The purpose of this essay is to investigate whether the vocabulary in authentic texts used by upper secondary English teachers teaching the course English 7 reach the expectations set by the Swedish National Agency for Education and the CEFR. This was done by analysing 26 texts contributed from five teachers with vocabulary profile web tools such as Text Inspector and Compleat Lexical Tutor. The analysis focused on word frequency and the CEFR levels.. The word frequency results showed that the vocabulary difficulty of teachers’ texts deviated slightly of being too simple or difficult for English 7 students, while the CEFR results showed that the vocabulary difficulty was too advanced for English 7 students. Although the results deviated from one another, the vocabulary difficulty of the teachers’ texts was often similar to each other. Furthermore, the results showed that the vocabulary difficulty often variated between text genres. The study, therefore, reasoned that the English 7 teachers enact their agency by selecting texts that they not only believe are suitable for their students but also will be suitable for students with different language proficiencies. The study concluded that English 7 teachers select texts of similar vocabulary difficulty and that English 7 students read authentic texts that contain advanced vocabulary that goes beyond the expectations of the CEFR. The study also suggested that further research should investigate how the CEFR should be interpreted and that similar studies should include a closer engagement with the teachers to obtain their views on how and why they select particular authentic texts.

Sweden is seen as a successful adopter of English as an additional language (EAL) and the country is a frontrunner in the globalization of the English language. Much of the success could be attributed to the large presence of English in Swedish society. Additionally, EAL learners are acquiring the English language out-of-school to a larger extent, often referred to as Extramural English (EE). Therefore, it is important to investigate how EE affects learners, teachers and discuss how it can change education. This has been done by evaluating the current state of research through a systematic literature review. It was found that learners engage in a variety of EE activities, with playing online games and watching movies being the activities with the most English exposure. Learners engage in these activities mostly out of their own interests or because of other socially driven motives. EE affects their opinion of English and could have negative effects on their attitude towards school English. Teachers are aware of the gap between EE and school English and try to integrate activities similar to EE activities in class. However, it is a challenge to find authentic material that fits a large number of learners’ interests. In conclusion, there is a need for more research that could point to a clear cause-and-effect relationship between EE and high proficiency in English. This thesis also calls on teachers, principals, and school leaders to prepare to change education if EE becomes a more widespread phenomenon.

Politically mandated development projects get attention in reports, assessments, plans and policies. Less attention is given to the small scale, local development-work made by teachers in schools everywhere, every day (Hultman, 2001). The aim of this study is to make, the small-scale changes that teachers make in their daily practice, visible. Also, this study aims to contribute to an increased understanding of teachers’ changed actions and factors that enable or constrain changed actions. Finally, this study aims to try the analytical concept of agency in relation to the changes teachers make in their daily professional practices. The following research questions have been developed: (1), How do teachers describe the changes they make and have made in their professional practice? (2), What possibilities and limitations do teachers experience when changing their professional-practice? (3), What do teachers wish to change and why? (4), What do teachers think are precipitating factors of change in their own professional practice? (5), How can teacher agency be understood in relation to the described changes in professional practice? Eight teachers from different schools have participated in semi-structured interviews, describing their experience of changes they’ve made in their professional practice. The interviews have been analysed in relation to theories of the three elements of agency developed by Emirbayer and Mische (1998) and further developed in connection to teacher practice by Priestley, Biesta and Robinsson (2015). The study found that teachers change their practice to adjust to new or changing contexts. New experiences, knowledge, ideas or policies can also cause changes in teacher practice. Teachers change their practice when they encounter problems or challenges, assess the consequences of different actions and choose an appropriate way to act. They use their knowledge and experience to identify problems and activate agency to solve them. The study indicates that there is a connection between security and change. Furthermore, it seems to be of importance for teachers and school leaders not only to have common goals but also share the interpretation of problems and the analysis of possible action to solve the problems. The study also found that teachers change their practice to be in alignment with their own goals and aspirations. Even though all teachers abide by common laws and regulations, teachers choose to focus on different parts of the regulations when shaping their goals. The teachers´ goals and aspirations, shape their images of the future they want and play a pivotal role in shaping their actions in the present and in activating agency. The teachers in the study constantly changed their practice in relation to the needs they identify in the local context but also from a genuine interest to learn more, change and improve their professional practice.

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This study examines the experiences of teachers being motivated to do more for their students. While the lives and practices of teachers have received significant scholarly attention, to this point the extant literature on teacher motivation and expanded roles is limited. In response to that gap, this study uses a phenomenological design with semi-structure interviews and observations of classrooms to examine the motivations that inspire teachers to go beyond their prescribed roles in service of their students. Additional lines of inquiry examined how these motivations to embody expanded roles for students evolve from pre-service to actual classroom experience. The study also investigated teacher-reported possibilities and limitations of doing more in service of students. Self Determination Theory of Motivation was used as the theoretical framework to guide the methodological design of the study. Results from the study illuminate a symbiotic relationship in which teachers engage in role expansion in order to both meet the needs of their students as well as to have their basic psychological needs of competence, relatedness, and autonomy satisfied. Implications for further research highlight the need to understand how to support and sustain these practices as a mechanism to combat burnout and teacher attrition. / Urban Education

Yes / The adoption of physically active learning (PAL) in schools is becoming more widespread. To understand how PAL is being used in different countries and explore if and how methods and strategies differ, this paper draws cross-national comparisons in primary school teachers' use of PAL. Thirteen focus groups were conducted with 54 teachers from Norway, the Netherlands and the UK. Four themes were identified using thematic analysis: 1) teachers' values and beliefs about PAL; 2) influence of school context; 3) influence of the national policy context and; 4) managing teacher dissonance when using PAL. Use of PAL was related to teachers' values and beliefs and the degree to which these aligned with the context of the school and the wider educational system. The findings underline the importance of addressing teachers’ competence, opportunity and agency to use PAL in different contexts. / The authors of this manuscript were supported and funded by the European Union ERASMUS + Strategic Partnership Fund as part of the Activating Classroom Teachers project, ACTivate (Grant no 2019-1-N001-KA203-063024).

Group work is commonly recommended as a student-centred instructional strategy which may enhance learning. Research in this area has predominantly used controlled interventions focusing on unproductive teacher assistance or specific strategies of doing group work to be applied by teachers. On the other hand, teachers’ own understanding and uses of group work in classrooms have been under-researched. Drawing on cultural-historical theory, this study scrutinises how and why teachers use group work, and how their enacted understanding is related to the broader contexts of teaching. The present study consists of four teachers of English in two secondary schools in Hong Kong to discern their rationales for and implementation of group work. The analysis delves into the dynamics within the activity of teaching, which comprise the interrelations between teachers' biographies, their purposes for group work in classrooms and what was expected from these teachers within the school practices. The Vygotskian perspective taken by this study entailed an inquiry into the teachers' intentional actions in everyday teaching. Each teacher was interviewed at the outset and end of the school-based fieldwork for their learning backgrounds and beliefs about teaching. In between these interviews each of them was observed in 15 lessons involving group work and undertook five to six stimulated recall (SR) interviews. These lesson video-recordings provided the stimuli for the SR interviews for probing the teacher’s pedagogic decisions while orchestrating students in small groups. The data was analysed by deploying concepts from cultural-historical theory, particularly two organising frameworks developed within the approach. One is a pedagogic sequence proposed by Edwards (1995; in press) as a descriptor to categorise the teachers’ purposes for and actions in group work. The other is an adaptation of Hedegaard's (2012) planes of analysis for identifying the various motives and demands in the multi-layered setting of teaching where group work was located. Group work as a pedagogic tool displayed the intra- and interpersonal dynamics in the activity of teaching. The findings indicate that the teachers' historically-constructed identities as learners of English oriented their intentions for group work and beliefs about teaching the subject. How the schools mediated societal expectations on teaching and learning had a considerable bearing on the teachers enacting their understanding. These institutional objectives and demands in practices created sets of opportunities for group work in the classrooms. The analysis thence was sited at the interface between the teachers' personal pedagogies and the multi-faceted social structure reflected in how education policy was mediated differently in different school contexts. The implications for teacher development are discussed.

This qualitative study featured two research endeavors. The first was a narrative inquiry of six teachers at Weedpatch Charter School as they understood curricular and pedagogical decisionmaking. These teachers, along with the Weedpatch Charter School founder, participated in this study soon after the curriculum and instruction decision-making had undergone a democratization effort whereby a top-down administrative approach was replaced by a teacher-led effort. Ironically, WCS school leadership welcomed the latter effort, despite the antiteacher legacy of the charter movement, which has long featured “at will” employment and no collective bargaining. The second component of this study was critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the curricular and pedagogical manuals used at WCS before and after the democratization effort. The findings in this study point to a dialectical set of developments at WCS that made it possible for teachers to move from a period of disillusionment into a period of active teacher agency. Similarly, the document analysis findings point to the need for more nuanced understandings of the ideological underpinnings of charter schools. Discourse analysis determined that WCS did not necessarily present a classic example of neoliberalism. Given the latter nuance, the manual that the teachers created was counterhegemonic, liberatory, and ultimately contextual and contingent upon that very unique WCS dynamic. As such, the conclusion of this study was that charter leaders could learn from teacher understandings not by being prescriptive but by abiding by what the author has coined contingent collectivism.

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