Teachers’ professional identity, agency and commitment in loosely-coupled and tightly-coupled educational organisation
Abstract
This article examines teachers’ work and their professional identity negotiations in two different organisation: a vocational institute and a university department of teacher education. It illustrates how the administrative regulation of educational organisations can restrict and support teachers’ professional orientation, agency and commitment to their own organisation. The research data consisted of 24 open-ended narrative interviews, which were analysed applying qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis. The analysed organisations represent different ways of managing and controlling teachers’ work, which lead the researchers to describe one of them a loosely-coupled organisation, and the other a tightly-coupled organisation. The results show that loosely-coupled and tightly-coupled organisations differ in the way they provide resources for teachers’ professional identity negotiations. The teachers interviewed are more committed to their own organisation when they have strong professional agency and opportunities to practice their individual professional orientations, and their working practices are not subject to major external changes. A loosely-coupled organisation promotes teachers’ commitment to the organisation. On the other hand, a loosely-coupled organisation does not seem to promote organizational and educational reform.
Funding data
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Academy of Finland
Grant numbers 139538
