Research topic

In 2024, the Swedish Ministry of Education has introduced a course on AI in upper secondary and adult education (Komvux). In response, several universities across the country have organized professional development courses aimed at improving teachers’ competence in the field of AI. This study aims to explore the hopes and fears attached to AI in political and academic discourses on the teaching profession in Sweden.

Theoretical framework  

We draw on the notion of policy assemblage (Savage, 2019) to examine how different political imaginaries, rationalities, technologies, infrastructures, and actors collectively shape certain perspectives on AI and its role in education. By focusing on 1) policy rationalities and 2) academic discourses as expressed in the literature of newly established AI courses for teachers, as parts of the policy assemblage, we explore how they construct the kinds of teachers (cf. Hacking, 2006) in response to different problematizations (Foucault, 1994) of AI and education.

Methodology 

Two sets of data were collected to examine and contrast two parts of the policy assemblage described above. These are (1) Swedish and international policy documents on AI in education in general and in relation to the teaching profession in particular, (2) syllabi and reading lists for courses on AI for teachers.  

In analyzing the empirical sources, we focused on (a) whether AI is presented as a threat or a blessing for teachers, (b) what visions of desirable futures are embedded in different discourses on AI and the teaching profession, (c) what kinds of teachers are envisioned by different discourses. Special attention was paid to the visuals accompanying some of the selected texts, as they often carry important messages that may not be explicit in the text itself.  

Findings 

Preliminary findings suggest that discourses about AI produce specific kinds of teachers-those who are adaptable, digitally literate, and data-oriented. We also find that discourses about AI in education are shifting from framing it as a salvation for educational problems to framing it as a potential threat to the teaching profession. The polarized visions of AI as either a silicon savior or an iron-fisted digital dictator are also reflected in the accompanying imagery, which depicts a world in which AI is seamlessly integrated into classrooms, symbolizing hopes for efficiency, as well as fears of overly mechanistic teaching and learning and reduced human connections.

Relevance to Nordic educational research  

In the Nordic countries, education has historically been rooted in values such as equity, inclusivity, and democracy - principles that prioritize humanistic, student-centered teaching. By exploring different discourses on AI and the teaching profession in Sweden, the study contributes to an understanding of how AI might affect or even challenge these values in the Nordic context.  

In recent years, Swedish teacher education has come under scrutiny as policymakers seek to raise the status of the profession. Since 2021, universities have been authorized to set specific admission criteria for teacher education programs, including recent proposals to require a minimum grade of C in Swedish (SOU 2024:81). These changes reflect broader concerns about declining teacher competence and societal anxieties about the profession’s ability to meet its demands. At the same time, they raise questions about how the concept of teacher suitability is constructed, governed, and tied to societal desires.  

This paper addresses these questions by providing a genealogy of teacher suitability discourses in Sweden from 1842 to 2024. Drawing on the theories of Foucault (1991) and Hacking (2002), it examines how selection requirements have historically regulated teacher subjectivities, producing individuals who are both docile to institutional norms and desirable to societal aspirations. Through an analysis of policy documents, government reports, teacher guidelines, the study traces how moral, professional, and meritocratic discourses have shaped the processes of defining and assessing teacher suitability in Sweden. 

Preliminary results show that when Sweden’s compulsory school system was introduced in 1842, teacher suitability was grounded in religiously inspired moral values. Suitability was articulated through religiously inspired notions of virtue and sin. The teacher, as a figure of ‘moral purity’, was tasked with embodying Christian ideals (Dahm, 1846). This moral regime sought not only to discipline teachers but also to use them as tools for disciplining society, positioning them as mediators of the state’s moral aspirations. 

By the mid-20th century, teacher suitability shifted towards professionalization and meritocratic ideals. Suitability became tied to the teacher’s observable performance and professional behavior as assessed by entrance examinations, interviews, and pre-practice requirements (SOU 1952:33; SOU 1975:67). These techniques also fabricated a specific kind of teacher subjectivity – one that embodied the dual imperatives of individual merit and professional conformity. The discourse of suitability thus shifted from explicit moral authority to the subtler forms of conformity to professional norms and institutional practices. Teachers were no longer seen as just moral figures but as technicians, expected to meet the societal demands for expertise. 

The most recent proposal to require a minimum grade of C in Swedish (SOU 2024:81) exemplifies how meritocratic ideals are reinscribed into suitability discourses, constructing a ‘floor’ beneath which one cannot fall. Hidden behind meritocratic arguments, language requirements are presented as an important yet neutral criterion of teacher competence. At the same time, this form of ‘linguistic meritocracy’ exemplifies how teachers are increasingly governed through performance metrics, which are believed to be objective. 

Overall, our analysis demonstrates how institutional and societal desires are inscribed in the very processes that make up the people who are meant to serve them. The teacher, as a subject of both discipline and desire, is shaped through societal fears and desires and the intersecting discourses of morality, expertise and effectiveness. 

Focusing on the shadow education system of private supplementary tutoring, this paper contains comparisons over time and place in the distinctive circumstances of the Soviet Union and the 15 independent countries that emerged following its collapse in 1991. The paper uses the lenses of politics and economics to understand changing tides in the scale and nature of shadow education. The phenomenon did not fit the official ideologies of the Soviet era, but became evident particularly in the decades from the 1970s. In the post-Soviet era, shadow education expanded markedly, but with diversity across the 15 countries and with changing features as the decades progressed. The paper shows the broad contours in this diversity while also highlighting significant research gaps.

In this paper, we trace specific numbers related to reading and vocabulary that circulate in public discourse and are regularly referred to in educational and political settings in Sweden. Our purpose is to explore how numeric indicators of reading co-produce societal desires, fears, and political solutions. The results show that the numbers remain an enigma: their origins are not traceable, nor how they were produced. We regard the numbers as examples of numberfic(a)tion, meaning there is no measurement underpinning them. Yet, they stabilize, dramatize and communicate research findings in ways that are considered convincing. The numbers have rhetorical value and efficiently guide the discourse about reading, readers, and non-readers, as well as indicate political action.