| Summary: | The overall aim of this study is to understand the impact of Swedish education policy-making on teacher education post-1945. The study explores the relationship between national structures and changes affecting teacher education, its relationship to research, and in particular, implications of policies for teacher educators at Umeå University in northern Sweden. A combination of top-down and bottom-up research approaches was used and included analysis of policy documents, research literature and micro-level perspectives. This included interviews with 57 teacher educators and senior managers, who had been or remained responsible for teacher education programmes. The research draws on a variety of theoretical frameworks, which aid the exploration of the relationship between various parts of teacher education and higher education more generally. In so doing, relationships of power, discourse and gender are seen as particularly important, as are the sociological perspectives of Bourdieu, Bernstein, Foucault and Connell among others. Prosopography was used as a methodological approach, by which biographical details were collected and analysed in order to illuminate the social relations of the field of teacher education. The study showed that in Sweden, research for teacher education was a major issue in post-war education policy in connection to reforms of the school-system, and widening access to research. ‘Practical Pedagogy’ was specifically created as a sub-discipline of Pedagogik (Educational Studies), and established in the 1950s and 1960s at the new teacher colleges. The relationship between educational research and teacher education remained weak, however, and traditional research structures were largely maintained despite reform intentions. Also, reform of higher education and inclusion of teacher education in the university system in 1977 paradoxically meant that teacher education, given its new university status, lost its research subject and avenue into research. The weak relationship between research and ...
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