as already mentioned, become a multidisciplinaryfield under educational sciences.
Due to the hybrid and interdisciplinary structure of educational sciences, pedagogik
(k) has come closer to the structure of education. Indeed, politicians and certain
academics almost take for granted that pedagogik(k) is a multidisciplinaryfield,
rather than an independent discipline which is formed and developed in such a way
as to being able formulate educational problems and questions.
Pedagogik(k) may be harmed by this, as other disciplines, including philosophy
of education, is undermining pedagogik(k) as an independent academic discipline
and therefore hinders the development of educational knowledge. Ironically, the
consequence of such state of affairs tends to be that an increased focus on educa-
tional research decreases the production of educational knowledge based in tradi-
tions of educational thought. Consequences for teacher education tend to be that
instead of being able to base‘the idea of teacher eduaction’its‘ethos’as well as its
practical undertakings in educational thought other disciplines than pedagogik are
legitimized to teach courses at teacher education traditionally taught by teacher
educators coming from pedagogik(k) based in traditions of educational thought.
The irony is that by doing this the knowledge proper for teacher education is at best
dated and at worst wrong. Of course there are exceptions to this state of affairs—but
then always as other disciplines have managed to take up traditions of educational
knowledge. Ironically, by so doing those disciplines either have to admit that they
are producing‘second hand knowledge’in education or refute the argument for
utbildningsvetenskap, that each discipline produces‘better’knowledge within the
confine of itself. Or, which is not that uncommon refute pedagogik(k) as a valuable
discipline at all for teacher education (see for example article in Dagens 2008
signed by Ebba Bratt-Wittström, Martin Ingvar et al.).
12.5 A Quantitative Conception of Time
Our fourth andfinal point leads us back to the introduction where we pointed out
that utbildning/utdanning has a beginning and an end, and takes place within an
institutional framework. As a basis of this, wefind a conception of time where
beginning and end, and everything in between, lie on a straight line, where old and
new incidents move forward, in a pretty much predetermined progression and
subsequent order. This is a quantitative understanding of time, which is charac-
terized by homogeneity and succession, in which events follow successively after
each other, making it possible to measure that which occurs within the given
timeframe. Today’s education is by many described as‘the age of measurement’,
where teachers and others focus on measuring learning outcomes and similar areas.
In the age of measurement, utbildningsvetenskap/utdanningsvitenskap plays an
important role as it provides legitimacy to evidence-based research, i.e. rigorous
outcome-oriented research, which can then be transferred more or less directly to
the practicefield. The goal being to ensure that the research can lead to certain
knowledge about the educational practice. Thus, we end up with a positivist
188 C.A. Säfström and H. Saeverot