Kritikens kris

The following study is a discourse analysis of the concept of critical thinking within pre-school teacher education. It considers the following questions: how does the concept of critical thinking appear in policy documents, central to the pre-school teacher education, and which possible conceptions of critical thinking are conveyed by students and teachers active within the education. Additionally, the study seeks to discuss, as well as suggest a possible relation, between the findings of those two questions. In reviewing the material (consisting of five semi-structured interviews with students and teachers, and of a selection of policy documents central to the education), I argue the existence of a sort of project within the education, which presents critical thinking as a higher value. At the same time, I argue that the concept is not defined or concretized. This project, however, as I suggest while drawing upon Foucault?s ideas of discourse and government, involves a rather high degree of control. The project attempts to get the students to adjust their behaviour, by gaining the desired skill of critical thinking, making them believe that it is essential for their own as well as for the future of society?s sake; thus using both hope and fear, as the desire for participation and belonging, as strategies of government. At the same time, drawing upon Foucault?s concepts of genealogy and critique, I indicate a large dispersion in terms of the possible conceptions of critical thinking, as demonstrated in the material from the interviews. I conclude that the encounter between this dispersion of conceptions of critical thinking, and the concept?s considerable importance as regarded by the project, while left undefined, may cause confusion amongst students and teachers, not leaving them any alternative way of thinking or acting, and may therefore imply potential implications for contemporary Swedish higher education.

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