Changes in teacher education in Sweden in the neo-liberal age: Toward an occupation in itself or a profession for itself?

In the last two decades, the Swedish welfare state has been radically transformed in a neo-liberal direction, including extensive decentralisation and marketisation of the education sector with significant consequences for the work and professional identities of its teachers. Teacher education has also been directly included in this transformation. The present article addresses the changes that have been introduced. We are concerned that key elements of theoretical disciplinary professional knowledge may be lost in the transformation at serious cost to future teachers and teacher professionalism, and that research knowledge that would help in this respect is no longer being financed for production nor communicated as examined knowledge in teacher education in Sweden today.