Sampling

In the introduction, I accounted for the national contexts of teacher education in the three associated countries. I argued that these national context make up for interesting cross-case analysis of teacher education. From each of these countries, two programs constitute my sample (all programs from the CATE study). That is the teacher education programs at the University of Helsinki and Aabo Akademi University in Finland; the University of Oslo and Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Norway; and Stanford

University and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), in California, US⁸. In the following, I describe the sampling of these programs in more depth.

According to Stake (2006), a random selection of cases is not possible for a multiple-case study, rather cases are often chosen due to access and familiarity. To some extent, this was also the case in my study. However, the six programs also constituted a purposive sample (Creswell, 2013), as they were seen as cases that would give good insights into the phenomenon under study. Stake (2006) claimed that such purposive sampling is often

preferable for multiple-case studies, rather than sampling most typical cases. The chosen cases

8 For the remains of this thesis, the programs will be referred to as Helsinki, Aabo, Oslo, NTNU, Stanford and UCSB, respectively. In the articles, they are anonymized, and referred to as program 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 3a, and 3b, respectively, in Article III, whereas in Article II Helsinki, Oslo and Stanford are referred to as program 1, 2, and 3, respectively.

45 should be relevant for the phenomenon under study, provide diversity across contexts, and provide opportunity to learn about complexity across contexts (Stake, 2006, p. 23).

Even though we aimed for a purposive sample of programs with shared similarities, we as researchers did not have thorough knowledge of the cases before beginning. This knowledge increases as the research project evolves, and the knowledge about the sample might change its character during the process (Flyvbjerg, 2006). We could thus base our sampling only on our own and others’ knowledge of the state of the different teacher education programs in these contexts, choosing the ones that presumably would provide us with interesting findings.

To find relevant teacher education programs, we looked for programs that were considered to be strong, as we assumed that stronger programs provide instructional practices that are closely connected to practice (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Levine, 2006). It is difficult to know whether a program actually is strong or not, but all programs in our sample were considered by their peers to be strong and effective (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Levine, 2006).

Nevertheless, we also emphasized the degree of reform efforts while selecting programs. At Stanford, faculty has been attempting to enhance the coherence of the program and ground their teaching in practice since 1999, although the major changes were completed in 2002. The program was redesigned around a clear vision shared by the faculty, and there was an explicit articulation of a model for student teaching, mentoring, and supervision (Hammerness, 2006).

Although with a less explicit focus on coursework grounded in practice, the UCSB program has also engaged in substantial reform efforts since 2001 (Sloan, 2015). UCSB used, for instance, assessment tools like TPAs systematically to improve their program (Peck, Gallucci,

& Sloan, 2010; Sloan, 2015). Similarly, Oslo has initiated large-scale reform efforts within the last four years, building upon international research on teacher education, and highly

influenced by the work done at Stanford (Engelien, Eriksen, & Jakhelln, 2015; Klette et al., 2011). In effect, the program was designed around four professional themes for teacher education to enhance coherence and common vision. In addition, all exams were based in practice, and field placement was organized in a strong partnership with cooperating schools (Engelien et al., 2015). The other Norwegian program had a less explicit focus on coursework grounded in practice, but NTNU has quite recently developed and implemented two projects to combine theory and practice in their teacher education programs. One focused on research and development projects as part of the program (Wæge & Haugaløkken, 2013), and another project worked to enhance partnerships with schools (Haugaløkken & Ramberg, 2007).

Finally, the Finnish programs were included because, as stated, Finnish teacher education was considered strong and seemed to have a strong focus on a research-based approach to teacher

46 education, rather than an enactment approach. While faculty reported constant work adjusting and shifting different features of the Finnish programs (such as course assignments, length of fieldwork, and entrance requirements), the programs have not implemented major changes recently, except from adaptation to the Bologna framework in 2006 (Hansén et al., 2015;

Jakku-Sihvonen & Niemi, 2006). The reform efforts of these programs thus differed in extensiveness and proximity of time. Some programs have conducted large-scale overhauls, while others have undertaken smaller-scale experiments adjusting or shifting specific features.

Similarly, some programs have been continuously making change efforts for a decade, while other programs have recently changed the entire program of study. As such, the sampling provided diversity across contexts (Stake, 2006).

Even though the sampled programs were chosen because they provided diversity across contexts, we wanted to include only cases that were : (a) university based teacher education programs; (b) preparing teachers at the secondary level (grade 8-13); (c) situated in urban areas; and, (d) seen as rather selective. They were also of particular interest to the

phenomenon under study, as they all (e) combine coursework with field placement in schools;

however with varying degree of established collaboration with collaborating schools, and with variations in the organization of field placement.

The two California programs and Oslo were one-year programs that the candidates attended following a bachelor’s or master’s degree. The Finnish programs and NTNU had a more flexible program design, where the candidates could be part of a five-year program or a one-year program. All programs could nevertheless be characterized by the “asymmetric matrix model” (Hansén et al., 2012), where candidates completed their subject matter education in the respective departments at the university, before receiving their teacher training in a relatively integrated unit of teacher education at another department. This is opposed to an “integrated model” (cf. Hansén et al., 2012), where candidates would have received teacher training and subject matter education within one unit of teacher education.

There are also important differences between the programs, as outlined in the Articles, and summarized in Table 3.

47 Table 3. Characteristics of the sampled programs

Program Country/

state

Organization of fieldwork Amount of fieldwork in hours

Acceptance rates in %

No. of candidates Intervals Concurrent

Helsinki Finland x 540 10-40^a 410

Aabo x 432 89^b 40

Oslo Norway x 480 20,5 160

NTNU x 520 44 220

Stanford California, US

x 780 -^c 72

UCSB x 1000 67 29

aDepending on subject. ^bThe acceptance rate seems high, but this is because there are three different types of teachers in the Finnish education system: subject teachers, class teachers and special education teachers. Our sample is from subject teachers, and here the acceptance rates are higher than with the other teacher education programs, because these teacher candidates have already gone through one university acceptance process when initiating their major studies. In comparison, the acceptance rate for candidates applying for the class teacher program at Aabo in 2012 was only 22 %, and for the program for special education teachers 13 %. ^cThis data was not obtained from Stanford.

As described in Article I, the programs’ sizes varied considerably, from small programs to rather large ones with more than 400 candidates. The programs from Finland, for example, ranged from 40 candidates (Aabo) to 410 (Helsinki). The two programs from Norway were relatively large, with 160 (Oslo) and 220 (NTNU) candidates, while the two Californian programs were considered small, with 29 (UCSB) and 60 (Stanford) candidates. While UCSB is a public university, Stanford is private; however, both sites require tuition fees. Still, both programs have a long tradition of supporting teacher candidates with generous scholarships.

The Nordic programs are public, and all candidates receive free tuition. The organization and amount of field placement varies considerably. The Californian programs have more hours of field placement than the Nordic programs, and the candidates in those programs also had their field placements organized concurrently with the teaching on campus (see Table 3). The acceptance rates were fairly low at all programs, with the exception of UCSB. Further information about admission requirements and criteria for deciding readiness to teach across the programs is given in Appendix 4.

Despite these differences, all the programs balanced the three pillars of teacher education (foundations, methods courses, and practice, cf. Hansén & Wikman, 2016) and offered a fairly similar “program of study” (Klette, Jenset, & Hammerness, 2016). Overall, these programs are not necessarily typical cases for their context. However, as stated, they were sampled because they constitute programs from which one might learn a lot about the phenomenon of practice-based teacher education. See also Appendix 5 for further information about the composition of the programs.

48 As the aim of the study was to get a targeted understanding of the extensiveness and

characteristics of the opportunities to learn that were grounded in practice in the teacher education classrooms, we chose to sample the courses where we believed we were most likely to see these opportunities. We decided to collect data in the methods courses within each individual program, and not foundations (pedagogics) or field placement, which are seen as the two other pillars of teacher education (Hansén & Wikman, 2016). Further, we specifically examined language arts and mathematics methods courses. These subjects are currently prioritized in most countries, and they garner considerable policy attention due to the

administration of international achievement scores in these subject areas (OECD, 2014) in all three participating countries. The preparation of teachers in these subjects is therefore of vital importance.