The shaping of pre-service teachers' professional knowledge base through assessments

Today teachers and their professional knowledge base have become important, since knowledge has become a pivotal aspect of modern society. This study investigates the shaping of pre-service teachers' knowledge base by studying the assessment practice in teacher education programmes for primary level teachers. The analytical focus lies on pedagogic discourses and what skills and competencies are legitimized in and through the assessment tasks. The results show that Swedish primary school pre-service 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 the current curricula. One possible effect of this strong subject didactic focus is that teachers are not sufficiently trained to critically analyse the conditions determining their work, especially in view of current global and local policy trends.