Being equitable and inclusive education of quality strongly related to the access to high qualified teachers, the risk of teacher shortage entails always a risk to Equity in Education. However, teacher shortage is still a challenge to face in several countries, risking not only equity but even teacher professionalism and teaching effectiveness.

One of these countries is Sweden, in which the shortage of school and preschool teachers is both a present and a future serious problem. A forecast from the Swedish National Agency of Education (Skolverket 2021) estimated a shortage of around 12.000 newly graduated School and pre-school teachers in 2035. This forecast of teacher shortage shows considerable regional differences as well as differences in relation to parents’ education levels. Even differences in relation to different teacher categories are significant. The shortage is acute in the category "teacher in vocational programs in upper secondary school "and in the category "subject teachers  for the compulsory school years 7-9". The teacher shortage affects even "preschool and compulsory school teachers for school years 4-6". To handle with this shortage situation unqualified teachers are employed in certain schools. 

Several factors have even contributed to the decline of teacher profession as an attractive career among young people.

On one hand, teacher’s profession is becoming more complex due, the higher and varied expectations that society has on teachers as well as the decrease of teacher career status in several countries around the world (OECD 2019). On the other hand, teacher work is expected to be more academized and professionalized due increased claims on evidence-based knowledge as strategy to improve quality of education. In addition, international assessment and rankings regulates more and more teachers' work (Larsson & Sjöberg 2021).

At the same time the quality of teacher education has been strongly questioned by politicians and media. According to Säfström & Saeverot (2015) in Sweden and Norway the place of pedagogical research as teacher education content has been strongly questioned. Instead, other academic subjects or subject didactics are suggested to take more place in teacher education programs. Consequently, the understanding of pedagogical issues in teacher education risks to be reduced “to the application of subject knowledge with learning as the only active concept that relates to education.”  (Page 308). Furthermore, teacher education “… is increasingly pushed towards psychology instead of pedagogy..." (308).

In order to combat teacher shortage and to improve teacher education quality the Swedish Government has introduced different political measures during the last years. One of these measures is to introduce reduced teacher education programs for applicant with other academic degrees.

Against this background, this contribution highlights and discusses teacher education policies to combat teacher shortage as well to improve teacher education quality. With this purpose, it analyses and discusses a reduced teacher program target to applicants to teacher education with bachelor's degree or a master's degree in other academic subjects who will be compulsory school or upper secondary teachers.

The conception of education policies as discursive strategies that speak on the wider social processes in the construction of “the teacher” (Ball, Maguire, Braun 2012) is proposed in this contribution as theoretical starting point. This research starts from the following questions:

• Which kind of reductions are proposed in this program?
• How are teacher professional knowledge expressed in this program?
• Which arguments for and against this reduced teacher education program are exposed by  different central education actors?
• Which kind of impacts in relation to equity in education is expected by the enactment of this reduced program according to different central education actors?

This contribution is based on the analysis of a case study concerning a reduced teacher education program called " Complementary pedagogical education leading to compulsory or upper secondary school teacher degree". This complementary teacher education program will start as an explorative teacher education strategy. This explorative implementation stage will start during 2022 and will finish in Januari 2028. A number of Swedish universities have been selected by the government to deliver this teacher education program thought online distance courses during this explorative stage. This program is part of the Swedish strategy to improve quaility in Teacher Education and to increase the number of qualified teachers at schools (promemoria Ökad Kvalitet i lärarutbildning U2021-00301) Based on Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis (2000. 2003) this research analyzes teacher education policies as historical discourses. Therefore, it involves both the analysis of policy documents and the historical, social, and educational political contexts in which these political texts are constructed. It discusses even the impacts of this teacher education policy on equity in education. With this purpose this analysis encompasses three dimensions: (a) text analysis (description), (b) processing analysis (interpretation) and (c) social analysis (explanation). 9 political documents produced by the Swedish government concerning the selected teacher education program are analysed (regulation documents, government decision, memorandum, government press release). Even 78 documents from referrals bodies are analysed. These documents are a response of the Swedish government proposal to improve quality in Teacher Education (promemoria Ökad Kvalitet i lärarutbildning U2021-00301). These referrals bodies are both internals and externals consultative bodies and include public and private educational organizations as well as national and municipal authorities.

The analysed program includes 75 credits of which 35 credits correspond to courses on subject didactics., 20 credits correspond to core courses on educational science and 20 credits correspond to teacher training courses at schools. This complementary teacher program represents a considerable reduction of credits corresponding to the core courses on education sciences in comparison to the other already established teacher programs in Sweden. The core courses on Education research are reduced to the "absolutely necessary contents in educational sciences " that teacher needs to know. According to the analysed national policy documents these absolutely necessary curricular contents are the following: - the conditions of the school system, - the school's values, including fundamental democratic values ​​and human rights, - development and learning, which should have an interdisciplinary perspective that includes cognitive science, as well as special education, -social relations, conflict management and leadership, -assessment and grading. It is relevant to note the central position of cognitive science as curricular content as well as the lack of other traditional educational sciences contents in this complementary education program. Preliminary results of this ongoing research shows that this complementary reduced program is described by the Government as an strategy for promote teacher education quality and to make teacher profession more attractive. Some critical referrals bodies point out that this complementary teacher program can have negative impacts on teacher education quality and increase inequalities in teacher education. The analysis of the Swedish case can even be relevant for other European countries affected by teacher shortage. It is even expected to contribute to the discussion about equity and quality in teachers' education as well as about on the position of educational sciences in relation to the current neoliberal educational framework dominant at the national, European and international levels.

Braun, Maguire & Brown (2012) How schools do policy. Policy enacments in secondary schools- Routledge Fairclough, Norman. (2000). Discourse, social theory and social research: The discourse of welfare reform. Journal of Sociolinguistics 2000, 4: 163–195. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9481.00110 . Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Critical discourse analysis as a method in social scientific Research. In Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer. Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. (London: Sage Publications, 2003:121-138). García E. and Weiss E. (2019) The teacher shortage is real, large, and growing, and worse than we thought. Economic Policy Institute Retreived from https://files.epi.org/pdf/163651.pdf Larsson C. & Sjöberg, L. (2021) Academized or deprofessionalized?– policy discourses of teacher professionalism in relation to research-based education, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 7:1, 3-15, 8 OECD (2019) Teacher in Focus. 2019/27 June. New Insights on Teaching and Learning: Contribution from TALIS 2018. Retrieved from https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/new-insights-on-teaching-and-learning_72dfe982-en Skolverket (2021) Lärarprognos 2021 Redovisning av uppdrag att ta fram Återkommande prognoser över behovet av förskolärare och olika lärarkategorier Retrieved from https://www.skolverket.se/getFile?file=8945 Regeringskansliet (2021) Ökad kvalitet i lärarutbildning och fler lärare i skolan Retrieved from https://www.regeringen.se/48e736/contentassets/e2180d7c973c449097dbcab00eda65b3/okad-kvalitet-i-lararutbildningen-och-fler-larare-i-skolan.pdf Säfström & Saeverot (2015) Debat Att skada pedagogisk kunskap. Striden om Lärarutbildning i Sverige och Norge. Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige. Volumen 20- Nummer 3-5, pages 300-314