Ingrid Carlgren teaches in the Department of Thematic Studies, Linköping University, Campus Norrköping, Kungsgaten 38, S-60220 Norrköping, Sweden. She is leading the development of a new teacher education programme within a cross-disciplinary department of thematic studies and research. Her research interests centre on teachers' work and professional knowledge, cultures within teacher education, and classroom research.

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 As part of the restructuring of school systems and teacher education programmes, the teacher role is being redefined. There are many ways of describing the ideal of the 'new', desirable teacher that is emerging: the teacher as supervisor or guide, as curriculum-maker, as reflective practitioner, as researcher or action researcher, or as intellectual. But the on-going reforming of teacher education, which sometimes has been called 'the reflective wave', seems to be more concerned with what teachers should be, and the nature of their knowledge, than with what teacher knowledge is about. Perhaps this is natural if we consider the object of teacher education as the formation of teachers and teacher knowledge. However, there are also tendencies for this focus on the teacher and on the nature of teacher knowledge to become the content of teacher education programmes. Inasmuch as this content substitutes for courses about, for example, methods and ways of teaching, the implementation of the idea of educating the 'reflective practitioner' seem to imply a transfer of focus from the 'objects' of teaching to the 'subjects', i.e. the teachers.

Thus, there are many examples of new courses in, for example, curriculum planning or theory ñ preservice as well as inservice ñ which are constructed around the concept of 'reflection', and focused on the participating teachers' thinking and practical knowledge. Often it seems as if the focus of these courses is not what teachers think about or the content of teachers' practical knowledge but, instead, practical knowledge and thinking as such: how teachers' knowledge is embedded in teachers' worlds and lives, and how teachers' identities ñ as teachers ñ are formed.

What knowledge will the 'new' teachers prepared in this way develop? What kind of knowledge will replace traditional content like, for example, 'how to use the blackboard?'

One example of one answer to these questions is seen in a video meant to be used in teacher education programmes that I watched a couple of years ago about reflection in teaching. It took us around a primary school showing mainly teacher-student interactions as well as teacher-teacher interactions. What was so interesting about that video was that the commentator did not talk about what the children did, or what the teacher tried to accomplish, or what the teachers talked about, i.e. what the practice was about. Instead the different shots were used to illustrate kinds of reflection. The 'reflective teacher' was the content of the programme. From a teacher's perspective, reflexivity is becoming self-reflexivity.

The same shift from the object of thinking to the thinking subject can be noticed in relation to students' learning. There is a growing focus on 'learning to learn', i.e. reflecting on the process of learning rather than on what is learned. In Sweden such tendencies are more obvious in some subjects than in others. In the national standards for physical education, for example, the capability to reflect on how to improve physical health is emphasized ñ in other words, it is more important to be able to reflect on how to learn to jump higher than how high one can jump!

This emphasis and focus on reflection can be seen as in accord with the reflexivity that is a growing aspect of modern life. As a consequence of the crisis of tradition, reflexivity must become a more important part of more and more social practices. Reflexivity as an attitude or mode of thinking is about the relation between the subject and the world seen in terms of two poles, the 'reflective subject' and the 'reflected object'. The reflective subject constructs and acts on the world through the reflected objects. Reflected objects, or objects of knowledge, are 'tools' in reflective practices. But without such reflective tools there is a risk that the reflective wave will lead to introverted 'self-reflexivity'. I think this may be the case in teacher education for several reasons:

• Teachers' professional knowledge is to a large extent tacit and not reflected on, i.e. the professional objects are not related to theoretical objects of knowledge.

• Discourse around schools and teachers' work comes from groups that are not made up of teachers; instead it comes from teacher educators, policy-makers, and administrators, all of whom have teachers as their professional object, i.e. the formation and changing of teachers is part of their job. To problematize the nature of teacher knowledge is necessary for teacher educators ñ and important in the construction of teacher education programmes as well as school reforms. The nature of teacher knowledge has also been an important research focus leading, among other things, to a discourse about schools and school change that very much is about the teachers and how they could be changed. But teacher knowledge is not the professional object of such groups; a teacher's professional object is students' knowledge and learning.

• Teacher education has a long tradition of training and talking about how to teach instead of what to accomplish through teaching. As part of this there has been an emphasis on teacher roles rather than on teachers' professional objects. To talk about the teacher as curriculum-maker, or to focus on the process of curriculum-making instead of the content of curriculum-making, accords with such a tradition.

Reflexive modernization

Reflexivity as an aspect of modern life has been much in focus in the discussion about the present period of modernity. The discussion of reflexivity can be related to other aspects of modernity, such as the dissolution of time and space, disembeddedness, uncertainty and risk-taking, all of which contribute to a situation where the 'claims of tradition' have to be replaced by the 'claims of reason'. The 'reflective wave' in teacher education can be understood as a response to this situation ñ which presupposes new dispositions to act and be. Claims for reflexivity among teachers can thus be seen as claims for a certain mode of knowing and acting in a changing world, a necessary response to changing conditions, and, therefore, a growing aspect of teachers' work and knowledge.

We can understand this movement against the background of teachers' roles over this century. Thus, around the turn of the century and during the first decades of this century, there was a professionalization movement among primary teachers in Sweden. 'Intellectual' teachers participated in the public discourse as well as in the formation of school politics. Teachers were closer to research during the first half of this century when compared to the second half. Some teachers were actively involved in research; others came into contact with research during summer courses where they met with national as well as international researchers. This changed, however, during the period of the great Swedish school reforms, i.e. the creation of comprehensive secondary schools. As an expression of this turn the minister of education in 1950, after the Parliamentary decision on a nine-year comprehensive school, declared that teachers didn't need research or theory, but tangible methods and materials for their work. The 1950s and 1960s, in Sweden, can be described as a period of de-professionalization, a period when the gap between teachers and researchers widened. Teachers changed from being the receivers of research to become the objects of research.

This period was also a period of centralization with standardized solutions to general problems being given to teachers in order to get schools open for all and equal in value. The belief in research as the way to solutions for the schools was strong.

Thus the growth of educational research in Sweden was part of the implementation of school reforms. As a consequence of this linkage, a particular knowledge-interest was integrated into educational research: research was to contribute to the change in the ways of working in schools in accordance with the aims of school reforms. From such a perspective it is not surprising that the focus was on the teachers, since teachers were (and are) carriers of traditions.

However, this process of making teachers the objects for research was a sign of an absent professionalization. It was not teachers who took on the responsibility to develop schools in accordance with the aims. 'If teachers can be changed, then the activities in schools may change.' The control of teachers vs. teacher autonomy has been a central theme in the discourse of school development. There has been a tension between 'school development' and teachers' professional knowledge.

Research on teacher thinking, which can be seen as a reaction to the exclusion of the teachers from educational research, was built around the idea that teachers were the actors in school development. Indeed, some of the research on teacher thinking has been consciously oriented towards teacher empowerment. However, to say that reflexivity is a necessary response to new conditions doesn't mean that it will automatically develop.

When the concept of reflexivity is discussed in research on teachers, it is often considered from a normative perspective: to reflect is a desirable way of being. Although the meaning of reflexivity is discussed and interpreted in different ways, its value is mostly assumed, which has led, in turn, to a reaction ñ a questioning of whether reflection is something that is good or not good, whether it is possible or not possible in the teaching profession, and whether reflexivity is an appropriate way of describing the qualities of teaching. It is said, for example, that the immediacy of classroom practice is incompatible with being reflective, that teachers' knowledge is embedded in practical situations, and is a non-formulated kind of knowledge, contextualized, personal and, to a large extent, tacit.

This questioning of reflexivity as something 'good' relates to its normative aspect. However, if reflexivity is seen as a necessary response to changing conditions in a profession that is characterized by uncertainty and continuous changes, then the discussion about whether it is good or desirable or not is irrelevant. Instead of discussing if reflection should or should be, the questions are What is it? or What could it be? and What should it be about?

Where did the blackboard go?

Since school is an institution that is constantly reformed the teaching profession is a profession characterized by an almost constant discontent with teachers. The 'desirable' teachers are always different to existing teachers. Thus teacher education programmes have been created to form teachers who are different from most teachers working in schools. The approaches to this goal have varied ñ letting becoming teachers experience what they should be letting their students experience together with learning 'how to do' in the classroom; fostering politically-correct teachers with the 'right' views of knowledge, children and learning; constructing teachers who are 'willing to change'. The 'reflective practitioner' is the latest way to construct 'new' teachers.

Regardless of the different ways seen as being appropriate for making teachers able to change the practice of schools, the focus has been on how to teach rather than on a theoretical understanding of teaching. Teacher education students were once, for example, taught how to write on the blackboard. One aspect of the reflective wave is, the elimination of such 'how to do' content in teacher education programmes. But such how-to-do content has not been replaced by theoretical and reflected knowledge centred on teachers' professional objects.

Since teachers' knowledge is, to a large extent, personal and tacit, and since the 'what' of the professional objects is not formulated or problematized, teacher knowledge is, as a result, knowledge by acquaintance rather than interpreted knowledge. Traditionally such professional knowledge has developed through experience of teaching. But today there is a risk that the emphasis on the reflective subject, in combination with a lack of reflected objects, will lead to reflection without content. From that perspective one can talk about a change from a focus on the objects of teaching (the students, the content and the methods) to the subjects, i.e. 'myself as a teacher'.

Another way of making teacher education more theoretical that, at the same time, keeps teachers' professional objects as content, would be to change courses on 'how to teach' into theoretical courses about the 'what' of teaching. Instead of focusing how to deal with students, content and methods (which is itself is taken for granted), the focus could be on knowledge for the 'what of teaching'. Teacher reflection might be organized around issues such as What is the character of the learning that is to be accomplished? What qualities of knowing should be developed? and What forms of student participation should be constructed? With such a set of framing questions, the meaning of professional situations and actions could be formulated and related to professional aims!