Råde (2014) presents a tension in teacher education that originates in the dichotomy: vocational orientation/academic orientation. The vocational orientation emphasizes preparation directly for vocational practice, and the academic orientation emphasizes preparation for research education. An example of where this tension may be expressed is in the students’ theses. Academically oriented theses strive to live up to traditional academic standards, but at the same time students often find it difficult to transfer the knowledge they have gained to professional practice. Vocationally oriented student theses strive to provide knowledge that is more directly transferable to professional practice, but at the same time, it is more difficult for students to live up to traditional academic standards. A problem inherent in this dichotomy is therefore that it creates a fruitless split between the interest in contributing to academic knowledge building and the interest in contributing to useful knowledge for practice.

The argument of this study is that this conflict is best managed by abandoning the dichotomy. It creates the appearance that knowledge associated with an academic orientation is of a different kind than knowledge associated with a professional orientation. However, it is more fruitful to think that an academic orientation also needs to be a vocational orientation at the same time and thus see these as expressions of the same knowledge interest: knowledge that supports the planning, implementation and evaluation of teaching content. The concept of didactic models is associated with this kind of knowledge interest (Wickman et. al. 2018) and will be used here to show how such models can help dissolve the conflict in practice. This will be done by giving examples of how didactic modeling in students’ master projects implies an integration of an academic orientation with a professional orientation. The examples are taken from the pre-school teacher program (15hp thesis) and elementary teacher program (30hp thesis).

 Wickman et al. (2018) argue for considering didactics as the academic discipline of teachers’ profession. The concept of didactic models plays a central role in their reasoning. Didactic models help teachers make decisions when planning, implementing and evaluating a specific content by supporting didactic analysis and design. A central task for didactic research thus becomes to produce, develop and exemplify didactic models for the analysis and design of teaching. This is referred to as didactic modeling and can be seen as a research program that aims to build a knowledge base that is owned, used and developed by teachers together with researchers for the analysis and design of instruction.

In didactic modelling, the exemplification phase is central. It concerns the documentation of teaching examples where a didactic model has been used for didactic analysis and design of teaching. Within the frame of a student thesis, teacher students can make exemplifications of didactic models with action research as a research approach. In such an approach, students would use a didactic model as support for analysis and design when addressing a teaching problem that they themselves have experienced, while at the same time documenting this process in a systematic way. There is no fundamental difference in how analysis and design are used in teaching and in didactic modeling. This means that they simultaneously strive to develop the collective didactic knowledge base and develop knowledge for their own professional practice. Hence, the academic orientation simultaneously becomes a vocational orientation and the dichotomy loses its meaning as an expression of two different interests in tension with each other.