Browsing by Author "Lönnrot, Susanna"

Changing school is a difficult task. Since classroom teachers are in such a significant role in bringing the change into practice, their experience in the change process is important. Previous studies show that school reforms usually either fail or don’t reach the goals set to them. The purpose of this Bachelor’s Thesis was to bring more understanding to challenges caused by school reforms. The research task is to depict what challenges classroom teachers articulate when talking about their experiences during the national curriculum reform in autumn 2016. The theoretical framework consists of studies about school change and previous school reforms and the typical challenges with them. Also personal challenges with change are addressed by theories about going beyond ones comfort zone and dealing with change. With these theories it is possible to understand more about the complexity and difficulty of school change and find reasons why school reforms fail so often. At the end of the theoretical framework there’s an introduction to the main characteristics of the national curriculum reform that became valid in autumn 2016. The data of this study was collected by interviewing two classroom teachers living in the Helsinki metropolitan area using the method of semi-structured interview. The interviewees were chosen by a pre-survey where they told that they felt like being outside their comfort zone during the curriculum reform. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed using content analysis and comparing the data to previous studies. The found challenges were divided into internal and external challenges. The major challenges were inadequacy of preparation, lack of resources, external demands, lack of realism, dealing with change and skepticism.