Anna-Lena Østern

Responding to the challenge of providing stronger research base for teacher education: research discourses in the Norwegian national research school for teacher education

Abstract Background and purpose: The purpose of this article is to shed light on how the research projects of 140 PhD candidates in the National Research School for Teacher Education in Norway (NAFOL) respond to the challenges faced by Norwegian teacher education regarding the demand for higher competence and a stronger research base. The concept of NAFOL is of interest from an international perspective because of its focus on facilitating teacher educators to achieve a PhD. Since 2001, Norwegian educational policy has had a strong focus on strengthening teacher education and making it more research-based than before. From 2017, all new teachers in Norway are expected to take a master’s degree. In order to accomplish this, there is a need for many new supervisors with a PhD in teacher education institutions. NAFOL is a unique project: a consortium of 23 participating network institutions within teacher education. The research school includes 140 research fellows, all of whom wish to achieve a PhD suitable for work in teacher education. The research school is funded by the Norwegian Research Council, originally for a project period from 2010 to 2016. The research school has had a positive external midway evaluation, and the project period has been extended with four cohorts of students to the end of 2021. However, this study is the first one looking into the research projects of this young generation of teacher education researchers. The research question posed in this article is: how do the research projects of the NAFOL PhD candidates contribute to the research base in teacher education? Main argument: The main argument in this article is that the potential impact of this research school is dependent on the quality of the large number of PhD projects connected to teacher education and education in general developed within the research school. The quality is likely to be good because, among other reasons, these projects are scrutinised by the research school community. The challenges these research projects face, located as they are between solidarity regarding grants from the funds financing the PhD candidates, solidarity with the aims of education, and the wish to contribute to innovation, might prove to be able to be met. These research projects have the potential to create innovation in teacher education research through ‘border crossing’ between different educational discourses, as well as through creating new knowledge in meta-studies based on the results from several projects. Sources of evidence and method: In this article, project abstracts from 140 PhD candidates participating in NAFOL are analysed in terms of their theme and problem formulation. The analysis is inspired by discourse analytical thinking – namely that in a certain situation, several conditions for action exist. In this study, these conditions for action are made apparent in the choice of theme and problem formulation in the research projects. The content analysis is focused on ‘signal words’, because these words might signal positioning in different educational discourses. Results: In the study, three main discourses can be seen as influencing the choice of topic and the problem formulation in the projects: a goal-oriented educational discourse, a ‘Bildung’ (i.e. character formation, or personal growth – ‘danning’ in Norwegian) and democracy discourse, and a critical knowledge-producing discourse. These discourses are constituted when the PhD candidates start their research projects but the conditions for action are ever-changing and, hence, the findings in this study cannot, of course, be considered as ‘final’. The development of these discourses within the research community of NAFOL is one way of scrutinising the research projects in order to make a contribution to qualified teacher education research. Conclusion: ‘Border crossing’ between discourses in research projects concerned with what might be, and what can make a difference in a knowledge society could be a key way of enhancing the future for a young generation of researchers in teacher education. The research projects carried out by the PhD candidates in NAFOL have the potential to develop both new knowledge and new discourses of importance for Norwegian teacher education, as well as for a broader international context regarding professional development in teacher education and education in general. The view of the teacher education profession – and on what a teacher educator can be – could become more fully informed than before the candidates’ participation in the research school.

Emerging Research as a Basis for Developing a Poetics of Drama Education

Abstract Drama education is traditionally closely connected to wider societal discourses about human development and ‘character formation’1. In this article I will address some of the central themes in contemporary research in the field of drama and theatre education2. One of these themes is the benefit of drama education and drama literacy for ‘character formation’. In a postmodern era this concept includes the notion of otherness. One experiences otherness in thoughts, cultures and in oneself through the changes of perspective that occur when building fictional worlds. This can be seen as part of a poetics of drama education. In this article I will discuss, from a research perspective, the foundations of a poetics for the field of drama education.

Drama and Theatre in a Nordic Curriculum Perspective--A Challenged Arts Subject Used as a Learning Medium in Compulsory Education.

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to present a Nordic curriculum perspective on drama and theatre in education ranging from preschool to upper secondary education and cultural schools. Underlined in the Nordic welfare model is an equity, inclusive and democracy perspective, which guarantees free access to compulsory education and to upper secondary education. How is drama/theatre presented and positioned in the national curriculum frameworks of the Nordic countries? This comparative analysis concerns drama and/or theatre in the curricula in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

Close-up of the craft of making a multimodal lecture for teenagers about the universe: the importance of a meaningful context and supporting colleagues

In this paper I reflect upon transformative peer learning processes connected to the structuring and communication of a lecture for teenagers about ‘Man in the universe’. The lecture transported the lecturer and me, his observing colleague, from one existential vantage point to another. The joint experience of art and science combined in the lecture was not only acknowledged, but this experience also brought about change in habits of mind. The questions posed for this study of the craft of making a multimodal lecture for teenagers were: what are the characteristics of the lecture, and what are the possible reasons for transformations of understanding among two involved colleagues? Transformation, multimodal meaning, and some principles from Otto Scharmer’s U Theory of a creative process (the intention, the relation and authenticity) serve as guiding principles in the reflective text. Multimodal reflection in action is suggested as a concept suitable for this type of a lecture. A suggestion is also to call the lecture a lecture performance. Risk taking, the provocation and vulnerability of the lecturer in the encounter with teenagers is acknowledged as part of the situation. However, the reward in engagement, involvement and innovation is potentially very high.

Supervision by an artist creating a poetic universe as a reference in the development of aesthetic approaches to pedagogical supervision

This article is based on a study of what contributes to the development of an aesthetic approach to supervision that might be identified in a choreographer’s supervision of artists in a co-creative artistic production process. The theoretical framework consists of multimodal learning theory with a focus on semiotic mediation inspired by Jewitt, Kress, van Leeuwen, Rustad, and Vygotsky. The analysis is informed by Dewey’s theory about transformative aesthetics, developed by Sava as a description of transformations in artistic learning processes. Some of the characteristics of artistic supervision were identified as corporeality, heightened listening, mindfulness and the avoidance of a negative response. These characteristics are suggested to serve as inspiration for multimodal approaches to pedagogical supervision in general. The tools provided by different art forms, different ways of telling, sharing and communicating stories are considered as holding the main potential of an aesthetic approach to supervision.

Drama As a Learning Medium in Science Education

To respond to the decline of young people’s interest in the sciences, calls have been made to reorganize the ways in which science is taught, in order to address low student motivation. Drama offers a toolbox of techniques that can be used when teaching science and which can address the issue of low student motivation. This chapter provides science teacher educators with the theoretical and practical knowledge of how drama may serve as an inquiry-based teaching and learning tool in the sciences and how it may increase students’ scientific literacy, engagement and motivation. We discuss aspects of teacher training for the use of drama in the science classroom with two sample workshops aimed at teachers’ professional development. Hereafter we describe some conventions offered by the genre process drama. We discuss the learning achieved through drama. We then show that drama can be an inquiry-based learning form which functions through narrative and is multimodal, multisensory and sociocultural. We address the potential of a budding researcher and give some aspects of a future scenario for inquiry-based learning focusing on depth of learning through embodiment.