Vad händer i lärares kollegiala samtalspraktik? En studie av mötet mellan en nationell kompetensutvecklingsinsats och en lokal fortbildningspraktik.

Abstract

This thesis explores teachers' professional learning practices; how they are expressed within a national continuing professional development (CPD) programme and how they are formed and shaped by the site in which they are enacted. The aim of this research has been to create an understanding of the significance of the site in the implementation of a professional development initiative and the resulting practices. In this study, the site was viewed as the integration of a national CPD programme, The Boost for Mathematics, and a local school context, Frida Education. The unit of analysis was the practice that unfolded in this meeting, namely the collegial conversation practice. The overall purpose thus strived to understand this professional learning practice from a relational perspective. The empirical data has been analysed through the theory of practice architectures in order to identify, understand and describe the relationships between the collegial conversation practice and the practice architectures that keep it in place. The relational perspective also explored how the participants, through their actions, influence and shape the practice and its practice architectures. A further aim of the study has been to investigate how the practice architectures influence the content of the collegial conversation and in what way they enable or constrain the practice to reach its goal. The study was designed as a case study, the case being an independent school company with four schools in four Swedish municipalities. All mathematics teachers at the four schools participated in the government financed CPD program The Boost for Mathematics, based on collegial learning, over two years. Data was collected during three years and consisted of audio recordings and observations of collegial conversations, documentation from collegial meetings and teachers' individual reflections. The results show that there is tension in the integration of the national and the local practice, which influences what happens in the collegial conversation practice and to what extent the goal of the practice can be reached. In this study, three components of the practice architectures have emerged as especially important in terms of what holds the collegial conversation practice in place; the way in which the school group organizes and implements the CPD programme, the content of the CPD programme and the organizational culture of the school group. The results also show how the participants, through their actions and by being innovative and creative in relation to the practice architectures, can transform these and create new practices. This thesis highlights the complexity that professional development work entails. The results of this thesis contribute to the professional development literature, encouraging such educational work where account is taken to the local context. Top-down national initiatives need to be negotiated in interaction with the local practice, where practitioners are given the opportunity to be involved and are given access to adapting the work according to local conditions and needs.