Research as power and knowledge: struggles over research in teacher education

Abstract

This article explores discourses of research in the ‘academisation’ of Swedish teacher education. It takes as its theoretical framework Foucauldian concepts of power and knowledge to analyse the moves to incorporate teacher education in the university. The study draws on a case study of teacher education in Sweden which used documentary and interview analyses to explore institutional history, and structures and shifts in teacher education and research from the 1950s onwards. The study shows how struggles over power and knowledge were constitutive of the development of a research‐oriented teacher education that emerged in a multilayered process involving a variety of actors at different levels. It also shows the tensions in the emergence and construction of a new research discipline. The article should be understood in the context of current international discourses where there is a need for a research base for teacher education.

Acknowledgement

In preparation of this article I much appreciate the help and support Professor Gaby Weiner has given me.

Notes

1. ‘Teacher education’ in Umeå usually refers both to the overall teacher education programme involving up to 30 departments across the university, and the five departments in the Faculty of Teacher Education. In this article, the term ‘teacher education’ refers to the five departments. The Department of Educational Studies, in the Faculty of Social Science, is also a key contributor to teacher education programmes.

2. The main discipline of the Department of Educational Studies, Pedagogik, will henceforth be referred to as educational studies.

3. Further details on Swedish research structures in teacher education are provided in Kallós (2003).

4. Five of the 45 interviewees had taught the subject of educational studies and were later employed at the department of the same name.

5. One interviewee, currently involved in management, had previously worked in a teacher education department.

6. This classification of occupation and social background draws on Jonsson and Mills (1993) and Statistics Sweden (1989).