Between tradition and reform: Pedagogical essay topics at two Swedish teacher training seminars, 1915–1937.
During the beginning of the twentieth century, a series of school reforms was carried out in Sweden. One concerned the education of elementary school teachers. In this article, we examine which knowledge and teaching ideals that was posed by some of those who had the task of putting this reform into practice. At the center are the nearly five hundred essay topics that were offered at the teacher training seminars in Lund (only male apprentices) and Falun (only female apprentices) 1914–1937. The results advocate that two rather different local cultures of knowledge were developed at the two seminars. While the essay topics that were offered in Lund mostly seems to promote a more traditional reproductive view on teaching, the ones proposed in Falun rather appears to encourage a much more reformistic understanding of schooling. Hence it is suggested that the latter might be understood as an aspiration to establish a more autonomous and independent women teacher identity.