Since 2022, all teachers in Sweden must use a norm aware approach. Regardless of whether the educationtakes place at school or at a workplace, it must develop the students' abilities to critically examine how norms,values and structures can limit the power of women and men in society (Skolverket, 2022). Developing norm-criticality is particularly important for vocational education, since workplace cultures shaped over time aremore difficult to change (Hedlin & Åberg, 2013; Hedlin, 2014). Norms become problematic when they excludecertain students and reinforce prejudices or discrimination (Kärnebro, 2020). Teachers often lack awareness ofnorms (Skolinspektionen, 2018) and may support problematic patterns (Kontio & Evaldsson, 2015). Teachersmust counteract norms and patterns that limit their students’ learning, choices, and development (Skolverket,2022). VET teachers’ norm awareness is in this sense crucial for their students’ Bildung. We see that there is aneed for a validated tool for measuring teachers’ norm awareness, both in VET learning contexts and otherschool contexts. The NORM-survey will also give insights into how this concept relates to issues of importancein schools today, e.g., equity, justice, and democracy, as well as teachers’ relational competence (Aspelin2018).The NORM-survey will be distributed to VET teachers at several educational institutions in Sweden and Finlandduring 2023. The survey consists of 59 variables in total written in Swedish. It is based on the operationalisationof norm awareness in six themes (Blomberg, 2020), structured in accordance with levels of knowledge: 1)Values and readiness to act, 2) Declarative knowledge of norm awareness, 3) Procedural knowledge about howto act in accordance with norm awareness, 4) Conditional knowledge of norm aware strategies for dealing withsituational needs, 5) Collegial awareness and openness, and 6) Collegial support to address norm-based issues.The construct validity of survey will be tested using two types of factor analysis: exploratory and confirmatory(Taherdoost, 2016) to see if and how predefined themes can be found and if these are consistent acrosseducational contexts. The first, exploratory factor analysis, will explore all variance in the data set. The second,confirmatory factor analysis, will show whether the hypothesized factor structure of the levels of knowledge issupported by actual data (de Vet, Adèr, Terwee & Pouwer, 2005). Both discriminant and convergent validitywill be tested (Taherdoost, 2016).

References

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