Examination is a crucial thing. In the Swedish teacher education the final examination thesis is written and defended by the student teacher in the traditional academical way, which gives him or her the formal right to apply for studies at a doctoral program. That possibility is a new thing and met with increasing interest from students. But the examination is also controversial. Some say that theses by student teachers are passed in spite of low quality. Others claim that professional criteria are not enough taken care of in choosing subjects for thesis writing or in the treatment of teaching and schools as praxis in the investigations building up the thesis. The latter critique is not only directed to the final examination, but to most intermediate examination tasks that students are working with during their studies in the program. Four authors here discuss what the examination paper mean to students themselves, what room there is for reflexion on teacher repertoires in different examination tasks, if experential learning is possible in such examination work, and how action research can be used to make praxis a more relevant issue for examinations. Peter Eimsheimer’s paper will scrutinise the possibilities for reflexion in the work with praxis related thesis work and a starting point will be Kolb’s model for experiential learning. In the process of a thesis close to praxis the student will have better opportunities to develop reflective thought as “theories” not are the only material for the work with the material. Possibilities and modalities will be shown. Monica Hansen Orwehag’s. study is based on a questionnaire among 148 students in the region of University West, Sweden. She explores teacher students’ understanding of the significance of the degree project in terms of “usefulness”. Students are asked if the degree project seems to be useful in relation to their prospective work as teachers. Students seem to change an inititial scepticism into an insight into the productive possibilies of writing the thesis. Elisabeth Hesslefors – Arktoft (together with her co-writer Annika Lindskog) reports from two action research projects in teacher education in the Gothenburg region. These projects aimed at changing the focus of students´ course work in order to promote professional practice knowledge. The authors have interviewed 15 newly graduated teachers about their views of the degree project. One conclusion is that “academic” knowledge is predominant. From an action research approach, the authors try to outline criteria for assessing students´ achievements. They analyse certain aspects that might be of relevance for the field of professional practice such as “empowerment”, “inquiry culture” and “reflection”. Rolf Lander discusses reflection habits within teacher education and how they can be analyzed by tools from neoaristotelian and other concepts. An analysis of 85 papers and essays produced by students in eight courses of the teacher education program at Gothenburg University is presented. It focusses on what teacher students take interest in when observing teachers’ work, and by what means they try to describe and analyse it. Categories of teacher deads and teacher orchestration are used. Student stories about teachers’ work are rather often too episodical to allow teacher repertoires and design in instruction to be the objects of reflection. Cases are very seldom contextualized, and the school organization is most often ignored in stories.

Document analysis, case studies.

The studies presented are of an analytical and critical character. Student teacher may find there examination theses stimulating, but indications in the cases studied point to that they get an academic training which is not very integrated with what they do and see as practice and praxis. One of the papers claims that, according to experiences, an action research approach will benefit student teachers understanding and grasping of school practice during practicum.