Suchergebnisse

The education policy of the last few decades has significantly changed the Swedish school system. Municipalization and deregulation reforms were implemented in parallel with an internationally prescribed professionalization of teachers. This seemingly contradictory combination has reshaped not only teachers' attitudes and actions but also those of principals and students as managers and consumers. In light of these changes, the professionalization of teachers and the strategic importance of a teacher-specific knowledge base, multi-year academic training, certification and career steps are analysed. Based on Freidson's three competing work organization and control logics, this article focuses on how the mix of logics has changed at the expense of professionalism in favour of bureaucracy and the market. The professionalization reforms have in some respects benefited teachers, especially with regard to their positions in the labour market. In other respects, the actions of managers and consumers have resulted in restrictions on teachers' autonomy as professionals.

This article analyses the professionalization of the education field in Sweden from a historical perspective by tracing efforts towards professionalization of teaching from a clerically consecrated to a scientifically grounded praxis. Some of these efforts seem to be fairly typical for welfare states like Sweden. However, others are more unique, such as the state ambition to create a unified teacher profession based on a scientific knowledge base across elementary and grammar school teacher categories. This ambition failed. Some reasons are speculatively discussed primarily from a Bourdieuan perspective in terms of different teacher habitus, education capital and professionalization strategies among teachers in different positions in the field of education. Primary and secondary data sources are used but National Policy Documents have formed the main data source.