micro-political actions (Kelchtermans 2005).

When policy texts and reorganisations of economy and administration are inevitably moulded into different kinds of concrete action, i.e. when they are turned into practice, they become a structuring element for teacher’s professional lives, their reactions, behaviour and relations not only to their colleagues but also to themselves. From the perspective of this project, an ethnographical approach allows for the possibility of unfolding manifest and value-laden emotions and actions involved in teachers’ working lives as a part of a larger administrative and economic transformation.

Method

This article is based on a six-year-long ethnography that is being carried out in an upper secondary school in the south of Sweden. We have spent approximately 500 h of field studies, using ethnographic methods, for example, participant observation, field interactions with different stakeholders, interviews and informal conversations with informants, as well as collection and analysis of documents. The main part of the data concerning this article was collected during the autumn 2016, when the TSB reform was launched, and in the spring 2017, a short time after reform was implemented. Informal and formal interviews were conducted with teachers and principals during this time. The two sets of interviews were conducted with six teachers and four (all) principals before and after the reform was implemented. These (more formal and semiconstructed) interviews lasted between 25 and 90 min and were recorded transcribed (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009). With few exceptions, the informal field conversations were also recorded transcribed.

During our field studies, we attended several different kinds of meetings and discussions that concerned the TSB reform; we did observations and interviews with teachers and principals. The observations fulfilled two main goals. First, we are convinced that the result of the observations is a source of information about not only the informants themselves, but also the context in which they live and the socio-cultural processes that generated them. Secondly, the events, actions and expressions that were observed, pointed out the direction of our continuing research. This led us to places and events with rich possibilities to find information about different stakeholders emotions, motions and strategies.

The main body of the data that has been used in this article is oral accounts. The interviews made it possible to adding more analytical depth in the organisational and relational processes (Jacobsen 2014). The combination of observations, interviews and field conversations, especially in transcribed form, turned out to be fruitful when we continuously analysed our data. Participant observation is often mention as the key opponent in ethnographical research (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007). It was, however, the conversational data that gave us the best opportunity to analyse the informant’s perspective on the phenomena we had as research focus, as well as the discursive strategies these perspectives employed and the psychosocial dynamics they suggested (Hammersley and Atkinson 2007). We were, from the very first beginning of our research, also convinced that our informants’ voices were the main data that be needed to deepen the understanding of how a sudden change in teachers and principal’s professional lives effect their relations and professional selves.

Time, place, and objects were strategically selected (Jeffrey and Troman 2004). At the start of the study, we avoided distinguishing between different categories of teachers and principals. We more or less ‘hung around’ in corridors and spoke with employees working at the school. Over time, the informal conversations gradually led us to participants who were interested in sharing views and experiences concerning the TSB reform. However, as in every ethnography, the data presented in this particular text is only a very small portion of the data produced during the field studies. As time went on, we chose to follow a smaller group of teachers (and principals). This was a natural consequence of, over time, having more and more elaborate conversations and discussions with some of them and therefore also establishing closer relationships with them. Certainly, we are aware of the fact that this can be a source of bias. However, during our time in the field, we found no indications that this group represented a different view than that of the employees in general. On the contrary, we found that the relatively close relationship we established with some of the respondents gave us the opportunity to produce data with greater depth then would have been possible otherwise. As Erlandson and Karlsson (2018) put it: ‘Interviews, observations, and other interactions indicated that the / … / reform was something that (a) puts emotions in motion and (b) makes the teachers ‘critical’, worried, and sometimes angry, and (c) urges them to address and cope with their reactions'. This, of course, makes a relatively close relationship with the respondents beneficial to our research. As researchers we seek to have what Habermas (1984, 112) called a ‘performative attitude’. Sometimes we actively took part in discussions as a way to get access to people’s culture, symbolic systems and understanding of their own actions. The facts that we, over time, become quite familiar with the staff made us discuss our roles continually.

The data produced were thematically coded, categorised and analysed continuously (Aspers 2011; Hammersley and Atkinson 2007). Those who were formally and informally interviewed were informed about the overarching aim of the study and that their participation was both confidential and voluntary. The staff as a whole was continually informed about our presence at the school. Active consent was obtained when necessary (Swedish Research Council, 2002). In order to contain anonymity and avoid speculations among the staff we have give the teachers fake names in our excerpts, while the principals is presented with just a title and a number. The reason for this difference is that the teacher-staff in the school is over ninety, while the principals only are five in number.

Results

The arrival – the reform comes to Baxter High

Baxter High is located in the centre of a city which has traditionally had a strong industrial profile. A heavy industrial crisis during the 70s and 80s forced the city to develop a diversified business sector. Today, the city has a small university and more than a handful of upper secondary schools. Baxter High has adapted to the new times, as well as the marketisation that characterises the Swedish educational system of today. The school has the highest application rate in the region, with more applicants than educational positions. Today the school has about 1500 students and plans to expand further. It has a reputation for ‘openness’ in the school culture: the students – as well as the teachers – can ‘be themselves’ and this describes the school’s ethos very well. The students’ final grades have been among the highest in the region for many years.

During our observations, we noticed that there was very little graffiti, tags and the like in the public areas. The sound level was very moderate, and the students’ language and social conduct were surprisingly cultivated. There is a culture of taking education seriously, with the effect that one of the most alarming problems is the increased stress levels among high-achieving female students. The work at Baxter High is guided by long-term, as well as short-term goals, and the actual classroom work of teachers is expected to be continuously validated against these goals. There are also documents with policy which regulate most aspects of school life. The organisation of the school can be described as a well-defined hierarchy in a strong bureaucracy, with the headmaster at the top and four principals just below, who implement regulations and decisions. During our 6 years as researchers at the school, the headmaster has been replaced three times and none of the four principals who were working when we started the project are working at the school today. These changes, however, seem to have had a pretty slim impact on the daily school activities. There are several reasons for this. One is that the school leaders are regulated by policy and national declarations concerning school work, which the reform that is in focus in this article is an example of, and their influence is therefore limited. A second reason is the strong sense of tradition and the fact that the teaching staff, in contrast to management, stay in their positions over a long period of time.

However, during these six years, there have been a lot of changes concerning the teachers’ everyday work, initiated by different authorities. For example, there have been at least three larger school development projects running for several years with both similar and different goals (Karlsson and Erlandson 2018) and various organisation-oriented projects initiated by the local authorities, including expansion of the school buildings, a new library and so on. Of course, there are also the large national reforms concerning teachers’ work and salary, discussed previously in this text (and in earlier studies). In a broad sense, this is the background for the generated data that we use as a focus, which concern the ‘Teachers’ Salary Boost’ (TSB).

At Baxter High, before the TSB took effect, and teachers were waiting for the mail that was going to clarify whether they, as individuals, would benefit from the reform and get a raise or not, there were some discussions in the corridors. That is, some showed publicly that they were upset about the reform taking place. However, according to our data, at Baxter High there is an official culture of silence and polite disagreement. In meetings, teachers seldom argue or disagree openly. In more private areas, however, such as in staff-rooms, in corridors, in the canteen or even during events taking place in non-school areas, disagreement could be both distinct and open.

Even though I know that many of the staff are upset, they keep quiet. You could probably say that there is a culture of silence dominating them. I speak with some teachers after the meeting. They say that there are different reasons for why they do not go public with their objections. Some of them blame the management’s frequent statement ‘my door is always open’, seeing it as a technique to suppress democratic dialogue by being ‘pseudo-open’. Others claim that it is all about resignation; that you, as a teacher, are without any opportunities to influence these kinds of reforms, as well as the management’s decisions concerning how the additional salary should be distributed among individual teachers. (Field note 2016-11-03)

We also heard a principal commenting on the model. He tried to give us some idea about how he saw the model for distributing salaries among the teachers and how he tackled the implementation of the reform.

The model is based on the fact that if you are last in a race and you have some stimulation, you run faster. That's what it's all about. So, if I believe in the model, it should be a driving force to be in the last group and know that you can succeed if you just try a little harder. If I change a little, the salary will be raised. But, as you say, it's not certain that it will be like that. It may be the other way around. I’m last in the race. I give up. (Interview, Principal 1)

After the tape recorder has been turned off, Principal 1 says that he still sees a huge point in giving teachers different pay. ‘If a teacher does not have a raise in salary', he says, ‘it is certainly an incentive to improve' (field note). The answer seems to follow a purely administrative logic, but it is permeated with ideological assumptions following a neoliberal conceptualisation of what makes people act and improve.

Already here we can see the ambivalent relationship that the principals have to this reform. On the one hand, they have the opportunity to make some – that they feel – justified adjustments in the teachers’ salaries but, on the other hand, they feel that the ‘race’ between teachers that this reform might result in, could for them as principals, have good as well as bad consequences.

Taking effect – the policy reform and professional identity

The reform had from the very beginning evoked a lot of emotions among the teachers. The criticism to the reform was massive. Teachers were both worried and angry and had no problem addressing the issue in different arenas. Many of them had felt bad and certainly did not look forward to the decision. Among the principals, there were several discussions about how the outcome of the TSB should be announced and how the teachers should be informed. The principals finally took a decision: they would arrange to have a letter sent out to each and every one of the teachers.

Now. One late November evening, when the teachers came home from work, the letter was waiting for them.

I came home from work, after feeling bad for several weeks, or months. I have been so pissed off about this. I even participated in a debate about this in the local paper … I opened the envelope and breathed out. I felt absolutely nothing. Honestly. I really felt no joy. I was only thinking: ok, I can stay on at my job. I would have quit if I hadn’t got it. I would have been ashamed. I do not feel better or more worth the raise than anybody else, but I would have felt belittled. Not in relation to the other teachers, since they couldńt know if I actually got the raise or not, but in relation to myself … For the first time in ten years, I went to work with a lump in my stomach. I use to love my work … It is a terrible feeling. (Interview, Lotten)

When I got the announcement by old fashioned mail … this is so fascinating … that you get a letter home … and then you open it … well I opened it … and my son was home … and I remember that I shouted: “Fuck … I got the salary boost”! Then I become ashamed in some strange way. It was reversed … You dońt feel “Oh I am so good”. ´Cos you know that process that led to the decision was arbitrary. There are no ways to measure or assess in these kinds of professional matters. Probably they rewarded the teachers that have been working the longest, teachers that don’t beat pupils or take a shot at a headmaster … (Interview, Roland)

For Lotten, the raise in salary means more than the raise in itself. She passed through the eye of the needle herself, but did not feel happy about it. She relates the raise in salary to her professionalism, but also to her social relationships with the other teachers. When she mirrors herself in the eyes of her colleagues, she feels at the same time relieved and empty. The reasoning is counterfactual, but the ‘shame’ she speculates that she would feel if she was one of those who got no raise at all is not about having the idea that she would have been looked down on by the other teachers. It is about professional self-identification. The joy in her profession, and in her work, seems to have vanished. Lotten is not alone. In our data, other teachers show similar reactions. ‘The increase in particularly skilled teacher’s salary’ not only seems to drive a spear of dullness and shame into the heartland of the teachers’ professional lives, it also had the power to alienate the self from the professional identity.

As with Lotten, Roland experiences the combination of joy, shame and guilt in being one of the winners, even if he still is negative towards the reform. Although his answer is dripping with irony, sarcasm and humour, Roland also addresses the shame, but from another perspective. The raise in salary is unjustified since it depends on arbitrary, or impossible, professional judgements. These excerpts are two of many examples of how teachers, who had earlier felt passionate about their jobs, were suddenly forced into a different and ambivalent way of relating to themselves as teachers. Their passion for their work was blended with the consequences of the insight that the working conditions now also called for career-thinking. We here clearly see the ‘classical’ neoliberal idiom at work; competition, efficiency and individualism restructure the teachers’ everyday professional lives and emotional self-relations (Erlandson and Karlsson 2018).

This became even more apparent when one of us went to the school on the day after the teachers had received the letter from their principal that announced whether they had got the raise connected to ‘The increase in particularly skilled teacher’s salary’ or not. The atmosphere in the corridors, in the canteen and in the staff rooms was not as it used to be. People did not seem to know how they should address the ‘thing’ that everybody (probably) had on their mind: the letter from yesterday.

I am eating lunch with two teachers and start a discussion about the TSB. I know that one of the teachers has not got the raise and is frustrated about it. I understand from the other teacher’s body language that she, in contrast, has got a raise. The second teacher tries to lead the conversation into the election in the US. It does not work. The Pandora’s box is open. The first teacher seems to be a bit ‘low’. “Well. Now its starts”, she says. “This is the day we have feared. This will tear the school apart … ” We finish our lunch. The first teacher accompanies me up the stairs. When we reach the middle of the stairway, she suddenly freezes. She looks very pale and says that she does not feel so good, that she has an irregular heartbeat and feels a headache coming on. I try to help her, but she leaves me and runs away. Later on, I hear that she has left work and gone home. (Field note 2016-11-09)

To us it seems quite obvious that this reform threatened to shatter teachers’ working lives and to have severe consequences for the professional identity that they may have built up over decades. We could see different coping strategies, such as anger, humour/irony, attempts to change the subject or silence, as ways to tackle the new situation. It seems, however, that shame was the most common reaction to the situation that created a deeply ambivalent relation to the professional role which called for these coping strategies (Karlsson and Erlandson 2018).

Categorising change in working life as a bureaucratic issue (towards efficiency)

Leaving our focus on the teachers for a while, we note that different stakeholders also had their different views on the reform. The teachers’ unions, both on central and regional level, were more or less positive towards the reform. They believed that the raise in teacher salary, in the long run, would make the teachers wages rise in general. One of our teacher informants was also a local delegate (ombudsman) for the union. The TSB reform put him in a somewhat troublesome situation. While the TSB reform provided relatively large pay increases for a limited number of teachers and led to an increased wage dispersion, the reform also reduced the cohesion among the teachers (RIR, 2017:18). Our teacher informant/union ombudsman was in this case forced to hold two different opinions at the same time. As union representative, he had to embrace the reform; as part of the local teacher collective he had strong objections to the reform.

Of course, the principals also thought a lot about this reform, and the effect it would have on the school’s everyday life. For example, they were worried that the reform would tear the teaching staff apart and make cooperation between teachers more complicated.

The reform categorises teachers into an A, B, or C category. All research says that it is collegial cooperation that drives schools forward … . This reform tears the teacher group apart more than it binds them together. […] There were only a few teachers that were angry and wanted a talk with their principal. But they were not more than a handful. […] Those who got the raise were silent and those who didn’t were sulky and silent … [… but] we can always discuss how much damage this has done … like everything else … time heals all wounds … (Interview, Principal 1)

Sooner or later you get caught up in your everyday work. You have to teach. You have to perform. When everyday work takes over the emotions and disappointment sink back. Even if the thorn still there. (Interview, Principal 2)

Even if the principals in general were critical to the TSB reform, they were confident that the emotional storm soon would blow over. Certainly, they understood why the teachers got upset, but their major concern was the organisation of the teaching work. On the one hand, they worried about the hierarchisation and the damage it would do to the teachers as a collective and to future opportunities to develop collaborative work between teachers, but on the other hand, they were certain that the heated emotions would soon vanish and that the reluctance, on the teachers’ part, to embrace the reform would soon be buried under the working load of everyday teaching life. However, we by the principals manifested also saw the two-fold perspective represented among several of the teachers.

The school leaders have been very critical of the reform, you know. It is because they have seen the same thing [as the teachers]. They do not see such big differences between the teachers … at least they have not said so openly (…) It is about ranking people where ranking is not possible. (Interview, Gunnar)

The excerpt from Gunnar illustrates that some teachers saw the dilemma in which the principals found themselves when dealing with this TSB reform. It is clear that the principals knew that many of their staff were aware of the dilemma. From an organisational perspective, this unspoken understanding dismantled much of the aggression that could have been aimed at the principals. The principals, therefore, more or less got a free pass, so to speak, from many of the teachers. But another aspect of this scenario is that the principals had succeeded with an argumentation grounded in a narrative about the school’s many successful years, and the necessity to move forward in order to maintain the school’s high status in the region. The continuing of this story called for the teachers’ loyalty and solidarity to the school’s common good, verbalised and exploited by the school leaders.

In a way, this is what it means to be a professional street-level bureaucrat/school leader of today. One has to meet and understand teachers’ emotions and frustrations but handle them as questions concerning organisational effectivity; one has to transform the teachers’ life-world difficulties into bureaucratic issues. At the same time, school leaders have to carry the burden of making ‘hard’ decisions when implementing unpopular national reforms. But no one had forced the principals to become principals and they could therefore not be given total absolution by the teachers, as they were leaders by their own choice.

Disturbance in the collective

The teachers were also transformed by this reform, since it restructured the teachers’ professional relations. But the teachers also complained about the vague criteria and the arbitrary principles they were based on. The connection between the raise, and competence or teaching skills, was not very obvious, the teachers in our data stated.

They [school management] are not into details so much. But … but in the last years new development projects have come into existence … there are such extremely comprehensive things we are expected to do nowadays. I think the payroll criteria have had a huge impact on us. You must show off all the time. I have noticed that as soon as a principal is nearby, some change their behaviour … ha, ha … they try to look clever. I've noticed that … even I do it myself sometimes … It is really unpleasant. This new reform will hurt people. So. If I had not got the raise, I really dońt know what I would have done. Should I continue to spend all that time on all those projects or would I just say: I dońt give a shit about this? (Interview, Lotten)

In a way, the reform did exactly what it was supposed to do. It rewarded the teachers that the principals identified as especially skilled and gave them a reward that was supposed to stimulate them to continue to do a good job, and maybe take on an even greater workload. It also economically as well as socially punished the teachers that the principal thought could have presented a more satisfying work outcome, even if the teacher in question had worked at the school for decades. The reform was not intended to reward seniority, but rather proven and visibly manifested teaching skilfulness as well as involvement in school development projects. However, the reform also – as it was supposed to do – put great weight on minor differences in teaching skilfulness and made them more socially visible. Nota bene: none of the teachers define themselves as superior to other teachers in our data and none of the principals said it was easy to draw a line between those who should get the raise and those who should not. But when the line was drawn, small arbitrary differences and unstable judgements had been transformed into clearly manifested differences in skilfulness between teachers.

As Lotten also points out in the excerpt above, the reform threatened to change the teachers’ social behaviour. They establish a kind of double standard at work, acting if as on stage when a school leader is nearby, being very aware of what they say and do, and saving their more honest concerns for close-working colleagues. Lotten’s statement ‘this new reform will hurt people’ is in line with several other teachers’ statements. They expressed a fear that the reform would have a devastating impact on the cooperative work as well as on the social relations at the school.

It sets teachers against teachers. The idea is wrong from the very beginning. (Field conversation, Roland)

This reform tears the teacher collective apart. The most important value in the school has always been cooperation. Our aim has always been to help our pupils to achieve their goals. I think we have more success if we work together

instead of competing with each other … in the same way we try to teach the pupils to cooperate and not compete with each other. It is a paradox. (Interview, Lena)

The paradox that Lena points to is particularly interesting: the teachers at the school try to teach the pupils the importance of working together to achieve goals (according to Swedish school policy), while the teachers themselves are more or less forced to compete with each other and downplay cooperation in order to increase their opportunities to get a promotion or a raise in salary. Here is another paradox on the same theme, as one of the criteria for being labelled a skilful teacher is in fact being inclined to participate in cooperative work. However, the reform and its stress on competition did not only stay behind the school doors. Teachers who were personal friends pointed out that the relationship suffered in cases when they ended up on different sides of the line drawn by the reform, as this could have a large impact on their identity as professionals.

People start to look sideways at each other. Some of those who didńt get any money felt very bad, I think. (…) “I've been working as a teacher for 25 years. Does it not mean anything? I'm sitting at home with my work every night, shouldńt I get anything for that?” That's what I heard. (Interview, Bernt)

During our research, there was not much doubt that most teachers were everything from annoyed to depressed by this reform. But everything should not be painted black. These teachers are professional educators, many of them have many years of experience of classroom life, and they were not particularly interested in embracing the role of victim. As one of the principals says above, ‘Sooner or later you get caught up in your everyday work. You have to teach. You have to perform.’ Their emotions, he meant, were soon to be buried under the working load of everyday teaching life. Additionally, the teachers also find different strategies to cope with the situation and the consequences of the reform.

People make a lot of jokes and ironise about the new system and reforms such as the salary boost reform, but behind the laugh there is a lot of real concern. It is a way to address the problem. (Interview, Gunnar)

Teachers are civil servants. In a public institution civil servants have a certain leeway that you always can use. You listen what they have to say at the top and then you do as you used to do at the bottom. (Interview, Roland)

In the excerpt above, Gunnar states that colleagues used humour and irony as weapons in order to dethrone the impact of the reform. For example, they made jokes about the principals and their dilemmas, and ironised about which character you should have or embrace in order to get the increase. Roland, on the other hand, gives an example of how you can find comfort in the fact that you are a public civil servant and therefore can maintain quite a distance from bureaucratic changes.

Conclusions

Researching school change is a complex matter, structurally of course, but also because of the emotions surrounding those whom the change concerns. Change can be hurtful and troublesome for some and smooth for others. It can be described in many ways, such as contingent, stable, powerful, durable, fragile. Sometimes change is executed over a long time period. Sometimes change is the result of an impulsive decision and executed more or less immediately. For the researcher, change can sometimes be elusive, as it often permeates both professional and social life. However, change in the professional life of teachers has also been seen as a key component in improving the Swedish educational system. This study exemplifies how a national reform is implemented, interpreted, and renegotiated (see, for instance, Erlandson and Karlsson 2018; Ball and Bowe 1989; Ball, Maguire, and Braun 2012; Beach 1995; Braun, Maguire, and Ball 2010; Jacobsen 2014).

The complexity of perspectives and aspects before and after the implementation of TSB becomes obvious during the analysis of our transcripts and fieldnotes. Most of the teachers were critical towards the reform and did not only see it as a reward for ‘doing a good job’ or punishment for ‘doing a bad job’. As with the principals, the teachers saw the reform as a diversification of the teachers that threatened to tear the teacher collective apart. This was, however, not only a question about how the everyday work was organised in the school. For many of the teachers, the ‘new’ way to categorise them has had an impact on how they look at themselves – in relation to their colleagues, but also as people in an almost existential sense. It concerns passion, joy, loyalty, solidarity, respect as well as disrespect, and feelings of failure. For some of them, being a teacher had become a part of their identity, which went deeper than the professional title. The TSB reform very much jeopardised the foundations of this identity. In short, from our data, it seems that the leadership at the school viewed and handled the reform in another way than did the teachers. The leadership at the school executed the reform as a question concerning administration and how to manage to get the work done. The teachers received the reform as a question concerning existence which involved their personal life and forced them to renegotiate their professional as well as their personal and social selves.

However, turning back to the reform and its implementation, it is important to stress that it actually concerns teachers’ skilfulness. This is the reason why it struck the teachers’ identity so hard, and in a way, remodelled the professional positioning within the collective of teachers. From an analytical point of view, we argue that embedded in this reform, there is a trivialisation of teachers’ skilfulness in at least two dimensions.

First of all, there are many ways in which a teacher can be more or less skilful. One example is communication with students (in order to make them comfortable in school and to get them to do their best and work hard). Another example is being very knowledgeable in the subjects, and being able to get the students to improve their knowledge. Yet another example is being communicative with other teachers and therefore being important to the teachers as a collective. A different kind of skilfulness is being adept in talking to the staff and school leaders. There are also other, unquantifiable, kinds of skilfulness that have to do with creativity and development. The list can, of course, be made longer. However, the TSB reform, which only offers the label ‘particularly skilled teacher’, collapses this complexity. Being a ‘particularly skilled teacher’ becomes dependent on the school leaders’ particular taste in what counts as most important according to their local ‘objective skilfulness list’.

Secondly, being ‘particularly skilled’ is not self-evidently binarily coded. There can be small differences between different teachers’ skilfulness in some ways, but also large difference in other ways. The label ‘particularly skilled teacher’, however, makes all these differences similar. Either you are particularly skilled or you are not. Small differences are made large and vice versa. The complexity in actual teachers’ different forms of skilfulness is totally flattened out by this binary coding.

By this reform it has, at least partly, been decided, which course the development of the inner life of Swedish schools will take. This reform that was supposed to change the teaching profession has at the same time changed the culture and the social processes within the schools. Is this a good or a bad thing? From the discussion outlined in this paper, it is perhaps easy to conclude that we view the TSB reform as all bad. This is not so. Whether this reform ends up being good or bad, effective or not, or leads to consequences that are sought after or not, is ultimately an empirical question that is as yet impossible to answer. It might be beneficial for some stakeholders in the short or long term, it may support certain social and political factions, and it might prove to be less than fruitful for others. It finally comes down to what you mean by ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘effective’, and of course what you mean by a prosperous educational system.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In Swedish: Lärarlönelyftet. Sometimes the same reform is also called ‘The increase in particularly skilled teachers’ salary’ in English.

2 It is, however, important to point out that our study does not primarily concern school development or policy implementation, nor the outcome of any changes in terms of school effectiveness, student grades, rankings or other improvements that are aimed at benefitting different stakeholders or solving real or imaginary problems in school.