Swedish Teacher Education Research Articles

Japanese and Swedish Mathematics Teacher Educators’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge – An Institutional Perspective

The aim of this paper is to investigate which kind of conditions and constraints affect Japanese and Swedish teacher educators’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). We analyse the praxeologies of the lessons in which the educators teach area determination. Our study shows that the Japanese teacher educators’ PCK are more explicitly shared by the community of the teacher educators compared to the Swedish counterpart. Also, the detailed Japanese curriculum and the structured problem solving approach promote to illustrate how to construct rich mathematical and didactical organisations for prospective teachers.

The ideal teacher: orientations of teacher education in Sweden and Finland after the Second World War

ABSTRACTThere are many similarities between the Nordic countries of Sweden and Finland, but they have made different decisions regarding their teacher-education policies. This article focuses on how the objectives of teacher education, particularly the vision of the ideal teacher, have changed in Sweden and Finland in the period after the Second World War. In Finland, the period since the 1960s can be described as a gradual scientification of teacher education. The image of the ideal teacher has transformed according to a research-based agenda, where teachers are expected to conduct minor-scale research in the classroom. In Sweden since the 1980s, on the other hand, teacher education has oscillated between progressivist and academic orientations, following shifts in government between the Social Democratic Party and the centre-right. Since the turn of the millennium, however, a consensus in favour of a strengthened research base of teacher education has also emerged in Sweden.

Konsumtionsuppsatser som ny bedömningspraktik för lärarutbildare

Vid den senaste lärarutbildningsreformen beslutades att på de flesta lärarutbildningsprogrammen ska lärarstudenter skriva självständiga arbeten omfattande totalt 30 högskolepoäng. Vid många lärosäten har detta lett till en uppdelning i två olika självständiga arbeten: en konsumtions- och en produktionsuppsats. Denna studie undersöker om konsumtionsuppsatser – en typ av kunskapsöversikter – innebär en ny bedömningspraktik för lärarutbildare som examinatorer. Examinatorer vid lärosäten med lärarutbildning har blivit intervjuade och fått besvara en enkät rörande dessa bedömningskriterier. Resultaten indikerar att en majoritet av examinatorerna inte ser stora skillnader mellan att bedöma en konsumtionsuppsats och en mer traditionell produktionsuppsats där egen empiri i form av till exempel intervjuer samlas in och analyseras. Vid intervjuerna framkom dock några skillnader mellan de två uppsatstyperna. Dessa hänger huvudsakligen ihop med antingen hur strukturen byggs upp, vad som är metod eller hur forskningsförankringen är framskriven. Slutsatsen blir att den nya form av uppsatser som konsumtionsuppsatser innebär inte tycks ha renderat i någon stor förändring av bedömningspraktiken hos examinatorerna.

Att vetenskapligt förankra ett yrkeslärarprogram: Erfarenheter från ett utvecklingsprojekt

Demands on the scientific foundation of Swedish Vocational Teacher Education has led to a development project on academic competence at Dalarna University in 2018. The project contained two sub-projects; the construction of a matrix, to display the progression of students’ academic competence; and the implementation of a series of seminars on VET research. This article presents the point of departure and the methods used, together with the results of mappings and analysis of four different aspects of academic competence. This inventory of features of academic competence in teacher education, evokes a wide range of questions on the meaning and consequence of scientific foundation, the research-practice relationship and concrete questions concerning course content.

Views of poetry as a competence expressed by students in teacher education

Since 2011 the Swedish curriculum has been oriented towards creating knowledge at school that is measurable and evidence-based. At the same time, there is still an overarching aim for education at school to stress equality by, among other things, letting all students use languages of their own to express themselves. This conflict, between knowledge that is measurable and goals aiming at maintaining democracy, also characterizes teacher education in Sweden. Hence, there are reasons to discuss the role of aesthetics at school by focusing on students’ views of the role of poetry in education. We present qualitative data consisting of interviews with eight student teachers being educated to work in primary school. In this way, a variety of conceptions of poetry, and the role of poetry at school, are captured and analyzed, which in turn, makes it possible to discuss what counts as a competence at school. The results show that lack of knowledge about aesthetic expressions limits the student teachers’ agency in several ways. They express a lack of self-confidence and they are afraid of being trapped by the school system in spite of their aspirations to work independently with poetry and other aesthetic expressions

Representation and safe space: conflicting discourses in RE teacher education supervision

ABSTRACTThis article explores supervision conferences in RE teacher education in Sweden. Two discourses that are often articulated in supervision conferences are ‘representation’ and ‘safe space’. These are investigated and presented as necessary components for becoming a competent teacher of upper secondary school RE in Sweden. The empirical material consists of observations of six RE supervision trialogues and interviews with the participants – student teachers, upper secondary school supervisors and university-based teacher educators. Based on the analysis of the empirical material, representation and safe space emerge as essential ‘RE teacher knowledge’. Furthermore, the antagonism between representation and safe space that emerges in the supervision trialogues is explored and highlighted. By way of conclusion, the presented discursive struggle is reflected on as a battle over power within the supervision triad.

Swedish Final Year Early Childhood Preservice Teachers' Attitudes, Concerns and Intentions towards Inclusion

Abstract This article explores ninety-seven (n=97) Swedish Early Childhood (EC) preservice teachers' attitudes, concerns, and intentions to include children with disabilities in regular classrooms. A six-part self-reporting questionnaire was used to examine participants' attitudes, concerns, efficacy, and intentions toward inclusion. The results showed that although the Swedish EC preservice teachers' in this study expressed 'some' concern about working with children the results indicated a high degree of teacher efficacy. To determine predictors of participants' intentions and use of inclusive practices a series of regression analysis were undertaken. Knowledge of local legislation emerged as significant predictor of participants' intention scores. Teaching efficacy scores were significant predictors for both intention and use of inclusive practices. The results are discussed in the context of the Swedish idea ‘a school for all' with a focus on the Swedish preschool teacher education program.

What is the ‘problem’ that digital competencein Swedish teacher education is meant to solve?

This paper explores how policy makers argue for the importance of digital competence in Swedish teacher education. A policy analysis of key policy documents from the government and from government-affiliated organisations from the time period 2011–2016 is conducted using Carol Bacchi’s ‘what’s the problem represented to be?’ approach. The paper critically examines underlying assumptions and particular viewpoints that underpin how the concept digital competence is formulated in key policy texts.

Teachers’ Understandings of Emerging Conflicts

ABSTRACTScholars in the field of conflict resolution in schools theoretically argued that minor distractions and disturbances are conflicts. In the present study, we refer to them as emerging conflicts. The study has been carried out within the phenomenographic research tradition and used semi-structured interviews. We addressed the professionals – the teachers – who deal with emerging conflicts every day, investigating their different ways of understanding an emerging conflict. The 9 different ways we found make the collective and shared understandings of emerging conflicts visible and form a professional language with which to discuss these kinds of conflicts. These nine could be divided into three groups, the social practice of the classroom, something that stems from outside the classroom, and something that characterises all human interaction. The awareness of the existing understandings could further be discussed in relation to what is actually taught in teacher education in Sweden.

Student participation within teacher education: emphasising democratic values, engagement and learning for a future profession

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to explore student participation in teaching and learning, focusing on third-year students’ experiences in a Swedish teacher education programme. Student participation is here defined as students being active and engaged in the classroom; students impacting on curriculum design; and students’ feeling of belonging to a community. The research reported is based on an interview study and analyses processes, benefits and challenges of, as well as motivations for, student participation. The findings revealed that students have diverse understandings of student participation and that the degree of participation is dependent on students’ and teachers’ engagement, expectations and responsibility. Student teachers also connected student participation to their learning and future profession as teachers. The students mainly discussed intrinsic motivations (beneficial to learning) for student participation, but there were also traces of altruistic motivations (learning citizenship). Extrinsic motivations (university benefits), however, were absent. Voices of resistance to student participation were also present; these students preferred a more teacher-led education and were not used to a high degree of participation. Students’ understandings of student participation challenge teacher–student roles in teacher education specifically, but also in higher education generally. It is important to acknowledge students’ diverse understandings of student participation. Overall, based on students’ experiences, student participation creates engagement and motivation for learning here and now and for the future profession. The study indicates that student participation has an inherent value beyond benefitting measurable outcomes, where democratic values, engagement and learning for the future profession are promoted.

Meaning-making or heterogeneity in the areas of language and identity? The case of translanguaging and nyanlända (newly-arrived) across time and space

ABSTRACTThe study presented here, theoretically framed at the crossroads of sociocultural and decolonial perspectives, draws attention to the sudden proliferation of two specific neologisms in the area of language, education and identity across time and space. It particularly highlights concerns regarding the ways in which these are deployed within scholarship and in schools and teacher education currently in the nation-state of Sweden. The analysis presented in this paper throws critical light on the ways in which the emergence and proliferation of neologisms like translanguaging and nyanlända (newly-arrived) contribute towards (or confounds) issues related to communication and diversity in the educational sector. This is done by juxtaposing the trajectory and deployment of neologisms in relation to social practices across institutional spaces. Such an enterprise is important, given recent calls for flexibility against the backdrop of concerns regarding heterogeneous populations in schools in geopolitical spaces like Sweden. Here expectations regarding both inclusion and learning goals for all students are prioritised agendas. We draw upon data from ethnographical projects at the CCD research group (www.ju.se/ccd) to make our case. This includes naturally occurring interactional data and textual data, for instance, current scholarship, directives from the national bodies in charge of schools and teacher education in Sweden.

Becoming a primary education teacher - pedagogic discourses in the teacher education program’s examination practice

ABSTRACTGlobal reforming driven by neoliberal ideas is today reshaping educational systems. This study explores how a national policy incentive, aimed at changing teacher education in Sweden, is transformed and realized into educational practice and how pedagogic discourses are operating in and through the primary teachers’ examination practice in Sweden. The aim is also to explore which competencies are legitimized and thus form the knowledge base for primary teachers. The study is conducted through a qualitative and quantitative, theoretically based, analysis of all examination tasks (n = 322) in the primary teacher education at a teacher education department located at one of Sweden’s largest universities. The qualitative software package Nvivo was used for the qualitative analysis and the statistical software SPSS was used for the quantitative analysis. The result shows that most examinations involve the examination of methodological/didactical knowledge related to teachers work in the classroom (out of horizontal knowledge structures) and that students lack opportunities to practice and show analytical skills, with vertical knowledge structures, in their examinations.

Why become a teacher? Student teachers’ perceptions of the teaching profession and motives for career choice

The aim of the study is to discursively identify student teachers’ perceptions of the teaching profession early in their education and their motives for this career choice. Students wrote a letter sharing thoughts on why they want to become a teacher, how they regard the teaching profession and if someone inspired them in their career choice. The empirical data consists of 259 student texts from three Swedish teacher education programmes. The study employed a qualitative method denoting different categorizations compared to previous studies, emphasising the idea of multiple motives for career choice and the link to student teachers’ evolving pedagogical identity. Major differences can be distinguished among the programmes, emphasising different main motives and shifting incipient pedagogic identities. The results indicate the value of organising teacher education programmes drawing on multiple motives, which is expected to contribute positively to completion of teacher education and teacher retention in future profession.

“Separating the Wheat from the Chaff” – Failures in the Practice based Parts of Swedish Teacher Education

The present case study is part of a larger project where the overall ambition is to understand how an organization, through its way of arguing for the failures in student teaching, at the same time constitutes what is accepted as sufficient teacher quality. The article examines the students short comings from the supervisors and teacher educators perspectives. The analysis shows that the indicators of failure include passivity and rigidity, lack of posture, social timing and self-awareness. The indicators can be categorized into two groups of failures, those that are of too light weight and those carrying some weight. Critical for the categorization was the time for the discovery of the short comings as well as the assessors' experiences of hope for development. The result is then set in relation to the on-going discussion in Sweden about the possibility of introducing an aptitude test before admission to teacher education. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.17.1.6

Mathematics and Puppet Play as a Method in the Preschool Teacher Education

This study explores students’ perceptions and understanding of mathematics as a subject and using aesthetic expressions in their own mathematics teaching in preschool, more specifically, with puppet play as a method. In all teacher education in Sweden, mathematics in preschool is taught in different ways, which means that the teaching about the aesthetic possibilities as a part of the teaching of mathematics in preschool varies. The main purpose of the study has been to investigate students’ mathematical development in preschool practice based on the changes made in the educational and methodological implications during teacher education. The data collection consists of texts from 73 students. The qualitative content analysis focuses on the students’ descriptions of understanding and meaning of mathematics and aesthetics in their own teaching with the children. The results show that the methodological implications in the course’s organization and structure enabled a variation of qualitative changes in the students perceptions and beliefs about mathematics and aesthetics, but also that the conceptual languages of mathematics could be varied and concretized by new methodological strategies.

Democracy and emancipation in teacher education: A summative content analysis of teacher educators’ democratic assignment expressed in policies for Teacher Education in Sweden and Ireland between 2000-2010

How questions concerning democracy and emancipation thread through teacher education is currently under theorized and there is a paucity of cross-national studies examining the problem. In this study, we draw from a number of theoretical frameworks for their discursive positioning of democracy and emancipation in teacher education and what we are calling teacher educators’ democratic assignment. The framework allowed us to identify key words which we then used for a limited content analysis of policy documents in two European countries, Sweden and the Republic of Ireland, in two separate timelines 2000/2002 and 2010/2012. Our findings indicate that despite significant cultural and contextual differences between the two education systems, key words linked to democracy and emancipation have significantly decreased in policy documentation in both countries in this timeline. This prompts our hypothesis that a paradigm shift has occurred in the discursive positioning of teacher educators’ democratic assignment. The findings suggest the need for a deeper discourse analysis of the four documents as the next phase in the research design. The findings while tentative have implications, well beyond two nation states, for contemporary issues in teacher education and society that require collective consciousness and action.

Research-based teacher education? Exploring the meaning potentials of Swedish teacher education

In this article, we explore the meaning potentials of teacher education in terms of the significance of a research-based approach and the different pedagogic identities that such an approach implies. The study’s aim is to examine the important factors for education to be considered research-based and to identify and analyse the research base of teacher education in Sweden. The results from the analysis of a large number of course documents and from a survey administered to teachers and students in four teacher education programmes indicate that the emerging potential meaning is that teacher education is generally a strongly framed professional education with a relatively weak and adapted research base. The analysis of the classification and framing of disciplinary content and pedagogy in the Swedish teacher education curriculum points at different pedagogic identities emerging from the different meaning potentials that are made available to the students. We argue that a thorough understanding of research-based teacher education needs to be grounded in both course content and its research base as well as other possible pedagogical aspects of research-based education; the education as a whole must be included in the concept of research-based education.

Co-creating curriculum in higher education: promoting democratic values and a multidimensional view on learning

This paper discusses a case study in teacher education in Sweden, focusing on creating spaces for student engagement through co-creating curriculum. It highlights democratic values and a multidimensional learning view as underpinning such endeavors. The main findings are that co-creating curriculum is an ambiguous process entailing unpredictable, thought-provoking, motivational, collaborative, and transformative aspects. The conclusion points to the importance of challenging traditional roles of students and teachers as well as organizational structures and regulations, and argues that academic developers have a vital role in supporting teachers in creating spaces for larger-scale student engagement initiatives.

Exploring potentialities for cosmopolitan learning in Swedish teacher education

This study aimed to explore student teachers’ experiences of learning in teacher education, with a focus on how students describe their ways of thinking about their own learning in relation to their future professional role as teachers and how these descriptions relate to emerging cosmopolitan visions for student learning in teacher education. Data were collected through qualitative interviews with a small sample of student teachers at two Swedish universities. Thirty student teachers writing their final exam papers were invited to participate in an interview. Of these, 14 volunteered for audio-recorded, individual interviews exploring the students’ experiences of studying and learning. The analysis drew on a conceptual framework developed in research on students’ approaches to studying and learning and focused on how students described their experiences of learning in the course of studying, with an emphasis on the ways in which students reflected on their own emergent understandings of knowledge that they believe to be central to the process of becoming a professional teacher. These reflective accounts were subsequently analysed with a focus on the ways in which they connect to current philosophical ideas of cosmopolitan learning in teacher education. While the student teachers did not explicitly link their own understandings of what is involved in becoming a teacher to any cosmopolitan views raised in their teacher education, their ways of thinking about their own emergent professional understanding of teaching revealed a certain reflexive potential that can be linked to ideas of cosmopolitan learning in teacher education. This study contributes to educational research by linking an empirically derived conceptualisation of student learning in higher education to broader philosophical visions of higher education specifically addressing the challenges that teacher education faces in the light of the globalisation of society as a whole.

Educating competitive teachers for a competitive nation?

The aim of this article is to discuss recent Swedish teacher education investments and reforms, and the work of teachers in response to globalisation within the context of modern social imaginaries. I briefly outline Charles Taylor’s concept of modern social imaginaries, and I examine the character of recent Swedish teacher education, teacher education reform and the work expected of teachers. I conclude that economic imaginaries are given primacy: aims and reforms are primarily linked to economic imaginaries of the competitive nation; economic norms are given primacy in the governance of schools and education; globalised and economic standards of quality and success are increasing in importance; and the concern about how to make teacher education an attractive career investment for groups the state finds important to attract to teaching is held to be vital for the quality in outcomes of education. I critically discuss the underlying globalist imaginary I think underpins Swedish education reform in the global era, and transform the teacher into a scientifically grounded economic agent for market integration and the competitive edge of the Swedish nation. I address the question of whether the modern social imaginary of democracy and citizenship should be restored and cosmopolitised in education and teacher education and in relation to the expected work of teachers rather than be reduced to or transformed into economic worldviews and agency in the era of globalisation.