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The “academic drift” of professional education is an international phenomenon typically associated with the 1960s and 1970s and reflects an approach to problem-solving whereby science is regarded as the single-most important element while solving practical problems. Specifically, we focus on how esthetic school subjects from our media ecology perspective are challenged when some mediations, both theory- and script-based, are rewarded at the expense of action-based knowledge forms. In the study, we consider Official Reports of the Swedish Government (SOU), a type of authoritative policy text intended to influence an activity, but which govern less formally than “governing policy texts”, such as bills, which are legislative in nature. Our study shows that scientifically based content obtained greater space in various Techer Education programmes, while at the same time practical issues were theorized and given greater prominence. We conclude that the mentioned reforms have challenged the subject paradigm, and future subject ecology, involving changed recruitment patterns of teacher educators and shorter preparation studies for teacher students in the practical/esthetic subjects but also opportunities to develop new content and new methods.

The present article focuses on the role of the teaching and learning of literature in a large-scale Swedish, professional development programme for teachers called the Reading Lift. More specifically this study, using qualitative content analysis, examines the educational function of the most prominently referred to literary didactic theory and method developers in the program: Judith Langer, Aidan Chambers, Louise M. Rosenblatt, and Rita Felski, but also the relationship between literary didactics, literacy, and fiction. The results show a strong domination of Langer-inspired manual and strategy-based approaches, primarily promoting efferent reading stances. More holistic hermeneutic and dialogic approaches in support of aesthetic reading, represented by Chambers, Rosenblatt and Felski, are less common. Further, there is a strong alliance between the literacy concept and the systematic and manual-based literary didactic approaches. Also, in the literacy discourse, literary works of art have become not just texts amongst other texts, and foreign, but are also framed as hypermediacy. Based on our results we tentatively suggest that a shift in paradigms of literature education has taken place, from literature pedagogy, grounded in print culture, to literature didactics, situated in new mediacy and the digital.

The short-term international immersion model (STIIM) for the internationalisation of doctoral education is a meeting between groups, or cohorts, of doctoral students from at least two countries. This chapter describes STIIM, and through examples from a four-day meeting in Wales, we illustrate how STIIM meetings can be designed to support learning and internationalisation. The chapter frames STIIM in its historical context in Norway and Sweden, highlights the democratic aspects of the model, and demonstrates the importance of socialisation into the academy as a global arena as supported by the model.

Presentationen fokuserar en delstudie av det VR-finansierade projektet Estetikens ekologi: akademiseringen och digitaliseringen, eller ”amatörisering” av skolämnena bild och slöjd. Syftet med delstudien, som är av utbildningshistorisk karaktär, är att beskriva och analysera den ”akademiska drift” (Kyvik 2007; Kyvik & Skodvin 2003) i svensk lärarutbildning som började i och med 1946 års skolkommission (SOU 1948:27) och de konsekvenser som det innebar för lärarutbildning i estetiska ämnen. Våra frågeställningar är: Vad motiverade förslagen att akademisera lärarutbildning efter 2:a världskriget? Vilka principer föreslås av 1946 års skolkommission och hur görs de mer konkreta i senare utredningar? På vilka sätt utmanas lärarutbildning i teckning (bild), musik och slöjd av reformförslagen i utredningarna? I delstudien görs en kritisk diskursanalys av fem av statens offentliga utredningar, från tiden mellan 1946 och 1972, som föreslår reformer av skola och lärarutbildning. Statens offentliga utredningar betraktas som en typ av auktoritativ policyskrift avsedd att påverka en aktivitet, men som styr mindreformellt än propositioner, som har en lagstiftande karaktär. Vår studie visar att vetenskapligt baserat innehåll föreslogs få större utrymme i olika lärarutbildningar, samtidigt som praktiska frågor kom att teoretiseras. Vi drar slutsatsen att de reformersom föreslås i utredningarna har utmanat ämnesparadigmen och förändrat utbildningsekologin inom estetiska ämnen, vilket här inbegriper förändrade rekryteringsmönster och mindre förberedande studier i praktisk-estetiska ämnen, genom att göra lärarutbildningen mer teoretisk och likriktad.

In this last and concluding chapter, we use a meta-perspective on the five contributions with respect to both form and content. We then find that the construction of the five chapters in several respects is the same, but also differs, for example in terms of the personal positioning in the texts. A central theme in the various texts is knowledge development. Several of the authors depict an internal knowledge-based academic development of the teacher education subject, while others emphasize the external one. Methodologically, all authors use, but in different ways, a combination of life stories – scientific essay. This means that the different ‘life stories’ that are presented in the different stories are also placed in their social, historical and political context – ‘life histories’. As an important contextual factor, several of the authors connect to the sociological concept of “social generation” by linking their stories to the 1968 generation as a discursively mediated identity. The contributions largely follow the authors’ internal, professional history with an emphasis on the epistemological dimension, or in other words the epistemological development. While we regard this substantive focus in the various contributions as a complementary contribution to professional research’s emphasis on the external, i.e. form and function, and formal academicization, we reflect on the relationship between professionalization, academization, school and teacher education. We conclude that the development of subject didactics constituted a major subject- and knowledge-wise addition to teacher education and significantly contributed to teacher education research and professionalization in all four countries.

This study deals with the academisation or “academic drift” of teacher education in the aesthetic subjects in Sweden from the 1970s to the millennium shift. After long preparations that already began after the Second World War, TE, along with other vocational education, was integrated into the Swedish university system as part of the expansion of the higher education sector in 1977 (H77). The study’s aims were to describe and analyse how the conditions for teacher education in practical/aesthetic subjects changed in the new and diversified higher education sector. For the study, we drew on Official Reports of the Swedish Government (SOU), a type of authoritative policy text intended to influence an activity, but which govern less formally than “governing policy texts” like bills that are legislative in nature. Our study reveals that a division was made between the old, prestigious and discipline-based universities and the newcomers in terms of vocationally-based education. The entire teacher education ended up on the periphery of the new higher education sector. We establish that the absence of own academic structures and thereby power within the higher education structures has harmed the independent development of teacher education in the aesthetic subjects as part of the enlarged higher education sector in the process of them moving from school subjects to university-like disciplines.

This chapter frames five academic essays concerned with 50 years of didactic professionalisation of Nordic teacher education. It is argued that studies of professions have put more stress on structure and function of reforms than on content and offers a complementary approach. It focuses in particular the role of mother tongue education (L1) in four Nordic countries, both as a school subject, an educational discipline, and a research field. An assumption is that research on mother tongue didactics (Norw. morsmålsdidaktikk) as a field has contributed significantly to increased professionalisation. The book’s five contributors are retired L1 teacher educators and researchers. They have had first-hand experience of a significant knowledge development (Norw. kunnskapsutvikling) that has taken place over decades. They have even taken part in a wide range of research and projects that shaped the L1 field and partly teacher education. Further, the chapter suggests that professionalisation can be broken down into intertwined sub-processes such as academisation, didactisation, theoretisation, and textualisation. These and other key concepts are discussed. While the five personal essays are more empirically oriented, this introduction aims to give a theoretical framework and premises for the book as a whole. All chapters are formed as academic essays and apply an approach inspired by Ivor Goodson’s methodology for writing recollecting lifestories academically backed up by historical contextualisation of described events. This chapter thus presents the epistemology and discusses relevant methodologies.

I denne boka søker fem erfarne, nordiske morsmålsdidaktikere og lærerutdannere sine faglige røtter som elever, studenter, lærere, lærerutdannere, ledere og forskere over en femtiårsperiode.

I det vitenskapelige essayets form undersøkes ulike historiske fagkamper og prosesser som kan ligge bak denne profesjonaliseringen, dels i et kritisk perspektiv: Akademisering, teoretisering, didaktisering, tekstualisering og internasjonalisering, spesielt innen morsmål (L1), morsmålsdidaktikk og morsmålsdidaktisk forskning, men også fagdidaktisk forskning. Dokumentasjon og diskusjon av det komplekse forholdet mellom institusjonalisert akademisk drift og personlig og kollektiv kunnskapsutvikling utgjør likevel en hovedlinje i fremstillingen. De L1-fagene som beskrivelsene forankres i, er dansk, finlandssvensk, norsk og svensk.

Bidragene gir personlige, erfaringsbaserte, historiske fremstillinger av utviklingen kontekstualisert med beretternes egen forskning på feltet samt beskrivelser av generelle utviklingstendenser innen skole, utdanning og samfunn. Et innrammingskapittel gir metodologiske og teoretiske premisser for tekstene og et avslutningskapittel analyserer innhold i og diskuterer utkommet av essayene. Boka henvender seg til alle som er interessert i fremveksten av en profesjonalisert lærerutdanning på nordisk grunn, særlig morsmåls- og fagdidaktikere.

In this book, five experienced Nordic L1-didactitians and teacher educators search for their professional roots as pupils, students, teachers, teacher educators, managers and researchers over a period of fifty years.

In the form of the scientific essay, various historical professional struggles and processes that may lie behind this professionalisation are examined, partly from a critical perspective: Academisation, theorising, didacticisation, textualisation, and internationalisation, especially within first language (L1), L1 didactics and L1 didactic research. Documentation and discussion of the complex relationship between institutionalised academic operations and personal and collective knowledge development nevertheless constitute a main line in the presentation. The L1 subjects in which the descriptions are anchored are Danish, Finnish Swedish, Norwegian and Swedish.

The contributions provide personal, experience-based, historical representations of the development contextualized with the narrators' own research in the field as well as descriptions of general development trends within schools, education, and society. A framing chapter provides methodological and theoretical premises for the texts and a concluding chapter analyses the content of and discusses the outcome of the essays. The book is aimed at anyone who is interested in the development of professional teacher training on a Nordic basis, especially native language and subject didactics. Although Per-Olof Erixon and Sigmund Ongstad are editors, the book has been created in close collaboration with the other contributors, Sven-Erik Hansén, Ellen Krogh, and Jon Smidt.