tandfonline.com – Becoming a primary education teacher – pedagogic discourses in the teacher education program’s examination practice

ABSTRACT

Global reforming driven by neoliberal ideas is today reshaping educational systems. This study explores how a national policy incentive, aimed at changing teacher education in Sweden, is transformed and realized into educational practice and how pedagogic discourses are operating in and through the primary teachers’ examination practice in Sweden. The aim is also to explore which competencies are legitimized and thus form the knowledge base for primary teachers. The study is conducted through a qualitative and quantitative, theoretically based, analysis of all examination tasks (n = 322) in the primary teacher education at a teacher education department located at one of Sweden’s largest universities. The qualitative software package Nvivo was used for the qualitative analysis and the statistical software SPSS was used for the quantitative analysis. The result shows that most examinations involve the examination of methodological/didactical knowledge related to teachers work in the classroom (out of horizontal knowledge structures) and that students lack opportunities to practice and show analytical skills, with vertical knowledge structures, in their examinations.