Teacher autonomy and teacher agency: a comparative study in Brazilian and Norwegian lower secondary education

“We adopted a directed approach to content analysis, which means that analysis started with a theory as guidance for initial codes or themes; as analysis proceeded, we revised and refined the initial codes and developed additional codes (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005).”

“The method of analysis of the interview transcripts was qualitative content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005; Bowen, 2009).”

“Such changes occur in very different national contexts, as noted by Ball (2003, 2010) in England and Dias (2018) in Brazil.”

“We used this approach to provide us with rich data that gave us a sense of the multifaceted complexity of the subject under examination (Given, 2008).”

“At the international level, the production and use of data, such as the publication of league tables of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), have triggered countries to implement educational reforms with increasing accountability (Steiner-Khamsi, 2003; Grek, 2009).”

“Previously identified group members indicated additional members of the population to generate a sufficient number of cases for the analysis, as in the snowball sampling technique (Thomas, 2006; Schreier, 2018).”

“We used this approach to provide us with rich data that gave us a sense of the multifaceted complexity of the subject under examination (Given, 2008).”

“As such, teacher agency illuminates how teachers make sense of policy and the varied factors that affect the process (Priestley et al., 2012).”

“The research questions are: How can Brazilian and Norwegian teachers’ autonomy be interpreted with respect to nation-specific characteristics of the respective school settings in an accountability system? What might teacher autonomy mean for Brazilian and Norwegian teachers’ agency in an age of accountability? Account…”

“The will and capacity of these teachers for reflecting on and developing practices (Mausethagen & Mølstad, 2015) can be seen as their achievement of agency (Priestley et al., 2012, 2015; Biesta et al., 2017).”

“According to world culture theory, globalisation has increased standardisation in educational arrangements, programs and policies without regard to national contexts and history (Dale, 2000).”

“Teacher agency pays particular attention to the day-to-day work in classrooms and schools, considering teachers’ personal beliefs, values and attributes as well as the local and national characteristics of the school settings, in the sense that teachers shape and are shaped by their working conditions (Priestley et al…”

“Norway introduced national testing in 2004 and an outcomes-based curriculum in 2006 in response to increased criticism after the publication of the first PISA study, in which the country scored barely above the average (Karseth & Sivesind, 2011; Imsen & Volckman, 2014; Mausethagen & Mølstad, 2015).”

“Moreover, we were concerned with exploring how such different countries, which are supposed to be unrelated, may show connections regarding teacher autonomy and teacher agency in an educational context marked by global ideas, such as the relevance of testing and accountability to improve the quality of education measu…”

“Norwegian teachers also turn to the union, which has an active role in school, to solve issues related to their working conditions, indicating an extended general professional autonomy, according to the definition by Frostenson (2015).”

“The Curriculum Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association”

“In contrast, teacher agency focuses on the capacity for professional action given the resources and limitations of their working environment (Erss, 2018).”

“Although some definitions of teacher autonomy and agency overlap, it is possible to argue that teacher autonomy emphasises teachers’ capacity to make decisions on their own, individually or as a group, with varying degrees of external constraints (Wermke & Höstfält, 2014; Mausethagen & Mølstad, 2015; Wermke & Forsberg…”

“In contrast, the culturalist theory attempts to ‘point to the importance and perseverance of local contexts, showing how world culture may be resisted or processed, adapted and appropriated to local conditions, leading to hybridisations and new local particularities’ (Waldow, 2012, p. 413).”

“Norway introduced national testing in 2004 and an outcomes-based curriculum in 2006 in response to increased criticism after the publication of the first PISA study, in which the country scored barely above the average (Karseth & Sivesind, 2011; Imsen & Volckman, 2014; Mausethagen & Mølstad, 2015).”

“…seeking to apply alternative ways to explore how the state regulates and governs teachers through more sensitive, nuanced and contextual descriptions of the restructuring of teacher autonomy, as suggested by Klette (2002), hence, lifting up the complexity of autonomy and agency of teachers.”

“Previously identified group members indicated additional members of the population to generate a sufficient number of cases for the analysis, as in the snowball sampling technique (Thomas, 2006; Schreier, 2018).”

“The research questions are: How can Brazilian and Norwegian teachers’ autonomy be interpreted with respect to nation-specific characteristics of the respective school settings in an accountability system? What might teacher autonomy mean for Brazilian and Norwegian teachers’ agency in an age of accountability? Account…”

“Following the international education scenario, Brazil adopted an outcomes-based curriculum in the early 2000s and national testing in 2005 (Barreto, 2012; Villani & Oliveira, 2018).”

“Researchers have also studied teacher autonomy in relation to regulations and resources provided by the state, which can empower (Cribb & Gewirtz, 2007; Smaller, 2015) or de-professionalise teachers (Ball, 2003, 2010).”

“In addition to being a multidimensional concept, teacher autonomy is a complex and relational phenomenon, which means that the autonomy of one individual and/or group affects the autonomy of others (Bergh, 2015; Frostenson, 2015).”

“This autonomy concerns the relations between the teachers’ scope of action and the curriculum’s role in providing directions, resources and rules that constrain or extend the learning environment [8].”

“Autonomy emphasises one’s capacity to make decisions on one’s own (da Silva & Mølstad, 2020).”

“Despite public authorities actively promoting the use of performance metrics among teachers in order to support underperforming students (see Da Silva & Mølstad, 2020), it was common for teachers to still rely on their professional judgement as the main source of knowledge to plan teaching…”

“Lennert da Silva and Mølstad (2020) used interviews with teachers to argue that Norway’s history of professionalization creates a strong sense of autonomy, whereas similar requirements feel controlling within the context of Brazil’s legacy of teacher management.”

“…analyses on TBA have investigated broader accountability effects on teachers’ practices and decisions, but without delving into the relationship between different accountability policy options and undesired responses (Houtsonen et al., 2010; Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020; Osborn, 2006).”

“…be implemented (although perhaps to a lesser extent) beyond anglo-phone contexts including for example Norway (Mausethagen et al., 2021) and Brazil (Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020), the findings from this study of teacher agency may have relevance for teacher educators and researchers working…”

“Brazil is included in this category because this country has adopted open-market and privatization measures in education to reduce costs and increase the efficiency of education (Dias, 2018; Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020).”

“Thus, the era of accountability (Buchanan, 2015; Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020) has, in many ways, not found its way into the Finnish educational sector, as it has elsewhere.”

“Teacher agency refers to teachers’ capacity to act constructively and purposefully based on their perception and experience to respond to existing educational dilemmas (Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020; Liu et al., 2016).”

“However, when considering studies on autonomy in the Norwegian public school context, ideas of teacher autonomy have been found to be challenged after the introduction of a more product-oriented curriculum (Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020; Mausethagen & Mølstad, 2015).”

“In this regard, following Frostenson (2015), teacher autonomy becomes significant for teachers’ responsibility to influence their own practices and empowers them subsequently to enhance their agency as Lennert da Silva and Mølstad (2020) noted in a different context.”

“In addition, teacher autonomy plays a pivotal role in enhancing teachers' creativity (Nguyen, Pietsch, and Gümü ş 2021), job satisfaction (Kengatharan 2020), and motivation and engagement (Lennert da Silva and Mølstad 2020).”

“…example, a teacher may not feel that they are able to fully enact their vision for PBL because of many factors, from curricula or testing mandates (da Silva & Mølstad, 2020) to the ways that classroom technologies (Kavanagh, Bernhard, & Gibbons, 2024) and students’ biases (Kavanagh, 2018) shape…”

“…were associated with higher levels of positive and lower levels of negative teacher and student emotions” (p. 2), and this research aligns with research on the critical role of teacher agency and autonomy in classroom decision-making (see e.g., Lennert Da Silva & Mølstad, 2020; Sang, 2020).”

“This dynamic and relational perspective on agency is consistent with the research of Thorgeirsdottir (2019), Lau (2021), and Lennert da Silva and Mølstad (2020), which illustrated how teachers constantly manage the tensions between standardization and innovation.”

“Some scholars prefer to treat agency and autonomy as synonymous terms (lennert da Silva, 2022; lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020). lennert da Silva (2022) asserts there are two types of autonomy; the first is freedom without any governance and the other is freedom within governance which most…”

“The first path is to provide LMIC-based teachers with sustainable, context-specific supports to encourage more intentional adaptation of existing SEL programs and to help them to overcome pervasive barriers to their implementation (e.g. lack of time, resources; Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020).”

“In other words, autonomy is the professional responsibility of teachers (Duyen, 2019; Tehrani & Mansor, 2012; Ulas & Aksu, 2015) and decision-making freedom (Ananthan, 2016; Ipek, 2017) that affect the environment and content of teaching duties (Silva & Mølstad, 2020; Worth & Brande, 2020).”

“The national curriculum from 2006 had a strong emphasis on learning outcomes and national tests, which changed the teachers ’ autonomy considerably (Lennert da Silva and Mølstad, 2020).”

“An outcome of cultivating this professional community of learners is that teachers feel free to try new things, make mistakes, and stretch as professionals versus feeling surveilled or having a fear of punitive measures tied to test scores (Lennert da Silva et al., 2020; Villavicencio et al., 2021).”

“…to educate students and determine their professional development activities (Brevik et al., 2019; Huffling et al., 2017; King & Nomikou, 2017; Lennert Da Silva & Mølstad, 2020; Lund et al., 2019; Pantić et al., 2021) and hints how teacher training and PD play a significant role (King &…”

“Teachers' capacity to make decisions regarding their working conditions according to the rules and available resources is part of teacher autonomy (Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020).”

“We have already mentioned the correlation between autonomy and greater work satisfaction, perceptions of workload manage-ability, staff retention and collegiality (da Silva, Lúcia, and Mølstad 2020; Worth and Van den Brande 2020).”

“Teacher professional agency interlaps with teacher autonomy, though the constructs are not exactly the same (Erss, 2018; Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020; Vangrieken et al., 2017).”

“…factors encompass individual beliefs, values, and emotions (Benesch, 2018), while social factors include relationships with colleagues and students, and the mode of agency enactment (Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020), school culture (X. Li & Li, 2021), and organizational structure (X. Liu, 2020).”

“Opettajan au-tonomia viittaa opettajan vapauteen tehdä opetustaan koskevia päätöksiä ilman valvontaa, mutta siihen liittyy myös eettinen vastuu työn toteutta-misesta ja kehittämisestä (Salminen & Annevirta, 2014; ks. myös Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020).”

“The embedded researcher conducted extensive observation and took copious fi eld notes, which reduced the participants ’ apprehensions about external observers and allowed the researcher to become acquainted with the school ’ s cultural dynamics (Lennert da Silva and Mølstad 2020).”

“According to Lennert da Silva and Mølstad (2020), teacher autonomy and agency are related to the improvement of teacher motivation, engagement, self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and work climate.”

“Teacher agency is a key aspect of teachers’ policy enactment (Lennert da Silva & & Mølstad, 2020).”

“Meanwhile, Lennert da Silva and Mølstad (2020) shared perspectives of teachers in Brazil who resented the regulation of tests and use of lesson booklets.”

“Every curriculum exhibited quality output based on various philosophies that framed the educational content and standards the students need to learn and acquire at a particular level (Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020; Pradhan, 2021).”

“…agency and autonomy in collective work groups is necessary to achieve this shift to new teaching habits, because it offers opportunities for personal reflection and a collective construction of teaching plans and strategies that frame and legitimise teaching work (Lennert da Silva & Mølstad, 2020).”