Changing context, changing landscapes: a review of teacher education in Norway and England

Teachers matter (OECD, 2005) and the selection and preparation of ‘good’ teachers are essential functions when
securing excellent teaching and learning in schools. For this to happen, teacher education (as opposed to ‘training’)
within the Academy must continue to play a crucial role, not least in its functioning as a gatekeeper to the
profession and the educational research that informs it. Proposals made by the European Commission in 2007 have
led to the Education Council adopting, for the first time, a European agenda for improving the quality of teacher
education for all countries within the European Union. There are, however, different globalised and
internationalised views on how to educate teachers and the nature of what it means to be a professional teacher
educator (Gewirtz et al 2009; Darling Hammond and Liberman 2012). Within the rapidly shifting landscapes of
an international context in which the education and training of teachers is moving into schools, the focus in this
chapter is on teacher preparation. We investigate this topic by comparing teacher education in England and
Norway, and the policy that forms the basis of two very different educational systems. The aim of this chapter is
to reflect on current developments in teacher education in two Northern European countries in order to provoke
and stimulate further discussion and critical enquiry in relation to Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in a wider
international arena.