In Sweden, university-based teacher education programs have been the dominant path to teaching since the late 1970s. In 1977, a period of higher education reform transferred teacher education from teacher education colleges to higher education institutions (Furuhagen et al., 2019). In January 2020, teacher education programs were offered by 27 out of a total of approximately 50 higher education institutions (HEIs) in Sweden. The majority of HEIs are public authorities. There have been frequent teacher education reforms in Sweden—program structure and curriculum were reformed in 1988, 2001, and 2011 (Åstrand, 2017). The reforms are founded on different ideas on “the contents and aims of teacher education” (Furuhagen et al., 2019, p. 795). The 2001 reform was based on an ideal of a general teacher while the 2011 reform resulted in separate programs and degrees for class (grades 1-3 or 4-6) and subject teachers (grades 7-9 and upper-secondary schools). Sweden faces a shortage of certified teachers and there is a demand for alternative routes to teacher certification. Within this reform context, the University of Gothenburg began by establishing an innovative teacher education program with the neighboring municipality, the City of Gothenburg. A key element of success was the establishment of a joint commitment to integrating the work of schools and the university. Representatives from municipal government became involved in facilitating connections between the university and schools where teacher education candidates were placed. The partners evinced a depth of commitment to subject matter pedagogy and to the continued evolution of teacher education policy and reform in Sweden. In reflection, iSTEP catalyzed a promotion of the principles of powerful teacher education and helped to integrate these into policies and practices in the Swedish context. The collaborative project documented in this chapter was designed to build a teacher education program guided by the core principles of a program vision, coherence and opportunities to enact practice. It is our understanding that these principles, as elaborated by Klette and Hammerness (2016), mainly refers to conceptual coherence as defined by Hammerness (2006). A basic assumption in our work is that collaborative institutional arrangements—structural coherence—facilitate conceptual coherence, i.e. support the establishment of a program in which faculty, teachers and principals have a common understanding of good teaching and learning and where students’ opportunities to enact practice are strong and lively.

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