Moralen, barnet eller vetenskapen? En studie av tradition och förändring i lärarutbildningen

Sammanfattning: Tradition and change in compulsory school teacher education are studied historically, using the theoretical framework of curriculum theory and theory of cultural reproduction. The concepts of classification and framing are used as analytic devices. The curriculum is analyzed by its principles of selection, organization, methods of instruction and evaluation. The objects of study are pedagogical texts and material frames; also, important actors and struggles in the field of teacher education are identified.The establishment of a State education for elementary school teachers from 1842 onwards is analyzed. Two main periods of change have been discerned - one in the 1860s and one around the turn of the century. Both these changes coincided with considerable alterations in the context of the institution of teacher training. Changes occurred in the relations between community and State networks, power relations of State bureaucracy were altered and new ideas of nature, science, the child and morality broke through. Initially, classification and framing were comparatively weak; step by step they were strengthened as State control grew more forceful. From the 1880s onwards, the dominating character of teacher education was challenged by the new professional organization created by the elementary school teachers. The strong dominance of Church and religion over education was deeply questioned in light of the newly developing sciences like empirical psychology and the natural sciences. Actors from teacher training institutes played important roles in national educational policy and in the field of teacher education. These actors have been engaged in struggles for admission to the field, for the ownership of the arena and for the power over examination - struggles concerning the distinctions of the field itself in relation to other fields.The study has demonstrated how ideas of morality, the child and science in various shapes have dominated the scene of teacher education from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.