The Making of Teachers and Teacher Education: Studying Complex Systems of Societal and Scientific Desires, Hopes and Promises

The project investigate and elaborate on how teacher education is emerging out of complex systems of interacting agents located in diverse contexts, having different understandings and sometimes contradictory interests in the making of teaching professionals.

We interview teacher educators and teacher students to analyze their experiences and relations on the working of this system. This is combined with analyses of policy documents and of teacher education programs.

Given ongoing globalization we include international expertise and actions by supranational organisations directed to teacher education.

Analyses of this assemblage of agents (actors, instruments, organisations, and their resources) and how teacher education is emerging out of their interplay, are expected to make significant knowledge contributions on the complex making of teacher education of today.

This is also expected to result in important overaching insights in the working of this complex system with implications for teaching and schooling.

The proposed project is based on international cooperation and a combination of research expertise and traditions in curriculum theory, discourse analysis, knowledge politics, profession theories, and systems of reason.

Our ambition is to develop these traditions in educational sciences and by that to improve knowledge about education in globalizing societies. These contributions will be presented and tested in conversations in the international research community.