In different discourses the importance of teacher educations for education and society are frequently stated but also connected to hopes and fears of various kinds (see e.g. Barber & Mourshed, 2007; Clandinin,  & Husu, 2017; Lagemann, 2000; Popkewitz, 2017). We have noted that teacher educations – in their differences – on one side are described as highly problematic and on the other side as solutions to various problems in education and in society (Bacchi  2007; Cochran-Smith & Zeichner 2009), which is of interest when analyzing the organization of this research (for an overarching analysis of the system of higher education and research in this respect, see Whitley, 2000).

In this paper we have the ambition to present an overview of teacher education research based on systematic reviews. The purpose is more precisely to identify and discuss different positions in research with a focus on teacher education as systems of different organizations, stakeholders and other agents. Thus, our ambition is neither to present an all-inclusive review of this research, nor to evaluate it.

Empirically, this focus in the review is based on frequent statements – globally and in different national contexts – considering the importance to understand teacher educations as systems based on a number of actors and stakeholder that interact in the making of teaching professionals (see for instance Lindblad & Samuelsson, 2020; OECD, 2016, and different international and national education policy documents). And intellectually, we consider it as vital to have an understanding of how teacher educations are working as assemblages of different parts – interacting and influenced by different contexts (DeLanda, 2019; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Given this theoretical approach we regard research knowledge – in its differences – as part of a teacher education assemblage produced in certain contexts, and by that of importance to analyse as such and in its actual working in the making of teacher education in their specific contexts in space and time. Such analyses are founded in studies of science-society agora (Nowotny et al, 2003) with a special interest in educational research and policy discourses (Lindblad, Pettersson & Popkewitz, 2018) and systems of reason at work in the making of teacher education.

Based on this interest in teacher education as systems the following research questions are put forwards:

a.         What research on teacher education is identified by a systematic review?

b.         How is this research located over time and space?

c.         Which discursive positions are of importance in this research?

d.         What are important gaps in research on teacher education?

Given answers on these questions we are discussing the state of research on teacher education systems, mostly considering how this knowledge is organized and implications of that for teacher education assemblages. We are also debating limits and possibilities in the way we are researching knowledge and knowledge organization in describing and analyzing teacher education. It is our hope that this research will be a significant contribution to knowledge on teacher education.

In order to answer the research questions we are carrying out a systematic research review. It is using Web of Science as the primary search engine, in combination with Google Scholar. The review is based on a combination of quantitative and conceptual analyses (Gough et al, 2012; Lindblad, Pettersson & Popkewitz, 2015) where we step by step focus our analyses in relation to our interest in teacher education as an assemblage. The analyses were carried out 2020 to early 2021. Short on the systematic review processing: “Teacher Education” as a search term gave more than 21 000 hits of predominantly Anglo-Saxon research articles. This set of publications was further analyzed based on keywords such as system, assemblage, and organizations giving a much smaller set of handbooks, articles and research reviews. We did a further selection of publications by means of keywords and research communication patterns in these ongoing analyses. Our review is still in progress and we are planning to complement findings and conclusions by further analyses.

First, we identified a large number of publications identified by the search engine we used in the review. Furthermore, in geo-political terms these publications were to a large extent based on analyses carried out in Anglo-Saxon contexts, a pattern that was – according to our preliminary analyses – further emphasized when looking at citations of the identified publications. In quantitative terms the current field of research seems to refer to a specific geo-political position, as could be expected from a southern theory point of view (Connell, 2017) Second, a high number of different problems and interests are present in the current research, indicating not only a fragmented academic field which could be expected by studies on systems of higher education and research (ex. Whitley, 2000) and by research on teacher education problems (Smeplass, 2016, Bacchi, 2012) but also by the fact that the teacher education assemblage is constructed by heterogeneous and contextualized parts. Third, there is more of research in teacher education dealing with teacher educators problems, reflections and prescriptions for teacher education and teachers’ work or how to organize it, and less of research on teacher education – curriculum theorizing, historicizing institutions, or problematizing problems, or attention to “the black box” of education; the internal theories and practices that order and classify the pedagogical practices and selection of curriculum that enter into teacher education and schooling (Kliebard, 1986; Popkewitz, Diaz,Kirchgasler, 2017). These findings point to the importance of capture the making of teacher education as an assemblage of interacting and heterogeneous parts that are interacting ((including counteracting) in the making of teaching professionals. Given this, it is vital for research to capture teacher education systems in its complexity and not to focus on isolated de-contextualized cause-effect relations (Cochran-Smith et al 2015 a,b; König & Mulder, 2014; Darling-Hammond, 2017).

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