The teacher as innovator in the pandemic

Abstract

The upper secondary school's transition to remote education in spring 2020 showed Swedish schools' preparedness to redirect to distance learning (The Swedish National Agency for Education, 2020). The processes during the transition revealed that technology not only replaced the walls of the classroom, but also took over every day learning practices. With the aim to create in-depth knowledge about conditions and practices that emerged, facilitated or hindered the transition, a data set has been constructed based on 52 upper secondary school teachers’ stories about their personal experiences of the transitional period. The narrative approach (Riessman, 1993) methodologically serves to access qualitative aspects and different dimensions of practice in change. Theoretically, Kemmis (2019) describes the importance of paying attention to practices in motion and to provide for and support practices in the making, since human development, as well as individual and collective learning, are based on constantly changing practices. The data material has been analyzed thematically and the results reveal three overarching practices: collaborative, communicative, and creative, as crucial in the development work with digital and distance learning. The results offer indications that if these three practices are equally and jointly supported, the quality of the teaching and learning will develop.