Teachers’ Professional Autonomy During the New Public Management Epoch

Abstract

The last few decades of intensive school reform has affected and continue to affect teachers’ work and the construction of the teaching profession. 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. Most of these policies are neo-liberal policies or New Public Management technologies. The findings testify to the on-going emphasis on the significance of market logics as well as on how these work together with bureaucratic logics to shift occupational professionalism to organizational professionalism and licensed autonomy to regulated autonomy.