Law and order in Schools? : A comparative study on legal regulations of the social interaction between teacher and students in Finland and Sweden.

Abstract: The following thesis investigates differences and similarities in the social aspect of teachers’ professional work, as described through teachers’ rights and responsibilities regulated in national school law of the social interaction teacher-student in Finland and Sweden. This thesis is written as a pilot-study in the Swedish Research Council project concerning teacher autonomy in Sweden, England, Finland and Germany. Teacher autonomy is seen as a multidimensional concept in recent research made, and in an analytical matrix developed by Wermke and Salokangas (2016) teacher autonomy can be analyzed on different levels and in different domains of teachers’ professional work. This thesis connects to the social domain in the analytical matrix, which concerns disciplinary policies in the social interaction between teacher and students and thus explores the social part (or dimension) of teacher autonomy. The methods adopted in this thesis are content analysis and comparative method where documents on a national level (i.e. school law) and local level (i.e. rules of conduct) from Finland and Sweden are analyzed. Three terms (i.e. rights, responsibility and offensive actions) guide the analysis together with three analytical questions drawing on Ingersoll’s (2003) research where decisions concerning the social aspect of schooling was proven to be the most important area of teachers’ decision-making power. The results of the investigation indicate that there are both similarities and differences in how the social aspect of teachers’ work is described on national and local level in Finland and Sweden. On national level for example, both Finnish and Swedish teachers can take disciplinary measures to maintain a safe study- and classroom environment, although it is more regulated in the Finnish school law. The investigation also shows that there is a clearer connection between the national level and the local level in Finland, a connection which cannot be perceived in the Swedish case. Lastly, the possibility of reporting teachers divides the two countries apart where in Sweden this is described in the school law, which is not expressed in the Finnish school law.