ABSTRACT

In recent decades, the work of teachers worldwide has undergone deep change. We have seen that teachers have encountered recent challenges differently and adapted to educational changes to a different extent depending on their personal disposition, but also school leadership and workplace support. This study focuses on the example of Estonian vocational teachers that serves as an interesting case for analysing how the interplay of the transitional context and neo-liberal policy trends adopted since Estonia regained its independence in 1991, after 50 years under Soviet rule, have affected the individual trajectories of teachers’ lives. This paper aims to understand how the interplay of the institutional context and individual (work) lives shapes Estonian vocational teachers’ understandings of their work and professionality. We suggest that certain periods of practice are visible in teachers’ narratives and those periods might be considered as enabling different degrees of agency. However, our interviews also revealed that different reform periods have been perceived and responded to differently. In the context of 25 years of the educational reform process, the policies and requirements introduced have been refracted at different levels (Goodson & Rudd, 2017), including that of the vocational field, the schools and individual teachers. Our results confirm that teachers individual, social, cultural and material resources such as competence, career stage, relations and networks, school leadership and prevailing culture at schools have their role in enabling or hindering the agency of teachers.

摘要

近几十年来，全球教师的工作发生了深刻的变化。我们已经看到，教师面对新挑战的方式有所不同，并且根据他们的个人性格，学校领导和工作场所的支持，在不同程度上适应了教育变化。这项研究的重点是爱沙尼亚职业教师的例子，这是一个有趣的案例，用于分析自1991年爱沙尼亚获得独立以来，过渡时期与新自由主义政策趋势之间的相互影响如何影响了苏联统治50年。教师生活的个人轨迹。本文旨在了解制度情境和个人（工作）生活的相互作用如何塑造爱沙尼亚职业教师对他们的工作和专业的理解。我们建议在老师的叙述中可以看到某些实践时期，这些时期可能被认为可以实现不同程度的代理。但是，我们的采访还显示，人们对不同的改革时期的看法和应对方式有所不同。在25年的教育改革过程中，所引入的政策和要求已在不同层面得到体现（Goodson＆Rudd，2017），包括职业领域，学校和个别教师的政策和要求。我们的结果证实，教师的个人，社会，文化和物质资源，例如能力，职业阶段，关系和网络，学校领导力和学校的主流文化，在促进或阻碍教师代理方面发挥着作用。