Values in Student Teachers’ Educational Practice

A qualitative, quasi-experimental study is described that had the aim to illuminate, by focussing the classroom dialogue, the relation between student teachers’ explicit and implicit values. Two groups of students participated in inquiries about the character of the classroom dialogue. The experimental group also participated in an intervention. The intervention implied that the students were taught to pay a lot of attention to those parts of the Swedish National Curriculum in which teachers’ explicit and implicit democratic values are focused. The result was that during the intervention, the students changed their values, but not only in a direction desired by the project. A conclusion is that, besides the intervention, also the practical work at schools affected the students’ understanding of the character of a desired classroom dialogue.