The Professionalization of the Field of Education in Sweden: A Historical Analysis

: This article analyses the professionalization of the education field in Sweden from a historical perspective by tracing efforts towards professionalization of teaching from a clerically consecrated to a scientifically grounded praxis. Some of these efforts seem to be fairly typical for welfare states like Sweden. However, others are more unique, such as the state ambition to create a unified teacher profession based on a scientific knowledge base across elementary and grammar school teacher categories. This ambition failed. Some reasons are speculatively discussed primarily from a Bourdieuan perspective in terms of different teacher habitus, education capital and professionalization strategies among teachers in different positions in the field of education. Primary and secondary data sources are used but National Policy Documents have formed the main data source.

professional landscape defined and described extensively by Brante in the introductory article.
In this article the education field is dealt with primarily form a Bourdieuan perspective, where the field concept is analytically connected to the concepts of habitus and capital (Bourdieu, 1995), in this case expressed as teacher habitus and teacher-specific educational capital. The analysis of the field is divided into three periods. The first covers the formation of the state regulated school and its teacher categories (1840 -1879). The second period embraces the consolidation of the education field and its constitution through further State interventions (1880 -1939). These periods concern the social legitimacy of teaching as a politically constituted occupation in combination with the internal professionalizing efforts of the newly formed teachers' organisations. The third period (1940 -2000) embraces the welfare state and its ambitions to strengthen the cognitive legitimacy of teaching through scientification of teacher education. Some of these interventions seem to be fairly typical for welfare states like Sweden. However, others are more unique, such as the state ambition to create a unified teacher profession based on a scientific knowledge base across elementary and grammar school teacher categories.

Emergence of the field of education and state regulated school and its teacher categories (1840 -1879)
The latter part of the 1800s is an interesting era. With the beginnings of industrialization and the dissolution of agrarian society the material and political foundations of society changed dramatically. The Land Act had made many of the rural population landless and together with increasing levels of urban migration a rapidly growing underclass emerged. An educational response was called for and the National Charter of 1842 was written. It required that the urban and parish councils set up schools for the peasantry and the workers' children as a means of tackling both social confusion and secularism (SFS 1842:19).
The first official statistics over the Swedish school system appeared in 1839, at which time education for the mass of the population was largely conducted as home schooling. Sweden had about three million people then, of which about half a million were between 7 and 14 years-old. One-seventh of these children went to school (BiSOS).
National schooling up to this point had been part of the ecclesiastical sphere and was greatly influenced by the medieval educational traditions. After the reform two separate school organizations developed: a strongly selective secondary school with roots in the medieval monastic and cathedral schools and a parochial school operating as a funded elementary school with roots in Lutheran education ideals.

The struggle against church hegemony and the rise of the modern grammar school
Up to the beginning of the 19th century the nation's grammar schools had been established in accordance with the 1649-year Royal Ordinance. They were divided into a lower school and an upper-school, which together comprised schooling for future priests and high officials. A classical-humanist educational ideal characterized the education. Latin and the religious scriptures were the main subjects. However, with the advent of changing forms of economic production a growing middle class demand for a reformed educational system emerged. Classical educational ideals were judged as increasingly anachronistic by the new middle class of architects, pharmacists, veterinary surgeons and so on, who initially created their own educational institutions through various private trade schools (Florin & Johansson, 1993).
Changes to the education system were accomplished by parliamentary means. The Second Chamber of the Swedish parliament had been mobilized and this chamber was also broadly in opposition to classical education and the hegemony of the clergy. It initiated an education system reform with support from the bourgeois liberal intellectuals, the new middle-class and liberal farm-owners. The alliances were necessary because it was essential that any education that was advocated as an alternative to the Latin hegemony of the grammar schools was attributed equivalent value as a cultural capital and no one group could alone hope to emerge victorious in a battle on this against the interests of the clergy and aristocracy. The new alternative was presented as providing greater long-term thinking in education. It was successful and over time it secured sufficient financing to enable it to become a viable national project (Richardsson, 2004;Larsson, 2006). At the same time as this struggle was taking place, there was also a growth in privately funded schools, like technical schools and girls' schools. In addition to government interventions in education this was a further challenge to the dominant Latin doxa. The 1849 Royal Circular gave each grammar school the opportunity to dispense with the teaching of classical languages and a few years later the two first classes of the grammar school were re-organised as a foundation for one of two subsequent lines of study: the classical line and the realia as per the 1878 Grammar School Charter. The Latin hegemony was broken and Latin was abolished as the language of instruction in a variety of university courses (Kyle, 1972;Florin & Johansson, 1993).

The emergence and development of the public elementary school (folkskolan)
The expansion of the education system was triggered by the growth of a capitalistic industrial society that worked as an engine in the transformation of the State from a churchly aristocratic autocracy to a liberal and tendentiously meritocratic social order. Once established an increasing systematization and standardization of entry requirements, skill levels and degrees, was needed. There was a clear reason for this. The status of professionals educated at private trade schools and their position in the social division of labour depended on a highly valued educational capital, such as degrees and education titles. These qualifications worked as an asset and as a form of cultural capital. Matriculation was introduced as a secondary school exam in 1862 and was soon made necessary for admission to trade schools for engineers, pharmacists and so on, as a step towards professional status for these occupations. Education had become a new means of establishing status and position (Florin & Johansson 1993).
The 1842 Elementary School Act strengthened requirements for public education and required that an elementary school should be established in every parish with duly authorized teachers appointed (SFS 1842:19). Responsibility for this rested on the cathedral chapters (the diocese). The Act was to be implemented within five years and annual reports from the dioceses were to be published concerning how school operations were conducted. These reports were far from uniform however and rarely detailed, and in 1861 parliament therefore took the decision to introduce a State Primary School Inspection Service to oversee the enforcement of the education statutes (BiSOS; Richardsson, 2004).
The school inspectors' showed that the introduction of the public elementary school had been far from universal. Only half of the eligible pupils went to school full time. The others were in part-time schooling and at worst were accommodated in the so-called itinerant schools, in makeshift accommodation (Richardson, 2004). State intervention was intensified in the 1860ies and 1870ies, during which time the amount of State schooling and the number of State schools grew significantly. The number of school children increased from 69 000 (in 1840) to 600 000 (in 1880), an increase of more than 800%. During the same period the number of teachers in elementary schools also increased from 1 537 to 11 124 (BiSOS). The elementary school was developing from a loosely coupled collection of schools to a State-regulated mass education.

Two categories of teachers in an emerging and expanding educational field
Different categories of teachers emerged in the growth of the education sector. Two of them became numerically dominant. These were the subject teachers in the State grammar schools and the elementary school teachers. The former took a dominant position in the education field based on their educational capital, social background and gender.
At the start of the 1800s grammar school teachers and priests had the same educational background and as an occupation teaching was part of the career of a minister on the road to obtaining his own parish. Teaching was not judged as of a high status by these ministers. Work as a schoolmaster was usually conducted during the priest's application process to the ministry rather than as a chosen occupation (Sandström, 1997).
The path to recognition of teaching as an occupation had its beginnings in the mid 1800's through the Royal Circular of 1849. This Circular separated grammar school teaching from the ministry and legitimized it as an independent occupation. A second important step towards the recognition and power of grammar school teachers was the introduction of matriculation as a final exam at school for assessing suitability for university entrance. Prior to this university entrance was administered by the universities themselves. Placing this responsibility on the grammar school teachers was status-enhancing and a few years later the mandatory probationary year teaching position under the control of the headmaster was introduced. Even though the teaching test, which the applicants for a teaching position took, was still administered by the Bishop, the probationary year was another important step toward a more autonomous professional control over teaching. In the 1905 Grammar School Act the cathedral chapter's control over state grammar schools was finally abolished (Sandström, 1997;Richardsson, 2004).
Gender was a formal point of closure for subject teachers as women were excluded from the regular services at the state grammar schools. In 1861 a formal four-year education for female teachers in the girls' high schools was introduced, but their professional trajectory was still separated, despite a comparably long education and work in a complementary type of school with regard to the length of schooling, ages and social background of the pupils taught (Florin & Johansson, 1993).
The establishment of public education through numerous government interventions and directives between 1860 and 1880 led to a quantitative rise in the number of elementary schools and teachers. However, in public school regulations and directives this activity was still described as a calling. This contributed to low pay, poor school facilities and undersized and often substandard teacher housing. Salaries were set by the parishes, who interpreted requirements in line with what they considered themselves able to afford rather than in terms of the demands or quality of the work carried out and teachers' needs. To improve the situation the State established demands for a higher minimum wage and provided government grants to parishes together with these recommendations to ensure they could be carried out.
Eligibility for an elementary school teaching position required graduation from a teachers' seminary. This made it possible for elementary school teachers to define themselves as special in relation to the large number of unqualified teachers. However, like subject teaching, elementary school teaching also had gender differences. Like the State grammar school the elementary school as an institution was a male institution as its teacher education was initially directed exclusively to men. Only a great shortage of teachers and a need for a broadened recruitment base opened the field to women, for whom teaching became one of the few socially legitimate occupations at the time. Even then a male hegemony still operated inside schools. Women were designated to be more suited as 'care-givers' for younger pupils and were restricted to teaching infant and lower-primary classes. As in other countries these classes rapidly became female led and essentially separate institutions. Infant and lower-primary teaching was the lowest and least prestigious position in the education field, which we can still see evidence of today (Florin, 1987;Erixon Arreman & Weiner, 2007;Beach, 2008, Beach 2010).

The consolidation of the field and the constitution of teachers as two professional groups (1880 -1939)
At the end of the 19 th century, and for some four decades to come, the public elementary and grammar schools existed as two parallel school systems. The elementary school was used by the lower social classes and grammar school by the middle and upper classes, who often used this school in preparation for higher education. However, as early as the late 1800s, liberal education policy makers introduced the idea of using the elementary school to provide a common education foundation, where children from different social classes would be taught jointly during the first years of their education. At the turn of the century school politics were marked by debates for and against this common foundation school ideal (Isling, 1973;Richardson, 2004;Edgren, 2011).
The debate was brought about in connection with the 'Bottenskolprincipen'-(literally bottom or base school principle) introduced by the liberal politician and former elementary school teacher Fridtjuv Berg in 1883 as a common six-year school for all children. One main argument was that such a school could bridge class divisions, address socially inherited inequality and serve as an integrating force in society based on a common moral curriculum code. The common school idea was thus seen as a means of uniting the nation and as a future cornerstone for building a meritocratic society.
Opposition to the common school idea came mainly from conservatives, university representatives and grammar school teachers, who obviously had most to lose in terms of status from such a policy turn. They argued that the idea of a common elementary school was unproven and that there were serious risks that such a school would undermine social values, as it would not have the quality or effectiveness to serve as a preparation for grammar school and universities where the leaders of the State, the clergy and industry were educated.
The Liberals got support for the foundation school project from the growing Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP). However, the SDLP had somewhat different overtones to their commitments and these party-political differences slowed the reform process down. Also the grammar school and elementary school teachers took opposing positions in the political struggle over the introduction of a common elementary school. Grammar school teachers defended social selection and the early differentiation of pupils. Elementary school teachers favoured a centralized and uniform school in accordance with SDLP ambitions.

School reforms and the integration of the elementary school in the field of education
Liberal and social democratic school policy during the early 1900s aimed to counteract the differentiation between different types of school. A first step was the 1894 Parliamentary Directive. This legislated that the first grade of the State grammar school should be based on knowledge corresponding to the third grade of the public elementary school, which could therefore take the role of a preparatory school that facilitated transfer across the two school systems as well as a school conveying common moral values. In 1909 came the next step, through the establishment of a Middle School system, which functioned as an extension of the elementary school in regions that lacked a grammar school. The middle school was given the same formal status as a junior grammar school. The 1918 Education Commission provided the next step. It proposed that all children should receive their primary education in a 6-year elementary school, which would be followed by a 4-year junior grammar school and 3-year upper grammar school for those talented enough, and that the State should no longer economically support parallel types of school in the lower grades and girls' schools (Isling, 1973;Florin & Johansson, 1993).
These proposals again met stiff resistance from the political right, the clergy and grammar school teachers, whose relative power and influence was most threatened by the reform proposals. But in the end even the Liberals voted against it and it took two further decades before the common elementary school principle was introduced when the SDLP strengthened its position as a government party. The common school project became a central component of the SDLP's political program for the construction of a welfare state.

Teachers' organisations and its professionalization strategies
Teachers in the grammar and elementary school were from different genders and social origins and their professional teacher education was given in different institutions with different statuses and values as educational capital. Differences were also reflected in salaries. At the turn of the century the average elementary school teacher salary was less than half of a grammar school teacher average salary (Florin & Johansson, 1993). However for the teacher unions that emerged at that time comparative pay issues was not the most central question. The emerging unions corresponded to the different occupations but both unions worked in trying to raise the teacher's professional status albeit in different ways. These were by means of alliances and strategies that reflected the characteristics of different teacher habitus that had evolved historically in different school institutions and in relation to the social and educational background and experiences of different teacher categories.
In 1884 the National Teachers' Society was formed to protect social status and prestige by monopolizing grammar school teaching and represent the interests of grammar school teachers and teacher categories that were considered educationally equivalent, such as university teachers. It later took the name the National Association of Grammar School Teachers (NAGST) and represented a form of social closure in a weberian sense (Weber, 1983) by providing a clear indication of distinction and difference (both inwards and outwards) toward the seminary trained teacher categories. There was also a strong gender demarcation. The female teachers in the girls' high school didn't have access to teaching posts in the State Grammar schools. This aspect of professional closure defined grammar school teaching as an occupation for a cadre of highly educated upper-class men with high status and professional sovereignty over the numerically dominant category of elementary school teachers, who were looked upon as the educational field's semiliterate upstarts (Florin & Johansson, 1993;Lärarnas Riksförbund 1884-2000. These were obvious manifestations of the grammar school teacher habitus. The growing interest in education and teacher education shown by the State and the establishment and extension of seminary training were important for the status of elementary school teachers, particularly when seen from the perspective of the theory of professions developed by Freidsson (1994), where length of training is important not only in terms of body of knowledge but also in terms of professional socialisation and esprit de corps. Teacher education in the seminaries also provided an advantage when it came to elementary teachers' opportunities to organise meetings and rallies. Several National Assemblies were called in the first decades after the establishment of seminary training and the National Association of Elementary Teachers (NAET) was formed in 1880, with the first edition of its official newspaper being published in the same year (Florin, 1987;Marklund, 1992).
The formation of this association was a deliberate strategy related to the mounting trades' union movement. Formed by occupational association, like the union movement, the NAET prioritised both higher wages and better working conditions. They did so though through strategies such as participation in public debate rather than through direct confrontation and strike action, as was the case with the more militant trades unions.
The NAET was initially a joint project between male and female elementary school teachers. The male teachers in particular seemed to benefit from this alliance. They came from the lower strata of society and saw the middle-class cultivated background of their female counterparts as a means for raising the social status and cultural capital of the occupation. However, at the beginning of the 1900s when the State introduced a principle of pay differentiation favouring male teachers a split was obvious and the women formed their own interest group, the National Association of Female Teachers (NAFT). The result was a differentiation of the representation and organisation of elementary school teachers into male and female teachers. Accordingly the elementary school teacher habitus developed as a dual habitus based on gender.

The position and status of the different teacher categories in the education field
The origins and development of a State education system was a prerequisite for the formation of an occupational category of teachers and the establishment of teacher training, through a seminary system for elementary school teachers from 1842 and as a university based teacher education for grammar school teachers in 1907. It transformed the status of the two categories of teachers in terms of their respective social position and gave teachers opportunities to define a State legitimated occupational monopoly.
In this sense both teacher categories were dependent on the government for their recognition as socially legitimated occupations. However, the two categories had different relationships to the State. Grammar school teachers saw themselves as intellectuals. In terms of both habitus and capital, understanding the academic discipline constituted the basis for professional image and under-girded an occupational double coupling to the academic as well as the educational field. The liberal (and later social democratic) reform process was also often opposed by grammar school teachers and their associations. Elementary school teachers were more in consensus with State education reform policies.
These differences provide clear reasons why the different teacher categories chose (and in fact in Sweden still choose) to organize themselves into separate professional organisations, built on different teacher habitus.The specialised training of grammar school teachers prepared these men for the role of academically trained subject matter experts with relatively high economic and cultural status. Elementary school teacher seminary training had more of a practical profile based on horizontal and tacit knowledge. The point was clearly stated in the 1940 School Commission Report. The commissioners expressed that scientific knowledge about school and education was still in its infancy and that the elementary school teacher's occupation was essentially based on practical experience (SOU 1944:20).

The development of a shared knowledge base for schoolteachers through teacher education (1940 -2000)
The complex formations of a strongly differentiated school system and different teacher habitus described above is a starting point for analysing the problematic welfare state ambition to create one single teacher profession for a new type of school. This project was one that was difficult to fulfil in practice and it has been reversed in recent years. It was connected with the expansion of the welfare state and the implementation of school reforms in the 50's for a nine-year compulsory comprehensive school that was considered to require a reorientation of teacher education to challenge the organizational and personal barriers between primary, secondary-elementary and grammar schools and their teachers. This was suggested first by the 1946 School Commission Teacher College Delegation. The Commission therefore proposed a shared teacher training for all categories of teachers to create a shared scientific cognitive base for the development of the comprehensive school (SOU 1948:27).
Resistance to these proposals came from the Grammar School teachers. This university educated teacher category had already achieved certain professionspecific attributes, as described in the introductory article by Brante, such as several years' academic training. Their assertion was that it was subject expertise that formed the specific cognitive base for their professional action and that the professional studies component on pedagogy and psychology introduced with the 1907 state examination should remain a secondary component limited to one semester of university studies. Extending the emphasis on pedagogical and psychological content and changing the academic subject studies into a common teacher education threatened the unique holding of grammar school teachers.
The education of seminary trained teachers had been under development for a number of years prior to the Commission. Entrance to the public school teacher seminary had increased and lengthened, to correspond in principle to education at the upper-secondary school level. The graduation from the four-year seminary training did not provide access to university, which meant restrictions for elem-entary school teachers in their quest for higher status and improved working conditions. The teacher-specific cognitive base of both teacher categories was thus questioned and appraised as relatively weak, especially in comparison with the classical professions like medicine and law. Teachers as socially licensed professionals lacked the kind of cognitive legitimacy that a scientifically based professional practice could contribute to. With the 1946 School Commission a State policy driven scientification of teacher education was introduced.

Professional cognitive base of the 1950's: Scientific Pedagogy and Psychology
In 1946 a new School Commission drew new conclusions regarding teacher education and research. Unlike the previous investigation team, which largely consisted of head teachers and primary school inspectors, the new commission was dominated by politicians and members of parliament. They were critical to their predecessor's view of the school. They emphasized the reforming and democratization of the Swedish school and devoted space to the need to anchor teacher work in scientific pedagogy and psychology (SOU 1984:27). These subjects helped to constitute a sound basis for modern child-rearing principles, according to the investigators, who expressed that it was of great importance that all teachers were also trained in scientific thinking and could distinguish between proven principles of teaching and temporary whims. The Commission proposed the establishment of a new institution closely linked to university research in pedagogy and psychology, the Teachers' College, where the training of all categories of teachers would be placed. This created a necessity for a further commission to review the working conditions and activities of these institutions. Two main intentions were expressed. One was to break the previous seminary-academic dichotomy. The other was to develop a cognitive base for the teaching profession and common for the different teacher categories. Courses in psychology and education were proposed to achieve these intentions (SOU 1952:33).
One of the proposals submitted to the government suggested that research on learning and teaching should be more closely associated with teacher training and more relevant to teachers' work than the more abstract content of psychology and education that existed previously. The proposals suggested that this would be more likely if professors in Education Research could be established at the new Teacher Colleges. The research developed was to involve scientific studies of general pedagogical issues and a full scientific study of teaching methods and the contentrelated analytical skills of teachers.
Psychology and pedagogy were to form the main topic areas in the teacher colleges. However, also indicative of the Commission's work was that the two disciplines were sometimes used in the commission report in combination and sometimes interchangeably, in such a way that the boundaries between them blurred. The value given to psychology was however clear. Developmental psychology and child observations were the main key elements expressed for the professional (cognitive) knowledge base of teacher education.

Cognitive base of the 60's: Applied pedagogy
The Teacher Education Expert Committee (TEEC) was appointed in 1960. It also argued strongly for the need of a research-based education theory in teacher education, as had the TCD. However, the TEEC also critiqued the contribution of disciplinary pedagogy as often being too far-removed from teaching as carried out in schools to accomplish such aims. The committee stated that it was not that the pedagogy dis-cipline was too abstract and theoretical, as was suggested from some practitioner quarters, but that it needed to rest on empirical foundations and focus more on institutional practices in education settings, which at the time it rarely did (SOU 1965:29).
This argument formed a basis for the direction that teacher education should be taking. Two key dimensions were again outlined. One was for general educational theory that comprised studies in philosophical, sociological and historical perspectives on schooling and education and one was for research related to teaching methods in different subject areas and for pupils of different ages and stages of development. Both contents were to be communicated as courses in higher education inside the pedagogy discipline to develop a link between theory and practice. They were to be taught in addition to subject studies. As in the TCD recommendations the intention was to strengthen the professional knowledge base through content based on general pedagogical research and research on teaching methods under the name applied pedagogy (SOU 1965:29).

Cognitive base of the 70's: Practical pedagogy
Nine years after the TEEC report had been submitted a new commission was appointed (LUT 74). This Commission wrote extensively about the role of pedagogical research for teaching and teacher education. They stated that the function of research in society was that it must be highly specialized and oriented toward technological and economic progress and they added that schools and universities should teach research-based-knowledge of this kind. However, the commissioners also outlined another position. It stated that quality in teaching would be enhanced by teachers becoming not only better informed consumers but also producers of research. According to Beach (2011) and Beach & Bagley (2012) this represents a mile-stone recognition of the value of research-based knowledge about teaching for work in the teaching profession.
The report from the commission was critical of the existing division of pedagogy, methodology and practice in teacher education and suggested that these should be grouped together into a topic area called practical pedagogy. A merging of subjects into subject blocks was also recommended, to allow for a more holistic approach to subject content and to promote more thematically oriented studies (SOU 1978:86).
Several of the recommendations from LUT 74 were shelved in connection with the change of government in the mid-seventies. The right coalition government that came to power argued that the micro-management of teacher education that would result from the LUT 74 recommendations was anachronistic. Lecturers in the universities should, as professionals of the academic field, determine the content and form of a scholarly teacher education, and this would be guaranteed once teacher education became incorporated into the university system, as planned by the government. This incorporation took place with the 1977 University Reform.
Through it the relatively new subject of applied pedagogy was integrated in the existing university pedagogy discipline. In practice this meant that teacher education at one and the same time gained status by becoming a university programme but lost control over the main subject of its emerging cognitive base, which was re-integrated into the mainstream discipline and actively lost (Erixon Arreman & Weiner, 2007).

Cognitive base of the 80's: Didactics
The recommendations from LUT 74 underlaid changes in teacher training first after the Social Democratic Labour Party's return to government in 1982. A main purpose of this reform was (again) to establish a single category of teachers for the compulsory comprehensive school, this time by establishing one program of education for the comprehensive school, with two broad and overlapping ageenrichment lines: one for the school years 1-7 and one for years 4-9. A central argument for the change was that the former divisions were artificial in relation to pupil development and contradictory to the needs of a compulsory comprehensive school (Government Bill 1984/85:122).
These intentions were enacted in a different political and intellectual climate to that of the seventies and took place alongside a major debate about a new subject area for teacher education and educational research. This debate had developed in part from the frustrations due to the hegemony of the pedagogy discipline in relation to the professional knowledge base. The new subject was called didactics (Sw: didaktik, approximately Anglo-American: pedagogy) defined as questions about the selection of teaching content and examination forms and how to make subjects comprehensible to pupils.
In addition to this new subject the new teacher education programmes contained some residues from the former distinctions between seminary and academic teacher education traditions. One was in terms of the length of the programmes. The programmes for grades 1-7 comprised 3 and a half years full-time study whilst the 4-9 program which replaced the secondary level subject teacher education were 4 or 4 and a half years and included quite emphatic subject specializations. Moreover, in relation to subject teacher education, although the reform meant a broadening of subject studies from two or three subjects to all subjects in a subject block (usually 3 or 4), the subject studies component was also extended by half a year. Entry requirements were three years in the academic gymnasium with qualifications from relevant subject areas. Research links were encouraged through theoretical training in individual subjects or in pedagogy, either as an original philosophy doctorate or as a combined philosophy doctorate in pedagogy and didactics. The government allocated funds to didactic research at universities in the 1985 budget proposal, which thus formed a new research component in the cognitive base of teacher education.

Cognitive base from the 90's: Education science
The next commission was the 1997 Teacher Education Inquiry Committee (abbreviated in Swedish as LUK 97). It was appointed by the Social Democratic Government in the wake of a series of reforms in the school sector introduced earlier in the decade, primarily but not exclusively by the preceding right coalition government. These reforms included the Independent School Act (Friskolereformen), the decentralisation and curriculum reforms and the introduction of new forms of governance and criterion referenced national grading. They were changes that were felt to place new requirements on schools and teacher competence. The committee published its recommendations in 1999 (SOU 1999:63).
One important change recommended by the committee was to strengthen the school-based part of teacher training as a means by which to address and overcome what was identified as a theory-practice dichotomy in the cognitive base. Another key issue was the value of broadening the general professional knowledge base and skills for teachers through courses in didactics and interdisciplinary thematic studies. In the new training program eight formally separate teaching examinations became one, with three sub-areas. One of these (called the AUO) was to be jointly studied by all student teachers, no matter what level of education or subject specialization they chose (Government Bill 1999/2000. All of the above recommendations were in line with LUK's remit. However, the LUK-investigators also went beyond the directives they had received by recommending the establishment of a new research field that would support school research and research of particular relevance to teacher education. They. It was called Education Science and recommended as a new field of research that the committee felt would be better than the existing disciplinary organisation of knowledge when it came to providing the scope, focus and content of the research needs that existed in relation to teacher education, but had not been adequately met. This proposition was made by a researcher from the pedagogy discipline but with a background in teaching and teacher education. As Beach & Bagley (2012) concludes it finally helped undermine the hegemony of the pedagogy discipline in relation to the theoretical cognitive base of the professional knowledge component and it created a heated response from the discipline's old guard.
The committee members relied on previous research on teacher education when making recommendations. This research had concluded that the measures previously taken to realize a common cognitive base for teacher education had failed. The existing pedagogy discipline was criticized for this. Although this discipline had dominated research on teaching and teacher education for decades, it had given low priority to research that served teachers' needs. Despite orders from the government in conjunction with teacher training becoming part of the academic landscape in 1977, the universities were not producing professionally relevant knowledge nor even educating enough PhDs to fill lecturer posts in teacher education (SOU 1999:63).
LUK:s criticism was also raised in the subsequent bill for a renewed teacher education (Government Bill 1999/2000. However, the government did not support the proposal to establish a new research area. Instead, it was suggested that a special committee (Committee for Educational Sciences: CES) would be formed within a new organization for research funding called The Swedish Research Council (Government Bill 2000/01: 3). The Committee was given the task of promoting the development of research of high quality with relevance for teacher training and teachers' professional knowledge needs. This can be understood as the final break with the post-war teacher education based on pedagogy as the main discipline.

Discussion
In this article we have discussed the formation of the Swedish education field in the late 1800s as the basic foundation for the professionalization of teaching as an occupation. We have described how the structure of the education field underwent a quite radical overhaul in the 18-hundreds and how it, since then, has been subjected to regular political jurisdiction and reform.
A first decisive struggle in the emergence of the field of education was the struggle against the Latin hegemony, which was also a manifestation of the struggle between conservative religious forces on the one hand and the needs of a new middle class on the other, over the right to define the content and form of the State-funded grammar school education system. A second struggle of significance was the political struggle for a common compulsory elementary school between social-liberal and conservative interests.
These struggles also engaged schoolteachers. The dividing line was between the field's dominant category of subject teachers and the more numerous elementary school teachers who were subordinated in terms of educational capital, social background and gender. In this period of internal professionalization subject teachers and elementary school teachers formed separate alliances and different types of teacher habitus based strategies to strengthen their positions as professionals in the education field.
By the turn of the 19th century education expansion had begun to play a key role in the formation of a welfare society. The 1946 School Commission started a period that could be described as external professionalization by the State striving for professionalization through scientification of teacher education. Teacher education as a key component of the state ideological control of the school system was to be designed as an education uniting the two different teacher categories to one teacher profession based on teacher specific scientific knowledge. The guiding notion was that scientific innovation and community development went hand in hand and that the school was a central element in the development of the welfare state. However, the main intentions permeated in the welfare state school reforms were hard to put in practice.
Attempts to instigate one single teacher profession for the compulsory comprehensive school stretched over five decades from the founding of Teacher Colleges to the recommendations of LUK in 1999 for one common teacher education programme with a common cognitive base. Several changes were conducted to the ends of social legitimacy and status enhancement: higher admission requirements, temporal extension of education, specialization of subject expertise, general access to doctoral studies. At the same time in all investigations a recurring dissatisfaction with fundamental cognitive aspects like the quality of school research and its linking to teacher education was expressed.
In spite of common denominators such as the hegemonic position of developmental psychology in the 50's and the reform pedagogic movement of the 70's, there are some important differences between developments in Sweden and those in other countries. In Sweden the study of education, teaching and learning historically belongs to a disciplinary tradition in the university. This discipline, the pedagogy discipline, has had its own modes of inquiry and systems of thought. It originated at the University of Halle in the late 17-hundreds. In Sweden it has formed part of the social sciences faculties of universities for over a hundred years and has had a hegemonic position in relation to the production of scientific professional knowledge for the teaching profession (i.e. what we have termed the scientific cognitive base of the profession). This is a very different situation to the one existing in countries like England or the USA, where research on education and for teacher education is organized as a research field. Developments in the cognitive base of the teaching profession have been organized differently there than in the Swedish context.
The welfare state scientification policy first set out to strengthen but then later began to successively undermine the sovereignty of the pedagogy discipline in terms of its relationship to the professional cognitive base of teaching. In the 1980s the term pedagogy and didactics (didaktik: roughly translated education and curriculum science) was introduced. The latter was concerned with the scientific study and development of models of thought and communication in different school subject areas. In the late 1990s a new multi-disciplinary research area was introduced under the name Education Science(s). In addition to finally undermining the hegemony of the pedagogy discipline today's liberal education policy characterized by a reassertion of the value of traditional subject knowledge and traditional practitioner skills (Government Bill 2009/10:89) also signifies a retraditionalisation of teacher education and a reassertion of a historical professional dualism similar to developments in other countries (Beach 2011, Beach & Bagley, 2012Furlong, 2005;Lawn & Furlong, 2009).

Conclusions
The implications of the article suggestions in relation to professionalization are worth discussing at some length but space restricts this discussion here. One point that should be made however is the role of teacher habitus in relation to the resilience toward unification of the professional field on the one hand and the ease and support for the return to a dualist policy base on the other. Another is that if the starting point is that increased cognitive legitimacy is a central component of occupational professionalization, it is doubtful if the constant redefinition and uncertainty created by recurrent political interventions regarding the definition and content of a teacher-specific scientific knowledge base has contributed positively to this purpose. In this light a State policy driven scientification of teaching has proved to be a far from unproblematic path to professionalization.