Individual growth or institutional development? Ideological perspectives on motives behind Swedish higher education teacher training

Abstract

What are the motives for offering or engaging in higher education teacher training courses? This question is of interest for educational developers, teachers, university managers, and policy makers in order to design courses and to meet stakeholders’ expectations. Previous research has mainly focused on the impact of higher education development courses on teacher practice and student learning. Few studies have investigated the motives behind these courses. In this paper, the motives are investigated among students, teachers, university management, and the government. The study is based on national and local documents on educational development and on interviews with representatives from four Swedish universities. The results show that all stakeholder groups are in favour of compulsory courses but the motives differ. Students, management, and government embrace an institutional perspective on educational development, in line with a social efficiency perspective on the purposes of higher education emphasising usefulness, function, and the production of skills. University teachers, on the other hand, have a more individual-oriented view on educational development and are more oriented towards a learning-centred perspective.