There is concern on the European level about the diminishing attractiveness of teaching as a profession, as well as about the shortage of qualified staff in schools and the increasing turnover of teachers in segregated education markets. However, analyses of both teacher segregation, i.e., the regionally uneven distribution of qualified staff in affluent, mixed and disadvantaged schools, and the stratification of the teaching profession, i.e., teachers with different social-class backgrounds, have attracted relatively little attention. OpeSegr-project is developing a comprehensive research approach to scrutinising conceptual and empirical debates on stratification and the segregation of teachers. It brings a social scientific approach, combining sociology of education and human geography, to a research field typically dominated by psychology and economics. On the empirical level OpeSegr explores how, why and with what societal consequences stratification and segregation among teachers emerge in Finland. How does this segregation reproduce, reinforce or reduce existing inequalities between social groups. A multilevel and multi-methodological strategy combining quantitative (surveys, register data, geographical data) and qualitative methods (interviews) advances this approach. The aim is to arrive at an in-depth understanding of educational inequalities and their construction.

2024