These results derive from a project on preschool student teachers’ professional development. The basic idea was that issues of democracy – discussed and talked about in different forms and contexts – are vital to become part of teachers’ agency. Thus, the project aimed to explore how the student teachers developed democratic agency during their teacher education.

Theoretically, the project was grounded in an understanding of teacher agency, in which experiences, different contextual aspects as well as temporal dimensions are taken into account. For 7 semesters, a group of 10-20 preschool student teachers in Sweden participated voluntarily in the project throughout their entire teacher education. Our method was to gather regularly in conversations with the students in ‘horizontal networks’. These worked as arenas for the students to challenge their thoughts on democracy and values without being graded for their developing opinions. We were four researchers that, in about 70 occasions, met with the students in such conversations about their future profession. Our roles were to take part of reflections on issues of democracy and teaching profession.

Our main results show that the students developed democratic agency though active participating in horizontal networks. The students themselves were able to describe the value of participating and how they perceived their democratic agency to be more developed compared to non-participating fellow students. The students in focus were able to reflect on issues of democracy in society, how they possibly could act differently in situations with children, colleagues and other actors in the preschool, issues that in previous research have been found to be difficult.

The results demonstrate a need to clearly focus on issues of democracy in the teacher education in order to develop future teachers’ democratic agency, which doubtless has become even more necessary in the present democratically troublesome times.