Lärarutbildningens olika undervisningspraktiker. En studie av lärarutbildares olika sätt att praktisera sitt professionella uppdrag

Sammanfattning: The starting point for this dissertation was the reform of the school system in Sweden with consequences for teachers´ work and new demands on their professional knowledge. This thesis aims to illuminate the issue of what professional knowledge student teachers are offered during their time in the university, and how this professional knowledge can be characterised. This is carried out with respect to three questions: What are the teaching practices that constitute teacher education at the university? What brings these teaching practices about? What professional knowledge is made possible by these various teaching practices? In order to study the different teaching practices that constitute the programme of teacher education, an activity theory perspective has been adopted. What teachers do in their practices, what tools they employ, what use these tools are put to, and the division of work that emerges all have significance for what professional knowledge student teachers are offered while studying in the university. The content of different teaching practices can be identified, analysed and described with the help of concepts derived from activity theory, phenomenography and variation theory. By using the concept of teaching object and learning object it is possible to bring out analytically the relation between teaching and learning which aims to identify the relationship between the goal-related acts (what is the goal for the specific teaching event) and what appear to be the motives of the participants (what professional knowledge the students are to be given the opportunity to develop during the teaching event). The study is based on 22 interviews and observations of 39 teaching events in three subject areas during the academic year 2003-2004. The results of both the interview analysis and the observation analysis were studied together in order to identify the teacher educators´ professional motives. The content that is chosen and the ways in which this content is shaped in teaching are to be understood in terms of the motive that the researcher analyses from the data. From the data, 10 different teaching practices were identified, which could be grouped under four headings, depending on the character of the teacher educational professional motive. There are seen to be four different teaching education activities (TEAs) within the framework of the new teacher education programme: TEA for personal development, TEA for fostering fundamental values of society, TEA for an analytical approach, TEA for a subject didactic awareness and pupils´ identity. They offer qualitatively distinct kinds of professional knowledge and prepare students differently for their handling of the task of the school.