Maintaining, reconstructing and creating tradition in education

Against the background of a society living after the 'end of tradition', th is mostly theoretical paper develops a conceptualisation of the nature of t radition and discusses the central role it still plays in the construction of teachers' professional and schools' institutional identities. In doing s o, the paper speculates on the degree to which currently there is taking pl ace in education a reinvention of established and very familiar pedagogic a nd school traditions alongside the creation and emergence of new ones. It a lso suggests that reflections along these lines may provide a theoretically innovative way of bridging the gap between micro-institutional and macro-s ocial analyses of teachers' work.