Umeå universitets logga

A decade ago, less than 25% of students in four teacher education programs in Sweden had positive feelings towards their studies in values education. The majority of the students claimed that they had learned the basic concepts, but felt that those concepts were not clearly defined (Frånberg, 2006, p. 151). Consequently, roughly 4 out of 5 students felt that they had not been sufficiently prepared for their role of instilling values in their students. The newly reformed teacher education program was accompanied by an increased ministerial emphasis on values education, but it is unclear what impact it had (Zackari, 2000, p. 11). Studies indicate signs of improvement, but those studies are not fully comparable, so there are good reasons to address these issues again (Åstrand, 2013a). The fact that the majority of students report ambiguity in their understanding of the main concepts of values education suggests there may be varied understanding of the central concepts among teacher educators. The primary aim of this article was to study understandings of and approaches to core terms in Swedish teacher education that relate to democracy and values education. Following that, the analysis also takes into account changes in legislation, policy and reform.