Administrating existence: teachers and principals coping with the Swedish ‘Teachers’ Salary Boost’ reform

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is a part of an on going ethnography project that run over six years in an Upper Secondary School in the south of Sweden. In this particular article we shed light over the implementation, enactment and reactions from the staff of one of the latest of a series of reforms that has been launched into the Swedish educational system: The Teachers’ Salary Boost reform (TSB). The reform rewarded especially excellent teachers – with raise in their monthly wage with 200–300 €. 40–50% of the teachers at the school did not get any raise at all. We produced our data using ethnographical methods with focus on participant observation, formal and informal interviews. From our data we draw the conclusion that while the leadership at the school executed the reform as a question concerning administration, the teachers receive the reform as a question concerning existence. The embedded trivialisation of teachers’ skilfulness remodelled the teachers professional positioning and made them questioning their professional lives and professional selves.