curious and have an inherent desire to learn. They are constantly learning new things and should be mobile, creative, flexible and productive. This should increase Sweden's economic competitiveness.

Expectations of students and teachers of Swedish school today are relatively consistent. This is what Lena Sjöberg at University West has found when critically examining different types of policy documents. On February 25 she will defend her thesis Bäst i klassen? Lärare och elever i svenska och europeiska policytexter (Best in class? Teachers and students in Swedish and European policy texts) at Gothenburg University. She has performed her research at University West in Trollhättan, where she is Lecturer in Education.

"There is a relatively consistent and therefore powerful image of how the ideal teacher and student should be," says Lena Sjöberg.

Disagreement about personality
However, there is no consensus on how the teacher's personality is formed. In the 1960's and 70's ideas about a highly malleable personality prevailed, and this view still exists. A competing idea is that a certain inborn predisposition is required to become a teacher. This is reflected in the government survey of teacher education, HUT 07. It says that you must have an aptitude for the profession. "No matter how good education is, it cannot shape the good teacher that the pupils and children need, unless she or he has the potential to successfully pursue the profession." (SOU 2008:109, p. 362) This is an echo from the middle of the last century. Then policy text also claimed that teachers must have some innate predisposition.
Lena Sjöberg call the approach of the HUT 07 neoconservative. Teachers are divided on the issue.

"Some think this is great, and some think it's horrible," she says.

So there are parallels between the 1940s and the present, but there is also a big difference.

"Then school was considered to have a democratic mission. Today instead an economic rationality prevails. Sweden should be best in class," says Lena Sjöberg.

There are now a variety of systems and techniques to govern teachers and pupils towards the ideal. The purpose of it all is according to policy documents that Sweden should do well in the global economic competition.