Teach for Sweden (TFS), stemming from the global Teach For All (TFA) movement, has attracted the attention of policymakers and various educational stakeholders since its establishment in 2013 for its efforts to solve the problems of Swedish schools by recruiting and training new groups of potentially qualified teachers. TFS particularly focuses on recruiting individuals with STEM or language expertise to undergo a short complementary teacher education program. While TFA has been studied internationally (Bailey, 2015), there is a lack of Swedish studies that examine TFS. Therefore, this paper aims at examining how the TFS initiative constructs problems and solutions within the contemporary Swedish education system, with a particular emphasis on its stated goal of addressing educational inequality. The analysis is based on a five-step critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the extensive material available on the TFS website. The analytical approach combines Fairclough’s (1995) analytical framework with a modified version by Guo and Shan (2013). The analysis include five steps: (i) Focusing on a social problem with a semiotic aspect, analysing how the problem is portrayed/construed and identifying the discourse(s) involved; (ii) Analysing how the proposed solution is portrayed/construed and identifying the discourse(s) involved; (iii) Mapping the network of practices within which the problem and solution are situated and how they may be reorganised; (iv) Identifying potential contradictions and gaps in the material; (v) Critically reflect on the analysis. In accordance with the initial step, this paper focuses on a social problem – educational inequality – that has a semiotic dimension, as evidenced by the use of images, fonts, colours, and other visual elements on the TFS website. 

Preliminary findings suggest that TFS constructs both problems and solutions within the framework of an overarching neoliberal discourse, which encompasses regulations concerning efficiency, competitiveness, knowledge claims and audit practices. This discourse, in line with an emphasis on practical-behavioural know-how in teacher education, position teachers not as ‘thinkers’ but as ‘doers’. Consequently, the TFS initiative reinforces the on-going tendency in Sweden toward a ‘teacher training’ paradigm, which emphasises the idea of deliberate practices (Horden et al., 2025) and, in turn, undermines teachers’ professional judgement and autonomy. In conclusion, our analysis reveals that TFS inadequately address structural injustices and inequalities within the Swedish school system. Although several Nordic countries are involved in the global TFA movement, research in the area is scarce. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that the findings of this paper are relevant to Nordic educational research.

References

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical Discourse Analysis. Longman.

Bailey, P. (2015). Consultants of conduct: New actors, new knowledges and new 'resilient' subjectivities in the governing of the teacher. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 47(3), 232–250.

Guo, S. & Shan, H. (2013). The politics of recognition: critical discourse analysis of recent PLAR policies for immigrant professionals in Canada. International Journal of Lifelong Education 32(4), 464–480.

Horden, J., Pratt, N., Kelly, P., & Evans, K. (2025). Why deliberate practice is not a basis for teacher expertise. Cambridge Journal of Education, 55(4), 569–586.