In Sweden, as in the other Nordic countries, teacher education programmes have in recent

years become increasingly scientific. The importance of scientific knowledge and

understanding has been emphasised and the professional teacher is seen not only as a ‘doer’

but also, and more importantly so, as ‘a reflective practitioner’. In the education of all new

teachers - from preschool to upper secondary school – the emphasis is currently on the fact

that teaching is to be seen as an outcome of a scientific approach and scientifically-grounded

working methods. Simultaneously, the status of workplace-based learning (VFU) has become

elevated to form an integral part of the programme of education, on an equal footing with the

more theoretical content. In preschool settings, educated teachers work side-by-side with staff

who, although they lack any formal education, nevertheless can sometimes have long

experience from work in these settings.

My aim here is to present an exploratory study of a recently started teacher education

programme in which all of the participants, although they have a long experience from work

in pedagogical settings in preschools and recreational centres, have no formal teacher

education. It is a characteristic of this educational programme that, to be accepted, students

have to work at least 50% of a full-time post in their ordinary workplaces. The aim of the

study is twofold. One part is to describe and analyse the students’ experiential knowledge as

well as whether, and if so how, that knowledge is transformed in the interaction with

theoretical knowledge during the education programme. The other aim is to describe and

analyse the process of change in professional identity that takes place in the shift from one

profession to another in the same workplace.

In this paper I present the results of an initial discourse analysis of the ways in which

prospective teacher students talk about their pedagogical field of action, the ideas they have

concerning their forthcoming profession and the forms of experiential knowledge that they

possess and express. The analysis was performed on texts and recorded discussions produced

during an introductory course the aim of which was to validate the participants’ knowledge

using the first year courses studied by students on the university’s regular teacher education

programme as a benchmark. The study can be regarded as a longitudinal exploratory casestudy

and I will, in this presentation, also introduce a number of tentative results relating to

the students’ experiential and theoretically-based knowledge at the end of the two initial

programme courses. Further, I will also discuss the students’ professional identities and,

finally, I will present and explore a research design that is intended to comprise participant

observations, interviews and document-analysis, planned for the next three and a half years.