1. Norwegian Teacher Education Policy Contexts
1 See Appendix 1 for the official mandate.
On 1 April 2016, the Norwegian Ministry of Educa-tion and Research gave the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) the task of setting up, and functioning as a secretariat for, an international expert panel on teacher education.
The main task of the panel was to support and advise Norwegian higher education institutions concerning the implementation of the new 5-year integrated master’s degree programmes in teacher education and to make recommendations to the Ministry of Education and Research and NOKUT
about potential challenges to the success of the reform and ways to address those challenges.
This introductory chapter describes the terms of reference and the mandate NOKUT received from the Ministry of Education and Research.
Then the chapter discusses how NOKUT worked to recruit the panel, provided the panel with in-formation about Norwegian teacher education, and finally how NOKUT has worked to support the panel’s work.
1.1 The mandate
As stated above, the Ministry of Education and Research tasked NOKUT with recruiting and functioning as a secretariat for an international expert panel on teacher education whose main task was to support Norwegian higher education institutions’ implementation of the new 5-year integrated master’s programmes in teacher edu-cation. The Ministry’s terms of reference stated that the panel should stimulate the institutions’
enhancement of the quality of both education and research in the teacher education programmes.1 The Ministry specified six general areas for the panel to consider.
• The panel should maintain a close dialogue with the relevant institutions through open academic events such as seminars or workshops.
• The panel should contribute to quality enhance-ment so that all teacher education programmes
have sufficiently high quality at the time of NOKUT’s audit of all programmes in 2019.
• The panel should assess whether the national guidelines for teacher education and the institutional programme plans are based on international research on excellent teacher education.
• The panel should identify structural, academic, and economic factors that might hinder further quality enhancement of the programmes.
• The panel should suggest a norm for how the government should regulate the staff compo-sition of the new 5-year integrated master’s education in teacher education.
• The panel should suggest an arrangement for the continuation of the quality enhancement activi-ties after the panel’s work is concluded in 2019.
Transforming Norwegian Teacher Education
29 N O K U T – Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education
In order to operationalise the mandate further and to recruit suitable experts for the panel, NOKUT established a reference group2 in the early stages of the project. In collaboration with the reference group, NOKUT wrote a separate mandate, which specified a set of recommendations3 for the advisory panel in the Ministry’s initial mandate and furthermore advised the panel about what elements might be explored. The following issues were listed for the panel to consider:
2 Members of the reference group (and their institutional affiliations at the time in parenthesis) were Elaine Munthe (University of Stavanger and NRLU), Kari Smith (NTNU and NAFOL), Sølvi Lillejord (Kunnskapssenter for utdanning), Frode Rønning (NTNU), Jonas Bakken (UiO), and Fredrik Thue (HiOA).
3 See Appendix 2 for NOKUT’s supplements to the mandate.
• Are national guidelines for Norwegian teacher education, and study programme plans, in accordance with international standards for teacher education? How well do they serve their purpose?
• What qualities in staff composition are necessary in order for the new master’s programmes to reach high educational standards?
• How can teacher education institutions (TEIs) become more research active?
• What organisational aspects would help research and development work to flourish in TEIs?
• How can TEIs and educators ensure that their research and development work benefits their students’ learning? What are the best ways for research to become part of student teachers’ education?
• What strategies will help TEIs form
international networks to strengthen their teaching and research?
• How can TEIs create greater coherence between the disciplines involved in teacher education?
• How can the new master’s programmes establish good partnerships between TEIs and partner schools?
• How can TEIs create greater coherence between the student teachers’ theoretical knowledge and research, their experience in schools, and their future school careers?
• What qualities in study programme design can help the new master’s programmes reach high educational standards?
• Are there academic, structural, economic, or other factors that hold teacher education back, or make it harder for it to improve?
1.2 Selecting the international advisory panel
NOKUT has a long history of using international experts in many operations. However, these experts are most often from Scandinavia because most of NOKUT’s operations require an understanding of written Norwegian. Since the Ministry of Education and Research wanted an advisory panel with a broader international perspective, NOKUT established a reference
group consisting of Norwegian teacher educa-tion academics. The reference group and NOKUT met twice in the autumn of 2016 to discuss the mandate and potential members of the panel. In addition, three of the members of the reference group participated in the first meeting with the advisory panel on 13 February 2017.
The reference group suggested multiple names for the panel, which gave NOKUT an opportunity to tap into a large international network of teacher education experts.
Throughout the autumn of 2016, NOKUT contacted several international experts and by January 2017, all members of the advisory panel confirmed their participation for the entire project period (2017-2019).
The advisory panel for teacher education comprises:
• Professor Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Boston College, USA (Chair)
• Professor Mikael Alexandersson, Göteborgs universitet, Sweden
• Director of Educational Research and Evaluation Karen Hammerness,
American Museum of Natural History, USA
• Professor Viv Ellis,
King’s College London, Great Britain
• Associate Professor Lexie Grudnoff, The University of Auckland, New Zealand
• Professor Alis Oancea,
University of Oxford, Great Britain
• Professor Auli Toom,
University of Helsinki, Finland
1.3 NOKUT’s role as secretariat
4 See Appendix 3 for the first set of recommendations.
5 Viv Ellis is a professor II at the Western Norway University of Applied Science and Karen Hammerness was professor II at the University of Oslo, and is now an associated researcher.
Besides appointing the panel and providing the panel with information about Norwegian teacher education, NOKUT has functioned as a secretariat for the panel. In this role, NOKUT served as a link between the panel and the teacher educa-tion programmes, organised the logistics for the seminars and workshops, and set up meetings with relevant stakeholders, for instance, represen-tatives from the committee for teacher educa-tion, Universities Norway, the Council for Teacher Education 2025, the Union of Education Norway etc. Furthermore, NOKUT continuously supported the panel’s work through gathering relevant infor-mation on specific topics identified by the panel.
The panel members were responsible for the content of the seminars and workshops and for the recommendations in this report as well as the recommendations they released in May 2018.4