Suchergebnisse

One of the most important routes to employment within the social welfare sector worldwide is higher education, which equips students not only with the knowledge for employment, but with the tools to use and build on this knowledge. During the last few decades there has been an academic drift in professional education, especially for many shorter professional programmes. Many of these shorter programmes have left the realm of vocational education to enter higher education. On the one hand, graduates are confronted by an increased demand for research and evidence-based knowledge, and on the other, they are criticised for lacking the knowledge and skills relevant for professional work. From Vocational to Professional Education presents new research into programmes suggesting how best to prepare students for professional work and addresses the challenges facing the education of professionals for social welfare. The book identifies and clarifies key problems, as well as outlining the political and historical context in which they are embedded. Chapters discuss theoretical and analytical ways to address these challenges and suggest recommendations for the further development of education for professional practice. Based on comprehensive longitudinal research data, the book will appeal to policy makers, leaders of higher education, and teachers and researchers involved in programmes qualifying students for professional work.

The changing structure of the Swedish university system has shaped its corps of university teachers. The analytical device used to demonstrate this connection is the changing social functions of Swedish universities which serve as the lens through which we understand this change. We argue for five successive and historically added layers of functions: the training of church officials, state functionaries, experts of the industrial society, the welfare professions, and, finally, the mass of employees of the "knowledge society." Each new function is superimposed on the existing ones, adding to the complexity of tasks, areas of knowledge, and teacher categories in the universities. The position of the university as the arbiter of the highest form of knowledge, the internal differentiation of the field of higher education, and the growth and stratification of its teaching corps are three main building blocks for this history of the Swedish system of higher education.