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This dissertation examines the emergence of elementary school teachers as a collective actor in Sweden between 1838 and 1879, prior to the establishment of national trade unions. While previous research has often interpreted early teacher organization as a preliminary stage in the professionalization process, this study challenges such teleological views by situating teachers’ collective action within the wider transformations of nineteenth-century civil society, church influence, and educational reform.

The theoretical framework draws on both professionalization theory and social movement theory, using the former to analyze how teachers sought status and jurisdiction, while the latter broadens the perspective to encompass organizational diversity, protest dynamics, and the framing of ideas and collective identities. These perspectives inform the study’s central analytical concepts: conditions, mobilization, resources, interaction patterns, framing, and collective identity. The empirical analysis employs both qualitative and quantitative methods, including teachers’ journals, association records, and documentation from national and Nordic teachers’ meetings. Qualitative approaches are used to explore teachers’ conditions, goals, collective identities, and interactions, whereas quantitative methods are used to trace numerical growth as well as spatial and network patterns. The empirical chapters are organized into two chronological parts: Part II (1838–1863) and Part III (1864–1879).

The findings show that teachers’ early collective action was shaped by a contingent interplay of church structures, civil society practices, revivalist Christianity, ideas of Bildung, nationhood and citizenship, and the evolving institutional framework of the elementary school. Over time, their collective action became increasingly institutionalized, shifting from multifunctional grassroots arenas toward more professionalized structures influenced by school administrators. These insights contribute to a historically grounded understanding of teachers’ collective agency, demonstrating its evolution in response to changing institutional, cultural and ideological contexts, and offering a foundation for further research into historical and contemporary dynamics of teachers’ collective agency.