Teacher autonomy in the era of New Public Management

Abstract

This article examines how upper secondary school teachers perceive and respond to the consequences for their professional autonomy of recent school reforms and restructurings. Based on empirical material from interviews of 119 teachers in three studies conducted between 2002 and 2014, the findings indicate that teacher autonomy has been reduced by school reforms and restructurings since the late 1980s. Regardless of their individual aims, these reforms have collectively created a power structure that distributes power to the state, municipalities, principals and the school market, including ‘customers’, that is, students, at the expense of teacher autonomy. Teacher agency follows certain policies at the discourse level, such as decentralisation and management by objectives and results, but in practice seems to be based on individuals’ and groups’ capacities to exploit opportunities for agency in combination with more or less facilitative management and organisation cultures. This development is multifaceted and varies locally, but the overall trend can be described as a shift from occupational to organisational professionalism and from ‘licensed’ to ‘regulated’ autonomy but emphasising the influence of market logics.