The teaching of writing is a central task for teachers of Swedish and it is a complex activity which requires knowledge of different areas such as language, communication, and text. The aim of this licentiate’s dissertation is to investigate when and how the knowledge needed for the teaching of writing is developed in teacher education as well as during the first years of teaching. The study is based on semi-structured qualitative interviews with prospective and novice upper secondary school teachers of Swedish.

The data obtained from the interviews were analyzed in two ways. The first analysis focused on the way in which the prospective and novice teachers talked about text, writing, and the teaching of writing. The result shows that, at the beginning of the teacher education, prospective teachers focus on concrete aspects of text – such as syntax, punctuation and spelling – when they speak about text, writing, writing instruction, and assessment of student writings. In other words, they pay special attention to local text levels. At the end of the teacher education  programme, prospective teachers focus on aspects of text structure such as outline, the structure of paragraphs, coherence and cohesion. Certain aspects that the students pay special attention to are mentioned by the novice teachers, but these aspects are not central to them. Instead, novice teachers give special attention to the global text levels such as context, receivers and the purpose of the text, i.e. abstract aspects of text and writing. The pattern discerned shows a development that starts with a focus on the details at a local text level and expands into a more comprehensive view with a focus at a global level.

The second analysis concerns the development of the knowledge base for the teaching of writing. This analysis focuses on two of the knowledge categories described by Lee S. Shulman (1986, 1987), namely subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), both of which can be seen as central for the teaching of writing. The knowledge base manifested in the prospective teachers’ utterances mainly consists of subject matter knowledge, whereas the greater part of the knowledge base manifested in the teachers’ utterances consists of pedagogical content knowledge for the teaching of writing. The teachers also manifest a more complex subject matter knowledge and speak about writing instruction in a way which is characterized by conscious choices, reflection and metacognition. The analysis thus shows that the PCK for the teaching of writing is mainly developed in the teaching profession; in other words, after the teacher education programme is finished.