ABSTRACT
Historically, teaching has been considered a weak profession with difficulties asserting their autonomy but there are major differences between different groups of teachers (e.g., secondary versus primary teachers) and school systems. The chapter discusses the professional autonomy of Swedish and German teachers, focusing on assessment. It demonstrates that teachers’ professional autonomy in assessment is highly contextual and their beliefs regarding assessment differ both between contexts and within educational settings. It concludes that teachers in both countries refer to different sources of legitimation when explaining their assessment practices, and these legitimisations are partly framed by institutional settings and partly by teachers’ own justice beliefs. Although teachers act as professionals when assigning grades, their degree of autonomy is influenced by what is possible from an institutional perspective and by what is seen to be fair. Drawing on the findings of comparative research on teachers’ justice beliefs regarding assessment in Sweden and Germany, the chapter analyses interviews with secondary school teachers conducted between 2011 and 2015, official documents such as assessment guidelines and school regulations, and teachers’ own assessment materials from a professional theoretical perspective, linking the discussion about occupational professionalism with what Evetts (2013) terms ‘organisational professionalism’.
