Objective: As an increasing number of children are identified as insufficiently physically active, the school environment has been targeted for efforts to promote physical activity (PA) among inactive children. While research has highlighted teachers’ role in promoting generic school-based daily PA, less is known about the early childhood education teachers’ experiences of physically inactive children and the strategies they use to promote PA. This study’s aim was to explore early childhood education teachers in Sweden’s experiences of physically inactive children and their strategies to promote PA among members of this group in their everyday school settings. Design: Qualitative interview study. Setting: Four small municipalities in Midwest Sweden. Method: Ten teachers working in early childhood education settings participated in individual semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed with a focus on teacher agency and the social, material and cultural resources teachers used to promote PA. Result: Findings indicated that teachers shoulder the worry and unarticulated responsibility for inactive children. This resulted in their use of strategies that varied and which were largely subjective in character. At the same time, teachers expressed how their agency was limited by insufficient resources. Conclusion: Teachers used social, material and cultural resources to promote PA, but their strategies were not informed by evidence or formal guidelines. None of the resources they used were specifically designed for inactive children. Instead, teachers used general resources which they adapted to inactive children’s interests and needs.

This study examines conversations in a Swedish teachers’ School Rebellion (SR) group on Facebook, a group that attracts members who wish to engage in activism for a different and better Swedish school system and improved conditions for teachers. The phenomenon of teachers’ Rebellion Facebook groups is relatively new. It has emerged in several countries over the past decade and clearly differs from traditional online teacher collaboration and professional development groups. Placing the Swedish SR initiative in the context of discussions on changing teacher professionalism over the last decade, the aim of this study is to examine what content is given presence in SR posts and how it is discussed by members and to determine the extent to which the communication between the participating teachers has the potential to strengthen collective professionalism. To this end, curriculum theory and the concept of deliberative communication are combined to address questions of content and various relations between actors and levels, such as power and responsibility issues. The analysis shows that many topics related to teaching and education appear in the conversations, deliberative approaches vary from what is termed pre-deliberative to deliberative and even counter-deliberative. Although all participants have a voice, the administrators’ role is shown to be of special interest. Based on these findings, the administrators’ responsibility to maintain professional collegial deliberation is discussed as a complex mission of deliberation over political, pedagogical, and practical issues.

This study examines narratives about the teaching profession and teacher unions that Swedish teachers jointly produce in two teachers’ rebellion groups on Facebook, which is followed by a total of around 20,000 teachers. A sample of 33 posts and 2,445 comments were analysed using a narrative approach. The findings highlight narratives in which teachers wish to return to “the good old days”, struggle with everyday frustrations, call for a strike as an immediate solution, and describe hypothetical futures presenting the opportunity for proactive action and call teacher unions to dialogue rather than wait for them to satisfy the teachers’ demands.

The teacher education is often described as being in a performative and standard-based system. Being a teacher educator in this system is a complex task. Teacher educators have to deal with internal demands from students, colleagues and leaders and external demands from state authorities when shaping the education programme in which they teach. This presentation focuses on teacher educators in a Swedish preschool teacher education and aims to explore how commitment to and demands, inside and outside the higher education system, are handled and reflected upon. Results from interviews with teacher educators show among other, efforts to overcome less desirable traditions and how colleagues contribute to tensions but also are perceived as supportive colleagues to learn from. The combined results show how the teacher educators are part of webs of commitments. These webs are regarded as related fields and threads dependent on each other rather than separate parts, making the web/teacher education programme fragile. If any part breaks, the whole programme will be damaged. The discussion relates to how to overcome traditions and making actors in the programme shape a future-directed education together. We argue a need to provide possible tools to make use of deliberation and dialogue, to prepare future preschool teachers as well as the teacher education for public good. 

These results derive from a project on preschool student teachers’ professional development. The basic idea was that issues of democracy – discussed and talked about in different forms and contexts – are vital to become part of teachers’ agency. Thus, the project aimed to explore how the student teachers developed democratic agency during their teacher education.

Theoretically, the project was grounded in an understanding of teacher agency, in which experiences, different contextual aspects as well as temporal dimensions are taken into account. For 7 semesters, a group of 10-20 preschool student teachers in Sweden participated voluntarily in the project throughout their entire teacher education. Our method was to gather regularly in conversations with the students in ‘horizontal networks’. These worked as arenas for the students to challenge their thoughts on democracy and values without being graded for their developing opinions. We were four researchers that, in about 70 occasions, met with the students in such conversations about their future profession. Our roles were to take part of reflections on issues of democracy and teaching profession.

Our main results show that the students developed democratic agency though active participating in horizontal networks. The students themselves were able to describe the value of participating and how they perceived their democratic agency to be more developed compared to non-participating fellow students. The students in focus were able to reflect on issues of democracy in society, how they possibly could act differently in situations with children, colleagues and other actors in the preschool, issues that in previous research have been found to be difficult.

The results demonstrate a need to clearly focus on issues of democracy in the teacher education in order to develop future teachers’ democratic agency, which doubtless has become even more necessary in the present democratically troublesome times.

Research topic/aim: In this presentation, we focus on leadership between colleagues in the working team as well as preschool teachers’ responsibility for teaching in relation to the working team. This can be understood as ‘leadership within the preschool teaching activities’ (Jensen, 2022) The aim is to develop a theoretical understanding of leadership in preschool that takes previous experiences from preschool practice as well as from the teachers into account when arranging teaching activities and planning for the future. 

Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework consists of an ecological approach of Teacher Agency (Priestley, Biesta & Robinson, 2015) in which experiences are central and where cultural, structural and material aspects are considered vital when acting and achieving leadership in preschool.  

Methodology/research design: Through an action research project, preschool teachers will act, document and further discuss leadership activities in preschool with researchers. Insights from such discussions will - through recurring processes - be brought back to practice and enacted in new leadership activities. 

Expected findings: We expect the results to contribute a new understanding of leadership – a responsible leadership, which takes the context, history and temporality into account. Thereby, knowledge about how to enact a responsible leadership can both take advantage of the preschool’s own traditions and experiences and look ahead towards a teaching based on proven experiences and scientific basis.

Relevance to Nordic educational research: The topic is relevant to all Nordic countries as leadership in preschool are relevant and similar within the Nordic education (and other school forms where teachers are expected to shared leadership)

References

Jensen, M. (2022). Ledarskap mitt i verksamheten: Att leda kollegor i förskola, skola och fritidshem. [ Leadership within the teaching activities, in prescjool, school and leisure time centres]. Gleerups

Priestley, M., Biesta, G., & Robinson, S. (2015). Teacher agency: An ecological approach. Bloombury Academic.

This article explores Swedish teachers' and school leaders' Facebook rebellion groups as a medium where professional needs and actions can be formulated. Data consist of interviews with administrators representing the rebellion groups. Based on a theoretical perspective of teacher agency we searched for experiences and visions related to contextual aspects expressed in the groups. The results indicate a common experience of lacking resources among the groups. Through a well-balanced agency, they search for support among politicians in their striving to improve working conditions. However, the groups might develop different conditions for participating due to the formation of group-specific conversational climate about what is desirable and possible to post and discuss. Discussions on work-related issues might certainly be affected and the rebellion groups might contribute to preserve the specificity of each level in the school system. A split in the teachers' rebellion group indicates virtual relationships between professionals are easy to give up in favour of new formations, making the virtual groups vulnerable. The results raise the question about changing cultural aspects and what it means to be a professional teacher/school leader. Will teacher agency in the future be dependent on participation in such social media groups?

Recently, educational practices in many countries has undergone policy changes (Hardy et al., 2019), which highlights the need for developing pedagogical skills in leadership. One of the main policy changes deals with teachers’ leadership, both leadership in the classroom as well as collegial leadership. Previous research within the field of leadership in education has hitherto mostly focused on formal leadership and the role of principals as well as primary and secondary school teachers’ leadership (Håkansson & Sundberg, 2018). However, there is a lack of research focusing on teachers’ leadership in the ECE.  

The current focus on teachers’ leadership in ECE seems to be an international phenomenon (Zulkifly et al., 2020). The Nordic council of ministers stress teachers’ competence, ‘an increased demand on pedagogical skills in leadership to lead and develop education in the ECEC’ (Hännikäinen & Lipponen, 2017, p. 27). In the Nordic countries, ECE teachers are responsible for teaching, which means leading other professional categories (childminders) and taking responsibility for pedagogical decisions. In Sweden, teaching must be conducted under the guidance of the ECE teacher (Education Act). Leadership tasks have proven to be problematic as the historical organization of the ECE holds horizontal distribution of tasks with ‘anyone can do anything’, continue to be of great importance (Catucci, 2021; Hildén, 2021; Olsson et al., 2020; Vallberg Roth, 2020). Overall, there seems to be a lack of theoretical concepts that can clarify and guide ECE teachers in the new task of enacting leadership when guiding childminders in teaching.

The aim of this presentation is to explore ECE teachers’ professionalism and ability to achieve agency related to leadership. In order to describe, understand and discuss ECE teachers’ leadership, we use two related theoretical concepts that are both anchored in pragmatism. We believe that how leadership is enacted, relates to different kind of professional logics prevailing in the specific ECE context. We rely on the concept of teacher professionalism according to Solbrekke and Englund (2011), which in our study means the pedagogical quality of how ECE teachers enact their leadership (how) and with what content (what). 

Our research questions guiding the analysis are

·      What professional logics appear when ECE teachers are guiding childminders in teaching? and 

·      How does these different professional logics affect teachers’ agency when guiding childminders in teaching?

The analysis was conducted within the theoretical framework of professionalism as responsible or accountable (Solbrekke & Englund, 2011). Professional responsibility emphasizes an autonomous teacher who can act in the present and assess a situation based on their competence, who trusts their colleagues and can act proactively. On the other hand, an accountability professionalism, where adherence to guidelines and standardized norms for teaching, controlling and allowing predefined assessment criteria to determine what is considered to be teaching of good quality. Within this professionalism, the teacher acts reactively in relation to decisions made by employers and politicians. 

To further interpret and describe ECE teachers’ leadership, we have based our analysis on theories of teacher agency (TA) (Priestley et al., 2015). TA can be described as an ecological approach with temporal dimensions of past, present and future, in which experiences are central and where cultural, structural and material aspects are considered vital when enacting leadership in the ECE setting.  

Method

The data consists of short written descriptions collected from 18 ECE teachers and 3 childminders. All of them work at three schools under the leadership of the same principal, whose approach consists of specifically arranged learning environments. In addition, all schools work with pedagogical documentation as a procedural approach to plan, analyse and follow up teaching. Relevant ethical guidelines have been followed.

These 21 research participants make up just over half of those who were asked to, via e-mail, provide us with a description based on the following question:

·      What do you think about the phrase "teaching under the guidance of ECE teachers"? How is it done today? What experiences do you have of leading and of being led?

Altogether, the texts comprises of a total amount of 5108 words. The analysis have been conducted through several steps. As a first step, we have searched for words and concepts connected to ECE teachers’ leadership, both when it comes to leading as well as to be led. As a second step, we have interpreted the described leadership actions in terms of professionalism as professional responsibility or accountability (Solbrekke & Englund, 2011). 

Finally, the results of the different professional logics have been related to the theory of teacher agency (Priestley et al., 2015). We have looked for specific experiences in the descriptions of leadership and to what extent we could distinguish visions and ideals of future leadership. Above all, the cultural aspects in terms of tradition within the school’s way of organizing leadership and teaching activities have been our analytical tool. 

Results

In the descriptions of ECE teachers’ leadership over the teaching of childminders, four central concepts emerge: Children, collegiality, learning environment, and documentation. These four concepts have been taken into account in the analysis of the professional logics that data has generated.

The results of ECE teachers’ professional logics are described as three fields of tension around ECE teachers’ leadership while guiding the childminders in teaching. These relate to the professional mandate and the predetermined governance, trust and control, and proactive and reactive actions of ECE teachers. Children and collegiality appear to be more strongly linked to professional responsibility, while the learning environment and documentation are more strongly linked to accountability. 

ECE teachers’ agency, which is built up from both experiences and visions, is made visible in the dimension of the present in what they themselves describe as learning environments. Agency in this dimension is based on experiences and visions of children’s development and learning. However, ECE teachers’ agency when guiding the childminders in teaching is almost non-existent as their own experiences are based on collegiality and trust, which is reinforced by the cultural resources in the form of historical and traditional organization in work teams where anyone can do anything. It prevents ECE teachers from actively guiding childminders in the teaching and documenting processes, as stressed in the governing documents (structural resource). The cultural and structural resources counteract each other and in this way prevent ECE teachers from acquiring agency regarding leadership. Finally, in this presentation, we will present and discuss a theoretical model holding aspects of a responsible leadership that will help and guide ECE teachers in their new task of enacting leadership when guiding childminders in teaching.