Background and research proposal

The teaching profession in Sweden, as well as in the rest of Europe, is a normative profession. It is therefore important that future teachers in their professional training develop a readiness to convey core values leading to inclusive education. This paper takes, as a point of departure, teacher educators’ task to help student teachers develop competencies related to social and ethical responsibility necessary in the pastoral care and moral education tasks, that teachers are obliged to perform.

Swedish teachers are tasked to work with or from core values in a general national curricula (Curricula 2011) for Swedish compulsory school, as well as instill these values in their pupils. These values are referred to as the school “value base” and includes values such as:

The inviolability of human life, individual freedom and integrity, the equal value of all people, equality between women and men, and solidarity with the weak and vulnerable. (Curriculum for the compulsory school, preschool class and the recreation centre, 2011, p 9)

How student teachers are or should be prepared to handle and incorporate dimensions of core values in their daily work as teachers, is a crucial question for teacher training as well as for our research. All the researchers collaborating in this study are also teacher educators concerned with dimensions of core values and how and/or whether student teachers are prepared for social and ethical responsibility central in the teacher profession.  

This research is therefore based on the evaluative work in one of the Universities in Sweden where the authors of this paper were invited as experts to analyze foundations of education courses in various teacher education programs. The researchers were first and foremost to ascertain whether the core values are identifiable in the general aims of the courses in all teacher programs. Secondly, these researchers looked at the content of the courses within each program to not only identify core values in the courses but to also understand how they are taught and examined. Thirdly the researchers were mandated with the task of making recommendation on how to harmonize core values in all the courses in different teacher-education-programs.

To accomplish the task at hand the researchers formulated the following research questions.

Research Questions

1. In what ways do dimensions of core values emerge and are handled in four different teacher education programs (preschool teacher education, elementary teacher education, secondary school education and vocational teacher education)?
2. How can these values be systematically organized and theoretically developed, in order to contribute in a qualitative progression for student teachers to acquire core-value related knowledge, competences and abilities?

Theoretical Approach and perspectives

Researchers in this study come from a range of theoretical backgrounds hence why, value dimensions or concepts in this study are identified, interpreted and discussed from various approaches and perspectives. This, we recognize as a strength since teacher education programs are in fact build upon various theoretical perspectives. The different disciplines that each of the researches belong to therefore contribute to the following theoretical analytical tools used in this study namely: ethical theory (Benhabib, 2002, Young, 2002, Nussbaum, 2010), political theory (Kymlicka, 1995, Honneth, 1995, Taylor 1994) , and social anthropology (Hylland Eriksen 1995, Kuper 1999). Overall, the study has a discourse analytical approach, where identified value- related concepts in each educational foundational course in the teacher training programs are seen as ideological traces of current discourses, ethical and political ideologies or statements.

Benhabib, Seyla (2002) The Claims of Culture. Equality and Diversity in the Global Era, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press Bromseth, Janne & Darj, Frida (red) Honneth, Axel (1995) The Struggle for Recognition. The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Cambridge, Polity Press Hylland Eriksen, Thomas (1995) Small Places, Large Issues. An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology, Pluto Press Kuper, Adam (1999) Culture. The Anthropologists’ Account, Harvard University Press Kymlicka, Will (1995) Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Oxford, Oxford University Press Nussbaum, Martha C (2010) Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Princeton, N.J.; Oxford, Princeton University Press Taylor, Charles (1994) Multiculturalism, edited and introduced by Amy Gutman, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey Young, Iris M. (2000) Inclusion and Democracy, Oxford, Oxford University Press