History repeats itself. Every ten to fifteen years, the teacher education programme has been reformed. This has been the pattern in recent decades. In light of the Tidö Agreement, it is no surprise that the Government set up an inquiry over the summer to develop and reform teacher education programmes once again. What the balance between “develop” and “reform” will be remains to be seen, but a major change can probably be expected. The inquiry directive contains a number of issues that are recognised in the rhetoric of the coalition parties in the Government, such as raising admission requirements, concentration of subject teacher education, and changes in the programme content, with more focus on subject knowledge, cognitive science and practical methodology. With a teacher education programme that is the largest in the country and involves most of our departments, this proposal is of great importance to Stockholm University.
Naturally, whether the changes to be investigated can be considered necessary and good depends on who you ask. Concentrating subject teacher education to the higher education institutions with strong research in the instruction subject of the programme is, of course, worrying to smaller institutions with small research environments, while a large and research-rich institution like Stockholm University probably does not need to be so worried about losing programmes.
Raising admission requirements can strengthen the prior knowledge level in the student groups and reduce dropouts, which would, of course, be very welcome. At the same time, inquiries by the Swedish Council for Higher Education have shown that such a measure would drastically reduce the student base in certain subject specialisations, which could result in fewer graduated teachers, at least in the short term. It can also be seen as a questioning of the entire grading system in upper-secondary school, and what the grade of pass (E) there actually means.
When it comes to the proposed changes in programme content, some may think they are well needed, while others may not. But there is one recognisable factor from previous adjustments to teacher education that have been made repeatedly over the last decade – content is added, but nothing is taken away. And despite the relatively large changes in content proposed in the directive, there is only talk of what is to be strengthened, nothing about what must be removed as a result of this. The practical elements will increase and the subject content will be strengthened. What remains is the core education subjects – are these what is to be cut?
However, there is one thing in the inquiry directive that most people should welcome. It has been proposed that the national qualitative targets for teacher education should be simplified and reduced. This has something that has long been requested by the country’s higher education institutions. Teacher education is characterised by having the most qualitative targets of all vocational education programmes by far, which can be attributed to the political micromanagement that has characterised teacher education for a long time. A reduction in the scope of the qualitative targets would leave more room for higher education institutions to design the programme themselves based on the expertise that exists locally at higher education institutions in the various subfields of the programme. This would be a change that cannot come soon enough.
This text is written by Clas Hättestrand, Vice President. It appears in the section ”Words from the University’s senior management team”, where the management team take turns to write about topical issues. The section appears in every edition of News for staff which is distributed to the entirety of the University staff.