The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of a Swedish nation-wide professional development on participating teachers’ teaching practice and their knowledge, where collegial work, as a central part of the professional development, is taken into account as a factor to influence the outcome. We conducted statistical analyses (linear mixed models) on observational and interview data from a random selection of 105 teachers (grades 1–10/primary and secondary school). The results show effects on several aspects of teacher knowledge and teacher practice. However, the results show no connections between how the teachers have worked collegially and the observed changes in the teacher's knowledge and practice. © 2024 The Authors

This study investigates resource use by upper-secondary mathematics teachers in the context of collaborative planning. A thematic content analysis is conducted on audio-recorded teacher discussions in order to find out what resources are used by the teachers, how they are used, and for what reasons. The findings show that although teachers use a variety of resources to support their instructional enactment as well as instructional design, there is a difference in how they use different resources to support different planning practices. For instructional design, curriculum resources provide support for the mathematical content, while social resources, self-generated documents, and cognitive resources provide support for the design of instructional activities. Authority is given by teachers to curriculum resources, but conflicts of authority emerge in discussions, when teachers’ abilities to exert their agency are not supported by curriculum resources. We discuss the findings in relation to authority and resource use, as well as for established conceptualizations of resources. The findings bear practical implications for the design of curriculum resources.

Planning and preparation (PaP) are vital for high-quality teaching and thus for student learning. Nevertheless, the infrastructure to support teachers' PaP is often poorly developed. This project brings together the fields of subject didactic and school development in order to investigate PaP as part of an organised infrastructure and as qualified activity. We focus how infrastructure can be organised to support PaP in sustainable ways for professional development, efficient for transforming knowledge into relevant teaching activities, and is systematic and dialogic in its formative approach. The aim is to develop knowledge about a didactical collegial practice as well as about its role in the local school infrastructure. Our research-based hypothesis is that teachers PaP benefit from a collegial collaboration (Darling-Hammond et al., 2017) and that the implementation of such a designated work needs the local school management's active support (Jarl et al., 2017). We have followed the commencement and implementation of twelve subject-based planning teams (audio recorded meetings; documents). A modified version of the Tyler-model (Tyler, 1950), and tools from legitimation code theory (Maton, 2014) frames the analysis. The contribution to the fields of subject didactics bridge the knowledge gap about PaP qualities and competencies. It is likewise important for school improvement, as there is a parallel gap about leading PaP as a strategy for improvement. This knowledge is vital for improving school-reform programs, and teacher education. 

This paper reports on a project aiming to develop empirical and theoretical knowledge about teachers' planning and preparations (PaP) of lessons as a didactical collegial practice and how this shapes and is shaped by the local school organization. One goal is to explore and theoretically describe PaP as a collegial practice by contrasting different subjects over time. Another is to analytically explore how these settings affect and enable teachers' ability to make strategic decisions for students' learning. Finally, the aim is to examine local school improvement efforts. The project is based on longitudinal case studies wherein teachers of different school subjects had time to plan and prepare lessons. The collegial setting was organized to facilitate teachers' focus on student learning, primarily subject-oriented and sometimes cross-curricular, but always oriented to a learning object. This design allowed us to study teachers' transformational competence over time and between subjects by following their decisions about content, learning goals and objects, sequencing, and adjusting to students' needs and interests. This design opened up for comparative analyses to better understand similarities and differences between and across subjects. Further, the schools have different management cultures, one more individual and one more collegial. How PaP is implemented and refigured in regard to the local school organization is also examined in the project. We will be asking three research questions: 

• RQ1: How do teachers' PaP appear as a transformational competence when scheduled as collegial collaboration? 
• RQ2: How does the collegial teaching setting affect teachers' ability to make strategic decisions in relation to students' learning? 
• RQ3: How is school leading prefigured in the implementation process of scheduled collegial PaP at participating schools, and what are the implications for the local school organizations? 

What motivates this focus on PaP? In short, we know little about how collegial planning affects teachers' transformational competence and how this may be context-bound to different subjects, nor about its infrastructural function in the local school organization (Hirsh, & Lindberg, 2015; Yuan, & Zhang, 2016). Such evidence-informed knowledge is needed as PaP involves complex strategic decisions that have been shown to benefit from adequate collegial cooperation (Nordgren et al., 2019; 2022). As teachers can make a difference in student learning beyond socio-economic restraints (Hattie, 2008), school authorities and research communities alike have invested in enhancing teachers' professionalism both through collegial and individual strategies (Chetty et al., 2014; Lefstein et al., 2020). Consequently, it is a paradox that planning is largely overlooked as a fundamental activity for generating qualitative teaching. Boeskens and Nusche (2021) note that student learning does not correlate with lesson time as such, but with 'the time students spend engaged with tasks that are of adequate difficulty' (p. 12). To improve teaching quality, teachers have to canalize their knowledge through their PaP. If PaP is compromised due to organizational or ability restrictions, teaching quality will also be compromised. Yet, the role of teachers' planning is seldom distinguished in political reforms nor as a salient practice in school improvement research. In subject-didactical research, the planning–teaching–reflecting cycle is acknowledged as core to teachers' professionalism (Carlson & Daehler, 2019), yet it is seldom targeted for study (Boeskens & Nusche, 2021). Evidence indicates that whether the school improvement efforts target collegial cooperation or teacher leadership, a necessary condition for enduring improvements is teachers' ability to think strategically and autonomously about students’ learning processes (Kennedy, 2016). 

Methodology

Selection: The project was carried out in cooperation with one upper secondary school and one lower secondary school in Sweden. Voluntary schools were selected based on interest and size. In addition, the school leaders had to participate actively, and the teachers had to be allotted joint weekly planning time. The upper secondary school is in a mid-sized city. There are six planning teams organized based on teaching content: history, mathematics (three on three levels), technology, and physics. Each team consists of two to four participants. The whole management team (two directors and six principals) is participating in the project. The lower secondary school is in a municipality. The teachers are divided into six planning teams in one subject, Swedish, each with two teachers. One principal represents the lower secondary school. In total, the project monitors around 25 teachers, nine school leaders, and 600 students. Implementation: Planning teams (PTs) were set up to meet weekly at a scheduled time. Each PT plans and prepares teaching sequences. Each PT had one contact in the research group with subject-didactical expertise. A specific focus was on to what extent the collegial setting supports teachers' formative strategies. School leaders were actively involved in implementing the project. The school leaders met regularly to discuss the project's implications with experts in school development research.

Data: Audio-recorded PT group meetings, audio-recorded interviews with school leaders, and additional planning documents. Analysis procedure: Audio recordings from the PTs has been analyzed thematically. We have developed a framework for categorizing the data. Categories developed a priori (previous research and theory) were combined with categories a posteriori (deductive and inductive steps in the analytical procedure) (e.g. Österholm et al., 2016). The framework makes it possible to navigate the extensive data and analyze singular themes (e.g. teachers' choice of activity), correlation (choice of activity and formative teaching), or the whole iterative process of how teachers transform content plays out over time and in different subjects. Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) and particularly the dimension of Specialization is used to analyze teachers’ transformational competence as they take strategic decisions on students' learning (Maton, 2014). The NVivo coding enables us to search the extensive data to make comparative analyses overtime on what themes different PTs decide to focus. The coded PT meetings are also influential in searching for and unpacking the collegial setting and the complexity of strategic decisions. 

Conclusion

As already mentioned, we have comprehensive data. Our analytical results are preliminary and most of the material has not yet been analyzed. The initial findings can briefly be summarised: Collegial PaP as practice: After a negotiating period, a collegial PaP practice was developed. The teams started targeting specific areas that they wanted to explore. After a while, teachers began to implement research-based models to develop their teaching. PaP as transformation: Teachers do have formative ambitions but struggle to find effective and functional methods. A comparative perspective: Planning teams approach the PaP process differently, which seems to be related to subject-specific causes. For example, the planning team in History spent 36% on specifying objectives and knowledge whereas the planning team in Mathematics spent 5% on that theme. In a closer analysis of the teachers’ interactions, different beliefs about knowledge and knowers appeared where a hierarchical knowledge structure and a horizontal knower structure were identified in Mathematics and a horizontal knowledge structure and a hierarchical knower structure were identified in History (Jakobsson et al., 2022). PaP Implementation: It seems to take a rather limited amount of time for teachers to take PaP ownership. The local management culture seems to be of importance but in a complex way. The results show how methods that support dialogue, intersubjectivity, and unforced consensus enable the progress of an equivalent collaboration (Forssten Seiser, & Portfelt, 2022). In addition, the results reveal how a lack of shared agreements regarding the purpose of collaboration constraints, or even prevents, co-ownership. Hence, PaP is a complex and strategic decision; schools need to consider how to organize this activity adequately. We suggest that this calls for a balance between teachers' time for individual planning and marking and time with colleagues as a supportive setting for joint planning and strategic decisions. 

References

Boeskens, L., & Nusche, D. (2021). "Not enough hours in the day: Policies that shape teachers' use of time". OECD Education Working Papers, No. 245, OECD Publishing.

Carlson, J., & Daehler, K. R. (2019). The refined consensus model of pedagogical content knowledge in science education. In: Hume A., Cooper R., Borowski A. (Eds.), Repositioning pedagogical content knowledge in teachers' knowledge for teaching science (pp. 77-92). Springer.

Chetty, R., Friedman, J. N., & Rockoff, J. E. (2014). Measuring the impacts of teachers I: Evaluating bias in teacher value-added estimates. American Economic Review, 104(9), 2593-2632.

Forssten Seiser, A., & Portfelt, I. (2022). Critical aspects to consider when establishing collaboration between school leaders and researchers: two cases from Sweden. Educational action research, 1-16.

Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement: Routledge.

Hirsh, Å., & Lindberg, V. (2015). Formativ bedömning på 2000-talet–en översikt av svensk och internationell forskning. Vetenskapsrådet

Jakobsson, M., Randahl, A. C., & Nordgren, K. (2022). Planification et préparation collégiale des cours en Suède. Revue internationale d’éducation de Sèvres, (90), 127-137.

Kennedy, M. (2016), "How does professional development improve teaching?", Review of Educational Research, Vol. 86/4, pp. 945-980

Lefstein, A., Vedder-Weiss, D., & Segal, A. (2020). Relocating research on teacher learning: Toward pedagogically productive talk. Educational researcher, 49, 0013189X2092299.

Maton, K. (2014). Building powerful knowledge: The significance of semantic waves. In: B. Barrett & E. Rata (Eds.), Knowledge and the future of the curriculum (pp 181-197). Palgrave studies in excellence and equity in global education. Palgrave Macmillan

Merritt, E. G. (2016). Time for teacher learning, planning critical for school reform. Phi delta kappan, 98(4), 31-36.

Nordgren, K., Bergh, D., Duek, S., Liljekvist, Y., & Jakobsson, M. (2022). Rektorers uppfattningar om undervisningens villkor och en skola på vetenskaplig grund: En uppföljande enkätstudie till undersökningen Lärares planering och efterarbete av lektioner: Infrastrukturer för kollegialt samarbete och forskningssamverkan. Karlstads universitet.

Nordgren, K., Kristiansson, M., Liljekvist, Y., & Bergh, D. (2019). Lärares planering och efterarbete av lektioner: Infrastrukturer för kollegialt samarbete och forskningssamverkan. KUP

Nordgren, K. (2019). Boundaries of historical consciousness: a Western cultural achievement or an anthropological universal? Journal of Curriculum Studies, 51(6), 779-797. Y

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This article reports a study on members in self-organised Facebook groups for teachers. The aim is to investigate how teachers’ needs and actions form their roles in the extended staffroom. 26 teachers from six different Facebook groups within two different school subjects, mathematics and Swedish, are interviewed. The results reveal a trajectory from a lurking behaviour as authorised visitor to a key person within the community of the group or an influencer, where teachers can function as authorities in their field. In relation to this trajectory, the interviewed teachers describe the choice to become public as a crucial step, emphasising the courage needed. A next important step can be identified when teachers leave the role as consumers of content that others provide, asking questions and commenting on others’ posts, in favour of a more contributing role, publishing their own posts and expressing an agenda. Further, these kinds of large Facebook groups can be seen as a node in teachers’ social media networks.

High dropout rates in the first year of undergraduate studies are an expression of the secondary–tertiary transition problem and they seem to be particularly high in those degree programs where specialized mathematics courses are taught in the first year of study. Research shows that students’ difficulties during the transition period cannot be reduced to purely cognitive factors. In this article, we address the secondary–tertiary transition problem in mathematics for engineering students. Based on a questionnaire with focus beyond the purely cognitive aspects, a comparison of the transition problem at three European mid-sized universities is carried out, to identify common challenges and difficulties, as well as differences. The questionnaire concentrates on the four dimensions (personal, organizational, content related, and social) and corresponding critical requirements for a successful transition described in Trautwein, C., & Bosse, E. (2017). The first year in higher education – critical requirements from the student perspective. Higher Education, 73, 371–387. A group of 308 first-year engineering students partook in the study. In the presentation, we highlight students’ perceptions regarding the transition, changes, and challenges they experienced under the above-mentioned four dimensions and discuss similarities and differences between countries.

Matematik är ett ämne som många elever studerar inom kommunal vuxenutbildning. Det är samtidigt det ämne inom vuxenutbildningen som har flest avhopp, lägst betyg och högst andel underkända. I denna studie arbetar en yrkesverksam lärare och en forskare tillsammans för att öka kunskapen om hur metoder för återkoppling kan påverka både elevers lärande och lärares undervisning inom vuxenutbildningen. Specifikt studeras hur vuxna elevers engagemang och studieteknik påverkas av två olika metoder för återkoppling. Studien är ett aktionsforskningsprojekt, som tar sin utgångspunkt i en pågående praktik, där läraren under flera år har utvecklat och testat olika metoder för återkoppling. Resultatet visar att metoderna stödjer lärares arbete i den komplexa undervisningssituation som vuxenundervisning innebär. Metoderna verkar även stödja elevernas lärande när de används frekvent och systematiskt i undervisningen, och verkar vara gynnsamt för engagemang och studieteknik

Mathematics is a subject that many students study in municipal adult education. Still, it is the subject in adult education that has the most dropouts, the lowest grades and the highest percentage of failing grades. In this study, a professional teacher and a researcher work together to increase knowledge about how feedback methods can affect both student's learning och teacher's teaching in adult education. How adult students' commitment and study techniques are affected by two different methods of feedback is studied specifically. The study is an action research project, taking starting point in an ongoing practice, where the teacher has developed and tested different methods for feedback over several years. The results show that the methods support teachers' work in the complex teaching situation that adult education entails. The methods also seem to support student learning when they are used frequently and systematically, and seem to be beneficial for engagement and study techniques.