Chapter 2: The Crosscurrents of Swedish Mathematics Teacher Education

As with any programs in teacher education, Swedish mathematics teacher education is influenced by changing political winds, developments in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), culture, history, PISA results, research-based program designs, and a fair amount of passion. Content and outcomes are nationally determined and include the requirement of a strong research foundation, but this is often not how practicing teachers work, which exerts its own pull on teacher education. The specific implementations of programs take different forms at the universities that offer mathematics teacher education. In order to provide a comprehensive yet meaningful introduction to both the current system and current practices, we describe the overall organization of Swedish mathematics teacher education, and then offer short cases of implemented programs. To ensure inclusivity, the various parts are written by mathematics educators from the respective institutions. In this way, both variation across mathematics teacher education for different grade levels and variation across different institutions working within the same national directives can be distinguished. Issues such as the academization of teacher education are problematized, as are other forces that constitute the crosscurrents in Swedish mathematics teacher education.