Professional Self-Understandings of VET Teachers in Austria

Abstract

The vocational education system in Austria has been subject of comprehensive reform measures in recent years. Curricular restructuring as well as implementing quality management systems in schools mark central cornerstones of these change processes, which aim to serve the development of quality of VET. Educational reforms tend to be accompanied by changing demands on teachers. This article uses a qualitative-explorative design to address the question of what these changing demands do to the teachers and their professional self-understanding. The study links normative-programmatic quality recommendations and prescriptions of educational policy documents with empirically investigated professional self-understandings of teachers. Finally, the findings are interpreted in terms of Foucault’s theory of power.