Similar to many countries in the Western world, educational reforms in Sweden have dramatically changed the educational system in the last few decades. The two reforms that we address in this paper concern "The Career Services for Teachers Reform" and "Teachers Salary Boost" which were implemented at the national level in…

The aim of this study is to examine how a particular object for consumption, professional development for teachers and principals, is marketed to schools, and what propositions and understandings are embedded in such offers. Adopting a conceptualization of marketing as a "perpetual questioning machine," the study deploys and develops a…

The aim of this article is to develop and validate an analysis instrument of principal' identity in the Swedish context. A point of departure is taken in the work of Crow, Day, and Møller (2017) and three dimensions of the concept: professional, personal, and situated or socially located. The article builds on a survey on Swedish principals…

The aim of this study was to investigate professional agency in the context of higher education as manifested in Swedish teacher educators' perceptions regarding their working life in a digital society and to seek to obtain insights on salient factors influencing professional agency and identity. Eighteen semi-structured interviews with teacher…

Drawing on a case study of media technology, this article addresses theory-practice conflict in an educational work setting. This conflict is expressed in employment contracts and career opportunities and in how professional identity is made. We demonstrate how ideas about practical and theoretical knowledge are negotiated in the academic career…

Uncovering the motivations towards a profession may contribute to a better understanding of how the profession is chosen and will be pursued. However, the research on the attractiveness of the music teaching profession is rather limited and predominantly focused on identity development, thereby overlooking other aspects that may play a role. In…

High-quality teacher education plays a crucial role in the development of successful educational systems around the world. However, educational systems face challenges in relation to attracting and retaining excellent teachers. To meet teacher shortage, the Swedish government introduced alternative programmes that are more flexible than…

As school leadership has increased in complexity, policy makers, educationalists, and researchers have realized that principalship requires preparation. However, several researchers have called for a better understanding of how school leadership education affects the learning and activities of principals. This empirical study explores how novice…

We analyse changes in the collective identity that Sweden's largest labour union for teachers had during the period 1990-2017. The study is based on theory about how collective identity is constructed in adaptation and resistance to external categorical dimensions and internal group identification. We identify shifts in relation to how the union…

Pre-service training of language teachers requires tools that foster the development of teaching competences, and the construction of their teacher identities. One crucial tool in that respect is the e-portfolio. Thus, in the framework of the proPIC Europa project, the e-portfolio is a dynamic artefact in which students collate learning evidence…

In this study, we examine the conditions for participation in criminal investigation practices among two professional categories: police officers and civilians. Specifically, we analyse how participation is shaped and conditioned through the use of symbols and symbolic actions in relation to doing gender and professional identity. The Swedish…

Purpose: This study explores the role of previous occupational identity in the formation of the (new) teacher identity of vocational teachers. The focus is on how vocational teachers discover their teaching identity, how they describe the connection between their previous occupation and teacher identity and how they describe a competent member of…

It is argued that the use of high-fidelity simulators is educationally effective, since students are able to work more independently and can better control their learning. Therefore, simulations can be used as a teaching method to facilitate and ease teachers' work situations. This raises questions as to whether teachers' professional bodies are a…

The following paper aims to investigate how student teachers relate to the suitability of their student teacher peers after experiencing challenges to their emerging teacher identity, resulting in emotional responses. A constructivist grounded theory study was conducted in which 18 student teachers participated. Data from 14 individual interviews…

This study explores how lived experiences contribute to pre-service and novice teachers' redefinition of prior professional and academic identities in developing a mathematics teacher identity. It focuses on participants preparing to teach or teaching students aged 13-18. A hermeneutic-existential phenomenology perspective compares participants'…