The final professional bachelor's thesis in Danish teacher education

Tensions between theory, practice, and research in the complexities of repeated reforms

Abstract

Teacher education in Denmark for primary and lower secondary school is a four-year, professional bachelor's programme. The repeated reforms, the changing policy requirements, and their consequences for the final professional bachelor's thesis are issues discussed in this article focusing on tensions between the weighting of theory, research, and professional practice. The history of Danish teacher education provides a background to understand this, and it is discussed whether the tensions might instead be understood as fields of synergy in the inevitable complexity of educating teachers. To exemplify this key point, the article illustrates three areas
of student teachers’ competencies: 1) the practical-pedagogical area, 2) the personal-professional area, and 3) the area of research and development. Previous research studies looking into the final thesis for primary and lower secondary school in Danish teacher education have, for example, discussed tensions between text norms, where mixtures of references to personal pedagogical values and academically oriented, formal, rhetorical features have been seen. Furthermore, there is previous research examining if and how student teachers can benefit from working with collaborative inquiries based, for example, on classroom video. An analysis of four professional bachelor's projects is presented leading to the conclusion that a professional inquiry orientation is dominant in the work with the final thesis.