Research as Power and Knowledge: Struggles over Research in Teacher Education

Overview & Synopsis

This article explores discourses of research in the "academisation" of Swedish teacher education. It takes as its theoretical framework Foucauldian concepts of power and knowledge to analyse the moves to incorporate teacher education in the university. The study draws on a case study of teacher education in Sweden which used documentary and interview analyses to explore institutional history, and structures and shifts in teacher education and research from the 1950s onwards. The study shows how struggles over power and knowledge were constitutive of the development of a research-oriented teacher education that emerged in a multilayered process involving a variety of actors at different levels. It also shows the tensions in the emergence and construction of a new research discipline. The article should be understood in the context of current international discourses where there is a need for a research base for teacher education.