Cultural Boundary Work when Inviting Constructivist Pedagogy into Polytechnic Schools

Abstract

In this study, we focus on a process of change in a polytechnic school in Denmark where the school management team decided to promote a non-traditional pedagogical approach. We examine teachers’ moral evaluation of their own teaching, of students, and of learning during this transition in order to grasp the degree to which teachers needed to reconceptualize or reorient their traditional instructional roles and identities in order to meet the functional demands of the new forms of PBL-based teaching and learning. Based on qualitative interviews with teachers and heads of schools, we found that the process of change mobilized competing definitions of the legitimate teacher, the legitimate student, and legitimate knowledge in this organizational context.