Research ambition

Increased quality demands in school require teachers contributing to school development and simultaneously improve their own teaching through professional self-development (White Paper to the Norwegian Parliament nr.11 2008-2009).

Having in mind such expectations to the teacher profession, it is of utmost importance to make available clinical experience in school communities fronting evidence-based development and organizational learning keeping up with political expectations and changes in society. Such communities are characterized by professional teams of high quality, involvement in visions, goals, missions and learning outcomes for the school with collective processes and partnership also with parents and pupils. The accreditation system for university schools taking part in the project reflects these criteria.

The main challenge in the clinical part of teacher education is a lack of quality standards and weak coupling to theory. Creating learning arenas connecting content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and pedagogy with practice could meet this challenge.

Developing quality through research-based coupling of theory and practice though new partnerships with university schools is the fundament for the research issues and theoretical basis chosen for this research project.