First teachers – stratification in Swedish schools

Abstract

This article is about professions in transformation and the empirical case is the teaching profession. More specifically, it is about an attempt to strengthen the profession by introducing a new career step, first teachers (FTs). The aim of the study is to scrutinize what first teachers do and how they establish the position in the school system. Four main categories emerged that most actions could be sorted into: coordinating, policy formulating, knowledge generating and instructing. Most of the activities might be related to the collegial level. We use the term appropriation to capture the fact that the FTs both took over existing and novel tasks. The introduction of first teachers has led to a restratification process which in turn has helped strengthen the professional autonomy at a collegial level. The empirical investigation was carried out in a qualitative longitudinal study.