Why become a teacher of Swedish?

The Swedish subject is complex and rich in content. This puts great demands on teachers who need deep knowledge in several different academic fields, especially linguistics, literary studies and rhetoric. Students who choose an education to become Swedish teachers likely have different perceptions of the subject and value the subject’s content in different ways. It can also be assumed that the students’ perception changes during the course of the education, based on the education they have received and the experiences they have acquired during student teacher training.

The project contains two sub-studies. The first one focuses on newly admitted student teachers with Swedish as their main subject and the second one on the same category of students who are at the end of their education and approaching graduation. In both studies, the Q method is used, which is a composite research method to observe views, values ​​and attitudes towards a certain subject. In other words, it means that the participating students are allowed to evaluate statements about the different areas of content within the Swedish subject in relation to each other. The collected material is analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively and supplemented with follow-up qualitative interviews.

The results are expected to be relevant for research on the Swedish subject in schools and for the shaping of future teacher training in the Swedish subject.