Between gate-keeping and support: Teachers’ views on their role in young people’s educational trajectories

Teachers are the most influential institutional representatives and professionals involved in the educational trajectories of students. They prepare students for transitions, they assess their achievements and eventually compensate their failure. While (individual) teachers can potentially become significant others for (individual) students, they first of all represent the school system, that is the standardised curriculum as well as the meritocratic function of school. However, this function of “gate-keepers” has changed. On the one hand, education gets more important to secure life chances in knowledge societies. This growing importance assigned to education puts teacher under pressure due to the high expectations of families and society as a whole. On the other hand, compared to the Fordist era when schools had to produce future workers who were proficient in basic reading, writing, and arithmetic for the labour market, today schools and teachers do no longer know what kind of knowledge and skills are relevant for students’ later lives. Education transcends the classroom and school can no longer work in isolation. It is expected to find meaningful partnerships with the labour market and other agencies concerned with non-formal as well as informal learning (family, local government, third sector, youth association, media). This chapter is concerned with the question to what extent teachers perceive the growing importance of these new challenges. Do they try to mitigate or move around the structural meritocratic rigidity of the system or do they simple reproduce it? In a comparative perspective, a question is if structures of school systems – differentiated versus comprehensive – make a difference in this regard. The aim is to verify first whether teachers are aware of this challenge and second how they perceive their role in supporting pupils’ school transition in a life course perspective. The chapter takes existing research on teachers’ professional identities as a starting point. Whether teachers perceive themselves as ‘transition supporters’ is assumed to be influenced by the ways they consider themselves as subject matter expert, pedagogical expert, and didactical expert. We present qualitative data from expert interviews with teachers and school principals carried out in the qualitative case studies as well as with teacher trainers. The presentation of findings starts with teachers’ view on students’ lives and on the assessment of the adequacy of their abilities and aspirations. It continues with teachers’ opinions of parental involvement and their acceptance of cooperation with other educational actors out of school.