Discourses of teacher autonomy and the role of teachers in Estonian, Finnish and Bavarian teachers' newspapers in 1991-2010

This paper examines the construction of the professional role of teachers as reflected in the teacher autonomy and control discourses in teachers' newspapers during 1991-2010 in three national contexts: Estonia, Finland and Bavaria (Germany). Despite similar global pressures to increase the efficiency of education through output standardization and marketization, the local teaching traditions and policies have shaped different cultures of teacher professionalism. Throughout the national experiments with decentralization and recentralization of education, Estonian and Bavarian teachers have maintained restricted professionalism while Finnish teachers achieved extended professionalism in terms of the desired amount of teacher autonomy.