Reflections from teacher educators, student teachers and practice teachers on teacher knowledge in the areas of professional diversity, research & development and digital competencies

Paper presented in NERA network 19, Teacher’s Work and Teacher Education

1: Research topic/aim
The aim of the study is to compare and contrast reflections on teacher knowledge from teacher educators (TE), student teachers (ST) and practice teachers (PT). The question about whose knowledge and expertise counts in the education of teachers (Zeichner et al., 2015) is basically a question about hope & democracy.

2: Theoretical framework
A previously developed typology refers to types of knowledge like theory or empirical evidence arguing that both modes can be either local, experience-based, or more global (authors, 2020). TE, ST, PT can be expected to draw on different patterns of knowledge, and emphasise various types of knowledge, in particular tensions have been identified related to global theory (Kalgraf & Lindhart, 2018).

3: Methodology/research design
Two cohorts of STs have in a survey reflected on what is relevant diversity [research & development; digital] competencies for teachers? Furthermore, interviews with ST, TE and PT are included.

4: Expected results/findings
Findings show that STs refer to humanistic values and the student-teacher relation or tolerance to religious background when reflecting on professional diversity competence. Opposite, professional digital competence is mainly referred to in terms of an effective teacher proficient in using specific tools. Research & development competency is reflected in terms of a reflective teacher using new evidence to back practice. Differences related to various paradigms: the effective teacher, the reflective teacher, the enquiring teacher and the transformative teacher, appear also in the reflections from the same ST. The interviews reveal additional differences comparing ST with TE and PT.
TE primarily use global theory in their argumentation while ST and PT mainly refer to local evidence and experiences. `Research´ is by all groups implicitly or explicitly referred to as a specific materiality: research articles, not so much to practitioner inquiries.

5: Relevance to Nordic educational research
The study is from the context of a research project studying Norwegian teacher education, in cooperation with also researchers from Denmark and Sweden.

6. References
Kalgraf, S. & Lindhardt, E.M. (2018). Lærerutdannerens profesjonelle rolle i praksismøtet The professional role of the teacher educator in practice meeting. Nordic Studies in Education, 38(1), 67–81.
Zeichner, K., Payne, K.A. & Brayko K. (2015). Democratizing Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 66(2), 122-135.