This paper concerns a doctoral project focusing on educators’ cultural conceptions of the student within teacher education for early childhood education (TEECE) at a Swedish University. As a part of the project this specific paper explores how educators do education through negotiations in the processes of planning, discussing and constructing the different parts of the TEECE, focusing on the role of deliberative communication in these processes. As an educator in higher education (HE) in general and professional (teacher) education in particular, one can speak of limitations for the possibilities of educating autonomous future professionals, when instrumental rationality is highly valued (Ball & Olmedo, 2013; Bornemark, 2018; Biesta, 2011). HE and teacher education are commonly considered to be limited by a neoliberal governance which limits educators’ possibilities for educating future professional teachers (Lenz Taguchi, 2005; Levinsson, Norlund & Beach, 2020). The neoliberal governance is criticized and problematized, not least in relation to give the students space to be and act (Ibid.). Based on this, educators have a complex role to navigate this landscape of different interests of what HE is and could be.

Habermas theory of democracy (Habermas, 1996a; 1996b) is an important departure point for the project. Based on this theory, the necessity of communicative action, deliberative democracy and the concepts of private and public good (Dyrdal Solbrekke & Sugrue, 2020) is put in the foreground. Communicative action is expressed as a necessity to underline the subjects’ part in a democratic society (Carlheden, 2002) and one can say that this is a theory in which the private and public sphere is linked together. It means that the private autonomy and the public are each other's prerequisite (Ibid.). Based on this theoretical perspective, the paper focuses on the educators in the process of planning, discussing and constructing the TEECE, and discusses what good education is and could be in HE and TEECE. Englund (2008) and Dyrdal Solbrekke & Surgue (2020) argue for the need of HE to be that public spere where deliberation is an aim and where public debate is desirable.  

In this paper, autonomy is an important concept when understanding educators’ role as subjects at universities. One fundamental aspect for understanding how education is done and discussed among the informants/educators is that “[f]reedom is rather something that needs to be realized in a social community” [my translation] (Carlheden, 2002:50). Deliberative communication (Englund, 2006) is recognizable for its focus on for pluralistic communication including “[…] listening, deliberating, seeking arguments and valuing, coupled to a collective and cooperative endeavor to find values and norms which everyone can accept, at the same time as pluralism is acknowledged.” (Englund, 2008:103). This concept makes it possible to explore how educators handle their autonomy when doing education and if there is room for deliberative communication. The concept also underlines educators’ autonomy in the organization of TEECE.  

A five-month long critical ethnography (CE) was completed at one university hosting TEECE. The ethnographic fieldwork was carried out in various collegial contexts among a group of educators and their everyday, formal and informal work. The fieldwork includes observations of collegial settings, for example, teacher team meetings related to courses or the program as a whole; conversations with educators, both formal and informal; group discussions; documents and policy documents such as education plans, course plans and study guides; websites, where the TEECE programs are presented at different universities. Which situations and settings to focus on in the observations was quite quickly identified due to the researcher’s experience from the field. In parallel with observations and informal conversations, conversations of a more formal nature were carried out. Primarily, field notes were used to collect empirical material, but it also includes recordings from the formal conversations and written reflections submitted to me based on group discussions among the informants. In the field of CE there are different traditions and ideas on what CE entails (se for example Tomas, 1993;Carspecken,1996;Willis & Tondman, 2000; Beach & Vigo-Arrazola, 2021;Madison, 2011). However, one common idea is that CE enables the researcher to study power as an obvious part of all social relations. The ambition is to undress this power and power imbalance in order to question the power relations, contribute to change and adopt an emancipatory interest of knowledge (Habermas, 1996a; Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2008). The aim for me as a researcher in this project was to take part in the environment and the language at the field of study. The informants and their interactions were of interest as well as the rhythm of the field itself. Observation of the field can be seen as a prerequisite in ethnographically oriented studies (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2019;Coffey, 2018; Crang & Cook, 2007) where the culture is in focus and CE enables the researcher to take an active part in the field and to question what can be perceived as culturally accepted norms. In parallel to this active role, the informants were continuously invited to contribute to the creation of the empirical material. The material was not collected but rather created together with and in interaction with the field (Ibid.). The researcher's role as well as the informants, has thus been important in the construction of the collected material (Beach & Vigo-Arrazola, 2021; Tomas, 1993; Willis & Trondman, 2000).

At the time of writing this abstract the analysis is not fully completed but is intended to be, by the time for the presentation. However, preliminary results shows that educators are balancing their right for good working conditions with their pedagogical intentions, in favor of their own needs and working conditions. The educators negotiate what kind of requirements and perspective they can, should and wish to have in relation to for example policy documents and different kinds of IT-systems. This is probably the most common context when deliberative communication appears. Other aspects that are discussed, but not at all in that extent, are pedagogical visions, intentions and or strategies. The results also shows that different circumstances condition what kind of communication becomes possible. Deliberative communication is not always possible due to time where for example, deadlines and bureaucratic praxis are in the foreground. For example, the need to be careful with one's own time and one's own energy is very prominent and frequently used. And it is something that they argue from when they express limitations in relation to time. On a general level, the results show how educators’ room for action and their possibilities for deliberative communication, are two main factors that condition how educators do education and how they negotiate the education they are working with. The results will contribute a perspective on how and in what way educators’ autonomy and room for action appears in their doing of education and when navigating what HE is and could be.

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