No abstract

This paper investigates the hypothesis that teacher education in European welfare states is commodified due to its governance by neoliberal policy making. The starting point for the analysis is a discussion of the relationship between the welfare state and teacher professionalism. For this purpose, the concept of the ill-defined problem is applied. It shows why and how teacher education was changed in order to work as an economic instrument. Beyond that, it highlights how teacher education curricula, teacher education students and learning outcomes have become commodified. Finally, the paper shows that teacher education in Europe is nothing more than a mimetic construction of buying and selling a commodity.

This study explored the views of student teachers in England and Norway regarding the extent to which they felt the school should take the lead role (in comparison to the roles played by parents and other professional agencies) in addressing the needs of pupils identified by the school as experiencing a problem. A questionnaire comprising 30 problem areas was developed and distributed to student teachers at two universities in England and at two universities in Norway. A total of 542 student teachers participated in the study. The findings indicated that the ratings by student teachers in both countries of these problem areas fell broadly into four main groupings (in terms of the strength of feeling that the school should take the lead role): these concerned poor basic core attainment, disaffection, antisocial behaviour, and unhealthy lifestyles, respectively, except for one very important caveat: concerns regarding bullying received a high rating and were located in the first grouping. These findings are interpreted in the context of whether schools might be ready to adopt a social pedagogical approach to offering targeted support to pupils experiencing such problems and the implications this may have for inclusive education and initial teacher education.

Teacher education is of vital importance for what teachers are capable to do for their pupils, but little is known about student teachers' pedagogical knowledge. The Didaktik and the curriculum traditions are two main education approaches underpinning formal schooling and teacher education programmes (TEPs) in the Western world. The main difference between the two traditions lies in the content and objectives of teacher education, which are either theoretical or action-oriented. Two questions are addressed quantitatively: How do teacher education programmes and their outcomes vary across Didaktik and curriculum traditions? How do opportunities to learn and beliefs about teaching methods affect mathematical content knowledge (MCK) and mathematical pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) scores? Empirical data from the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M) are used, with samples from Norway, Germany, Switzerland, and the US. The study offers alternative explanations for variations of TEPs' outcomes within the Western world.

This paper considers teachers' use of data from national school tests. These national tests are part of the Norwegian top-down accountability school system. According to official regulations, teachers have to use the test results to improve learning outcomes even if the test system is not able to deliver necessary data. However, previous research has shown that teachers apply teaching-to-test strategies. The focus of this paper is twofold. First, we ask, 'How do teachers perceive and interpret the data from national tests?-' Second, 'How do teachers view their actions related to the data from national tests?' We base our research on data from semi-structured 5th-grade-teacher interviews. The transcribed text is subject to qualitative content analysis. We find that teachers are in a state of data illiteracy towards complex Item Response Theory tests. Inspired by Bernstein's concept of the pedagogic device, we see that the test data rules both teacher work in the classroom as well as knowledge provided to the pupils. The national tests seem to undermine teachers' autonomy, restrict teachers' practice and reinforce the impact of unfair structures on pupils' learning.