What is changing? Negotiating the scope and nature of the reformation of the Danish Public School

In this paper we depart from narrative organizational studies pointing to the introduction of change or innovation as important times for evoking, negotiating and enacting different notions and (re)constructions of the past, present and future and of “who we are” and “what we do” as organizations, professions, groups and individuals (e.g. Linde, 2001; Humphreys & Brown, 2002; Søderberg 2006; Pedersen & Johansen, 2012; Humle & Frandsen, 2016). Our case is the current processes of reforming the Danish Public Schools and we turn our attention towards micro level interactions and storytelling practices negotiating the scope and nature of the changes. In spring 2013 teachers all over Denmark were collectively locked out from their work as a culmination of a month long conflict between the teachers' union and the association of municipalities representing the employers. The dispute was primarily about “time”- about how working time was measured, about who (managers or teachers) should decide how teachers should spend their working time, and about whether or not teachers were productive enough during their working time (Bjerg and Vaaben 2015b, n.d.).