Both in Sweden and Norway, teacher education has been subject to comprehensive reforms during the last years. Central governmental documents are forming the basis for these reforms, and in these documents, the task of training pupil’s skills in critical thinking is emphasised as an overall aim for teaching processes and education. However, a more specific definition of the term “critical thinking”, i.e. how skills in critical reflection is encouraged in practice, in the classroom and among the students, seems to be lacking in the documents from both countries. In this paper, we will address the question of how far the policy documents give the necessary preconditions for developing skills in critical thinking in school. The question will be discussed comparatively, and on the basis of analysis of policy documents as well as on official reports on observations from the outcome of these reforms, both in Norway and Sweden. The theoretical and methodological basis for this study will be critical discourse analysis (CDA) as it is developed by Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak, among others. This will, in turn, raise questions such as: are there any differences between Norway and Sweden? If so, what differences can be highlighted? Can possible differences be related to differences in political climate? If not, what?

 Thus, the question of how texts communicate to the readers will be crucial to our presentation.

The paper is part of a larger project aiming to shed light on the mutual relation between practice and theory in teacher education. The project will be done in cooperation between Halmstad University and Telemark University College, as well as teacher education universities in Denmark (Via University, Aalborg).

As this paper is a part of a project in its initial phase, concrete research results are still to be seen. Our preliminary thesis, is, however, that policy documents, both in Sweden and Norway, tend to be driven by political goals rather than goals emphasising improvements of skills in critical thinking and education.