Swedish Teacher Education Research Articles

”Same same, but different”. En genealogisk studie av den ’goda’ läraren, den ’goda’ eleven och den ’goda’ skolan i svenska lärarutbildningsreformer 1940-2008

Teacher education in Sweden is facing yet another reform. On December 3rd 2008 the most recent report on the future content and organization of teacher education was presented. This proposal will have substantial consequences for the country’s teacher education institutions. The aim of the current study is to scrutinize, from a discourse theory perspective, the way in which the most recent reform of teacher education – HUT 07 – constructs and positions the ‘good’ teacher, pupil and school in relation to the ‘good’ society, or, put another way, the ideal societal picture which ‘good’ teachers and schools should provide the blueprint for. HUT 07 is studied from a historical, genealogical perspective in an attempt to trace continuity and change in the articulation of policy. The results of the study reveal, amongst other things, a close, discursive connection between the rationality of knowledge and the pupilteacher- subject articulated in HUT 07, and similar articulations made half a century earlier. It is not, however, possible to draw absolute similarities between the two reform periods, due to the fact that they are based on opposing rationalities, deriving from different societal visions and norms.

Training for Coaching or Teaching - a Challenge for Swedish Physical Education Teacher Education

Ever since the establishment of compulsory education in Sweden, competitive sports have had an important influence on the subject of physical education (PE) and Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE). In the latest curriculum of the subject of Physical Education, the name changed from Sports to Sport and Health indicating that health education should have a greater impact on the subject than before. Research and evaluation of the subject shows that activities related to competitive sports are the most frequent content during the lessons. It is also established by research that PE teacher educators share the value and norms of competitive sports, e.g. the necessity of using the body as a tool for success in sport. The teacher education students have a background in competitive sports and are also more interested in an education in sports than in a teacher education. PETE as well as the subject of PE is seen as conservative and reproductive. It is likely to believe that the connection to competitive sports is part of that conservatism. In order to develop PETE and really implement the aims of the curriculum it could be valuable to take the PE trainees' opinions of their future profession as a point of departure, supporting them in the tasks they find difficult and challenging them in the tasks they find easy. 25 PE trainees at a teacher education in Sweden were asked what tasks they find easy and what tasks they find difficult in the PE teacher profession? The answers were interpreted with the help of Bernstein's theory of the concepts of ‘classification' and ‘framing' and ‘educational transmission'. The PE trainees' view of the PE teacher profession can be described as: and distinct with motivated pupils, meaning that if the teacher is just and distinct the pupils will be motivated. They drew a picture of a teacher more like a referee in a sport game than a modern teacher. Can PETE challenge this picture and support the trainees' to build a PE teacher identity that is more in line with a skilled modern teacher. Can such an effort even be valuable for the leaders in competitive sports?

Qualifications of future teachers - ideas and ideals in the liberal discourse about teachers and teacher education in Sweden

Qualifications of future teachers - ideas and ideals in the liberal discourse about teachers and teacher education in Sweden

Writing practices in Swedish teacher education and the inclusion/exclusion of subjectivities

Against the background of an increasing drop‐out rate of students with ethnic minority and working‐class backgrounds, the aim of this paper is to discuss the ways in which writing practices in Swedish teacher education produce power and include/exclude subjectivities. A conventional academic writing practice will be compared to a hybrid writing practice that has been experimented with for several years at the Stockholm Institute of Education. This hybrid writing practice is characterized by two intertwined features: a divergent complicity that combines diverse subjectivities and multiple theories in a multigenre text; and a convergent and reductive shift that makes academic writing accessible. As the paper will show, a hybrid writing practice can strengthen the inclusion of students with ethnic minority and working‐class backgrounds and, in turn, help them finish their programs. It is, however, not bereft of all exclusionary tendencies.

The Process of Finding a Shape: Stabilising New Research Structures in Swedish Teacher Education, 2000–2007

This article explores the development and effects of Swedish post-war policies on the emergence of a research base for teacher education. From 2001 onwards, it is possible to undertake research and postgraduate studies within teacher education in Sweden, which prior to the 2001 reform was not possible. The article draws on a variety of frameworks to explore relationships between various parts of teacher education and also more widely in the university. These include relations of power, discourse and gender based on the theoretical perspectives of Bourdieu, Foucault, Sarfatti Larson and Connell among others. Policy documents relating to teacher education and research into national, regional and local perspectives were used to explore institutional history, structures and research development in teacher education from 1946 to the present time. For a micro-level perspective, an interview study was also carried out between 2000 and 2002 with teacher educators and senior managers who from the late 1940s were responsible for teacher education programmes, in and around Umeå, in northern Sweden. A further complementary interview study was carried out with teacher educators and union representatives between 2005 and 2007. The extended study reveals the emergence of new research areas in teacher education as a multilayered process involving a variety of actors at different levels at Umeå University and elsewhere. The aim of the article is to explore the implications of the new research structures for teacher education in Sweden and also to contribute to current cross-national discourses on the need to establish a research base for teacher education.

Developing Research Structures and Research Capacity: The Swedish National Postgraduate School in Educational Work (NaPA)

This article focuses on the emergence and development of new research structures and research capacity within Swedish teacher education at the beginning of the new millennium. Since 2001, it has been possible in Sweden to undertake postgraduate and research studies within teacher education — something that was previously impossible. As a result of a national reform, a new research discipline, educational work, was established at several Swedish universities. At the same time, the National Postgraduate School in Educational Work (NaPA) was created, the responsibility for which was given to Umeå University, one of the larger Swedish teacher education providers. The aim of the article is to provide a picture of Swedish national teacher education policies in the first years of the millennium that have generated new research structures, which, in turn, have enabled a rapid and nationally distributed expansion of research within the field of Swedish teacher education. It draws on a combination of policy documents, research carried out by the two authors and reflections on their own experiences, as a former Ph.D. student who now has a doctoral qualification in educational work and as the head of NaPA respectively.

Gender, research and change in teacher education: a Swedish dimension

This paper explores the factors that are at present reconstructing teacher education in Sweden and in other European countries, including professionalization, inherited traditions, feminization and globalization. The authors use as a basis for the paper: documentary analysis and nearly 60 qualitative semi‐structured interviews with management and teaching staff from teacher education at one Swedish higher education institution, Umeå University. Five overall themes emerged from the study: gender; teacher education cultures; organizational changes; collaboration; and research. It is argued that women and men in teacher education are positioned differently with regard to change. Women teacher educators identify more with research and accountability imperatives while their male colleagues tend to focus more on classroom knowledge and skills. The paper considers possible explanations and makes tentative extrapolations to other European sites in varying political contexts.

Deconstructing and Transgressing the Theory—Practice dichotomy in early childhood education

This article theorizes and exemplifies reconceptualized teaching practices, both in early childhood education (ECE) and in a couple of programs within the new Swedish Teacher Education (since 2001). These programs are tightly knit to the last 12 years of reconceptualized early childhood education practices in and around Stockholm, built on deconstructive, co‐constructive, and re‐constructive principles, inspired by poststructural and feminist poststructural theories. The aim is foremost to work towards a dissolution and/or transgression of the modernist theory‐practice binary that dominates ECE and teacher education practices, where theory is meant to be applied to practice. Student teachers, as well as pre‐school teachers, use what I have conceptualized as deconstructive talks, as a possibility of making visible the dominant discourses of childhood, identity, learning, play, and gender in the performed and documented teaching practices. In teacher education, students’ narratives are also deconstructed. The aim is to transgress teaching‐as‐usual; i.e. dominant and normative ways of thinking and acting in teaching and learning situations. I will suggest an ethics of ‘resistance’, affirmation and becoming, inspired by Derridean deconstructionist thinking, as a professional attitude and reflexive mode for teachers, teacher students and teacher educators.

Research as power and knowledge: struggles over research in teacher education

This article explores discourses of research in the ‘academisation’ of Swedish teacher education. It takes as its theoretical framework Foucauldian concepts of power and knowledge to analyse the moves to incorporate teacher education in the university. The study draws on a case study of teacher education in Sweden which used documentary and interview analyses to explore institutional history, and structures and shifts in teacher education and research from the 1950s onwards. The study shows how struggles over power and knowledge were constitutive of the development of a research‐oriented teacher education that emerged in a multilayered process involving a variety of actors at different levels. It also shows the tensions in the emergence and construction of a new research discipline. The article should be understood in the context of current international discourses where there is a need for a research base for teacher education.

The fading of a teaching profession? reforms of early childhood teacher education in Sweden

In Sweden, working with young children in institutions outside the home dates back to the late nineteenth century when public child care provision developed in a context of industrialization, urbanization and democratization. Out of the charitable work of unmarried women in these early institutions, pre‐schools and teacher education programmes developed. Over the years, pre‐school teacher education has undergone major changes, the most recent reform being the move into a system within which the previous eight distinctive teacher education programmes, pre‐school teacher education being one of them, have been replaced by one integrated teaching degree. This article addresses some major features of the development of pre‐school teacher education and concludes with a discussion of the most recent reform and its consequences for the early childhood teaching profession.

What Should Govern Teacher Education? The Impact of Unclear Governmental Prescriptions: Is there something more effective?

SUMMARY This article begins with a historical introduction to Swedish teacher education and continues with an investigation concerning a new teacher education that started in 1988 for primary and middle-school teachers, educated to teach grade 1-7 'grundskolla¨rare'. This teacher education is analysed and interpreted through paradigms constructed out of To¨rnebohm's paradigm concept idea. Four paradigms are used: the traditional craft paradigm, the academic, the progressive, critical-social and the personalistc paradigm. The article ends with a short discussion concerning teacher education regulated and controlled by politicians and the problems for teacher educators.

Intercultural education and teacher education in Sweden

The Swedish school is a meeting place for different cultures. Gender and class variations have been recognized for many years. More recently, ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity has also entered Swedish classrooms. This article examines these new educational circumstances in three parts. The first section defines some multicultural terms in Swedish context and briefly describes Sweden as a multicultural society. The second section discusses different pedagogical strategies in Swedish multicultural classrooms where cultural diversity problematizes traditional education. The final section addresses the need for an intercultural perspective in teacher education.

Swedish Teacher Education at the Crossroads

This paper discusses recent moves to modernise teacher education in Sweden. It first considers reasons why teacher education has received increased attention in different countries in recent years, and then goes on to explore what implications this has had for Sweden The approach taken in Sweden to the so-called crisis of schooling in Beck's risk society has been to attempt to raise the status of teacher educators by proposing increased research possibilities and a new discipline utbildningsvetenskap . The paper discusses the likely response of teacher educators to these new conditions and their overall implications for the Swedish state.

Sollte das der große Wurf gewesen sein? Anmerkungen zur Lehrerbildung in Schweden

In October 2000 a political decision to reform teacher education in Sweden has been taken by the national parliament. In its final part, this article describes the main ideas of the new teacher education. The reform is regarded to be the last step within the current changes in Swedish education, started in the beginning of the 1990s. School has been decentralised, and curricula have been changed from content orientation to goal and result orientation. Thus the new teacher education is dedicated to match the new situation in school and adult education. The core structural elements lead to a more common education, more emphasise is given to professionalism. All teacher students will have to study in three different areas: The General Education (60 weeks of studies) ... The Studies in Subject Areas will allow not only to study traditional school subjects but also to study more complex content or problem areas regarded to be important in school. The Studies with Specialisation will enable future teachers to deepen or to broaden their studies according to individual preferences. The whole system will offer a great flexibility in choice ... The author also presents some brief description of teacher education in Sweden since it started in the 1840s. ... The article gives some evidence of the development in educating teachers and describes more detailed how teacher education has been running during the last decade. It becomes obvious that the actual teacher education is differentiated into very many programmes, isolated from each other, leading to a professional competence in a very limited part of the educational system. But several investigations doubt whether this works successfully. Therefore a broad consensus inside the country could be activated to push forward the preparations for a new teacher education. Nevertheless the controversial debate on the new rules for teacher education has started, although they are not yet in force. (DIPF/orig.)

An analysis of internationalisation and intercultural outlook in Swedish teacher education

Abstract Foucault's discourse concept provides an instrument for the critical examination of internationalisation and, respectively, inter‐cultural education in Swedish teacher education. Three different discourses concerning internationalisation are treated in the article: solidarity with developing countries, immigrant knowledge, and integration within the EU. Attention is focused on the analysis of intercultural teaching upon those visions that governed implementation of the concept in teacher education, and on reality as it appears in evaluations of teacher education. The question is whether a dilemma exists for teacher education in realising the goals of intercultural education, or whether these goals merely act as teacher education's false banners? The article concludes with perspectives on the future of the development from immigrant knowledge to intercultural learning.

Theory and Practice ‐‐Two Fundamental Categories in the Philosophy of Teacher Education

Summary *This article was originally submitted to European Journal of Teacher Education, however, it was eventually published in Educational Review, Vol. 45 No. 3, pp. 205‐211. It appears here to reach a wider readership and with the kind permission of Dr Barrie Wade, Executive Editor of Educational Review. Taking the Swedish teacher education as its point of departure, two related problems are discussed in the article. 1) Practice is often understood as completely immersed in itself. Consequently there arises the problem if and how it can get out of this enclosedness and get some perspective on itself. Three ways are proposed of introducing distance into practice and, thereby, of establishing knowledge about practice: self‐reflection, dialogue, and scientific research. 2) Sometimes theory and practice are regarded as absolutely different and incompatible. According to this kind of dualism it is not possible to integrate any kind of theoretical knowledge into teachers professional actions. By showing how ...

Theory and Practice: two fundamental categories in the philosophy of teacher education

Taking Swedish teacher education as its point of departure, two related problems are discussed in the article. (1) Practice is often understood to be completely immersed in itself. Consequently, there arises the problem if and how it can get out of this enclosedness and get some perspective on itself. Three ways of introducing distance into practice are proposed, and, thereby, of establishing knowledge about practice, i.e. self‐reflection, dialogue and scientific research. (2) Sometimes theory and practice are regarded as absolutely different and incompatible. According to this kind of dualism it is not possible to integrate any kind of theoretical knowledge into teachers professional actions. By showing how distance can be eliminated from theory and transformed into practical skill, it is argued that this dualism is not maintainable.

From Teachers of Backward Children to Agents for Educational Change Within Schools

This paper examines special education teacher education in Sweden from 1921 to 1981. In 1962, national one-year special education teacher education was established. Prior to that time, special education teacher education consisted of one term of courses, mainly for what then were called "backward pupils. " The rationale for these changes is discussed, with special attention given to a change in the view of the relationship of special education and the whole school system. Trends and goals since 1981 in the preparation of new special educators also are commented upon.

Knowledge Traditions in the Education of Pre-school Teachers [Sweden

The purpose of this project, which forms part of the NBUC [National Board of Universities and Colleges] program "Research into Higher Education," is to describe and analyse the "pre-school methods" in Swedish pre-school teacher education. We plan to investigate how this subject has been perceived by the teachers of pre-school methods. Pre-school teacher training programs have expanded during the past twenty years as a result of the expansion of pre-school education itself. These programs are also examples of a non-academic education which was made a part of the higher education system in the reform of 1977. The subject now termed "pre-school methods" (and previously known, for example as "infant education") has traditionally been the focal point of these programs.