Institutional Roles of Teachers in the Region: between Conformism and Nonconformism

Abstract

The research objective was to determine the institutional roles chosen by the teachers in the Vologda Oblast, as well as the social and professional phenomena that shape these roles. The study featured the degree of trust that teachers put on local institutions and their participation in the implementation of institutional rules. The agents were clustered according to their institutional roles based on a sociological online survey of the local teacher community. The obtained classification showed that teachers are more likely to choose the role of opportunistic agents that tend to support new institutions but stick to traditions in their professional activities. The formation of such institutional roles as nonconformists, conformists, and opportunists depends largely on the social and professional well-being of the agents, which, in the case of nonconformism, acquires conflict features. The opportunism displayed by the teaching community can be associated with an attempt to avoid conflicts with colleagues and management. Maximum protection from deviant behavior can improve the educational environment if introduced in the process of institutional planning.