Building teacher knowledge and identity– career changers´ transition into teaching through a short teacher education programme

High-quality teacher education plays a crucial role in the develop-ment of successful educational systems around the world. However,educational systems face challenges in relation to attracting andretaining excellent teachers. To meet teacher shortage, the Swedishgovernment introduced alternative programmes that are moreflexible than traditional teacher education. This paper aims to ana-lyse a one-year governmental teacher education initiative and pro-vide deeper insight into career changing student teachers´ as wellas newly graduated teachers´ transition into the teacher profession.Research questions asked were which students choose to becometeachers, why individuals from other professional backgroundschoose to change career and become a teacher, and what aspectsstudent teachers emphasise as crucial for developing their profes-sional identity as teachers of their particular subject content. Assuch, the results might give implications for the way student tea-chers are recruited to teacher education programmes and hownewly graduated teachers can develop professionally. © 2024 The Author(s).