Primary teacher education in Portugal: a matrix of curricular, political, and professional tensions

This study addresses the initial education of primary teachers in Portugal, a policy domain shaped since the Bologna Process by successive legislative reforms whose cumulative effects on teacher professionalism remain insufficiently understood. Adopting a qualitative-dominant, exploratory case study design, the research analyses ten legal statutes issued between 2007 and 2026 through systematic documentary coding, examining how legislation frames the conception of primary education, the professional knowledge valued, and the teacher identity legitimised. The analysis shows that Portuguese legislation lacks a distinct conception of primary teaching, treating it as largely undifferentiated from other qualification pathways; since 2014, curricular credits have progressively shifted away from general educational training and educational research towards subject-specific didactics and content knowledge, particularly in language and mathematics education, while ethical, social and community dimensions remain transversal in discourse yet largely invisible in curricular design, and supervised teaching practice, initially framed as professionalising, appears to have been increasingly mobilised to respond to teacher shortages. Taken together, these findings suggest that Portuguese policy has been progressively legitimising a technically trained, compliance-oriented primary teacher over a critically reflective, research-engaged professional, reinforcing a broader diagnosis of policymaking oriented towards measurable performance rather than professional autonomy and critical judgement.