Teacher Educators in Norway: Awakening Attention

• In Event: Teacher Educators as Reformers? The Complicated U.S. Case

Abstract

Problem and Educational Significance
Teacher educators belong to in Norway, a profession, which has until recently, not been receiving much attention (Author, 2015; Lunenberg, Korthagen & Dengerink, 2014). This seems to be changing, and today the profession of teacher educators receives awakening attention from European and national policy makers (European Commission, 2013; Norwegian Ministry of Knowledge, 2017) as well as from researchers (Vanassche et al, 2015; Czerniawski, Guberman, A.& MacPhail, A.,2017; Author, 2016).

There is, however, still discussions around who are teacher educators, they can be school based teacher educators who serve as mentors for student teachers in school, and they can be university based who are engaged in pre and inservice teacher education. In this paper the main focus will be on university based teacher educators, but Norwegian initiatives with school based teacher educators will also be discussed. Another issue often discussed is what professional knowledge is unique to the profession of teacher educators (Loughran, 2014), and how is that knowledge acquired? Today we know little about this, and in this paper the Norwegian case will be illuminated.

Objectives, perspectives and mode of inquiry
The objective is to present recent developments and interests in teacher educators in Norway. The main focus has been on structures of teacher education, e.g. numbers of hours for practice, pedagogy, subject matter and didactics, and the length of teacher education programs from 2017 (Author, AERA, 2016). When discussing who will teach at a graduate level, the attention has been on academic qualifications and research (Author, AERA, 2017). Little attention is given to who is a good teacher educator, what professional knowledge is required, or how this knowledge is developed. The main argument in this paper is that the real essence of the discussion is neglected, attending to measurable instead of quality indicators. Four Norwegian studies are briefly presented. The first presents data about novice Norwegian teacher educators (Author, in print), the second examines teacher educators’ perception of their role and their development needs (Author, work in progress). The third informs about the effect of the Norwegian research school in teacher education- NAFOL (Author, 2017). The fourth discusses professional knowledge of school-based teacher educators (Author, 2015).

Analysis, results and contributions
The mode of inquiry dictated the analysis of the data. The first study applied a mixed methods approach in which qualitative data were used to explore the quantitative findings which indicate that the majority of novice teacher educators are not formally induced into the profession. The second used mixed methods and the main findings suggest that meaningful professional development relates to reading and collegial discussions whereas research competence is needed. The main findings indicate that NAFOL has had a strong impact on the research activities in the 19 network institutions and strengthened the graduates’ identity as researching teacher educators. Finally, the fourth study argues that the quality of mentoring relates to the education of school based mentors. Collectively the research contributes to creating a knowledge base about the teacher education profession.

Author

• Kari Smith, Norwegian University of Science and Technology