In an age when knowledge has become a competitive aspect in society, teachers and their professional knowledge base have become all the more important, both in terms of policy and practice. This study investigates what sort of content, knowledge, and competencies are included in the examination practice of the Swedish primary teacher education programme, and thereby legitimatized as a primary teacher’s professional knowledge base. The results show that Swedish primary school teachers are primarily trained to work with subject didactics, and focus is placed on being able to plan, carry out, and evaluate teaching in light of descriptive and normative learning theories, as well as current regulatory documents. One possible effect of this strong subject didactic focus is that teachers are not sufficiently trained to critically analyse the conditions that they work under, especially in view of current, global and local policy trends.