Swedish teacher training overhauls may sideline student identity work, study warns
New rules requiring Swedish teachers to address relationship education and neurodevelopmental needs were meant to help students develop healthy identities—but policy analysis suggests they may actually constrain how teachers can deliver this support. The research raises questions about whether sweeping education reforms are equipping teachers adequately or setting contradictory expectations.
Originaltitel: Förändrade mål i examensordningen för lärare: Policy som stödjer lärares arbete med elevers identitetsskapande?
<p>Changing goals in the degree ordinance for teachers: Policy enactment supporting students’ identity work? Goals related to Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) and Neuro-Psychiatric Difficulties (NPD) were added to the Swedish degree ordinance for teachers in 2021. These changes affect future teachers’ opportunities to support children’s development. Drawing on the work of Popkewitz on the fabrication of kinds of people, we explore how prerequisites, categorizations, and conditions are ascribed to children and future teachers. These fabrica-tions are constructed through a discursive analysis of the memorandum and responses from ten referral bodies working with students’ rights in education and RSE or NPD. The analysis shows that teachers are fabri-cated as lacking either knowledge or courage, often in relation to the age group they are expected to teach. Children’s identities are fragmented along lines of age, gender, and functionality, and RSE is constructed as relevant only to some of these fragments. We argue that there is a need for further research into the extensive and ongoing policy processes shaping teacher education, and how they might enable or constrain future teachers’ possibilities to support all children.</p>