Jakob Ditlev Bøje

Department of Psychology and Educational Studies

University of Roskilde

jdb@ruc.dk

Telephone +4546742351

This paper will deal with what can be described as a link between political wishes for higher educational standards and professionalization on the one side and everyday life in pedagogues’[1] professional schools on the other side.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, pedagogues’ professional schools as well as other schools for semi-professionals (e.g. teacher, nurse and social worker) have been put through a vast amount of reforms and experienced new political demands for higher educational standards and professionalization. The demands for higher educational standards have mostly been put forward by the incumbent government, as an attempt to raise the nation’s level of knowledge and competencies, while the demands for professionalization have been put forward by semi-professionals as an attempt to attain “real” professional status. Some researchers have referred to this process as an academization of practically oriented occupations whilst others have seen it as a female professionalization project which is making itself increasingly dependent on masculine mobilization strategies.

From a level of political wishes, demands and reforms and to a level of everyday life in professional schools there is a long way, though. What is decided in a vote and afterwards written down as a regulation is rarely the same as what is going on in a class between teachers and students. But what does actually go on between teachers and students in a school for pedagogues? Does it in any way relate to what is decided and negotiated at macro level? Are there some sorts of connections but perhaps not the ones first expected?

The paper will explore these questions by drawing on data and analyses from a just completed PhD. project. One of the main findings from the project is that pedagogues’ professional schools stratify students according to class, gender and ethnicity – that is, categories which relate to both school and work life. In that way professional schools seem to produce structure through interaction while at the same time maintain control of interaction through structure.

[1] In Denmark a pedagogue is (1) a kindergarten teacher and sometimes a primary teacher, depending on the recruitment patterns of the schools (pedagogues are somewhat cheaper than “real” teachers), (2) a social worker who takes care of socially marginalized people, neglected children and physically and mentally handicapped people.