Early academic drift in teacher education in esthetic school subjects from the 1940s to 1970s – a Swedish case

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Academisation
• “academic drift” vocationalisation
• media ecology
• knowledge forms

Introduction

This study is about Swedish Teacher Education in esthetic school subjects and how both content and form, i.e., its “paradigm”, or conceptions of the subject and the teaching practice (Erixon, 2010; Baggott La Velle et al., 2004) were challenged in a policy-driven academisation process on the discursive level already in the late 1940s. The concept used at that time was teacher education on a scientific basis.

In a European context, some decades later such a process was labeled “academic drift” (Kyvik, 2007), a concept that is used in this study. The term reflects an approach to problem-solving whereby science is regarded as the single-most important element while solving practical problems (Christensen, 2012; Harwood, 2006). The “academic drift” concept captures the long-term tendency of non-university higher education systems, institutions, study programmes, faculty, and the student body to strive for an upward movement in the direction of an institutional setting or curriculum which resembles that of the university as the epitome of prestige (Christensen, 2012), and marks a shift in orientation from the profession as an “art” concerned with creative design to the perception of the profession as a “science” concerned with scientific methodology and rigor (Heymann, 2009).

Our “case” is based on proposals made in a total of four Official Reports of the Swedish Government (SOU) and, to quote Gerring (2007), “for the purpose of understanding a large class of similar units” (p. 37). In doing so, we uncover an academisation process that started on a discursive level with the Official Reports of the Swedish Government, the 1946 School Commission (SOU., 1948:27), which was orchestrated not only by political parties but other groups in society as well like trade unions and women’s organizations (Ohlson, 1958; Wigforss, 1946). The SOU report summarizes and develops ideas that gradually emerged in the first part of the twentieth century (Richardson, 1963) and was followed up by several other investigations during the 1950s and 1960s which gave concreteness to the reforms, an aspect we address in this study by analyzing a further three reports.

The proposed reforms were taken from the university and academically-based “subject teacher education”. The word "scientific" with its different derivations, together with “democracy” and “equality”, are concepts that frequently appear. Teacher Education in the esthetic subjects and more practical subjects during the 1950s and 1960s was conducted at several different educational institutions with varying requirements for preparatory education and candidates. These were overshadowed when the major reforms were drawn up in the SOU. (1948:27) report and devoted a few lines.

The focus of this study is Teacher Education in these three esthetic school subjects: Visual art, Music and Sloyd, of which the latter, Sloyd (or pedagogical craft), was established in Scandinavia as a school-based system of formative education in the nineteenth century, originally meaning handy or skillful in the making of crafts (Olafsson et al., 2012).

Aims and research questions

The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze the motives behind the proposed Teacher Education on scientific basis or as in our study we regard as “academic drift” in Swedish teacher education. The process commenced with the report after investigations conducted by the 1946 years School Commission (SOU., 1948:27), followed by another three Official Reports of the Swedish Government and the consequences for TE in Visual art, Music and Sloyd. Our aims may be broken down into three research questions:

1. What may have motivated the proposals to academise Swedish teacher education after the Second World War?

2. Which principles are proposed by the 1946 School Commission and how are they made more tangible in later investigations?

3. In which ways do the reform proposals both challenge and produce opportunities for Teacher Education in Visual art, Music and Sloyd?

Background

The “academic drift” process is intimately connected with the expanding student enrollment or “massification” of the Higher Education sector in both Europe and the United States. The identified process of “academic drift” has been deduced from at least two different environments (Jónasson, 2006); in the USA, where the dynamics and tendency were first identified, being described in similar terms by Riesman (1956) in the 1950s, later including concepts like “mission creep” (e.g., Gonzales, 2013), “mission drift” (e.g., Jaquette, 2013; Tight, 2015) and “vertical extension” (Morphew, 2000; Schultz & Stickler, 1965); in Europe attributed to Pratt and Burgess (1974) in the UK, and later by Neave in the 1980s (Neave, 1979, 1982) and Kyvik (2007).

The main trend in Western Europe proceeded in the direction of upgrading vocational programmes to higher education, integrating small, specialized institutions into larger multidisciplinary and multipurpose colleges, and developing a unified college sector within a binary higher education system (Kyvik, 2004).

To find explanations for the academic drift phenomenon, several researchers have turned to theories of organizational change (Holmberg & Hallonsten, 2015; Jaquette, 2013; Morphew & Huisman, 2002; Tight, 2015), building on DiMaggio and Powell (1983), where the term used by the latter is “isomorphism”, which states that organizations operating in the same sector tend toward an increasingly similarity of form and practice where less prestigious colleges and universities have followed the lead of more successful and prestigious colleges and universities. Academic drift is also discursive, i.e., intimately linked with prestige (Hallonsten, 2012), and viewed as a public statement signaling conformity to the institutional field with which the organization seeks to identify: “symbolic isomorphism”.

According to Tight (2015), academic drift pits the interests of academics and their institutions, in their desire for a higher academic status and a securer and somewhat easier life, against those of the government and employers who are looking for vocational relevance, employability and value for money. It relates to the fact that higher education institutions are to various extents obliged to operate in two fields, i.e., one in a “practical” and wider politico-economic field, and the other in the narrower academic field (Harwood, 2010). The narrow academic field does not have the same level of dependence on, for example, Ministries, as happens in the practical field. This means the forces for driving the introduction of more practical subjects into old academic institutions are weak. The autonomous tradition in the prestigious universities settles this by asserting the priority of the discipline (Christensen, 2012).

In the 19th and 20th centuries, “academic drift” as a phenomenon was criticized in various areas like agriculture, engineering, medicine and management (Harwood, 2010). Such criticism related to struggles over the appropriate place or locus for educating; tensions between practice-oriented and science-oriented curricula (Christensen, 2012), and was responsible for a convergence toward a single organizational model, thereby making the institutional forms less diverse. Researchers have accordingly expressed alarm over the tendency of various groups of institutions to become more homogeneous over time as similar degree programmes are adopted by institutions with seemingly different missions and resources (Birnbaum, 1983; Morphew, 2000; Neave, 1979). Academic drift has in this spirit been called "the gravest threat to institutional diversity" (Morphew, 2009, p. 246) or, put differently, a limited educational ecology.

In postwar Sweden, science was expected to help build the Swedish welfare state (Lundin & Stenlås, 2010), a phrase first used in Britain after 1945 to cover both social and economic changes, with the demand for greater “equality of opportunity” through educational reform (Briggs, 1961). In this process, the Swedish state was assuming a more active role than ever before. In one sector after another, government committees were assigned to survey what was needed and propose reforms, while new institutions were formed to house and provide the necessary expertise. The reform technocrats, i.e., young academics, engineers and economists, defined themselves as apolitical and relied on scientific methods to overcome political and social conflicts of interest, and shared an “engineering mentality” (Lundin & Stenlås, 2010, p. 9).

Education for democratization was an important aim of this wave of reform not only in Sweden, but in many other countries as well (Ringarp & Waldow, 2016). This rhetoric was closely intertwined with the insistence that education helps make the economy more productive (Telhaug et al., 2006). Husén (1986) claims the motive for the proposed school reforms, which directly impacted the TE reforms, was twofold, i.e., it was partly about increased and more equal education that would help to reduce poverty and partly about greater justice.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Teacher Education in the esthetic subjects Visual art, Music and Sloyd was conducted at different institutions with varying requirements for preparatory education and talent (see SOU, 1972:92). The longest preparatory formal education was required for Sloyd teachers of wood and metal; 4 years, including 1 year in TE in Sloyd. With Bernstein’s (2000) concept, all three teacher education programmes were strongly classified. In the courses in both Visual art and Music, the ambition was often to become an artist or musician rather than a teacher. The education in Sloyd in this respect was more congruent with the teaching profession.

Research overview

Education is never value-free. Policymakers in democratic societies struggle to establish frames for the social transmission of culture and for preparing young people as future workers and members of society (Rusinek & Aróstegui, 2015). The postwar period has, according to Elzinga (1997), seen the emergence of a general framework of science policy development in which the “/…/‘applied’ or ‘mission oriented’ perspective, has become the new politics of science” (420). Elzinga (1997) labels this “epistemic drift”, by which he refers to a phenomenon whereby the state has played an important role in the emergence of a general framework for the development of science policy. In the first phase in the 1950s and 1960s, the focus was on institution-building and the expansion of policy for science. In the second phase, during the 1970s the utilization of science for policy was emphasized.

The reasons stated above mean that changes in art education are also historically conditioned. For example, in late nineteenth century public school art education a range of design forms was included in the field by, for example, focusing on industrial drawing and handicrafts. By the 1920s, children’s interests had become a topic of art education, while art in daily life was a slogan in the 1930s. During the Second World War, visual propaganda was taught in school; during the 1960s, craft increased in popularity. In the following decades, issues concerned with the use of popular culture and mass-media technologies in relation to students’ lives were important (Freedman & Stuhr, 2004). Shaw (2020) argues that arts education policies mostly came about indirectly, as an afterthought, in reaction to other policies and negatively impacted by the main policy efforts. The term used is “collateral damage” (18), with Shaw mentioning the example of music teachers who are required to focus on Common Core literacy objectives.

Regarded “academic drift”, academic staff in Teacher Education institutions saw a huge transformation in their role as a teacher with a focus on vocational/professional practice and undergraduate qualification to a new focus on maintaining a sustainable research profile and participating in national and international scientific networks (Hazelkorn & Moynihan, 2010). Originally, most of these academics were teaching vocational courses. To a growing extent and because of “academic drift”, teacher educators in Swedish TE were recruited based on scientific expertise rather than professional practical experiences, causing conflicts of interest within a teacher education department (Ek et al., 2013). This meant the practical knowledge imparted tended to be valued less than the more theoretical knowledge that characterized the conventional university disciplines. Borg (2007) states that the academic drift of Sloyd education underway since 1977 has seen the time for subject studies in handicraft reduced while the time for the general education area and the requirement for a scientific connection to the education have been tightened. Karnieli (2009) demonstrates that developing a professional identity is not viewed by most of the discipline-oriented lecturers in Teacher Education as part of their role, and also that they do not know how to perform it.

Academic drift and the creation of a research infrastructure in former vocationally oriented designated teaching institutions are likely to create tensions and dilemmas. According to Christensen et al. (2015), tensions arise over the distribution of existing resources between, on one hand the department’s need to develop research-based teaching within undergraduate education and, on the other, developing the department’s research, which may be more about the individual researcher’s interest, largely mediated via international journals in the first place. Tensions also concern research breadth in relation to research depth, as well as between research focuses. The tension also concerns the recruitment of employees and the relationship between the requirements for practical professional experience and teaching experience relative to the requirement for research competence.

The concept of academisation in the context of art education has caused a long-standing and polarized dispute. This disagreement is founded on an antithesis, Borgdorff (2012) claims, between on one side the concept of insufficient academic research and, on the other, the concept of the liberating cognitive practice of artists. Theory and practice are accordingly separated, and art and research are constructed as incompatible entities. Academisation is in turn expected to hold negative effects for higher arts education.

Academic drift also offers opportunities for development. For example, Gies (2019) regards the academisation of Higher Music Education (HME) institutions, which may also be applicable to other areas within the art field, as a dynamic process initiated from bottom-up perspectives, motivated for example by the social aspect that relates to an increase in social reputation, an epistemological aspect that relates to the recognition as a discipline whose methods of knowledge acquisition are theory- or reflection-based, yet also a political aspect that relates to an improvement in access to public and governmental funding. On the topic of artistic research in Dutch HME, Craenen (2019) noted that the transformation into research-based higher arts education does not mean subordination to irrelevant standards but gives the opportunity to develop research models that are natural to the field of music.

Reflection is both an inherent capacity of every kind of musicianship and an ability that must be trained in other ways, with academisation as a quality development project strongly emphasizing this view that may also lead to the inclusion of new art fields, like the inclusion of popular music in Nordic music education. Consequently, Nordic music scholars were some of the first to elicit research-based understandings of the acquisition of knowledge and skills among popular musicians, and also early in discussing the implications held by such understandings for music education practices (Dyndahl et al., 2017).

Analysis and critical reflection were also something that student teachers in visual art at the Art School in Stockholm (Kockum et al., 2019) called for in connection with the student uprising of 1967–1968. The students claimed that their TE was related to “the old authoritarian school” (19) and argued for a TE containing theory and practice while providing the knowledge and ability to analyze and critically review art. These ideas had politicians’ support, and a revised TE programme in Visual art was established as early as 1968, which meant a radical change in the TE programme. Subjects like photography and film knowledge, contemporary esthetic orientation, a subject that followed current debate, mass media and cultural policy and environmental knowledge were given a lot of space. Methodology, pedagogy and psychology were also developed.

Theoretical framework

The term academic drift was coined to describe the tendency of non-university institutions to orient their activities in ways that bring them closer to the image of a university. Neave (1979) and Kyvik (2007) developed the concept to embrace six different aspects of “academic drift”.

• Policy drift – when the state and government gradually change their view and purpose of non-university education within the higher education system.

• Staff drift – where development occurs through individuals within a structure taking the initiative in a process of academisation.

• Student drift – when students want to extend their lower degree with a higher degree by demanding greater academic quality in their higher education programme courses.

• Programme drift – drift toward academic values and practices in relation to the curriculum, like research capability, introduction of master’s and PhD programmes, new career patterns based on research and research training, while the role of tacit knowledge in the training process is downplayed.

• Institutional drift – driven by the ambition to acquire status for an education by introducing comparable academic requirements in education; for example, vocational education institutions striving for college status, as well as colleges attempting to achieve university status.

• Sector drift – driven by non-university institutions’ joint associations and spokespersons to enhance their academic status or when new rules and regulations pertaining to non-university institutions have an academic direction.

The programmes in the respective esthetic subject areas were mainly practical and mediated by other means of tools in a master–apprentice relationship, characterized by an “asymmetrical” (Nielsen & Kvale, 1999, p. 16) relationship between master and apprentice, through action, observation, imitation, identification and training. Academic drift includes that some mediations, theory- and script-based, that are rewarded at the expense of action-based knowledge mediations. Our point of departure is hence a media ecological perspective (Meyrowitz, 1986; Ong, 1978, 1990). An important aspect of media ecology is the assumption that all human activity is mediated by means of tools. Media are not regarded as neutral, transparent or value-free channels for transporting information from one place to another. Instead, different media have different “biases” (Strate, 2011) and state preconditions for how we acquire knowledge and which knowledge we acquire or, to quote McLuhan (1964), act partly as “extensions” on and partly “amputations” of our senses; media state preconditions for how we acquire knowledge. An “extension” occurs when an individual or society makes or uses for example of a new medium in a way that extends the range in a fashion that is new. For example, the telephone extends the voice, but also amputates the art of penmanship gained through regular correspondence.

With reference to Aristotle, the theoretical and the practical hold different functions and must therefore be learned in different ways and include other mediations and thus a different knowledge content as well as a form of knowledge (Saugstad, 2006). “‘Episteme’ refers to what is accurate, timeless, unchanging, predictable and scientific knowledge, with the aim of understanding and explaining” (Saugstad, 2006, p. 67). The practical, “techne” and “phronesis”, is context-dependent, changeable, and partly unpredictable knowledge. It is the knowledge of the participant, and the purpose is to act in the world (67). “Techne” is linked to the material, to producing for society and to a dominant knowledge form in TE in Visual art, Music and Sloyd. “Phronesis” is linked to the creation of the social, the political as well as the ethical—for the good of society and a dominant knowledge form in teachers’ knowledge.

Method

The Swedish educational policymaking discourse in the 1940s and 1950s considered in this study comes from Official Reports of the Swedish Government (SOU), based on a committee system that occupies a central position at the intersection of politics, public administration, research, and public articulation of interests and provides an arena for policy preparation, formulation and evaluation. In our presentation, we continue to use the words “committee” and “committee members” for a group that investigates. The result of their work is described by reference to a SOU report and its year and number.

Official Reports of the Swedish Government are intended to initiate a process of change and the text may hence be seen as argumentative. Simola (2000) calls this type of text authoritative policy documents as opposed to steering policy documents, which are often legislative in nature and designed to directly influence the practice they are targeting. Authoritative texts also intend to influence an activity but govern less formally. As mentioned, we look at this educational policymaking on the discursive level, i.e., the level of “policy talk”, not of “policy action” or “implementation”. We use “discourse” in the sense of “what can legitimately and acceptably be said” at a given time (Waldow, 2009).

The committee reports studied were aimed to initiate a reform process. They may thus be regarded as argumentative. In our study, we deal with this by describing the starting point of the reform proposals as presented in the opening “directives”. We then analyze the reform proposals or the direction they take in the production of a policy of “academic drift” in terms of objectives, content and organization with respect to the current situation and a desired change. Finally, we analyze the consequences for TE in the esthetic school subjects. The study hence entails an analysis using arguments, not an analysis of arguments. Since text content is in focus, the method involves text analysis (Bergström & Boréus, 2005; Bryder, 1985; Hallsén, 2013).

The advantage of studying this type of texts is that they consist of more elaborate and comprehensive reasoning with arguments and counterarguments for the proposed reforms than steering policy documents. They place the proposals and arguments in a historical context by referring to previous investigations and thereby constitute a kind of imprint of the historical consciousness then in place, or “the temporality or historicity of historical processes” (Jensen, 2005:158) at a given time. In this sense, they indicate where the boundaries lay for what was possible to “talk about”. A limitation when studying this type of document is that the proposals suggested were not always carried out. The principles of reform analyzed in our study were ultimately all implemented, as a rule with quite some delay.

In our study, we consider four reports which we find have an organic relationship and communicate with each other, and represent the development and concretization of the original proposals in The 1946 School Commission report (SOU., 1948:27) (Table 1):

Table 1. Official Reports of the Swedish Government (SOU) that were analyzed.

Full Swedish name of SOU report	Full English name of SOU report	Year convened	Year published	Here labeled
(1) 1946 års Skolkommissionens betänkande med förslag till riktlinjer för det svenska skolväsendets utveckling (SOU., 1948:27)	(1) The 1946 School Commission’s report with proposed guidelines for development of the Swedish school system (SOU., 1948:27)	1946	1948	School Commission (SOU., 1948:27)
(2) Den första Lärarhögskolan. Betänkande utgivet av 1946 års Skolkommission. (SOU., 1952:33)	(2) The First Teacher Training College. Report issued by the 1946 School Commission (SOU., 1952:33)	1949	1952	Teacher Training College (SOU., 1952:33)
(3) Lärarutbildningen. 1960 års Lärarutbildningssakkunniga IV:1 (SOU, 1965:29A)	(4) Teacher education. 1960 Teacher Education Expert IV: 1 (SOU, 1965:29A)	1960	1965	TE Experts (SOU, 1965:29A)
(4) Fortsatt reformering av lärarutbildningen. Lärarutbildningskommitténs (LUK) betänkande del 1. (SOU, 1972:92)	(7) Continued reform of teacher education. The teacher education committee’s (LUK) report part 1 (SOU, 1972:92)	1968	1972	TE Committee (SOU, 1972:92)

Result

The 1946 School Commission (SOU., 1948:27)

The starting point of the reform proposals in the School Commission (SOU., 1948:27), described in directives, is built on an earlier major investigation, the 1940 school investigation (SOU., 1944:20) which only concerned the organization of a new school system. The time had now come for a “reworking of the submitted proposals” (x). In addition to presenting a general plan for the public school system, another main task was to create a plan for reforming teacher education.

The central proposal for reforming the school was captured in the expression “School in the service of society” (p. 1). The Commission sought a school that would meet the needs of a modern and democratic society, based on free personalities of all citizens acting in cooperation, built on science and not faith. Emphasis was placed on a stronger social orientation in all teaching and increased contact with the achievements of technology and science via subjects like physics, chemistry and biology.

In this reformed school, “aesthetic education” is highlighted (37), with the committee emphasizing that school must

/…/teach the young according to the measure of their ability to perceive and enjoy the fine quality in various forms: literature, song and music, fine art, nature. (37)

In this task, the esthetic and practical school subjects, of which Drawing (Visual art) and Music are labeled esthetic and Sloyd practical, are assigned an important role. In subsequent SOU reports, Drawing is changed into Visual Arts. In the presentation below, we use the concept “Visual art” for this school subject.

Yet, the School Commission also stressed the importance of theory and orientation as well as coordination among different school subjects, in which the practical-esthetic subjects were expected to participate. The traditional gap between practical esthetic should therefore not be maintained:

/…/theoretical work steps relate to manual and aesthetic ones. (123)

These principles would also provide guidance while reforming Teacher Education and indicated that the government intended through “policy drift” (Kyvik, 2007) to take a firm grip on the development of the various Teacher Education programmes. The committee’s view of the role of the esthetic-practical subjects in school held consequences for the reforming of Teacher Education, in which they were also regarded as important but as holding a "second-class position" (181) because they were too “practical”. The solution was not to maintain a traditional “gap” between on one hand practical subjects, i.e., esthetic and practical subjects, and reading subjects, i.e., school subjects such as history. It was suggested that Teacher Education in the practical and esthetic subjects be devoted more to theoretical knowledge about, for example, esthetic cultural treasures or art music and theory.

The School Commission found that the distribution of theoretical and practical education required both subject knowledge and vocational education. For this purpose, it was proposed that a new structure be established beside the university structure, a Teacher Training College. This organization would take care of “the real vocational education”, involving three parts in addition to the subject education: practice, methodology and pedagogy. In this context, psychological and pedagogical research was seen as crucial.

In summary, we find that the notion which framed the School Commission’s report (SOU., 1948:27) in terms of objectives, content and organization of the future of “policy drift” was due to a shift in attitudes regarding the mission of Teacher Education in Sweden (Kyvik, 2007). The government had developed its view on the purpose of non-university education, and the status and role of non-university education within the higher education system (Kyvik, 2007). The investigators’ opinion that the esthetic subjects were too “practical” implied that the subjects should become more theoretical, i.e., drift toward academic values, “programme drift”, while tacit knowledge was downplayed. From a media ecology perspective, this involved changed mediations (Strate, 2011) and a downplaying of “techne” (Saugstad, 2006).

The demands that the content of the subjects be more strongly adapted to the needs of the teaching profession, “phronesis”, and the school, i.e., “vocationalisation” (Hippach-Schneider, 2014; Maclean, 2010) also implied theorizing of the content. Yet, the proposals for “vocationalisation” not only involved non-university education, but university education as well. In the same way that the committee wished to raise the status and value of the esthetic subjects in school and Teacher Education, it appears obvious that the ambition of the Teacher Training Colleges based on scientific grounds was a “sector drift” (Kyvik, 2007) aimed at enhancing the academic status of the non-university institution Teacher Training College and thus Teacher Education. The proposed structures for the future Teacher Training Colleges were developed in another report some years later, The First Teacher Training College (SOU., 1952:33).

The First Teacher Training College (SOU., 1952:33)

The starting point of the reform proposals in the Teacher Training College report (SOU., 1952:33), described in directives, was to investigate the prerequisites for and propose the structures for a teacher’s training college common to all teacher categories, to which the pedagogical training should be concentrated. (1)

The committee that was assigned focused on Teacher Education for the class teacher at “seminars” and Teacher Education for the subject teacher at the university. Teacher Education for the esthetic and practical subjects, as conducted at other and various institutions as shown above, was not dealt with. Still, the plans for reforming Teacher Education also allowed for those subjects to become included in this structure in due time. The proposed reform pattern, both large and small, was taken from university education, which was the model for the proposed new structure. Therefore, research should be conducted at the Teacher Training College with the task:

/…/to provide prospective teachers/…./contact with the pedagogical and psychological research and that this contact cannot be achieved unless such research is carried out at the teacher training college itself. (27)

This “programme drift” (Kyvik, 2007) comprised various well-known academic structures; initially, a professorship in “school research” (248), connected to the philosophy faculty at the university, was suggested. It was thus envisaged that a special bachelor’s degree in pedagogy would be created and that better conditions would be created for a fully scientific study of a school subject’s methodology, with a hint that the discipline of Pedagogy would develop such research. Science should be the basis for all categories of prospective teachers at Teacher Training Colleges, and the main discipline Pedagogy, be based on psychology.

It was also suggested to create a “licentiate degree”, which is a half PhD-exam, in a school subject’s methodology (192). In this context, the question whether the continued studies and research at the Teacher Training College should be integrated into a higher degree system or not was raised. The committee believed that interest in advanced studies, “student drift”, would grow if they were to lead to an academic degree. Teaching was no longer considered to be "a craft".

[…] teaching skill is not achieved solely with the help of blueprints and learned hand grips. The methodology does not consist of rules and templates intended for different school situations. (22)

This somewhat condescending attitude to the knowledge of the hand skills also included an implicit devaluation of “techne” (Saugstad, 2006) in the esthetic subjects.

Teaching skill was thus a science, and in their role the Teacher Training Colleges should act as a “hearth” for progressive pedagogy” (24). Only in this way could the "actual vocational education" at the Teacher Training College with its focus on schoolwork methodology be fruitful for the development of work in schools, it was stressed.

In summary, we find that the notion which framed the Teacher Training College (SOU., 1952:33) in terms of its objectives, content and organization when the contours of the proposed Teacher Training College were taking shape was about making the new institution as similar to the university as possible. It was a matter of developing academic degree structures and research, i.e., “programme drift”. Ensuring scientific quality in Teacher Education would attract staff (“staff drift”) and students who want to extend their lower degree with a higher degree (“student drift”; Kyvik, 2007), and all of this would benefit society. For the esthetic educations, this not only meant greater adaptation to academic structures but also the incorporation of theoretical content, “epistemic knowledge” (Saugstad, 2006). When the committee emphasized that teaching was no longer to be regarded as “a craft”, this may also have been aimed at “techne” in the esthetic subjects.

This report may additionally be seen as a steering policy document since it directly influenced practice (Simola, 2000) by setting up special Teacher Training Colleges; first in Stockholm in 1956, followed by Malmö in 1960, Gothenburg in 1962 and Umeå in 1968. For Parry (2009), colleges hold special significance for contemporary policies on expansion, differentiation and widening participation, being well placed to lead the democratization of access and participation in higher education, especially among the workforce (339).

Teacher Education Experts (SOU, 1965:29A)

The starting point of the reform proposals in Teacher Education Experts (SOU, 1965:29A), described in directives in the committee’s investigation, was to deal with the external organization of teacher education, chiefly concerning the organization of subject and class teacher education (SOU, 1965:29). This meant that the practical/esthetic subjects were only briefly treated. The central proposal was that the Teacher Training Colleges should take over all Teacher Education, while the seminars and other Teacher Education institutions should be closed.

In the argument, it was reiterated that the dividing of the school’s subjects into academic subjects and practical subjects was historically shaped and had its basis in the old “learned” school. The lingering division into academic subjects and practical subjects was thus regarded as a remnant of an older system.

The prospective teacher should therefore no longer build on "memory from his own school days" (100), but implicitly just science. The purpose was a "synthesis" (100) of the practical and theoretical, also for teachers in the esthetic/practical subjects. In order to achieve the set goals, the committee requested a stronger "goal orientation" of the discipline of Pedagogy, which they believed should “[…] deal with their actual field, research on teaching and teacher education” (134).

The committee draw attention to what they called the "integration problem" (204), by which they meant how the four mutually independent parts of subject education, pedagogy, methodology and practice at Techer Training college could be more closely connected and support each other. This brought another “problem” to life, the “congruence problem”, which in this context meant that the four parts of the various Teacher Education programmes would support not only each other (“integration”), but what they were related to: school and teaching in the school. School and Teacher Education should also be congruent in one or more respects, by

[…] achieving greater substantive agreement between the universities’ and the school’s subjects. (207)

In summary, we find that the model which framed the Teacher Education Experts report (SOU, 1965:29A) in terms of its objectives, content and organization was the academic structures of the university, for example, proposals for lecturer training, “programme drift” (Kyvik, 2007), which may be regarded as an embryonic postgraduate structure for Teacher Education. Yet, the experts also wanted to change the content of the academic content to make it more “congruent” with the needs of the school and Teacher Education, i.e., “vocationalisation” (Hippach-Schneider, 2014; Maclean, 2010).

Like in earlier investigations, the value of esthetic education is highlighted at the same time as its special nature of “techne” is questioned. When it was emphasized that the teaching profession was no longer based on “craft”, this also applied to the esthetic subjects, built on “memories” of bodily acquired knowledge and a context-dependent form of teaching through action, observation, imitation, identification and training (Nielsen & Kvale, 1999). A future scientific approach is set against this outdated way of conducting education.

Added to this is the requirement that the content be congruent with the school’s needs, more theoretically in combination or “integration” with other subjects and the questioning of the core education in the practical-esthetic subjects. All of these proposals challenge the strong classification of esthetic subjects (Bernstein, 2000).

Teacher Education Committee (LUK) (SOU, 1972:92)

The starting point of the reform proposals in the Teacher Education Committee (LUK) (SOU, 1972:92) described in directives or frameworks for the committee’s investigation was the issue of how teacher education in the esthetic subjects along with practical school subjects could be integrated into the new structures that were beginning to take shape. It was considered that there was a risk that the education in these subjects would fall outside the increasingly important integration between the school’s various subjects.

It took thus 20 years before an investigation came up with proposals for how the practical/esthetic subjects could fit into the already established structures, providing an example of how arts education policies come to be indirectly, as an afterthought, and negatively impacted by the main policy effort—“collateral damage” (Shaw (2020)). The report primarily sought to adapt these subjects to the new study organization at faculties of philosophy, and subject teacher programmes at Teacher Training Colleges (15). The guiding principles were the general reform ideas and principles of teacher education as communicated by the 1960 Teacher Education Experts report (SOU, 1965:29A).

Like in previous SOU reports, this was based on the notion that the old subject division was outdated and that Teacher Education in the Esthetic subjects should have the same form as the academic subject Teacher Education (SOU, 1972:92, p. 85) and that this division of a school’s subjects into “academic subjects”, “aesthetic/practical subjects” and “vocational subjects”, respectively, held "negative effects" for the Esthetic school subjects and was “outdated”:

This division reflects an outdated approach. The terms academic subjects, practical/aesthetic subjects and vocational subjects should therefore, as stated in prop. 1967: 4 (p. 122), be abolished. (16)

Implicitly, this motivated the esthetic subjects to become more linked to social issues in terms of content and, in terms of form and mediation, to theoretical subjects.

The experts proposed that studies on a basic level in a practical esthetic subject should be credited for postgraduate studies in the subject. This “teaching methodical” research and postgraduate education should take place in collaboration between one or more subject departments and the pedagogical departments at teacher training colleges and/or universities as well as the local school system by incorporating these subjects in the longer term, however, into interdisciplinary projects by both their subject and teaching methodical nature; everything in principle designed in the same way as the current postgraduate education available at the Faculty of Philosophy. Since Teacher Education in esthetic subjects had a weak or almost non-existent connection to existing university disciplines, including pedagogy, the proposed postgraduate programmes would develop and exist on the terms of the established disciplines. This would contribute to a further weakening of the classification of the esthetic subjects, which was the purpose.

In summary, we find that the notion which framed the Teacher Education Committee (LUK) (SOU, 1972:92) in its terms of objectives, content and organization, the committee continued the drift toward academic values by outlining a future graduate programme for teacher in the esthetic subjects, “programme drift” (Kyvik, 2007). In other respects, the report was largely a repetition of what had already been stated in the previous investigations, but here with greater concreteness. We regard both the delay in issuing the special report and the prediction that it would take additional (long) time to carry out the continued integration of these subjects into a more academic structure as confirming that the practical/esthetic subjects differed at crucial points from more theoretical subjects and that this would make it more difficult to fit them into the same academic structures as the other Teacher Education programmes. In so doing, the committee was downplaying the context-dependent form of teaching through action, observation, imitation, identification and training (Nielsen & Kvale, 1999). Future scientific approaches may be contrasted against this outdated way of conducting education.

Discussion and analysis

This study deals with the early “academic drift” of Teacher Education in Sweden, mainly on a discursive level, with a focus on Teacher Education in the esthetic school subjects Visual art, Music and Sloyd in the 1950s and 1960s. The process of “academic drift” preceded the major university reforms undertaken in the 1970s and consisted of the first phase of “epistemic drift” focused on institution-building and the expansion of policy for science (Elzinga, 1997). The rhetoric in the reports stressed on one hand the need for an esthetic education in the reformed school in which the practical/esthetic subjects were given great importance, and on the other proposed reforms that made these subjects more theoretical and more like other school subjects. The reform proposals were based on the notion that these subjects were overlooked and held low status. Therefore, and from an egalitarian perspective, whether these school subjects, discontinuously connected with any university discipline, should become more theoretical and “continuously” connected to a university discipline, school subjects, which challenged the content and form of these subjects (Stengel, 1997). The “academic drift” of Teacher Education also meant, by definition, as we see it, a weakening of the educational aspect of the pedagogical discourse. To compensate for this, the various reports called for greater “congruence” between subject teaching and the school’s needs in the future Teacher Education, vocalization.

In response to our first research question, i.e., what may have motivated the proposals to academise Swedish teacher education after the Second World War, we find that the process was policy-driven, a “policy drift”, at a dramatic time when political contradictions were being toned down, involving pressure from various groups in society, and a growing number of students applying for Higher Education. It was also about giving greater space to scientifically based content in the various Teacher Education programmes, at the same time as when practical issues were being theorized and attributed a more prominent place, “vocationalisation” (Hippach-Schneider, 2014; Maclean, 2010). In an age of social engineering, of an “engineering mentality” (Lundin & Stenlås, 2010, p. 9), the proposed reforms were to meet the expansion of the Higher Education Sector when the new knowledge society (Smeby, 2006) was to be implemented. Thus, the role models for educational reforms were taken from an institution of an older date, built on a scientific basis, the university, which represented stability and tradition at a time of great upheaval, i.e., “mimetic isomorphism” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) intimately linked with prestige (Hallonsten, 2012), as well as “symbolic isomorphism”—a “statement” (Jaquette, 2013) intimately linked with prestige (Hallonsten, 2012).

In response to our second research question, i.e., which principles are proposed by the 1946 School Commission and how were they made more tangible in later investigations; we find that the word “scientific” with its different derivations, together with “democracy” and “equality”, were frequent concepts, and that equality not only implied that education reforms would create the conditions for an increased degree of social equality, but also that the various Teacher Education programmes would be cast in the same scientifically based model. A fragmented Teacher Education ecology was an expression of inequality, and teaching was to be regarded as a science, not a craft. Science was regarded as the single-most important element while solving practical problems, “academic drift” (Harwood, 2006).

With Kyvik’s (2007) fine-grained typology, we establish that “academic drift” was proposed and thereby took place on the governmental level, i.e., “policy drift”. In this sense, one may also identify “programme drift” in the ambition that all education (both theoretical and practical) would have a scientific basis within established academic structures. When a special professorship in “school research”, and a special bachelor’s degree along with a fully scientific study of school subjects’ methodology is suggested, it is also the beginning, but not the completion, of an “institutional drift”. It was hoped that ensuring scientific quality in Teacher Education would attract staff, “staff drift” and students who wish to extend their lower degree with a higher degree, “student drift”. Yet, it would take several decades and many government reports before structures for research and postgraduate education could be set up like ordinary discipline-based university institutions.

The “programme drift” also involved the “congruence problem”, i.e., how to achieve greater content agreement between the content in university-based education and in the school subjects, i.e., the value of “academic drift” should be tested and manifested in an applied situation, i.e., be of relevance in Teacher Education or “vocationalisation” (Hippach-Schneider, 2014; Maclean, 2010). At the same time as subject Teacher Education and the established disciplines were serving as a model for all future Teacher Education, it was necessary to request the disciplines to adapt to the needs of Teacher Education. A wedge was thereby driven into the relative independence of the disciplines, which Elzinga (1997) labels “epistemic drift”.

In response to our third research question, i.e., in which respects do the reform proposals both challenge and produce opportunities for Teacher Education in Visual art, Music and Sloyd, we find that the proposed adaptation to the university’s structures entailed a reduction of the Teacher Education ecology, or “institutional isomorphism” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) and constituted a “threat” to institutional diversity (Morphew, 2009, p. 246) and worked against profiling and specialization in TE in the esthetic school subjects like Visual art, Music and Sloyd, as justified by the concept of “equality”. The argument was that the Teacher Education in the esthetic subjects was excluded in the educational setting, contributing to their low status. By making all Teacher Education programmes more equal academic high-status educations (subject teachers), the status of Teacher Education in the esthetic subjects would increase. However, the proposed reforms challenged Teacher Education in Visual art, Music and Sloyd when scientifically based content was given greater space in the various Teacher Education programmes, and teaching was to be regarded as a science and not a craft. This may have led to the practical knowledge imparted tending to become valued less (Ek et al., 2013) and that the time for studies in “techne” reduced (Borg, 2007) and create tensions and dilemmas concerning resources, teaching focus, the relationship to research, recruitment of staff (Christensen et al., 2015) and students.

We establish that one form of mediation (writing) and one form of knowledge, theoretical knowledge (episteme) was emphasized at the expense of other forms of mediation and forms of knowledge and epistemologies (“techne” and “phronesis”), built on action-based knowledge as a form of knowledge (Saugstad, 2006), filtered through a theoretical lens, the ecology was reduced. For Teacher Education in the esthetic subjects, this meant a development away from a context-dependent form of teaching through action, observation, imitation, identification and training (Nielsen & Kvale, 1999) to a more context-independent form, with a stress on writing as a form of mediation. Due to media “biases”, not only the forms of Teacher Education in the esthetic subjects were challenged, but so too was the content.

Moreover, the requirements that Teacher Education in esthetic subjects was to be combined with another school subject, preferably theoretical subjects, had the same effect. This implied not only less time for studies in the esthetic subjects, but also that the recruitment base for Teacher Education in these subjects had changed, if not immediately, then with time. The esthetic Teacher Education was also challenged by the demands for more society-oriented teaching as well as the increased adaptation of content for the future teaching profession, i.e., more congruent with the subject content that the future teaching profession was expected to require or “vocationalisation” (Hippach-Schneider, 2014; Maclean, 2010) via the new technology (script culture) and new (scientific) methods that mark the shift from “art” to “science” (Heymann, 2009), and when these subjects become even more “congruent” with teaching in school, “vocationalisation” (Hippach-Schneider, 2014; Maclean, 2010), teacher education in the esthetic subjects in all these respects are exposed to pressure and content shift, “anomalies”, which may lead to “paradigmatic change” (Kuhn, 1962). In all of these ways, the proposed reforms challenged the strong classification of Teacher Education in the practical/esthetic subjects.

A “paradigmatic change” may also entail possibilities and development of the art field if art and research are not constructed as incompatible entities (Borgdorff, 2012), but as a dynamic process, offering methods of knowledges (Geis 2019). This could lead to research-based understandings of how knowledge and skills are acquired (Dyndahl et al., 2017) and the inclusion of new art fields (Dyndahl et al., 2017; Kockum et al., 2019).

From our media ecology perspective, we establish that the early “academic drift” of Teacher Education in the esthetic school subjects involved both possibilities and limitations, consistent with McLuhan’s (1964) well-known conceptions of “extensions to” and “amputations of” of our senses.

Conclusion

We find that the actual forms of historical consciousness that were operating, or “the temporality or historicity of historical processes” (Jensen, 2005:158) in postwar Sweden, were based on science and a shared “engineering mentality” (Lundin & Stenlås, 2010, p. 9). In the name of “equality” and “democracy”, this initiated the reduction of artistic and action-based knowledge transfer (Saugstad, 2006) to the benefit of scientifically-based knowledge transfer based on theory and communication, i.e., scientific language (Ong, 1978; 1990), in terms of subject studies, practice and methodology.

We determine that the policy-driven academisation process in Swedish Teacher Education generally, and in the esthetic school subjects specifically in the 1950s and 1960s, in various respects corresponded to the necessary reforms. This was orchestrated by political parties and other groups in society like trade unions and women’s organizations (Wigforss, 1946; Ohlson, 1958), but also student teachers at the Art School in Stockholm. The proposed reforms comprised analysis and a critical approach to old truths and traditions, which are fundamental values in academic discourse (Northedge, 2003).

However, the one-sided emphasis on a single form of knowledge—“episteme”—was unfortunate and to the detriment of the esthetic subjects. Further, a legitimate demand for equality would not necessarily imply uniformity, or to put it more ecologically, a reduced Teacher Education ecology. An academisation process that considered different forms of knowledge to a greater extent than was the case would also have been possible.

Since the policy’s long-term aim was to integrate all Teacher Education into an academic structure, it required that in an early stage Teacher Education in the esthetic school subjects was to be offered resources to enable its adaptation to academic structures, i.e., by adding a scientific critical and analytical approach as a new component in the esthetic educations. Being able to build up their own research structures and identity, with the aim of developing their epistemological uniqueness Swedish teacher education in the esthetic school subjects would also have been able to develop its distinctive “techne” and “phronesis” features more than happened within the new academic structures. Unfortunately, we find that this was not the case either (see Erixon et al., 2023).

We conclude that the early “academic drift” of Teacher Education in postwar Sweden not only challenged the paradigm of Teacher Education in the practical/esthetic subjects by weakening their classification (Bernstein, 2000), but also signified the beginning of a policy that confronted the universities’ independence. By addressing the long-standing debate between liberal education on one hand and vocational education on the other (Tight, 2015), the disciplines became more dependent on political power and policy. Consequently, the identified tension between institutions belonging to the “autonomous” tradition as opposed to those belonging to the “service” tradition” (Burgess, 1978, p. 46) would be eased partially and give rise to another form of “convergence upon a single organizational model”, a policy-driven university built on vocational education. With the proposed “academic drift” of Teacher Education and the establishment of the Teacher Training College, the authorities indirectly acquired an influence that Elzinga (1997) termed “epistemic drift”; a brick wall that would reduce the universities’ freedom to formulate research questions and teaching content in Teacher Education. This was evident in the 1970s when a full step was taken toward the integration of all Teacher Education in Sweden, as well as most other vocational education in 1977 (H77) (Erixon et al., 2023).

The current study may be seen as a first step in the research on early academic drift in Swedish Teacher Education in the esthetic subjects. However, the result of the study is mainly based on the Swedish educational policymaking discourse in Official Reports of the Swedish Government (SOU). Future research could further examine the opinions about the proposals held by other groups in society like the teachers’ union for academically educated subject teachers, class teachers, and teachers in the esthetic school subjects, respectively, as well as teacher educators and university teachers in different disciplines.

Disclsoure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Vetenskapsrådet.

Notes on contributors

Per-Olof Arne Erixon

Per-Olof Erixon is a professor of Educational Work at the Department of Creative Studies, Umeå University, Sweden. He has published articles and books in the fields of mother tongue education, Teacher Education and Academic Literacies.

Stina Wikberg

Dr Stina Wikberg is an associate professor at the Department of Creative Studies, Umeå university. At present she is also head of department. Her research interests lie within the field of arts education. Currently she is studying the academization and digitalization of esthetic subjects at school as well as teacher education, and a previous study focused the gendering and history of visual art education.