Conflict and colliding points of view: Teachers’ and school leader’s vision of the development and future possibilities of upper secondary education

Abstract

It is undisputable that the COVID-19 pandemic seriously affected schools all over the world. When teaching and learning was moved online overnight in Icelandic upper secondary schools due to the pandemic, it posed significant challenges for teachers and school leaders. Teachers were required to instantly adapt their teaching practices and course plans to a digital environment and convert immediately to a situation that has be called emergency remote teaching (ERT). School leaders constantly needed to rethink the operation of the schools and teachers to adapt to an ever-changing reality. This condition lasted with certain variations for almost a whole year. The unusual situation offers a unique opportunity to investigate the effects of a sudden crisis as well as the ideas of educational staff concerning possible learning from the situation. The aim of the paper is to investigate teachers’ and school leaders’ vision of the development of the upper secondary school and its future possibilities, from the vantage point provided by the first year of the pandemic. The research is based on data from a comprehensive study entitled Upper secondary education and COVID-19: Crisis, challenges and adaptability. Twelve teachers and six school leaders from three upper secondary schools were interviewed towards the end of the first year of the pandemic. One of the schools is in a rural area, the others are two different schools in the metropolitan area. Purposive sampling was used to select schools and interviewees to cover various situations and experiences. Gender balance was considered, as well as working experience and subjects taught. Teachers who had either struggled with adapting their teaching to the ERT or who had found it relatively easy to do were interviewed. The school directors of each school were interviewed and another school leader, selected randomly from the middle management layer of each school. Since the results presented no discernible difference between genders or school subjects all interviewees are addressed as masculine to guard anonymity. The interviews lasted from 90–130 minutes. They were transcribed verbatim and coded to look for recurrent themes, three of which are discussed in the article: the first related to distance teaching and social needs of both teachers and students, the second to the development of teaching approaches and technology and the third one to the possibility of a more flexible upper secondary school. The results show an interesting conflict between different views of the interviewees. They emphasize their concern for the students and discuss how the pandemic has made ideas of the social value of the upper secondary school more salient. Participants have gained a new vision of the role of the upper secondary school which may build more upon social values, fellowship and student activity. These values go against the current trend of neo-liberalism in education. Simultaneously, they envisage a more open and flexible school where IT is used to modify teaching strategies and assessment practices to accommodate different needs of students. However, they also point out the challenges of increased flexibility. The authors of this article emphasize the importance of discerning between work and private life and that the merits of flexibility should not impede teacher autonomy. It is, therefore, important that teachers participate actively in future discussion about the development of upper secondary education. The results are an important contribution to the ongoing discourse on the development of upper secondary education where teachers’ points of view need to be pre-eminent. The findings demonstrate the experience of different stakeholders who were negotiating a transitional process in their profession.