First-teachers as school improvement agents

The Swedish school system has go through a number of extensive reforms since 2011: a new school legislation and new curriculum for the compulsory school. In 2013 a new career reform was launched with the aim to provide new career paths for teachers within the profession,reward skilled teachers and create conditions for school development. This reform has introduced a new category of teachers - ‘first-teachers’ – which are expected to work with school improvement with the aim to improve student achievement. The study is conducted within the tradition of participatory-oriented research using a research circle as a methodological framework. This paper aims to describe and analyze eight special teachers’experiences of working their first year as “first-teachers” in schools with self-contained classrooms for students with intellectual disabilities. The research circle described in this paperis carried out together with the eight members with myself as the participating researcher. The data presented in this paper is a small portion of data from an ongoing project about “firstteachers”work with school improvement processes. The study is conducted within the tradition of participatory-oriented research using a research circle as a methodological framework. The research issue concerns the questions the participating special teachers ask themselves in their everyday work with together with other special teachers, paraprofessionals and students with intellectual disabilities. In the research conducted in a research circle, the aim is that there should be an interaction between researchers and professionals so that both parties change theirview of the research problem. All participants is working in schools with self-containedclassrooms for students with intellectual disabilities. The work of the research circle is led byme over a period of over two semesters and will include a total of ten meetings and is documented with a digital voice recorder and with field notes. The analysis of the data materialis influenced by the work of Lipsky (2010) on street-level bureaucracy.