Teacher education in contemporary Sweden, much like its counterparts in other nations, has undergone a significant epistemological and institutional transformation. This transformation is marked by a pervasive prioritization of methods over theoretical knowledge. Teacher education has come to be framed less as an academic endeavor grounded in critical inquiry and intellectual engagement, and more as a technocratic enterprise focused on the acquisition of pragmatic skills. The shift toward methodological hegemony is not merely a pedagogical choice but a reflection of broader regimes of truth that govern what is considered valid knowledge in the preparation of teachers. 

This reconfiguration seems to be premised on the assumption that professional competence (lärarskicklighet) is achieved primarily through mastery of subject matter knowledge and procedural rigor. “Proven” teaching methods (beprövade undervisningsmetoder) are perceived as vehicles of certainty, offering clear, actionable solutions that resonate with the imperatives of accountability and efficiency. Theoretical engagement, in contrast, is framed as an indulgence – abstract, elusive, and misaligned with the pressing demands of the classroom. As Edling and Liljestrand (2020) and Mikhaylova et al. (2025) note, theory is increasingly relegated to the periphery of teacher education, cast as a luxury incompatible with the immediacy of practice. This instrumentalization of teacher education epitomized in the recent governmental investigation (SOU 2024:81), which declares all currently taught learning theories and curriculum theory to be too abstract, difficult to apply in practice, and therefore unnecessary. Instead, it is proposed to strengthen the teaching of practical aspects in order to better equip future teachers for the daily demands of classroom work. 

Such an instrumental view contrasts with the earlier conceptions of teaching. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, teaching was often envisioned as an art – a creative, interpretive practice resistant to standardization. Methodological guidelines from this era articulated teaching as a deeply human endeavor, imbued with uncertainty and requiring improvisation, judgment, and imagination. The notion of art in teaching acknowledges the situated, contingent nature of educational encounters, where no single method could claim universal applicability. 

While the relationship between theory and practice in teacher education has been a much debated topic in Sweden, it has not been the subject of much research. Yet, the ways this question is addressed by policymakers and educational institutions have significant implications for how teacher education is organized, what kind of teachers it seeks to produce and, ultimately, what kind of society it envisions serving. In other words, this question is political. 

To explore these issues, we draw on Foucault’s genealogy as both a theoretical and methodological framework. Genealogy, according to Foucault (1986), is not a search for origins but an analysis of the contingent and power-laden processes through which particular regimes of truth emerge. In this study, we apply genealogical analysis to critically explore what appears to be the “hegemony of method” in Swedish teacher education. More specifically, we examine the ways in which the relationship between theory and methods and between theory and practice in teacher education has been addressed as an educational and policy problem from the second half of the late 19th century onwards. 

The study consists of two parts. In the first part, we explore the current views on the relationship between theory and method in teacher education through an analysis of recent governmental reports, policy documents, and contemporary media and political discussions. This is complemented by interviews with teacher educators at three Swedish universities. These sources allow us to map how the problem of relations between theory and practice in teacher education is expressed, understood, and acted upon in policy and practice. In analyzing these sources, we paid particular attention to the assumptions, facts, truths, knowledges and beliefs that made a particular understanding of “the problem” natural and given (Bacchi, 2009; Foucault, 1986; 1994). To challenge some of these taken-for-granted understandings of the problem, in the second part of the study we historicize the current concerns with Swedish teacher education. For that, we collected and analyzed over 80 historical documents, including policy documents and teacher guidelines, from the late 19th century to the present. By analyzing these materials, we trace how the relationship between theory and practice has been framed within different historical and institutional contexts, identifying the discursive continuities and ruptures that have shaped current understandings. Through a genealogical lens, we explore how certain ways of thinking about theoretical and practical knowledge in teacher education have gained dominance, while others have been marginalized or excluded. A central focus of this analysis is the shifting views of teachers’ knowledge as both a pedagogical and a political problem. By comparing selected passages from historical texts, we show how different political, scientific and epistemological factors have influenced the debates about teacher education over time. At the heart of this inquiry lies a critical question: What kinds of teachers, and by extension, what kinds of citizens, are being produced within different discourses? Furthermore, by combining diverse empirical sources from different historical periods and across distinct domains, we hope to be able to examine not only how dominant discourses about theory and practice in teacher education have evolved but also to identify openings for alternative imaginaries.

The study is a work in progress, and the findings presented below are based on our analysis of policy documents, not the interview data yet to be collected. Our preliminary analysis suggests that the question of whether future teachers should be equipped with theoretical or practical knowledge is closely related to how teaching is conceptualized - as a concept, a practice, and an institution. This seemingly pedagogical question is imbued with broader political and epistemological stakes, as it reflects shifting regimes of truth about what constitutes valid knowledge, professional competence, and the purpose of (teacher) education itself. These regimes of truth, in turn, affect not only how teacher education is organized, but also what content is prioritized and how teachers' professional identities are shaped. They set the stage for how educational institutions position teachers - as technicians using “proven methods” or as intellectuals critically engaged with pedagogical challenges. Such a sharp dichotomy, however, is itself a construct shaped by historical processes of power and knowledge production. It emerges from an ongoing but ultimately unnecessary dichotomization between theory and practice, or theory and method, that perpetuates a fragmented understanding of the teaching profession and teacher education. Paradoxically, this dichotomization is evident even in discussions that point to the need to combine or balance theoretical and practical knowledge, as they often reinscribe the very division they claim to overcome by treating theory and practice as discrete, oppositional domains in need of reconciliation.

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