Teacher professionalism and digitalisation

Digitalisation as a nexus of teacher professionalism

Sammendrag

This article-based thesis addresses the relationship between teachers, educational policy and digital artefacts and explores how the complexity of teacher professionalism is challenged by the digitalisation of society. The digital experiences and visions of teachers, student teachers, pupils, policymakers and other actors are consciously and subconsciously being brought into schools, leading to increasingly digitalised working conditions for teachers. Although numerous studies have pointed to teachers’ need to accept, adapt or transform accordingly, less attention has been paid to teachers’ significance as a transformative part of this relationship. This thesis contributes to this limitation by exploring the aspect of teachers as professional agents of change in a digitalised teaching context. The empirical data consist of Norwegian educational policy documents at the intentional level, including reports to the Storting (white papers) and strategies. Additionally, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 Norwegian lower secondary teachers. The discussions in the three articles centre on theories on positioning, modes of agency and sense of agency. The overarching theoretical framework in the extended abstract concerns teacher professionalism theory, in addition to drawing on positioning theory, artefacts theory and teacher professional agency theory. The first article investigates teacher professionalism in the context of digitalisation by analysing how Norwegian policy documents position teachers as professional agents in digitalised teaching environments, identifying 11 teacher positions. While these positions accommodate various modes of teacher agency, there is an emphasis on positioning teachers as passive agents, in the sense that they are expected to comply mainly with political career programs and policy definitions of a teacher’s role. The article argues that the political intentions for Norwegian teachers are orientated towards a collectiveness, which implies that choices should be made for the benefit of collective society or collective professional practices. It is further suggested that this collectiveness can limit teachers’ individuality and hinder the implementation of policy intentions. The second article explores teachers’ reflections regarding the digitalisation of schools and focuses on teachers’ sense of agency within the realm of digitalisation. Predominantly, the teachers viewed digitalisation positively, appreciating its flexibility and the new possibilities that come with it. This positivity seemed to trigger theteachers’ motivation to rethink their professional practices. However, the teachers also recognised the societal requirement to be positive and curious about the digitalisation of education. The article suggests that teachers’ sense of agency should be appreciated as continuously constituted in several intertwined relationships. The concepts of ‘agentic space’ and ‘modalic space of agency’ are introduced as valuable tools for exploring the relational aspect of teachers’ sense of agency. The third article, based on the same data as the second, explores the role of digital artefacts in teachers’ reflections on professional practice within the realm of digitalisation. It is argued that artefacts are activated through teachers’ practices and that teachers’ activation of digital artefacts creates different spaces for negotiating the affordances that both teachers and artefacts bring with them. It is argued that teachers activate digital artefacts as dominating the teacher–digital artefact relationship, although teachers perceive themselves as dominant. The article argues that teachers seem to live under the impression that digital artefacts are untransformable; therefore, their practice might be predisposed to transformation by the affordances of digital artefacts. The findings in the three articles illuminate the complexity of teacher professionalism in the realm of digitalisation, which is further explored in the extended abstract by way of three entry points: (1) the relationship between policy intentions and teachers’ reflections, (2) the relationship between teachers, peers and digital technology and (3) the relationship between teachers and digital artefacts. The extended abstract’s overarching discussion of teacher professionalism within the realm of digitalisation highlights the significant position of digitalisation as a nexus connecting various aspects of teacher professionalism. In this connecting role,digitalisation forms teachers’ professional knowledge to primarily concern experience-based and tool-orientated knowledge. It is further argued that this implies that society’s trust in teachers with regard to digitalisation is primarily based on such knowledge, which may downplay the value of academic knowledge. This thesis highlights digitalisation as a complex process that shapes and is shaped by the relationships in which it is involved. It is argued that the aspect of digitalisation as a tool as well as the relational processes involving, and following in the wake of, digitalisation in the teaching profession should be explored and brought to light to fully understand the role of digitalisation as a nexus of teacher professionalism. By becoming aware of both the tool and relational aspects of digitalisation in teacher professionalism, it is suggested that teachers would be better equipped to initiate more transformative practices.