Abstract: The needs of a globalized economy are rapidly changing what is legitimated as school knowledge and values in Europe and calling up a new understanding of teachers’ role in stimulating democratic spaces, which we have termed teachers’ democratic assignment. In this study we examined changing notions of teachers’ democratic assignment using a Critical Discourse Analysis grounded in the methodology of Fairclough (1995, 2004, 2013) and philosophical worldviews of education and democracy (Dewey 1959/1916; Edling, 2012, 2015; Englund, 2016). We tested our hypothesis that teachers’ democratic assignment has changed in rapid and unprecedented ways using a critical analysis of four public policy documents in teacher education in Ireland and Sweden. Our findings, albeit limited to only two policy documents in each country, reported a substantive and converging paradigm shift from a predominantly progressive (reconstructivist) discourse in the early years of this century to a more essentialist (perennialist) discourse in recent times. The findings will have interest for a wider audience and have implications for society and teacher education as a social responsibility for democracy and emancipation in turbulent times.