”Same same, but different”. En genealogisk studie av den ’goda’ läraren, den ’goda’ eleven och den ’goda’ skolan i svenska lärarutbildningsreformer 1940-2008

Teacher education in Sweden is facing yet another reform. On December 3rd 2008 the most recent report on the future content and organization of teacher education was presented. This proposal will have substantial consequences for the country’s teacher education institutions. The aim of the current study is to scrutinize, from a discourse theory perspective, the way in which the most recent reform of teacher education – HUT 07 – constructs and positions the ‘good’ teacher, pupil and school in relation to the ‘good’ society, or, put another way, the ideal societal picture which ‘good’ teachers and schools should provide the blueprint for. HUT 07 is studied from a historical, genealogical perspective in an attempt to trace continuity and change in the articulation of policy. The results of the study reveal, amongst other things, a close, discursive connection between the rationality of knowledge and the pupilteacher- subject articulated in HUT 07, and similar articulations made half a century earlier. It is not, however, possible to draw absolute similarities between the two reform periods, due to the fact that they are based on opposing rationalities, deriving from different societal visions and norms.