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DOI: 10.12731/2218-7405-2013-4-18 UDC 378
NEW DISCOURSES OF TEACHER PROFESSIONALISM:
A NORWEGIAN CASE
Eyvind Elstad
Teacher-training programmes at the universities should be at the level of and ideally ahead of developments in the schools. When both teaching organisations and the authorities place an emphasis on efforts towards increased professionalism in the work of the teacher, it is reasonable to ask how the teacher-training programmes at the universities can and should respond. This is taking place at a time when new management systems are being put in place within the education sector. The purposes of this article are to place the questions relating to efforts towards increased professionalism within a theoretical framework and to use this framework to discuss challenges faced by the teacher-training programmes at the universities in particular.
The theoretical framework consists of four competing visions for influence in terms of the school's activities: professionalism, administrative management of the school sector, school democracy and marketisation. I will use this theoretical framework to discuss the possibilities and limitations for efforts towards increased professionalism and their consequences for teacher-training institutions. The solutions to the conflicts between these visions suggest that it is rational to look for a balance between several positive but partially contradictory intentions. The efforts towards increased professionalism have consequences both for student teachers and for established teachers, whilst tools for assessing teachers and making them accountable also have deep implications for teacher training. The manner in which these tools will be used will have consequences for the competitive situation between schools. Product development will be important in this perspective, which means a
need to develop innovation skills within the teacher's field of work. The conclusion must be that efforts towards increased professionalism based on tools for increasing responsibility and work assessment provides the teacher-training programmes at the universities with both significant challenges and with new opportunities.
Keywords: teacher professionalism, administrative management, school democracy, marketization, accountability.
Background for the challenges to the teaching profession
Management forms in the educational sector have changed significantly over the last decade [1]. A more results-focussed educational policy has been introduced. Different ways of making schools and teachers accountable have changed the work situation for school staff. For instance, there has been a significant increase in paperwork (documentation and written reports to pupils and parents) connected with the teaching profession [2]. This development mirrors an international trend in the educational sector [3] and forms one element in a wave of reforms in public administration [4]. The effects of this increased performance pressure on schools and teachers is debatable: some people perform better under pressure [5], whilst others feel that their professional energy is being lost [6]. The accountability of teachers and school leaders is highlighted in a new way through the use of measurement instruments such as the teacher appraisal survey, measurements of teaching quality, national tests and locally-developed tests, exam results and disparities between teacher-allocated grades and examination grades, etc. The teaching profession expresses resistance for instance to anonymous pupil evaluation of teachers' teaching [7]. Accountability and the tools that have been used have created a steep learning curve for both school governors, schools and teachers in Norway. Local authorities and county councils have received strong criticism for poorly-developed quality-assurance systems. Schools that have had poor results in national tests have had to carry out substantial improvement measures following pressure from school governors, parents and the media [8]. In addition, schools and teachers lose in many
complaint cases when these are heard in formally-established complaints procedures. This last phenomenon has to be considered in conjunction with the development of a system with comprehensive pupil rights.
The role of the teacher has changed its character to some extent. The personal responsibility attributed to the role has become more extensive and the job of the teacher has partly changed its content (due, amongst other things, to the requirement for more documentation work). There is widespread acknowledgement amongst educational researchers [9] that the professional work of teachers is too complex to be directed by bureaucratically-defined rules and routines. Reference has been made to the fact that management forms related to so-called New Public Management have contributed to a degree of improvement in tests of reading and numeracy in British schools [10]. The same is true of the management form termed hard stakes accountability [11]. In other words there is evidence to suggest that management forms that make schools accountable may lead to improvements in performance. At the same time, it must be mentioned that a rich research literature regarding these management forms documents unintended consequences [12]. The improvement potential available through, for instance, standardisation (detailed manuals for teaching, systematic testing standardised over many schools and which allows benchmarking) has been seen to have some limitations. The teacher's professional judgement is needed in order to attain a greater improvement than that which can be achieved through the standardisation of working practices. At the same time, it is claimed that very bureaucratic management systems can also hold teachers in an underdeveloped improvement mode [13]. When schools achieve poor results, a possible mechanism is that the school's staff looks for immediate, short-term solutions rather than a longer-term investment in improvement. Some commentators even speak of a danger of de-professionalising [14]. This sort of pessimistic interpretation of possible mechanisms has also been present in sociologically-directed work into professional occupations [15]. With such a perspective the thought of a possible professionalisation of the teaching profession is a tempting prospect.
Over the course of the past few years this concept of professionalisation has had something of a breakthrough in political manifestos. It has also had a powerful presence among teacher unions. The two trends in management documents and documents relating to Norway's largest professional organisation for teachers have been analysed in [16]. They find an interesting divergence between the professionalising efforts of the Union of Education Norway and those of the Ministry of Education. For instance, [17] identifies what the Union of Education Norway regards as professional autonomy. The Union will not accept narrow external control. The strategy of the Ministry of Education regarding striving for increased professionalism from the top and downwards involves a desire that future teachers will have higher academic and research-based skills at the same time as being better at practical and professional skills. In order to attain the goal of better learning environments and improved results, however, there needs to be more political management and the use of external control mechanisms and legal regulation is regarded as necessary to ensure teacher professionalism [18].
These different standpoints in relation to the question of the professionalising of the teaching profession can serve as a backdrop for a discussion of the possible strategic responses from the teaching profession. This article is restricted to teacher-training programmes at the universities. Teacher-training programmes at the universities should be at the level of and ideally ahead of developments in the schools. The theme of this article is what challenges the increasing focus on the vision of professionalising teachers can and should have for the teacher-training programmes at the universities. The purposes of the article are to place the questions relating to the efforts to increase the professionalism of teachers into the theoretical framework developed by Johan P. Olsen [19] and to use this framework to discuss the challenges for teacher-training programmes at the universities in particular. The theoretical framework consists of four competing visions of teacher training: professionalism, administrative management of the school sector, pupil rights (based on ideas of joint determination and democracy), as well as an understanding of how
inter-school competition will enhance quality in a form of marketisation (speaking here of a quasi-market). I will also use the theoretical framework to discuss possibilities and limitations in terms of attempts to increase professionalism and their consequences for teacher-training institutions.
The Janus face of teacher training
The teacher-training programmes at the universities have a foot in two camps. On the one side the university departments have to adapt to the premises, expectations and norms of the university world. These expectations are now connected to target figures for publication points, citation indexes and the international relevance of research. On the other side, a university teacher-training programme cannot possibly succeed unless school staff and those who are being trained as teachers find the content of the training to be relevant. To succeed in being relevant to the world of the school, relevant to students who judge the quality of the training from a student's perspective and at the same time in being progressive in the form of increased internationally-interesting research relevant to the teaching profession is a balance between contradictory aims [20]. On the other hand there is a significant need for new recruitment of teachers in the coming years. Teacher training has been criticised for a lack of relevance [21]. What makes the situation even more complex is that the professional language of the schools is little compatible with that which is used in teacher training [22]. These contradictory forces give the teacher-training programmes at the universities a Janus face: focus must partly be directed towards the needs of the practical world and partly towards international research (for instance in academic journals which are read by hardly any teacher). Efforts to increase the professionalism of the teaching profession can be seen from the side of the teacher-training institutions as a possible means of repressing these contradictory forces since the premise is that the teacher's professional practice is directed towards research-based knowledge [23]. Others regard the wish that theory generation should have practical implications as a utopia [24].
Professionalism
The vision of the classical profession can be understood as an idealistic concept [25] and as a discourse on profession-related values [26]. These values are promoted by the idea that the profession's institutions should be an important provider of ethical codes for professional practice. As an extension of this, the profession's institutions will be involved in the question of who should be given a professional license on the basis of skills and of when and if this license should be revoked. In addition, the profession's institutions will be involved in the terms by which the maintenance of high skills will be checked. Professional values are supported firstly by professionals having a common identity based on skills (skills that are guaranteed through training, mentored practice and by induction into the professional culture). Secondly, the relationship between professionals is characterised by collegial attitudes, collaboration and an adequate attitude to merits. This means that professionals have the willingness to seek out the best knowledge regarding professional practice. Professional practice requires skill-based judgement because professional situations are often unique and complex. To ensure professional practice it is important that professionals have autonomy in technical decisions. This means that control over working processes and work results, together with priorities in this connection, should be determined by professionals. Such a standpoint would be in opposition to the client's perception of the professional's skills. There are also researchers who appear to believe that teachers (like doctors) are actually to be understood as a profession.
In this perspective, teacher training will function as an induction into a professional culture via the formal training. In an extended understanding of the function of the teacher-training institutions, the skills pool will be maintained. The teacher-training system will be able to take responsibility for rehearsing the professional language used in collegial communication. It is a prerequisite that this professional language is used in practice and cultivated through the progress made by research and experience [27]. If such a professionally-directed, evidence-based
teacher training concept is to be realised, a number of demanding conditions must be met. One example is the relationship between the research-based theoretical foundation and the application of this knowledge in practical situations.
Administrative management of the school sector
In common with the term "professionalism", the term bureaucracy is understood as conceptual form. Bureaucracy is the name for a system for the distribution of power and authority through the hierarchic distribution of authority levels in a judicial state. Decisions are made on the basis of rules and regulations. What is called New Public Management [28] has certain similarities with the vision of effective bureaucratic management, with a hierarchically-divided administration, subservient to a political leadership which in its turn has a mandate from the people. The term public management can be associated with the formal characteristics of hierarchical organisation and its management forms. A school's governing body (in Norway, usually the county council and local authority) has the formal responsibility for the quality of the pedagogic work in the school. In recent years, governing bodies have been subject to supervision and control from the state. Administrative management occurs by means of various instruments for assessing performance in relation to expectation. This is a matter of summative assessment systems for measured learning outcomes for (through national tests, tests, exams), formative assessment systems (in which the teacher gives individualised comments to the pupil), systems to assess process quality (measurements of pupil participation and parental participation), and assessment systems which provide information about the structural conditions of learning (the schools' access to computers, programmes, the schools' pupil/teacher ratio). Institutional management arrangements are shaped partly by the educational policies of national government and partly by the school leadership. The purpose of the institutional arrangements is to collect, assimilate and systematically analyse the collected information. Assessment systems are designed
to lead to improvement. Evidence-based judgement of results is intended to influence practical decisions taken primarily by teachers.
In order that management from the top and down can improve quality in relation to the goals that are set, it is necessary that the responsibility for attaining goals is divided amongst parties located further down the hierarchic structure. Subordinate groups are made responsible for attaining goals by means of checking results. In a carefully laid-out institutional design the governing body will hold the head accountable for the results of the school and internally within the school the teacher will be held responsible for the results achieved by the pupils. A Norwegian White Paper [29] states that "teachers are to be given a clear responsibility for what the pupils learn in the school." Another Norwegian White Paper also clarifies what aspects the state holds teachers responsible for. The increased national emphasis on supervision heightens the responsibility of the teacher. However - as a White Paper [30, p. 22] makes clear - "schools (can) to a greater degree be held accountable for pupil results".
Norwegian White Papers [31] speak of the teacher as a professional, mentioning both professional training and professionalization: Efforts from above to increase professionalism include a desire that future teachers will have greater academic and research-based skills at the same time as they will be better at practical and job-based skills such as classroom management. Achieving the goal of better learning environments and improved results will however require greater political management, while the use of external control mechanisms and legal regulations are regarded as necessary to ensure teacher professionalism. [32, p. 823]. In the document from the Ministry of Education, collegiate influence and management in the traditional professional model has been replaced by bureaucratic, hierarchical control and leadership control [33]. Confidence in the profession and its autonomous status has been replaced by accountability by means of results-based control. This produces a hybrid form of teacher professionalism which comprises teacher-"accountability". In such a perspective it is the values of the school that form the
teacher's professional basis. This hybrid form is called organisational professionalism [34] and can be understood as a control discourse that is increasingly used, for instance in hospitals and schools.
For teachers this means the need to align themselves in relation to middle managers / heads of departments (which in Norwegian sixth-form colleges often have responsibility for both personnel and financial matters). Whilst the teaching profession was formerly characterised by the independent work of the teacher as monarch in the classroom, collective dimensions of the teacher's work have moved more and more into the foreground. Research [35] supports the proposition that relational trust between colleagues and between school leadership and teachers is significant for the quality-promotion work that is carried out in the schools. Thus the abilities of the student teacher in terms of team work are also an important factor for teacher training. Team work is not absent from teacher-training programmes, but does teacher training prepare students well enough for team work in the teaching profession? The academic departments in sixth-form colleges control the academic progression of the teaching and to a degree the forms of evaluation and the results of this activity are controlled by means of the tools developed by the national and regional authorities. In other words, the tools of accountability feature fairly prominently in the every-day life of the teacher and teacher training must prepare students for how these tools can be used and abused.
Another relevant factor in this respect is the consequences of extended pupil rights in a legal sense. Schools loose many of the appeals relating to grades that pupils send to tribunals. This does not necessarily mean that the teachers' grading in such cases was wrong. When schools loose this type of appeals it is possible to learn from the lost cases and gain a sharpened focus on administrative routines related to grading and to issuing warnings of the danger of not attaining grades due to absence. This entails the teacher - and the departments that are responsible for the administrative procedures - having adequate documentation in order to handle the unfortunate side-effects of pupil rights. A question that can be raised is whether
student teachers receive adequate training in the administrative procedures entailed in the work of a teacher. It is a task for future research to find out whether student teachers receive adequate insights and training in this type of administrative management.
For the teacher-training programmes (and possible future induction programmes for newly-qualified teachers) the development trends here described have interesting implications. Induction into the teaching profession will in the light of this entail the acquisition of adequate skills for the academic delivery that is the teacher's main function (teaching and assessment), but also strategic awareness of the consequences of accountability. It is a matter for research to find out whether student teachers are able to use measurements as a factor in their own strivings for improvement. Here I am thinking of the question of how student teachers as future teachers can make use of measurements as an input to their own strivings for improvement (benchmarking) and how the school as a learning organisation can make use of measurements in its improvement work. If student teachers are to gain personal experience of benchmarking as input to reflection over their own potential for improvement this will require an initiative to use the measurements during teacher training. It is an empirical question whether teacher-training programmes prepare future teachers well enough for the bureaucratic parts of the teacher's work.
School democracy: Pupil participation as a vision for school development
The vision of pupil participation can be coupled up to the democratic ideal. For school leaders, Norway's official guidance for leaders will be instrumental: leaders are obliged to maintain values of democracy and human rights. The public sector exists for the people and in school management the leader must ensure openness and involvement. Giving authority to pupils can take the form of a legal requirement for pupil participation in formal decision-making bodies at the school, in school planning, as well as in the every-day operation of the interaction between teachers and pupils. User participation can also occur through surveys such as the Norwegian
Pupil Survey and other types of assessment of the teacher's teaching. This depends on the school taking account of the users' "voice". Reasons for pupil participation are firstly to contribute to independence and secondly that it contributes to democratic influence. Academic principles support pupil participation [36]. Research in cognition theory, for instance, places weight on the active participation and involvement of the learner in order that the learning process should be a good one [37] and pupil participation can be an element in awakening the pupil's active involvement.
A demand has been put forward by the Norwegian Pupil Organisation for obligatory teacher evaluation in all sixth-form colleges. This type of anonymous teacher evaluation has been carried out by a number of county councils despite resistance from teaching organisations. A possible mechanism is that pupil assessments of the teachers' teaching can form the basis for processes to improve quality. Another mechanism is that teacher evaluation can kindle a customer relationship and consumer mentality amongst pupils. In this respect the terms of interaction between teacher and pupil resemble transactions between parties in which the pupil understands himself to be told exactly what it is that he needs to know.
For teacher training, pupil participation is a theme that is a part of the course. Attempts have been made to try out different forms of measurement of pupil satisfaction with the teaching of student teachers without this for the time being having been established as a standard routine. It can be argued that the use of measurements of student teachers' teaching during practice periods helps prepare student teachers for the uses to which measurements can and cannot be put.
Apart from the formal channels for feedback to student teachers, there are also informal channels for the expression of pupil opinion, such as blogs and other types of web sites which provide systematic access to characteristics of teachers (and in principle also student teachers).
Marketisation: he school as competitor in a quasi-market
Several aspects of the developments in the schools sector display elements of market thinking. The idea of being able to choose schools is an example. A system that permits pupils to choose their own school has thus market-like characteristics, but in the Norwegian context price mechanisms are lacking because the public sector pays a price per head in both approved private and public-sector schools. The school market in Norway thus functions as a quasi market.
In order that users will be able to make an informed choice, information about schools' measured results, process quality and structural quality can be made available on websites. In the public sixth-form sector, the attribution of school places occurs generally on the basis of grades achieved at secondary school. The distribution of a scarce resource (school places) is therefore made on the basis of performance rather than willingness to pay. One way of viewing this is that the competition between schools for the best pupils improves the schools' internal quality processes [38]. This sort of mechanism depends, amongst other things, on the incentives that schools have in a market not leading to perverted actions. It can well be imagined that competition in this sense leads to grade inflation and the removal of pupils who do not attain good grades at a school. Furthermore it can be argued that the system of teacher-attributed grades is not practicable in a school-based market or quasi market. The incentives for grade inflation are here formidable due to asymmetrical access to information. Market forces can thus fail to achieve the quality-improving operations on which the competitive model is based.
In cases where it is appropriate to speak of a quasi market for educational institutions a quality hierarchy is developed, in other words, graded lists of educational institutions [39]. The Norwegian media sometimes present lists of grades required for admission and applicant numbers for schools. This can be understood as a league table for schools within a school district. This type of information can influence applicant wishes. Some schools take strategic choices that are significant for how the school is presented in the media. The head becomes a sales agent. The
product offered by the school is made distinctive and this can be understood as deliberate product development. It thereby becomes possible for certain types of schools to attract certain types of pupils. A pupil's choice of school will be the result of a search for identity [40]. There appear to be stable characteristics over a period in certain school attributes, such as lasting patterns of political sympathies amongst the majority of pupils (measured for instance through school mock elections) , certain dress codes and similar. When a visible pattern of pupil attributes is first established the free choice of pupils will tend to perpetuate the same overall pattern; when a school has a high proportion of pupils with a certain dress code this tendency to follow a specific dress code will easily become even stronger.
Another possible mechanism is that by means of free choice of school it is possible to attain a better selection of pupils who match the individual school's unique profile. On the other hand, selection mechanisms that place poorly-performing pupils in certain schools can have negative indirect effects on the self-opinion of individual pupils. This in turn can be significant for the pupil's strategic awareness of which school they wish to attend. Research suggests that poorly-performing pupils can to some extent benefit from the presence of highly-performing pupils [41]. This is an indication of how complex the relationships are in different varieties of market models
In this type of market perspective a transaction is carried out between the school and the pupil. The pupil is to get "something" from the teacher. The use of the phrase "guarantee of the 3 R's" reflects the idea of similarities between delivery of school services and the rights problems that arise from it and commercial transactions and consumer rights. The school is responsible for satisfying the consumer guarantee. For the moment we have seen relatively few signs of this type of thinking in a Norwegian educational context.
In a pure market-oriented educational system, the idea of innovation will be important. If teacher training is to be ahead of developments in the schools, emphasis must be placed on the concept of innovation in the teacher's work. Innovation will
particularly be related to technological developments, for instance. For teacher training the implication will be that the innovative skills of student teachers must be cultivated.
Finding the balance between contradictory visions for teacher training
All the conceptual perspectives we have mentioned - and others - can tell us something about the challenges of teacher training. But since these perspectives to some extent can be regarded as contradictory the intentions need to be balanced. For this reason we need to take into consideration a perceptual combination of conceptual perspectives and weigh up the contribution of the one against the other. The balance that is characteristic of the challenges facing the school will also be seen in the challenges of teacher training.
Discussion
"Teachers are to be given a clearly-defined responsibility for what the pupils are to learn" claimed the Norwegian Prime Minister Stoltenberg in a New Year's speech [42]. This is a matter of responsibility in the sense of "accountability". The tools for control of the teacher's work are, as mentioned, national tests, tests and the Pupil Survey. To a variable extent, control systems have been built up in local authorities and county councils and the strength of the accountability varies between different types of schools. In other words, a control discourse is clearly present in Norwegian education. Control over working systems, processes, procedures and priorities will not be in the hands of the teaching organisations. The programme declarations of the Union of Education Norway state amongst other things that "Through our professional work we create trust between the profession and society" and "We take responsibility ourselves and do not accept narrow external control". Here we see tensions between the professionalisation efforts of the Union of Education Norway and what appears to be current policy [43, p. 822]. The term "profession" occurs over 120 times in a Norwegian White Paper [44], but in
connection with target management and result-based control, hierarchical structures and making teachers accountable. The extent to which the teaching profession will become an object of licensing (as in Sweden) remains to be seen. If a licensing system for teachers is rolled out (for instance after the first year of practice), there will be a greater need for mentor systems and mentor training. Here there can be strategic possibilities for the established teacher-training institutions, but we cannot ignore competition from institutions that have not traditionally been regarded as teacher-training institutions. For instance the section for education in the Greater Oslo Council has chosen not to use teacher-training institutions as partner for programmes offered to newly-qualified teachers. This shows that it is not inevitably teacher-training institutions that are chosen as partners in induction programmes for newly-qualified teachers.
It is possible to envisage combinations of efforts to increase professionalism from the top downwards and from the bottom upwards; that is to say organisational professionalism. The 'Knowledge Promotion from Words to Action' reform was intended to be a reform from the bottom upwards, at the same time as this programme was followed up by bureaucratic management structures. The evaluation of this reform shows a multifaceted picture of improvement work in Norwegian education [44]. I was myself involved in work with 'Knowledge Promotion from Words to Action' in a local authority. Amongst other things we developed a tool which measured various aspects of a teacher's teaching and pupil attitudes to the subject being taught etc. There were striking examples of the envelopes containing the results of class-by-class measurements not being opened until the teacher was interviewed about the possible uses to which the measurements were to be put [45]. Some researchers [46] make the striking point that the professional concept formulated by the Union of Education Norway is to a large degree related to the classical professional ideal including academic autonomy, little control, a common identity, relational trust between professional and client and collegiate forms of management. According to the Union of Education Norway the authorities should not define the
type of skills on which the teacher ought to construct his or her practice, but the profession should itself guide how schools should be run. Just what the alternative is to bureaucratic administration is however not stated. The question is thus how the "profession" is to exert its influence. Professionalisation must be constructed on a knowledge base, for which research will normally form an important premise. There are significant challenges in terms of research-based practice in the teaching profession. Criticism has been raised in leading international forums of the quality of teacher-training research [47]. We have no evidence for a claim that the quality of Norwegian teacher-training research is any different from that of other European countries. Some people regard the quality of pedagogic research to be poor [48]. It is also interesting that the Union of Education Norway reserves itself against "transient pedagogic fashions and low-quality research" [49, p. 32]. On the other hand, the Union of Education Norway is looking for "increased influence over research-based developments that are relevant for the professional work of the membership". If such an intention is to be realised, this will require a commitment to collaboration and participation in research projects which focus on significant aspects of the teacher's work.
A significant challenge relates to the language of the profession in the schools. If teachers' practice is to be research based, teachers need a professional language with parallels in research-induced concepts. Teachers are practice supervisors for student teachers and it is here that the school's professional language comes into play. Some people highlight the vision of an evidence-based teacher training as important [50]. In my opinion we do not have a sufficiently clear evidential basis to make credible claims for the idea of an evidence-based teacher training. Teacher training has challenges in terms of relevance and research into teacher training can have a legitimacy problem. The latter can be exemplified in that the Union of Education Norway does not want the teacher to become a victim of "transient pedagogic fashions and low-quality research. Educational researchers are thus a part of the basis for the legitimacy of attempts to enhance professionalism.
Conclusions
In this article I have presented a theoretical framework for the discussion of challenges in university-based teacher training. This theoretical framework consists of four distinct conceptual types in relation to training: rational and effective administration of the education sector, professionalism in the teaching profession, democracy/pupil participation and the market. I have argued that there are internal tensions between these visions. The question is thus how the centre of balance between these visions can be moved in the course of time. It is interesting that both the Ministry of Education and the Union of Education Norway places an emphasis on professionalism. Whilst the Union of Education Norway seeks a development in the direction of the classical profession which entails a high degree of autonomy, the Ministry of Education has an organisational understanding of the profession. They argue for a professionalization process in which the teacher's responsibility is connected to the organisational construction of the school sector. The work of the teacher is thus subjected to external control and does not have the characteristics of an autonomous profession. The tools that have been introduced for increasing accountability and control (testing, national tests, teacher evaluations) can also be significant as quality parameters in marketing promotion. At the same time, teacher appraisal surveys give the pupils an opportunity to express their perceptions of the school - in other words, provide an opportunity for pupil influence and thus democracy. Taken as a whole, the administrative management tools for control can lead to both intentional and unintentional effects in terms of what we have called democracy and market forces.
The attempts to increase professionalism have implications for teacher training. The increased emphasis on professionalism means that teacher training takes the form of an induction into a professional language and the professional norms of the teaching profession. Since the academic language of teaching training is relatively weakly represented in school, strivings for professionalism also serve as a cultivation of the technical language of established teachers [51]. This is a formidable challenge.
A professional language of this sort must have its basis in a skills base created through education and training as well as experience. It is difficult to imagine such a development without administrative arrangements for teachers' professional development, such as induction programmes and personal development for established teachers. The teacher-training programmes can here gain an extended role, but other institutional events can also be contemplated.
It is unclear whether teacher-training programmes help student teachers to adopt measurements (administrative accountability tools) as a part of their professional development. More research is required here. There is also little research concerning the significance of the accountability-enhancing administrative tools for inter-school competition. Product innovation can help strengthen the attractiveness of a school and can thus be taken as an argument for focussing on innovation in the working methods of the teaching profession and the schools' method of operation. For the teacher-training programmes this suggests that attention should be paid to student teachers' capacity for developing innovative skills.
The challenges for the teacher-training programmes at the universities are, in other words, significant. It is characteristic of the strategic challenges faced by the teacher-training programmes in Norwegian universities is that the goals and visions of interested parties are partly compatible and partly in mutual tension. As such, the strategic decisions within the teacher-training programmes might easily become an exercise in strategic navigation through demanding waters. How the established teacher-training institutions will relate to these strategic challenges is an empirical question that must be answered through more research.
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DATA ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eyvind Elstad, Professor, Department of Teacher Education and School Research
University of Oslo
P.O. Box 1099, Blindern, Oslo, 0317, Norway e-mail: eyvind. elstad@ils. uio. no
