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Teach for Sweden:: facilitating new teacher subject positions in the every-day teaching practice
University of Borås, Faculty of Librarianship, Information, Education and IT. (Hupp)ORCID iD: 0000-0003-2425-2088
University West.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0965-8805
2026 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Sustainable development
According to the author(s), the content of this publication falls within the area of sustainable development.
Abstract [en]

Current national government discourses about Swedish school practices often construct teacher performance as insufficient and in need of new knowledge and skills. It is partly for this reason, the government has opened up alternative ways to prepare preservice teachers for the challenges and needs of schools over the last few decades. Teach for Sweden constitutes such an alternative, a private teacher education facilitator stemming from the global philanthropic Teach For All (TFA) movement. Today, TFA is implemented in most Western countries (Brewer, et al., 2015) with the general aim to support schools in disadvantaged communities. In specific, Teach for Sweden efforts to solve the problems of Swedish schools by recruiting and training new groups of preservice teachers (often qualified engineers) to undergo a short complementary teacher education program. National research on this program is scarce but describes an organisation using language that point at 'teach for' more so than dialogue, and that the leadership associated with Teach for Sweden is favored by measurable outcomes that reduces teaching to preparing for tests (Myers, 2021). The aim of this study is to analyse the subject positions that are constructed in conversations with Teach for Sweden graduates and how these positions relate to or challenge contemporary discourses in teacher education. The analysis will specifically focus on positions within the transition from the education period to working as a teacher after graduation, and discourses expressed within the same. The theoretical framework emanates from a discourse analytic approach and a Foucauldian perspective (Foucault, 1980), which provides a starting point for the analysis of power and dominance relations. The empirical material stems from an ongoing study comprising interviews with Teach for Sweden alumni. The analysis focuses on actors in interaction, which implies that inspiration is drawn from discursive psychology (Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Tentative findings reveal subject positions among the participants that construct contrasts between the Teach for Sweden program and every-day teaching practices. Inconsistencies between various discourses give rise to a hesitant subject position, where the alumni try to navigate to handle workloads, lack of resources and school leaders under pressure. The discrepancy between positions during and after the Teach for Sweden program thus illustrate challenges for the alumni, for professional knowledge and for future teacher work. Although several Nordic countries are involved in the global TFA movement, there is a need for more research in the area. In light of TFA’s growing presence and legitimacy, it is reasonable to suggest that the findings of this paper are relevant to Nordic educational research.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2026.
National Category
Social Sciences Educational Sciences
Research subject
Teacher Education and Education Work
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-34695OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hb-34695DiVA, id: diva2:2020157
Conference
The Nordic Educational Research Association
Available from: 2025-12-09 Created: 2025-12-09 Last updated: 2026-01-19Bibliographically approved

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Angervall, Petra

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