Governance Mechanisms and Teacher Authority
A Six-Country Policy Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7577/njcie.6659Nøgleord:
comparative education, teacher autority, governance mchanisms, school safety, policy analysisResumé
This study investigates how governance structures shape teacher authority and institutional protection across six education systems: Finland, Sweden, England, the Netherlands, France, and Turkey. Through comparative policy analysis of national legislation, disciplinary regulations, and school safety frameworks, the research identifies three governance mechanisms. In Finland and Sweden, normative mechanisms rooted in professional trust and decentralized governance enable classroom-level teacher discretion. In England and the Netherlands, regulative mechanisms couple explicit legal authority with inspection regimes and safeguarding legislation, creating accountability pressure for implementation. In France and Turkey, cultural-cognitive mechanisms channel disciplinary authority through hierarchical administrative procedures and institutional bodies rather than granting direct teacher discretion. A Teacher Protection Policy Index (TPPI) synthesizes six policy dimensions—safety legislation, disciplinary authority, physical intervention provisions, reporting obligations, accountability mechanisms, and professional status—into a comparative heuristic. Scores reveal that regulatory systems (England, Netherlands: 11) and trust-based systems (Finland, Sweden: 10) achieve comparable protection through different institutional pathways: regulatory density versus normative density. Administrative systems (France, Turkey: 6) score lower, reflecting institutional distance between legal provisions and teachers' direct access to protection. The findings demonstrate that teacher authority is institutionally embedded within governance structures rather than determined by isolated disciplinary legislation. The TPPI functions as a diagnostic tool for policy borrowing, revealing that legal provisions cannot be transplanted across governance contexts without attention to the institutional mechanisms that make them effective.
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