Teachers’ autonomy deconstructed: Irish and Finnish teachers’ perceptions of decision-making and control

Abstract

Teacher autonomy has been a popular topic of investigation over the past decades. This article contributes to the debate by casting light on Irish and Finnish teachers’ perceptions of their professional autonomy, drawing from teacher interviews conducted in both countries. The intersection of newly introduced curriculum reforms, differing education governance models and differing control regimes make Ireland and Finland fertile points of comparison. Teacher autonomy is understood in this article as a multidimensional and context-dependent phenomenon, and the conceptualisation is presented in an analytical matrix applicable to comparative research. Findings indicate that teachers in both countries consider themselves very autonomous in their classroom practice and in their educational decisions overall. However, where much of the school-level decision-making in Finnish schools concerning educational, social and developmental issues tends to be in the hands of teachers (either collegially or as individuals), in Irish schools the senior management, and especially the principal, is reportedly more involved. Possibly the greatest difference is the ways in which teachers’ work is controlled, and in how teachers perceive it; Finnish teachers report intensified external control from the civil society, whereas on top of parental pressures Irish teachers report also increasing pressures from the state agencies.

Teachers’ perceptions of autonomy in the tensions between a subject focus and a cross-curricular school profile: A case study of a Finnish upper secondary school

“…The results can also be interpreted from the perspective of the educational, social, developmental and administrative domains of autonomy (Wermke et al 2019), showing that this collegial exercise of developmental autonomy placed the developmental and educational domains primarily in the hands of the teachers. The findings also support previous results suggesting a high level of perceived autonomy among Finnish teachers (Erss et al 2016;Salokangas et al 2019).…”

Unpacking autonomy for empirical comparative investigation

“…Where the matrix also became useful was in the analysis of findings. As an example here we demonstrate how it helped us to analyse 15 German and 10 Swedish teacher interviews as presented in earlier publications (Wermke et al, 2019, other findings from our comparisons are published in Salokangas et al, 2019;Salokangas & Wermke, 2020;Salokangas et al, 2020). Following Ingersoll's (2003) suggestion, we asked teachers who, in their view, make the most important decision in the different dimensions of their work.…”

“…Furthermore, teachers may be involved in developmental work involving, for example, strategic planning of the future directions of the school and their own professional development etc. (Salokangas et al, 2019). The extent to which teachers are autonomous and/or controlled in different domains of their work raises fundamental questions for teacher autonomy studies (Gewirtz & Cribb, 2009).…”

“…Their autonomy can be categorised by applying the matrix to particular domains of teachers' work (educational, administrational, social, developmental) and in relation to different levels (classroom, the school, the teaching profession). Regarding the nature or quantity of the decisions that are possible, categories such as strategic or routine or extended or restricted (Salokangas et al, 2019;Wermke & Forsberg, 2017; Wermke et al, 2019) can be used. The device can also be used to compare different configurations of how teachers in various contexts experience professional decision-making and control, in the sense of Ingersoll (2003).…”

“…In this article, building from existing conceptualisations that acknowledge teacher autonomy as a multidimensional phenomenon, we propose an analytical device, that, following Wilches' recommendation, brings existing conceptualisations together in the form of an analytical matrix, that can be applied in teacher autonomy studies. Our suggestion is a product of an extensive empirical research project on the nature of teacher autonomy from a comparative perspective involving teachers from different national contexts, which provides us with the resources for robust conceptual development and empirical application (Paulsrud & Wermke, 2019;Salokangas & Wermke, 2020;Salokangas, Wermke, & Harvey, 2019, 2020Wermke, Olason Rick, & Salokangas, 2019).…”