This paper presentation explores how national and international education policy is transformed into educational practice and what contextual and material conditions influence implementation and practice in teacher education (Sjöberg, 2019a).

The reformation of the teacher education that in 2011 resulted in new Swedish TE programmes, was very different from discourses in previous teacher education reforms and was rationalised by referring to globally recognised, neoliberal discourses on education, for example through ‘think tanks’ as well as international organizations such as the OECD, EC and the management company McKinsey & Co (OECD, 2005, 2015; McKinsey & Co, 2007; European Commission, 2015), but it was also justified with reference to traditional Swedish teaching methods dating back to the 1950s. The new TE programmes are thus based upon both neoliberal and neoconservative rationalities.

Previous research on pedagogical discourses in the new Primary Teacher Education programme (PTE) has shown how the subject didactics focus dominates assessment of student teachers’ knowledge and skills, that there are sub cultures within the programmes due to its assessment practices (Player Koro & Sjöberg, 2018), and that the current curriculum has a substantial influence on teacher education students’ knowledge base (Sjöberg, 2018a). Finally, it is shown that there are significant differences between the various specialisations and subjects in terms of pedagogical discourses on assessment practice (Sjöberg, 2018b, 2019b, 2020). The present paper is a continuation of a research project dealing with the new PTE programme and examine the programme’s pedagogic discourses in terms of the way that the programme is structured and the way its organisation affects the programme’s content and the future teachers’ knowledge base as well as their professional identity.

This study is based out of the following research questions:

• How is the PTE programme organised, based upon principles of integration and insulation respectively (weak or strong classification), in terms of courses and in assessments in the respective courses?
• What factors and rationalities affect and control the organisation of the programme and its praxis?

This study is mainly grounded in Ball’s and Bernstein’s sociological theories of education policy and practice. It is also based on Ball’s way of defining policy as both text and discourse (Ball, 2006). This approach to policy implies that university lecturers, in the case teacher educators, and others involved in policy practices participate in creating policy and can therefore be seen as both policy actors and policy subjects. In addition to Ball’s theoretical toolbox, Bernstein’s theories and ideas are used to analyse the way educational policy are transformed into pedagogic practice (the pedagogic device) through pedagogic discourse (Bernstein, 1996).

The study was conducted at one of the larger teacher education institutions in Sweden. The empirical material consists of both text and interview data. The text data contains the policy texts that govern what students should know upon finishing the courses and programme – that is to say, course plans, study guides, and assessment tasks. 44 courses and 283 assessment tasks are included in the study. The collection of the policy texts was done during the autumn of 2014 and spring of 2015, that is, during the academic year that the students who had begun the new PTE programme in 2011 were doing their last year on the programme and for which all course documents were accessible. During the spring of 2018, interviews were also conducted with seven teacher educators from the same university from which the textual data are derived. The analyses of both text and interview data were carried out with the help of the qualitative data analysis software NVivo. A deductive approach was used to analyse the textual data, primarily through Bernstein’s (1996) theoretical concept of classification. Each course and each assessment task was examined to see whether they are formulated based on principles of strong or weak classification, that is, whether they contain different components that are not clearly connected with one another, or if the course and/or assessment task are based on a principle of integration. The analyses of the interviews were also done using NVivo, but in this case the approach was based on inductive reasoning.

The results show that most of the assessment tasks within the courses have a weak or average classification, which means that they are constructed based on the holistic integrated principle of content coherence. Some subjects, however, demonstrate a stronger classification principle within the courses. However, at course level, the results show that about one third of the courses are organized from a strong classification perspective, i.e. that the content is divided into several clearly defined areas. The interviews with the teacher educators reinforce the image of how teacher education is constructed within and between assignment tasks and courses. They reveal an organisation that is influenced by 1) discourses within the subject and how that subject is constructed in schools and in curricula, but mainly they say that the content of the programme is significantly influenced by factors such as 2) organisation and 3) economic rationalities. Together these factors create the possibility of a strong classification in the organisation and content of the programme (the pedagogic discourse). Through both the text and interview data emerges the impression of a PTE programme with content defined by its organisation – an organisation that is based upon the suggestions and rationalities made in the national policy text (SOU 2008:109): that its basic structure should be strongly classified. Another rationality concerns that the teacher education should be the entire university’s concern. The result of these basic rationalities is that the PTE programme and its content, both in policy and practice, have become both atomised and commodified and grounded in a neoliberal market rationality where primary teachers are produced within an ‘industrialisation of instruction’.

Ball, S.J. (2006). Education policy and social class: The selected works of Stephen Ball. New York: Routledge. Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. London: Taylor and Francis. European Commission. (2015). Shaping career-long perspectives on teaching: A guide on policies to improve initial teacher education. ET 2020. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/epale/sv/node/16592 McKinsey & Company. (2007). How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top. Stockholm: McKinsey & Company Inc. OECD. (2005). Teachers’ matters. Attracting, developing, and retaining effective teachers. Paris: OECD Publishing. OECD. (2015). Improving schools in Sweden: An OECD-perspective. Paris: OECD. Player Koro, C & Sjöberg, L. (2018). Becoming a Primary Education Teacher – Pedagogic Discourses in the Teacher Education Programme’s Examination Practice. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 4(2), 78-91. Sjöberg, L. (2018a). The Swedish primary teacher education programme – at the crossroads between two education programme traditions. Education Inquiry. DOI: 10.1080/20004508.2018.1492845 Sjöberg, L. (2018b). The shaping of pre-service teachers’ professional knowledge base through assessments. European Journal of Teacher Education, 41(5), 604-619, DOI:10.1080/02619768.2018.1529751 Sjöberg, L. (2019a). Organising the ‘industrialisation of instruction’: Pedagogic discourses in the Swedish Primary Teacher Education Programme. Journal of Praxis in Higher Education, 1(1), 37-59. Sjöberg, L. (2019b). Pedagogic Discourses in the Swedish Primary Teacher Education Programme – from a subject perspective. Paper presented at ECER Hamburg, September 3-6, 2019. Sjöberg, L. (2020). Pedagogic Discourses in the Swedish Primary Teacher Education Programme From a Subject Perspective. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. DOI:10.1080/00313831.2020.1739127 SOU 2008:109. En hållbar lärarutbildning. Betänkande av Utredningen om en ny lärarutbildning (HUT 07). Stockholm: Fritzes.