Swedish teacher training has, during the last decades, gone through several reforms. The purpose has been toadopt teacher training into the university; to strengthen the teaching profession; and to bridge different traditionswhile including modern society. The discussions in these contexts have often shown a tension between scientificbased knowledge and knowledge grounded in other types of practice. Considering these discussions andchanges and in view of our earlier research studies, which show how the concept of ‘aesthetic learning’ (usedboth as a dimension within arts education and as a field within general teacher training) in school contexts isruled by dominating ideologies of knowledge, the purpose of the project is to identify, describe and criticallyscrutinize current discourses related to aesthetic learning and arts education within the teacher training.

The study takes its point of departure in post-structuralist and social constructionist theory and an assumption,therefore, that different kinds of knowledge are classified and created from a variety of specific preconceptionsabout the human being and the world. The data-collection includes 19 focus group interviews with teachers andstudents from 10 different Swedish teacher-training institutes. Our analysis shows that the aesthetic didactic fieldhas been challenged by more general pedagogical discourses. An academic discourse, with a focus on theory,reflection and textual production, has pushed out the musical skill based practice. A second discourse, which ischaracterised by subjectivity and relativism towards the conception of quality, is also found in the material.Finally, a therapeutic discourse, which marks out an affiliation to the teacher student’s inner personaldevelopment, is articulated and legitimised from an idea of emotionally balanced student teachers. The two latterdiscourses show similar features in teacher students’ personal development as well as in their didacticcompetence in relation to school and children. An assumption is that both educational ideologies andnondiscursive factors, like economic resources and the specific characters of different artistic expressions withinthe aesthetic field, contribute to the construction of the discourses.