Conference Agenda

Teaching in Sweden is undergoing a vocational crisis in terms of facing increasing teacher shortages reflected by low examination rates and increasing teacher attrition rates (Adermon & Laun, 2018). These shortages are particularly evident in elementary-year schooling. Reports by the Swedish National Agency for Education suggested that there will be a shortfall of ~80 000 teachers in 2031 (Skolverket, 2017). This shortfall is driven by demographic factors such as projected increases in the student population; low teacher education examination rates; and a high proportion of teachers nearing retirement-age (European Commission, 2019). Another contributing factor is the inability to retain teachers, illustrated by teachers’ turnover and attrition rates (Ingersoll, 2001).

Why teachers choose to leave their profession has been widely studied in the literature. Individual factors associated with attrition have provided an insight into which teachers are more likely to leave the profession whereas contextual factors have provided an insight into why these teachers choose to leave the profession. The results point to teacher attrition being higher among younger, less experienced teachers who report low levels of self-efficacy and job satisfaction (Borman & Dowling, 2008). Moreover, studies have consistently shown how challenging work environments, characterized by high job demands and low job resources, causes teacher burnout and exhaustion and subsequently contributes to teachers’ intention to leave the profession (Chambers Mack et al., 2019). In contrast to what makes teachers want to leave the profession, less focus has been placed on understanding the vast majority of teachers who choose to remain in the profession despite being subjected to the same occupational challenges (Sell, 2019). Refocusing the attention towards what can help teachers stay in the profession can provide valuable information about nuanced organizational practices that can safeguard teachers work-related health and facilitate teacher retention. This is important as better teacher retention can contribute towards addressing teacher shortages in Sweden (Lindqvist & Nordänger, 2016). Studies in the teacher retention literature have attempted to identify factors that can facilitate teachers’ willingness to remain in the profession. Some studies have indicated that contextual factors can facilitate teacher retention by providing teachers with a more advantageous work environment, characterized by horizontal and vertical support processes, that buffers against teachers’ job demands and poor work-related health outcomes (McCarthy, Lambert, & Reiser, 2014).

The study that will be presented at the conference is part of a doctoral research project and aims to contribute to the teacher retention literature by exploring factors that are associated with teachers’ intention to remain in the profession in Sweden. By doing so, this study aims to provide an insight into protective aspects of teachers’ psycho-social work environment that can facilitate teacher retention.

This is a part of a PhD project in science education and this paper is structured around a concept, created by the author, inspired by actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour, 2005; Law, 2004; Mol, 1999) with an ambition to try to investigate how nature and preschool are assembled together in various preschool practices. In this paper I would like to discuss how this concept of preschool-naturing could be theoretical and methodological useful when understanding nature’s role in preschool practices in the time of the Anthropocene.

In this study the notion of the Anthropocene, originally a suggested name of a geological time period to mark humans’ substantial impact on planet earth (Crutzen, 2006; Steffen et al., 2007), is used as an underpinning to stress the need for studies concerning human/nature relations. Gilbert (2016) argues that in these peculiar times of the Anthropocene we need to find the “blind spots” of science education and acknowledge previously unacknowledged assumptions. One of these unacknowledged assumptions in science education is the fondness of “entities” and Gilbert (2016) argues that we need to ask different questions to be able to deal with this: “How are science, society, and education inter-connected? How do they depend on each other? How do they influence each other? How do they construct each other? How do they talk to each other?” (s.18). These questions with the ambition to disrupt clear cut entities and with a focus on how, is in line with the ambition of this PhD project. Here the aim is to trace the complexity of how ”nature” and natures role in preschool is done together with preschool practice by also taking an interest in power aspects involved in these enactments.

In Sweden “nature” can be seen as a part of preschools aim and practice in several ways. This is stemming from a long tradition of connecting children to nature through natural environments but also as a part of the educational system, articulated in the curricula connected to science education, sustainable development, health and wellbeing (Halldén, 2011; National Agency of Education, 2018). In a hybrid understanding of the world where everything is nature and culture, also constantly connecting, disconnecting, and reconnecting, this is a try to use a concept for investigating taken for granted assumptions concerning nature and preschool. According to Fenwick and Edwards (2010) ANT can offer a different way to approach education and help us to better understand the complexity of everyday practice that often is overlooked. Preschool practices can be understood as actor-networks where humans and other-than human actors are connected in assemblages that are not symmetrical but draw on different certainties, already established. To stabilize themselves, actor-networks use relatively already stabilized networks, for instance materials or discursive resources (Nespor, 2011). Mol (1999) discusses how decisions can be made invisible by pushing them into places out of sight making them appear as if they are not decisions, but facts. This makes it interesting to understand where these facts, concerning preschool and nature, are made, and which places and actors are involved. These decisions are not only intellectually made but occurs in practice involving both human and other-than-human actors. This is a practical and necessary stabilization of the actor-network that enable practicians to handle reality but it is relevant, to try to understand where decisions are made since they often are taken for granted as facts when they rather could be reconstructed into other understandings of reality (Mol, 1999). Can the concept of preschool-naturing be helpful to make visible natures complex role in preschool practices and acknowledge unattended assumptions concerning nature and preschool?

Ulrich (2018: 75) points out that inclusion – in a pedagogical definition – dodges the aspiration of formalization that organisations process. Instead, it remains in the undefined which refers to the unavailability of the mental systems and attitudes of the organisational members (cf. ibid.: 74). This indirectly describes an empirical research program that is dedicated to the question of what exactly happens when organisations (such as schools) work inclusively – or claim to do so. More precisely – in terms of the level of pedagogical interaction following the systems theory sensu Luhmann (2002) – it would be to speak of an underdetermination: the decisions made at the organisational level tend to take on a form that contours the operational level (e.g., the classroom interaction) but does not determine it extensively (cf. Kuper 2008: 153). In this sense, organisations specify the rather diffuse expectations on the part of society and translate them into concrete programs (e.g., via curricula, timetables, cf. ibid.) or prevent them from being overwhelmed – as not all decisions can be made in the classroom itself (cf. Luhmann 2002: 121). On the other hand, freedom is created for professionalised actions, which cannot be oriented towards rules, since it always must deal with individualised clients (cf. Stichweh 1996: 60).

In this view, there is drawn a complex relationship between the interconnection and disconnection. Subsequently, research questions should not only focus on the orientations and practices of teachers, but also on the organisational structural condition for the interaction (cf. Bohnsack 2017: 135). In this context, Bohnsack – following Luhmann (2000: 222ff.) – describes it as a characteristic of organised social systems that they are based on decisions enabling further decisions. Consequently, interactions within organisations differ categorically from those outside since the latter do not know such (decision-based) frameworks (cf. Bohnsack 2017: 135). In this respect, the praxeological sociology of knowledge speaks of a constituting framing since it is of constitutive importance for organisations (cf. ibid.).

The question of how the specific framing is contoured can function as a 'yardstick' of professionalised action, because it focuses on the necessary processing of the demands on the part of the organisation as well as on the part of the interactions with the clients (cf. Bohnsack 2020: 109). Bohnsack thus addresses a tension that has already been raised in existing theories of professionalised action (cf. Oevermann 1996) but outlines it differently – especially regarding the question of how the individualised clients (Stichweh 1996: 60) are thought. The present contribution wants to use this framework within an empirical study.