Chapter: Nord University: Teacher Education in Transition
- Contributor
- Editors
- Publisher
- Year
- ISBN
- Language
- Jessica Allen Hanssen
- Cheryl R. Ellerbrock, Katherine M. Main & David C. Virtue
- Routledge
- 2022
- 9781032080406
- English
This volume offers a cross-national analysis of teacher education programs designed to prepare teachers for work in middle level schools.
The book showcases 15 detailed case studies of courses at institutions across North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa—including from countries currently underrepresented in middle level literature—which provide detailed information on programming whilst foregrounding the political, social, and cultural factors which have influenced priorities within teacher education. Underpinning the book is a comparative case study framework, used to identify divergences and commonalities within and across nations whereby factors such as globalization, policy, and socio-cultural views of teaching and adolescence are explored as determinants of the nature, success, and challenges of middle level teacher preparation.
This text will benefit scholars, academics, and students in the fields of middle level education, teacher education, and international and comparative education. Those involved with educational policy and politics, as well as teacher training and the sociology of education more broadly, will also benefit from this volume.
Nord University’s Faculty of Education and Arts educates and qualifies teachers from preschool through upper secondary levels, including teachers qualified for grades 1-7 and 5-10. Its candidates play a central role in the knowledge-based development of the regional and national community of educators. The faculty maintains a praxis-based approach to the field of education, and therefore remains professionally-oriented and practical, while also ensuring the promotion of research and development in the core research area of professional praxis.
At the same time as Nord University has solidified and transitioned into its central regional role within teacher education, numerous changes have taken place on the national level which have also expanded the university’s responsibility. Recent developments in the Norwegian national framework for teacher education and also the Norwegian National Curriculum for primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education have inspired numerous and rapid changes and developments in how the faculty approaches teacher education.
Prof. Hanssen’s chapter therefore traces these developments, and centers them within the unique geographical and program characteristics of Nord University, in order to demonstrate why Nord University’s approach to middle level teacher education has the potential to drive innovation, within Norway but also internationally.
