Educating competitive teachers for a competitive nation?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to discuss recent Swedish teacher education investments and reforms, and the work of teachers in response to globalisation within the context of modern social imaginaries. I briefly outline Charles Taylor’s concept of modern social imaginaries, and I examine the character of recent Swedish teacher education, teacher education reform and the work expected of teachers. I conclude that economic imaginaries are given primacy: aims and reforms are primarily linked to economic imaginaries of the competitive nation; economic norms are given primacy in the governance of schools and education; globalised and economic standards of quality and success are increasing in importance; and the concern about how to make teacher education an attractive career investment for groups the state finds important to attract to teaching is held to be vital for the quality in outcomes of education. I critically discuss the underlying globalist imaginary I think underpins Swedish education reform in the global era, and transform the teacher into a scientifically grounded economic agent for market integration and the competitive edge of the Swedish nation. I address the question of whether the modern social imaginary of democracy and citizenship should be restored and cosmopolitised in education and teacher education and in relation to the expected work of teachers rather than be reduced to or transformed into economic worldviews and agency in the era of globalisation.

Introduction

The two modern social imaginaries, the economy and the democracy, constitute a common understanding that makes possible and legitimises modern educational institutions and practices. These social imaginaries have played important roles in our understanding of teachers, their education and their expected work. Recently, education and teacher education reform have been fuelled by our imaginaries of globalisation. Policy makers in education worldwide seem to imagine themselves forced to respond adequately to a global economy that has made knowledge, competition and lifelong learning essential for economic growth. Teacher education, the work of teachers and the attractiveness of teaching are held to be vital in this global reform wave. Policy makers worldwide also seem to imagine that the competitive edge of a nation and the quality in education more or less stand or fall with the qualifications of teachers. It is therefore important to look more deeply into the imaginaries that have impact on the work of teachers and their education in the global era.

The aim of this article is to discuss recent Swedish teacher education investments and reforms, and the work of teachers in response to globalisation within the context of modern social imaginaries. In the first part, I briefly outline the concept of modern social imaginaries and their relevance for modern education. In the second part, I examine the character of recent Swedish teacher education reform, and I conclude that economic imaginaries are given primacy in teacher education, teacher education reform and the expected work of teachers. In the final part, I critically discuss the underlying globalist imaginary that I think underpins Swedish education reform in the global era, and transform the teacher into a scientifically grounded economic agent for market integration and the competitive edge of the Swedish nation. I address the question of whether the modern social imaginary of democracy and democratic citizenship should be restored and cosmopolitised in education and teacher education and in relation to the expected work of teachers rather than be reduced to or transformed into economic worldviews and agency in the era of globalisation.

Modern education and its social imaginaries

Charles Taylor (2004, 2007) uses the concept of social imaginary in his writings on the social and the interconnected nature of human lives. A social imaginary differs from the thoughts we entertain when we think or tell narratives about society in a disengaged mode. A social imaginary is the way ordinary people imagine their social reality and its relationships, order and identities, and it is carried in everyday conversation and stories. A theory is often the possession of an elite, but a social imaginary is shared by a large number of people (if not all members of society) even if a theory can also evolve into a social imaginary under certain conditions (Taylor, 2004: 23–30). A social imaginary is, in short, a shared, deep-seated understanding that makes our common practices possible and a shared sense of legitimacy of those common practices that cannot be vaccinated against fault, error, misguidance and danger (Taylor, 2004: 183). Taylor describes the evolving of social imaginaries as a long march in which new practices or modified versions of old practices develop. He claims that there are three important social imaginaries essential to the modern society, and I think that they are also essential for modern education even if I think of them as two imaginaries for my purposes in this context. They can all be seen as transformations of an original social imaginary of the modern moral order that grew in importance in 17th-century Europe after Grotius and Locke had launched their theories of Natural Law.

The new and distinctly modern moral order was not like the pre-modern imaginaries derived from a higher realm of being; rather, it was derived from the members of society seen as rational beings meant to collaborate in peace for their mutual benefit. The picture of society is that of individuals who come together in their search for security and prosperity to form a political entity against a pre-existing moral background of natural rights. Our primary service to each other was, first, the provision of collective security, to render our lives safe under law, but also the practice of economic exchange. The basic trait of this new order is the mutual respect and service among individuals that make up society, and this order also became the pre-condition for modern individualism (Taylor, 2004). The new order did not mean the rise of individualism solely at the expense of community and order; rather, modernity meant the rise of new principles of sociality, that is, a society of mutual benefit among equals. The modern moral order departs from individuals and conceives society as established for and instrumental for the rights and needs of those individuals. This moral order has served as a justification for socio-political change, it has been woven into several and increasingly demanding reactions over the years and it has moved from being descriptive to being prescriptive and is to a large extent actually lived (Taylor, 2004: 8).

It is from this imagined moral order that three important social imaginaries essential for the modern society and for modern education are derived and transformed. However, I will rephrase Taylor’s triadic proposition and think of them as two because of the kinship between the two imaginaries that make up the democratic imaginary. I will first describe the social imaginary of the economy, and then democracy as a collective agency made up of the two constituents the public sphere and the democratic self-rule of a sovereign people.

Economy as objectified reality vs democracy as a collective agency

Economy and democracy can be seen as two fundamental ways in which modern individuals are linked together to form a society. The imaginary of economy has marched a long way from being an idea to the dominant end and worldview in society. Human life was thought of as designed to produce mutual benefit, and the happy design was linked to the existence of what Taylor calls invisible hand factors: ‘actions and attitudes that we are programmed for, that have systematically beneficial results for the general happiness, even though these are not part of what is intended in the action or affirmed in the attitude’ (Taylor, 2004: 70). In the economic imaginary, our different purposes seem to mesh. However, divergent they may be, they are thought of as involving us in an exchange of advantages. The modern era means an affirmation of ordinary life, and economic activity and exchange are seen as a path to peace and order, compared ‘to the wild destructiveness of the aristocratic search for military glory. The more society turns to commerce, the more polished and civilized it becomes, the more it excels in the arts of peace’ (Taylor, 2004: 74). In our modern society, ordered life became important not only for an elite but also for the mass of people. Occupation and professions grew in importance, and the economy was imagined to make it possible for members of society to be able to simultaneously serve their own interests and the common good by just leading their ordinary, productive lives. We have gradually come to see society as an economy with its own laws and its own dynamic, defining the fundamental way we are linked together, a sphere of co-existence that in principle could suffice unto itself if only disorder and conflict did not threaten (Taylor, 2004). However, democracy can be seen as another and quite different way in which modern individuals are linked together.

The imaginary of democracy as a collective agency depends on two interlinked spheres of co-existence: the public sphere and the democratic self-rule of a sovereign people. The public sphere is imagined as a common space in which members of society can meet each other through a variety of media in order to discuss matters of common interest and to form a common mind. The common mindset that is supposed to result from these encounters, if any, counts as public opinion. The public sphere is not a place where people actually meet and solve things together or discuss a particular topic; rather, it transcends different topical spaces and forms a non-local, meta-topical space. It is a space quite independent of the political government, but it serves as a benchmark of political legitimacy: ‘An extra-political, secular, meta-topical space: this is what that public sphere was and is’ (Taylor, 2004: 99).

Public opinion is seen to emerge from critical debate, and not just from the aggregation of whatever views are held among individuals. Public opinion is imagined to be likely to be enlightened, and the government should therefore take it seriously. Governments are not only wise to listen to public opinion; rather, they are morally obliged to do so because the people are imagined as sovereign and should experience themselves not only as takers but also as makers of decisions. The people, therefore, are seen not only as an aggregate of individuals with their own personal opinion but also as a specific collective agency: a sovereign people exercising their democratic self-rule. How nation states came about differs from country to country, according to Taylor (2004), but, in general, the imagined sovereign nation was built on the idea that a people were allowed to give themselves their own constitution. The founding of the constitution was often invested with images of the superiority of the people. Nations and their people were often imagined as carriers of some sort of great personality that actually made the demand for self-determination plausible. The modern notion of citizenship involves the idea that one’s belonging to a nation state is characterised by direct access among free and equal individuals. This direct relationship abolishes the pre-modern heterogeneity of hierarchical belonging, making us uniform, and that is, of course, one way of becoming equal. Thus modern individualism does not mean ceasing to belong at all but imagining oneself as belonging to ever wider and more impersonal entities, making us equal largely in a uniform manner.

The economy and the democracy made up of a public sphere and a sovereign people are both imagined as spheres in which people are linked together to form an interconnecting society, but they differ in kind and role: democracy includes an understanding of the people as a collective agency which deals with matters of common concern accessible to all, but economic transactions link people together in a series of causal relations that can be observed and acted upon, but not as a common decision or in a public domain. There is no collective agent involved in the economic sphere of co-existence, only invisible hand factors operating behind the backs of the economic agents: ‘This is an objectifying account, one that treats social events like other processes in nature, as following laws of similar sort’ (Taylor, 2004: 78). Economy was one way to open up the modern mind to an understanding of society as a nexus of impersonal, norm-independent processes merely forced upon us, whereas democracy enabled us to imagine society made up of more or less free, horizontal modes of collective action and collective decision making. It is against this background of modern social imaginaries that I will discuss how they relate to modern education, and in what ways they are relevant to teacher education and the work expected of teachers.

Modern social imaginaries, education and the work expected of Swedish teachers

The modern social imaginaries constitute a common understanding that makes possible and legitimises our modern educational institutions and practices. Modernisation and education are closely connected. The social imaginaries discussed above can be read into the aims and functions of past and present modern education, and also into the education and the imagined work of teachers. This can be shown by reading the present formulations of Swedish schools as expressed in the Swedish Education Act (2010: 800) and the latest curriculum for the compulsory school, preschool class and the recreation centre 2011 (National Agency for Education, 2011). The 2010 Education Act stipulates that education aims at all pupils acquiring and developing knowledge and values but also developing a lifelong desire to learn, and that the education provided in each school form should be equivalent and that children should not be prejudiced in favor of any particular worldview. Education should impart and establish respect for human rights and the democratic values on which it is imagined that Swedish society is based, such as the inviolability of human life, individual freedom and integrity and the equal value of all people. All those who work in schools should encourage respect for the intrinsic value of each individual and further equal rights and opportunities for women and men. Pupils should be addressed as individuals who can exercise influence and make choices in schools, and they should be encouraged to find their uniqueness as individuals and their ability to participate in society by giving their best in responsible freedom (for the mutual benefit of all). The internationalisation of Swedish society is imagined to place high demands on the ability of people to live in cultural diversity, and in this light it is held important to develop awareness of one’s own cultural origins and of sharing in a common (Swedish) cultural heritage. Education and upbringing involve developing and passing on a unifying cultural heritage from one generation to the next and imparting the unvarying forms of knowledge that constitute the common ground that all members of society are imagined to need. Schools have the task of preparing pupils to live and work in society, to take initiatives and admit responsibility, and to develop their ability to work both independently and together with others (National Agency for Education, 2011: 9–21). In short, Swedish schools are definitely constituted in close connection to the modern social imaginaries discussed above. They make sense of the Swedish Educational Act and the recently revised curriculum. They serve as a common framework within which the modern Swedish education system is legitimised and constituted. The imaginaries might express lived realities and false assumptions as well as broken dreams of social order, and they might express ideals difficult to steer by in the light of harsh realities. However, even if they can be full of self-serving fiction, they are also essential ingredients of our social and educational reality.

The modern moral order and the economic and democratic imaginaries are essential to Swedish education, and, more generally, to education in the West. Democracy and democratic citizenship have been and still are essential to modern education (Parker, 1996). Amy Gutmann (1999), for example, famously argued that political education in terms of cultivating the virtues, knowledge and skills essential to democratic citizenship should have primacy in education. I have argued elsewhere that the economy actually has primacy in education globally in terms of the aims of education, the norms governing schools and the quality standards measuring the success of schools (Rönnström, 2012). Education and schooling have played an important role not only in the unification and rationalisation of society and its members, but also in the nation building of a sovereign people belonging to increasingly abstract entities such as the nation state and the European Union. Nation building seems to be essential to modern education and it has meant and in many respects still means efforts to shift people’s loyalties from the bonds they establish in their local communities to the nation as the centre of economic, moral, cultural, political and social gravity (Rönnström, 2012: 202). The function of education was and still is, therefore, not only the rationalisation of an increasingly knowledge-based society made up of free and equal members living their lives in the light of increasingly demanding redactions of social imaginaries conditioned by increased individualisation, globalisation and marketisation (Beck, 2009; Beck et al., 1994). Education was and is also geared to the nationalisation of society and its constituent members. In this light, the work of teachers is imagined to be in the service of the economy as objective reality, the democracy as a collective agency and the unification of a people loyal to a nation and its strivings under the influence of increasingly demanding redactions of modern social imaginaries woven in the early modern and in the late, hyper-modern society (Beck, 2009: 212–223). However, an economisation of teacher education and the work expected of teachers has advanced gradually and quite recently has been linked to some dominant imaginaries of globalisation. This change has affected teacher education and the work of teachers, and this will be discussed in the next section.

Globalisation and the economisation of teachers and teaching

Two or three decades ago, public sectors in the liberal West were considered too expensive, big, rigid, unproductive and inefficient. They were thought of as having too much power while offering poor service to the citizens (Eriksen, 1997, 2001). At the same time, neo-liberal politics won global success mainly because of the view that the state and its institutions should not differ materially from other service organs in society. A new agenda was set for the public sector, building on deregulation, decentralisation, customer orientation, cost effectiveness, management structures, quality assessment and increased orientation towards objective goals and results. The new agenda for public sector leadership and management was later interpreted in terms of New Public Management, referring to different strategies for change resting on the common assumption that economic norms should have primacy in the governance of the public sector, including educational institutions (Christensen and Laegred, 2007).

The economy and the market were no longer outside forces surrounding the bureaucratic public sector; they were suddenly regulating schools and other public institutions from the inside. The private sector became a norm for the public, and privatisation referred not only to changes in ownership structure in education, but also came to signify a homogenisation of the logic of governance and of service organs and public institutions in nation states. In Sweden, private schools were introduced, but the meaning of privatisation, economisation or marketisation went far wider and deeper than that. It reflected a shift in orientation in which the people were primarily addressed in their role as individual consumers rather than in their role as collective democratic agents. Public demands for an economisation of education were also reflected in the early 1990s public sphere, which is discussed by Matilda Wiklund (2006) in her analysis of public opinion in Swedish newspapers. The expansion of the economic imaginary into the public sector reflected a society of individuals in which the economy has become the dominant way by which people imagine themselves to be linked together, and in which economic worldviews, models, functionality and consumer behaviour cover almost all spheres of their lives (Bauman, 2008; Bottery, 2006; Sandel, 2012; Spies-Butcher et al., 2012).

The primacy of economic norms in education meant, among other things, that Swedish teachers were held accountable for educational agendas set by the state in a manner that was new to them. New qualifications for teachers were proposed by the National Committee for Teacher Education, LUK 97 (SOU, 1999:63). A teacher must master the local interpretation, planning, organisation, execution and evaluation of national goals in education. Developments in information and communication technology (ICT) were seen as new demand areas for teachers, but also as factors that were likely to change the nature of teaching. The mentoring, supporting and supervising of free, knowledge-seeking children were seen as essential to teaching, and traditional models focusing on the activity and authority of the teacher were thought to be outdated. The most significant change in the Swedish teacher education reform of the 1990s was, perhaps, the increased individualisation and freedom of choice, enabling student teachers to choose an education of their own (SOU 2008:109: 117).These students were encouraged to combine freely a large number of subjects in their teacher exam. However, many of them combined subjects that differed from the standard combinations that were important for schools, and, as a result, many of them were considered unattractive on the job market. The new agenda for public sector governance imposed the view that customer orientation and freedom of choice were promoters of quality, but this move actualised a tension between a public and a private view of education and different views of quality in education. The economisation of education implied the view that educational institutions should be instrumental in meeting individual goals articulated by individual actors rather than collective goals articulated by the state or the people, understood as a collective agent. Two different standards of quality were introduced that could easily conflict with each other. However, privatised teacher education was, not surprisingly, criticised for being hard to understand and for promoting freedom of choice that conflicted with employability and the actual needs of schools still counting as agents for collective goals.

The government inquiry into a new teacher education programme, HUT 07, published its report in 2008 (SOU 2008:109). The critical public opinion from the late 1990s and early 2000s was also reflected in the report. Wiklund (2006: 216) argued that imaginaries of the good teacher were promoted in the media as a person who displayed excellent subject knowledge and was a distinct and demanding leader who could overcome all possible obstacles in the process of passing on knowledge in an optimal fashion suited to the different needs of individual pupils. The outsourcing of learning to knowledge-seeking student teachers at universities and to pupils in schools was counteracted by a new focus on teacher activity and authority. However, what is reflected even more strongly in the inquiry is the fact that teacher education was rapidly becoming a global concern, eroding the national sovereignty of policy making in education. This can be seen as a second phase in the economisation of education, teacher education and the work expected of teachers: the quest for the way to respond effectively to global forces putting the Swedish nation, school and teacher at risk.

Globalisation, the primacy of the economy and the making of highly qualify (HQ) teachers

Recent education reform is fuelled by imaginaries of globalisation mainly woven in an economic fabric. Policy makers worldwide seem to imagine that they are forced to respond to a global economy that has made knowledge, competitive edge and lifelong learning essential for economic growth (Lingaard et al, 2008). They also seem to think that their own citizens, teachers and pupils are poorly trained for the skills that global pressures seem to call for. They try to close the gap between skills and demands through massive investments in education on the premise that a skilled and flexible human capital is the key to economic growth, prosperity and social cohesion for nations competing on global markets. Teacher education is held to be crucial in this project because it is imagined that increased quality and better outcomes in education stand or fall with the skills of teachers (Globaliseringsrådet, 2009: 35; OECD, 2005). The Swedish government recently expressed this global concern:

The education and skills of teachers are among the most important factors in ensuring a successful school system. Both Swedish and international research show that the skills of teachers play a crucial role for the learning outcomes of pupils. If Sweden is to regain its position as a leading knowledge-based and industrialized country, we must invest in world-class education for pre-school and school teachers. (Regeringskansliet, 2010: 1)

In its Bill Top of the Class, the Swedish government proposed that the new teacher education programmes in 2010 be based on its inquiry into a new teacher education programme (HUT 07) and its report Sustainable Teacher Education (SOU 2008:109). The Teacher Boost 2007–2011 was an in-service training aimed at responding to the challenges of globalisation, and the motive was explained by the former minister of education, Lars Leijonborg: ‘Without world-class teacher training we cannot stand up to the challenges of globalisation. The Teacher Boost makes the teaching profession more attractive and it ensures the availability of teachers with the right competence and a good, up-to-date training for their task’ (Ministry of Education, 2007: 1). School Minister Jan Björklund (Ministry of Education, 2007: 1) also expressed similar motives: ‘Raising the teaching profession’s status is a strategically important issue for Sweden. We need to attract young people to become teachers, retraining those who are already teachers and getting more people to find their way back to the profession.’

The report Sustainable Teacher Education was based on a review of teacher education programmes in top performing school systems. It resulted in claims about success factors in teacher education, such as clearly differentiated teacher programmes, specialisation of subject teachers, close proximity to field schools for teaching practice, a strong research base, and that the teaching profession can be made attractive and sought after among target groups with the right background knowledge. The inquiry also pointed to the importance of responding effectively to international competition and comparison of educational outcomes which were putting Swedish schools and teachers at risk: ‘Thus an important issue for educational policy is how Sweden stands in international competition. When it is shown that Sweden does not reach the desired results, a question arises: What factors are most critical for good educational outcomes, and how should these be achieved? In this context, teacher training is a given field’ (SOU, 2008:109: 176). This concern for international comparison is not unique for Sweden. Akiba and Le Tendre (2009: 7) claim that nations are no longer free to form their own educational policies: ‘Cross-national studies of school achievement have become common, even mandatory in the sense that more and more nations feel compelled to participate in order to “benchmark” their educational achievements against other nations.’ Policy makers worldwide seem to be rethinking and reshaping teacher education according to a global mantra: high-quality teachers in world-class schools for best possible outcomes (Gopinathan et al., 2008; Paine and Zeichner, 2012: 572; Rönnström, 2012).

In the pressing light of international comparison and competition, a new Swedish teacher programme was proposed. It was calculated to be both cheaper and more cost effective than its predecessor launched in the late 1990s (SOU 2008:109: 429–435). A common core of educational science was to be complemented with specialisations and differentiation in degrees. A dual qualification was introduced, making it possible for student teachers to receive both a professional and a general degree, which was primarily thought of as a move to make teacher education attractive. The marketisation of education was expressed in the double concern for attractiveness: a teacher programme needs to attract students with the right background knowledge so that high-quality teaching in schools can be secured, and students need to be attracted to a teaching career among several other ways of making a living in a global economy. A career development reform for particularly skilled teachers was also recently implemented. In July 2013, it was decided that primary and senior subject teachers should be introduced into Swedish schools, which was mainly a move to make teaching a more flexible and attractive career choice. The concern for attracting students to the teaching profession is, perhaps, most clearly expressed in a website constructed by the National Agency of Education (2014). As a teacher, it is rhetorically put forward, you will: be important, stay young, develop leadership, be creative, receive high-quality education, secure your future, work with your passion, be sought after, have a career, challenge yourself, have freedom, be remembered, have magic moments, be networking, have variation, and you will play a central part in people’s lives. One Swedish university website is trying to attract student teachers by announcing that the teaching profession is the most important profession for our future, and another website welcomes new students to the exciting project of creating the key persons and heroes of our future (see www.lun.gu.se/ and www.kau.se/lararutbildningen).

The economisation of Swedish education, teacher education and the work of teachers have expanded further over the last decade. It is no longer restricted to economic norms being given primacy in the governance of schools and education; rather, the aims and reforms of education are primarily linked to economic growth and the competitive edge of the Swedish nation; the standards of success and quality in education are increasingly becoming globalised and linked to economic imaginaries and the state is engaging in the marketing to make teacher education an attractive career investment for groups the state finds important to attract to teaching. It seems, then, that recent education reform in Sweden has primarily been linked to economic imaginaries, and to an almost negligible degree linked to the democratic imaginary, which is also important for modern society and education.

The nation-centred world-class HQ teacher

The OECD (2005) report with the tell-it-all title Teachers Matter – Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers reflects ongoing strategies for change in teacher education reform worldwide. Teaching is perceived as a demanding and complex profession, and high-quality teachers are expected to: manage pupils with differences in background and language; be sensitive to other cultures and gender issues; promote tolerant social cohesion; respond effectively to students with learning and behavioural issues; use the latest information technologies; keep pace with changing fields of knowledge and student assessment; and, finally, be capable of preparing students to be self-directed, lifelong learners (OECD, 2005). According to the OECD report, different nation states share many policy directions and they respond to the acknowledged complexity of teaching in similar ways because of the primacy of the economy (Rönnström, 2012). Typically, they stress the importance of: teacher effectiveness; the alignment of well-shaped teacher profiles and skills with clearly defined tasks for schools; connecting teaching to lifelong learning; making teaching a flexible career choice; developing accountability systems for promoting student outcomes; and the transformation of the teaching profession by means of science and the developments of scientific attitudes among teachers. These strategies are also reflected in the Swedish Inquiry. Let me now turn to the question of the characteristics of the imagined Swedish HQ teacher.

An analysis of teacher competence resulted in the following structure in the Swedish teacher programme (SOU, 2008:109). A joint core of educational science is supposed to unify all teachers, regardless of their specialisation, containing: democratic conditions and foundations for education; curriculum theory; didactics; science and research; learning theory; special needs education; studies in social relations and leadership; assessment, grading, evaluation and school development. The new high-quality teachers were also said to need a specialisation related to the specific tasks they are expected to fulfil and the groups they are expected to teach. Four important strands were built into the new programme: a scientific and critical approach was emphasised to counteract various unwanted and unfounded normative attitudes common among teachers and student teachers; a historical perspective was emphasised to make student teachers less sensitive to contemporary trends and gurus; an international perspective was underscored to counteract narrow national views of teaching; and finally, ICT as an educational resource was held to be an essential part of teacher competence in a digital world. With regard to internationalisation, two aspects are put forward in the inquiry. There is a need for increased international mobility and studies abroad for Swedish student teachers, and it is stressed that literature should be introduced from the field of educational science not necessarily connected to Swedish national conditions and outlooks. However, a primary motive for internationalisation is the focus on learning from other national contexts to increase the students’ own ability to compete globally and to increase outcomes in Swedish schools (SOU 2008:109: 176).

This view of teacher profiling and the making of high-quality teachers are also expressed in the organisation of teacher education in Swedish universities, and I will review how a sample of six universities in Sweden have organised their joint core of educational science. My review will be somewhat blunt and brief, but it will serve as an example in this context. The choice of six was motivated by their variation in profiling and geographical location. The actual sample display, in their website presentations, course syllabuses and mandatory literature, a content in the joint core of educational science focusing on (a) science, educational research, scientific methods and the fostering of a scientific attitude, (b) the teaching profession, past and present, and its close connection to science, research and in two universities professional ethics, (c) educational governance, the Swedish school system and the exercise of public office according to Swedish law and regulations, (d) leadership, social relations and conflict management, (e) evaluation, assessment, grading and development work, and (f) general didactics, learning theory and ICT in education. In learning goals linked to didactics, conflict management and learning, the categories ‘sex’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘class’, ‘genus’ and ‘disadvantaged children’ are discussed, but mainly as conditions for teaching and learning to be taken seriously or overcome without interfering with the overarching goals of academic achievement and educational outcome. All teachers should be endowed with capacities to understand, but more importantly to manage diversity and heterogeneity in the light of educational outcomes. I think that the basis for this view is similar to the basis expressed by the OECD and the European Commission with regard to matters of difference and interculturality: ‘the ultimate focus of all these activities should be to improve learning outcomes’ (European Commission, 2012: 11; OECD, 2005).

Since imaginaries of globalisation and international comparison and competition play a major role in teacher education reform, we might expect a post-national or global outlook in the joint core of educational science. However, questions of globalisation and their impact on teaching, schooling and education are rarely addressed in the course syllabuses and literature. The nation state as the centre of cultural, social, political, moral and economic gravity seem to be taken for granted. Moreover, the Swedish Education Act and the nation-centred national curriculum are, not surprisingly, points of departure for the content of most of the courses. The nation-centredness of Swedish teacher education is reflected in course syllabuses and literature making it clear that it is the category ‘Swedish’ that is referred to: ‘Swedish history, ‘Swedish conditions’, ‘Swedish society’, ‘the Swedish school system’, ‘Swedish schools’, ‘culture in Sweden’, ‘minorities in Sweden’, ‘democratic values in Sweden’, ‘the teaching profession in Sweden’ and so on. All universities in the sample draw resources from general didactics or curriculum theory when they set goals for learning about how and why a curriculum is formed, and how and why subject matter is chosen in a society at a particular time. In the sample, the context for learning goals and literature is clearly the Swedish nation, and the national and the local context are frequently mentioned but rarely the international or global context.

Globalisation and global change are rarely mentioned in syllabuses and literature; either the content of a course is articulated in the language of a tradition in educational science that operates on a level of analysis that excludes deliberations about globalisation, or the content is articulated in relation to national contexts and concerns. However, there is one university in the sample that seems to break with the nation-centred syllabuses and literature characterising the main part of the sample. A committee at this university discussed the importance of internationalisation in the traditionally nation-centred teacher education, and they opposed the tendency to reduce internationalisation to student mobility and competitiveness between nations. Their proposals for a more integrated view of internationalisation are expressed in their syllabuses and literature. These syllabuses address questions of global justice, international conflicts and sustainability in a global context, but also comparative aspects such as placing the Swedish school system and the tasks of Swedish schools and teachers in an international context.

I conclude, then, that recent formulations of Swedish teacher education and the imagined work of teachers as responses to globalisation are not about making globalisation or global change an essential subject in teacher education, or breaking with the modern tradition of nationalisation in education. The primacy of economy in teacher education and the work of teachers in the era of globalisation reflect a society in which we think of ourselves as mainly linked together in a global economy. This dominant view is mainly expressed: in the aims and reforms linked to economic growth and the competitive edge of the Swedish nation; in the economic norms being given primacy in the governance of schools and education; in globalised and economic standards of quality and success; and in the concern about how to make teacher education an attractive career investment for groups the state finds important to attract to teaching. The analysis of teacher competence is fuelled by the imaginary of a HQ teacher able to promote world-class quality and outcomes in Swedish schools for the national competitive edge. He or she is imagined to be: excellent in subject knowledge; effective in teaching and assessment; a demanding leader endowed with a commitment to improvement; grounded in a scientific attitude; a manager of diversity as an important condition for teaching, learning and increased outcomes; and a manager of conflicts as a condition for a social order necessary for teaching, learning and increased outcomes. Therefore, the nation-centred or nationalising character of educational content can remain more or less intact even in the light of increasing globalisation in education, teacher education and the work of teachers.

If this nation-centred economic interpretation of teacher education and the expected work of teachers is valid, we may well ask what role the modern imaginary of democracy as a collective agency plays in education, teacher education and in the work of teachers. Education seems to be primarily shaped and reformed in the light of late modern imaginaries about the harsh realities of a competitive, global, knowledge economy, but late modern redactions of the democratic imaginary, such as cosmopolitanism, or world citizenship, seem to be more or less absent. I believe this is problematic since democracy is imagined to be one fundamental way in which we are linked together in modern society – a way which partly defines us as modern and is held to be essential to education, and which is also challenged by the intensity, speed, scope and effects of globalisation. This raises the question of the presence or absence of other responses to globalisation than that of adaption to perceived needs of globally integrated knowledge economies.

The globalist imaginary, education policy and the work expected of teachers

The economy seems to be the dominant imaginary because of the legitimising, descriptive, prescriptive and actually living role it now plays in Swedish society, education, teacher education and the work of teachers. This view is strengthened in reports from the National Agency of Education, which is worried that Swedish schools have come to hold a narrow view of education rather than the broad view articulated in the Education Act (Ängmo, 2013). This view is also expressed in normative research in education stressing the importance of de-parochialising education under the influence of the primacy of the economy (Koh, 2008; Nussbaum, 2010; Roth, 2010). In short, democracy serves as an important ideal for legitimising education, but it is the economy that primarily shapes the realities of education institutions, teacher education and the work expected of teachers. What is at stake here is not only the democratic character of the increasingly globalised society, education and the work expected of teachers, but rather the continuation of the fundamental, non-reducible ways we imagine ourselves being linked together to form a society of individuals, the continuation of modern education and the role education is supposed to play in society as a whole.

Late modern Swedish education seems to be fuelled by an imaginary of a competitive nation made up of competitive people created by HQ teachers fighting its way back to the top of the world. However, this development creates many tensions. First, the primacy of the economy seems to crowd out the imaginary of democracy as a collective agency and the education of citizens ready to engage in critical debate and deliberation among equal members of society regarding their common concerns as both decision makers and decision takers. Even if democratic influence and the democratic foundations of the Swedish society are addressed in teacher education as important for teaching and learning, it is not clear if the collective dimension will survive the translation into the economic imaginary in which people are mainly addressed as customers or consumers but rarely as citizens. The nation-centred character of the democratic imaginary in Swedish education and teacher education also seems to be at least partly inadequate under global conditions. Moreover, it is also not clear how the professional teacher can act as a democratic agent who should count as both a maker and a taker of collective decisions, because the state addresses him or her either as a consumer to be attracted to teaching or as a scientifically grounded provider of educational services in relation to clearly defined tasks and standards of success that escape his or her influence. In the latest formulation of the teacher education programme in Sweden, the counteraction of normative attitudes per se counts as valuable and this strengthens the scientific and economic view of society as a nexus of norm-independent, impersonal processes (SOU 2008:109: 188). As a consequence, the education and professionalisation of teachers primarily build on an objectified view of schools, teaching and society. This scientific cure aiming at increased teacher professionalism downgrades the horizontal modes of collective and communicative action that characterise decision making and will formation in the democratic imaginary, and the collective, democratic aspect of teacher professionalisation.

Second, Swedish teacher education seems to include institutional paradoxes. The state is trying to attract student teachers by addressing them in their role as individual consumers as if education was instrumental to their own needs and preferences, but the work of teachers is also described as vital for knowledge economies and the high-quality teacher seems to be merely an effective tool in the service of the competitive edge of the nation. The state attracts teachers as if educational institutions were means for their own ends, but they assign tasks to them as if they were merely a means for the economic ends of the nation state. I understand this situation as the paradox of individualised instrumentalisation. Moreover, the work of teachers is described as complex and demanding in many aspects of cultural, social, political, moral and economic life, and all these aspects can be seen as affected by globalisation. However, recent teacher education reform is deceptively one-dimensional and simple in relation to descriptions of teaching as something complex in several social dimensions. I understand this situation as the paradox of complex simplification because multi-dimensional complexity in the teaching situation seems to be translated into skills and attitudes of HQ teacher mainly derived from the instrumental reason of economic and scientific worldviews. Institutional paradoxes are, according to Ulrich Beck, quite common in late modern societies. They capture both conflicts built into modern institutions as a result of increased, unforeseeable and uncontrolled reflexivity in society, and the fact that the same institutions that actually cause or worsen problems are often the same ones that are assigned to solve them (Beck, 2009: 193–195). To throw light on this puzzling circumstance, I will bring to the surface one underlying important social imaginary, which I believe is important for teacher education and the work of teachers. It is a very demanding, late modern economic imaginary, which I will refer to as the globalist imaginary which seems to express the one important way we are linked together in society as an economy.

Economy is conceived of as the essential way in which people are linked together to form a global society. In this imaginary, human life is thought of as designed to produce mutual benefit on a global scale under the influence of an invisible hand. Globalisation is mainly about the liberation and global integration of markets, and an ideal of the self-regulating market serves as the normative basis for social order and not the collective decision making of a demos. It is imagined that the global market will promote rationality, efficiency, social cohesion and prosperity in society, but this can only be achieved by protecting the freedom of and cultivating consumerist identities among the individuals who make up society (Steger, 2005: 32). Globalisation is conceived of as inevitable due to the impersonal and causal powers of economy as an objectified reality. It is imagined that no one nation, group or person is in charge of globalisation, and it is this objectivistic strand that makes it plausible to assume that the globalist imaginary mirrors nature itself (Steger, 2005). It is this objectifying strand that reduces democracy to the adaption to a norm-independent reality rather than the viewing of society as a norm-dependent, common concern that can be shaped and regulated by the demos. The globalist imaginary can provide us with a quite simple and one-dimensional narrative on the essential aspects of global change, which is conceived to be necessary, good and beneficial for all. In 1996, for example, at the G7 Summit in Lyon, the member states presented a communiqué that praised the opportunities of globalisation because it ‘has led to a considerable expansion of wealth and prosperity in the world. Hence we are convinced that the process of globalisation is a source of hope for the future (Economic Communiqué, 1996)’. It is imagined that what is good for capital is good for all, and therefore the global liberation and integration of markets must be conceived of as a promise of global justice (Beck, 2005: 5). Democracy is also imagined as naturally woven into the globalist imaginary, because freedom and free markets are held to be essential to democracy itself, even if the fundamental modern principle of a collective agency is individualised and translated into consumer behaviour and market solutions (Steger, 2005; Wohlgemuth, 2005).

The nation state is conceived of as a competition state in the globalist imaginary. The global economy is much more demanding than its nationally demarcated predecessors, and the transformation of nation states into competition states is expressed in attempts to discipline the state and its citizens in line with the demands of the global economy (Beck, 2005: 261). The competition state contributes to the internationalisation of the nation state without relinquishing its nation-centred character, even if it means running the risk of eroding its power and democratic foundations in the embracing of deregulation, liberalisation and privatisation (Beck, 2005: 261). This development is reflected in the field of comparative education, in which a GSAE thesis has been developed regarding the internationalisation of nation states in education contexts (Dale, 2005). The globally structured agenda of education is claimed to be created in line with the globalist imaginaries promoted by transnational actors, such as the OECD, the World Bank, the IMF and the neo-liberal regimes in the West. The felt need to adapt to the demands of the global knowledge economy not only narrows the scope of education, but also reflects the imagination of a close relationship between challenges of globalisation, needs for economic growth and the perceived necessity of educational change. It also expresses a hope that education will deliver a competitive edge and social cohesion among members of society primarily linked together in a global knowledge economy rather than in a knowledge society.

The globalist imaginary enables us to understand some premises important for recent teacher education reform and for the work expected of teachers, and why complex descriptions of the work of teachers can be met with quite simple and one-dimensional responses. In fact, I believe that globalist reasoning is a major influence behind recent teacher education reform in Sweden. Schools and the society are essentially captured in economic imaginaries and are thought of as markets. Social cohesion and order means integration into markets in which all divergent purposes, identities and people mesh, and in which all individual worldviews can co-exist peacefully as long as they are all interlinked in productive economic exchange. We can now appreciate the work of the teacher as an economic agent for successful market integration. The management of difference, diversity and behavioural issues is simply an act of market integration translated into the classroom level, where all kinds of diversity can be dealt with as long as the participants primarily play their roles as economic agents consuming their educational necessities. The globalist imaginary makes it possible to see all aspects of education, teaching and learning as economic transactions among economic agents orienting themselves instrumentally in marketised schools governed by economic norms of effectiveness. It makes it possible to understand why democracy as a collective agency is downgraded in education and elsewhere, and not reconstructed for global social conditions to the same extent, as economic imaginaries seem to be. However, the globalist imaginary is full of self-serving fictions and problematic reductions with regard to the way we have conceived of ourselves as fundamentally linked together in modern society and in modern education.

It is first important to stress that competitive economics has come about because of us. Its objective disguise conceals its roots as a social imaginary, and its felt necessity hides its moral imperatives. I also think that the globalist imaginary is full of self-serving fictions such as: economic growth is the universal cure for all or most of our problems, consumption is the one-way street to democracy and happiness, inequality is a natural state, and rivalry (not collaboration) is essential to both social justice and social order (Bauman, 2013). Moreover, it seems that the invisible hand belongs to the rich and definitely not to the poor. Reports from all over the world converge on the same conclusion: that an increase in wealth goes hand in hand with a deepening of social inequality. For example, ten of the richest individuals in the world could together outscore the French economy, which counts as the fifth biggest in the world (Bauman, 2013: 40). For the competitive state, this is bad news. The globalist imaginary promises that liberated and globally integrated markets will be beneficial to all, but the case seems to be quite the opposite; the competitive state might imagine it is making a contribution to equality and general welfare but in fact it is legitimising the wealth of a few and a steep fall in wealth and social standing for a great many others. The modern moral order was originally built on a view of how rational beings collaborate in peace for their mutual benefit, and the economy was imagined as a path to peace and orderly existence. However, the competitive economy seems almost warlike and the global imaginary downgrades collaboration and ‘renders cooperation and solidarity not just an unpopular, but also a difficult and costly choice (Bauman, 2013: 28). Finally, the marketisation of education gives rise to another institutional paradox connected to the modern order: the paradox of the privatisation of public power. Economy as objectified reality and democracy as a collective agency assume that society and its institutions exists for the sake of the free and equal individuals that make up society. However, there is a difference between individual and collective agency, and the latter cannot be reduced to the former, as I have tried to show above. If educational institutions are increasingly seen as instrumental to individual and not collective actors, then the very idea of modern education as a public good is threatened, together with the possibility for governments to use education as an effective tool in their response to global change.

The globalists assume that all that is important for the modern moral order and its social imaginaries can be translated into the globalist imaginary, but democracy and its forms of human interconnectedness that are not easily incorporated into an economic or consumerist worldview and markets solutions seem to be lost in translation. This calls for the restoring of the imaginary of democracy as a collective agency and the citizenship aspect of education in the global era, and not for reduction to economic worldviews, market solutions and consumer behaviour in education, teacher education and the work of teachers. The cosmopolitan imaginary would be one way to restore democracy, the public sphere and citizenship in the global era. In this imaginary, globalisation is not merely captured in economic worldviews and individualism; rather, it captures changes in nation states and education from within and from without in multi-dimensional terms including cultural, social, political and moral aspects of global changes (Beck, 2006, 2009). It captures the way people are imagined as being linked together as citizens forming an increasingly globalised world society and not only as consumers or economic agents forming globally integrated markets. The dominant response to globalisation among governments and policy makers has so far been, as I have tried to show above, an increasing economisation of education, teacher education and the work of teachers that leaves the nation-centredness of education more or less intact for the sake of national competitiveness. However, this can be seen as a costly political choice because the same institutions that are expected to promote democratisation in society seem to be part of erosion rather than a reconstruction of the democratic imaginary.

It is when addressing globalisation from a democratic or a citizenship perspective that the primacy of the economy and the nationalising character of education in competition states reveals its problematic nature: culturally, the nation-centred multiculturalism that characterises the Swedish curriculum and the tradition of homogenous nation building with its formation of a national identity derived from a national cultural heritage might neglect the plural source and the de-territorialisation of culture and meaning as well as the recognition of different lifestyles and cultures within a nation or a specific school. Moreover, the cosmopolitan imaginary furthers the value of living and learning with other cultures within and outside one’s nation, not only as a condition for teaching, learning and the increased outcome of schools but also as an important source for learning that should not be bypassed or downgraded by overriding consumer identities (Rönnström, 2012); socially, as nationally demarcated societies are becoming increasingly diversified, we cannot expect a harmonious social order or broad consensus regarding lifestyles within nations interlinked into one global world society where people anywhere can affect people everywhere (Beck, 2009). The globalist solution to social diversification is an overriding consumer identity, but this ideological move is hardly valid and should not guide education for democratic citizenship and public spheres; morally, citizens have reason to understand themselves at least partly as citizens of the world, thereby accepting responsibilities and obligations to global others living nearby or far away (Beck, 2009; Appiah, 2006); and, finally, politically, democracy understood as a collective agency as well as the locus of political power can no longer be identified with a nation state. We have good reason to take cosmopolitanism, world citizenship, seriously in the global era, and no longer tie down our understandings of democracy and citizenship exclusively within the framework of a nation state or the competition state (Held, 2010). Political governance under the (neo-liberal) influence of the globalist imaginary has come to enhance global market integration, economic liberalisation and the privatisation of the public sector and public goods. Political theorist David Held stresses that the globalist imaginary bears:

A heavy burden of responsibility for the common political resistance or unwillingness to address significant areas of market failure, including the externalities (for example, the environmental degradations caused by forms of economic growth); the inadequate development of non-market social factors, which alone can provide an effective balance between competition and cooperation; the underemployment or unemployment of productive resources in the context of the demonstrable existence of urgent and unmet need; and the emergence of global finance flows which can rapidly destroy national economies. […] The Washington Consensus has, in sum, weakened the ability to govern – locally, nationally and globally – and it has eroded the capacity to provide urgent public goods. Economic freedom is championed at the expense of social justice and environmental sustainability, with long-term damage to both. (Held, 2010: 154–155)

I cannot go into detail here about the meaning of a cosmopolitan reconstruction of democracy as a collective agency and cosmopolitan citizenship education. However, I have discussed the primacy of the economy in education, teacher education and in the work expected of teachers as a costly response to globalisation. It seems to crowd out the democratic imaginary essential to modern society and education, or translate it into economic worldviews, markets solutions and consumer behaviour, thereby losing its collective and public character. One university in the sample above did express some cosmopolitan intentions in its teacher education programme to counteract national narrowness in internationalisation. The future will show if this was a small step in the beginning of a long, de-parochialising, cosmopolitan march through globalist landscapes, or if it is our present economic move towards the education of competitive teachers for the competitive edge of nations that will be the prevailing response to globalisation. This is not only a question of policy making and education. It is essentially a question about how we imagine ourselves and continue our lives as a modern people; that is, how we can imagine ourselves as increasingly interdependent and interconnected co-existing members of a world society, and not only of a global economy.