Developing Research Structures and Research Capacity: The Swedish National Postgraduate School in Educational Work (NaPA)

This article focuses on the emergence and development of new research structures and research capacity within Swedish teacher education at the beginning of the new millennium. Since 2001, it has been possible in Sweden to undertake postgraduate and research studies within teacher education — something that was previously impossible. As a result of a national reform, a new research discipline, educational work, was established at several Swedish universities. At the same time, the National Postgraduate School in Educational Work (NaPA) was created, the responsibility for which was given to Umeå University, one of the larger Swedish teacher education providers. The aim of the article is to provide a picture of Swedish national teacher education policies in the first years of the millennium that have generated new research structures, which, in turn, have enabled a rapid and nationally distributed expansion of research within the field of Swedish teacher education. It draws on a combination of policy documents, research carried out by the two authors and reflections on their own experiences, as a former Ph.D. student who now has a doctoral qualification in educational work and as the head of NaPA respectively.