Construction of teachers’ roles in collegial discussions

Abstract

This paper investigates how teachers portray their teaching role in a professional-development community. By analyzing data from five groups, the goal of the study is to understand how teachers portrayed within these practices. In the majority of interactions, teachers position themselves within a traditional teacher discourse, an official Swedish discourse, or a reform-oriented discourse. The analysis provides examples of different teacher roles both within and between groups. Teachers who advocate a reform-oriented teacher role indicate that, in this type of role, they face challenges, and they stress that they need more specialized content knowledge.