Från samhällsmoder till forskarbehörig lärare : kontinuitet och förändring i en lokal förskollärarutbildning

From Mother of Society to a Teacher Qualified for Post-graduate Studies – Continuity and Change in a Local Pre-school Education. The aim of this thesis is to throw light upon the basic values and representations of knowledge within a local female teacher education tradition and identify what kind of expectations are held of a pre-school teacher over time. The main question concerns central values and notions in a local pre-school teacher education regarding what is expected of a recognised pre-school teacher between the beginning of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century. A key interest is how these underlying values and notions are maintained and how they are transformed over time. Another interest is how these values and notions are maintained and transformed when they meet other teacher education traditions and when they are confronted with traditional academic values. The preschool teacher education is deeply rooted in a female tradition and the study presented here also focuses on the role that gender plays in the formation, changes and continuity of the central values in pre-school teacher education. The empirical sources include in-depth-interviews with 22 lecturers and supervisors from a local pre-school education in addition to document studies of selected materials from the archives of the Department of Education at Örebro University and at the Örebro University Library. The historical context and the dimension of time have been analysed using James Wertsch’s (2002) conception of voices of collective remembering in addition to the concepts of knowledge cultures (Englund & Linné 2005, Nerland 2008) and communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 2003). The results presented in this dissertation indicate that major shifts have occurred in the collective memory of the local pre-school teacher education during the 20th century and the first years of the 21st century. I have distinguished seven historical periodic themes in the analysis. These are: Mother of society – formation of a new female activity system (ca 1902–1942), All-round kindergarten leader (ca 1942–1963), Personality development and child observation (ca 1963–1972), Developmental psychology and dialogue pedagogy (ca 1972–1977), Education in a university setting and a citizen of society (ca 1977–1983), Reflective child pedagogue (ca 1982 1993) and Teacher of younger children – qualified for a research tradition (ca 2001– 2007)