between many disciplines, instead of just giving them to pedagogikk, as had tra-
ditionally been done. In other words, pedagogikk should have a minor role with
regard to research on education. Beyond this, Telhaug suggested that sociologists
should take care of sociology of education, psychologists should do the same with
psychology of education, while philosophers should attend philosophy of educa-
tion. As a consequence, educational research and educational practice could be
based on sociological, psychological and philosophical norms.
As pleasant as the argument may sound it also comes with some unforeseen
consequences more than what already have been mentioned above. First and taking
Sweden as an example: Pedagogik was established as a discipline in 1907 at
Uppsala University as a response to the need to give teaching and teachers a base in
science. Itsfirst professor was Bertil Hammer (installed in 1910) who wasfirmly
based in a hermeneutic tradition of educational thought and who dismissed the idea
that the new type of experimental psychology (inspired by Wilhelm Wundt) was
doing any good for education (Säfström 1994 ). As for Norway, Pedagogisk seminar
(seminar for pedagogikk) was established the very same year, and only two years
later, in 1909, Otto Anderssen was appointed as thefirst Professor of pedagogikk in
Norway. For over 100 years, countless of people trained in research have spent
entire carriers and life times, studying, thinking and writing about educational
issues. This means that there literally is a tradition of knowledge accumulated as
disciplines of pedagogik(k) for over 100 years. To simply replace this tradition of
educational [pedagogik] knowledge with traditions of thought formed around other
issues than education—but applied to educational systems, is to deny the power of
history as well as how scholarly traditions are formed and developed over time.
Also, with some time passed we can now see that the promise of improving
educational research for the benefit of school systems simply is not happening.
Sweden, for example, have never been lower ranked in PISA than in 2013. When it
comes to Norwegian pupils their math skills are at the lowest level since Norway
started testing pupils for Pisa. In science, too, there is a negative change, while the
results in reading remain quite stable.
But maybe more important is what tended to happen in teacher education in
relation to the massive critique of poor quality of teacher education in Sweden
orchestrated by the state department of education from 2006 onwards (see Säfström
2014 for a response to this critique). What tended to happen, among other things,
was that a wide variety of disciplines were taking up‘didaktik’as a way of moving
into the centre of teacher education. Reasons for doing this were not only a newly
awaken interest for‘ämnesdidaktik’(subject didactics) within the subject disci-
plines but also economical. The basic funding for the disciplines at the univeristies
became from the beginning of the 1990s and on directly related to a system of
funding based on full time equivalents and student completions rates, meaning that
it suddenly became clear that teacher education programs was a majorfinancial
contributor to the economy of the universities and university colleges. Small dis-
ciplines, with few students became all the more motivated to take active part in
teacher education, and to develop ways of legitimizing this by developing
‘ämnesdidaktik’, or other inventions. They tended to do this though often without
184 C.A. Säfström and H. Saeverot