Department contributes to policy change on teacher education in Norway
Following advice from an international advisory group involving the department’s Director of Research, Professor Alis Oancea, The Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) has announced that it will no longer audit its new five-year masters programmes for thematic supervision of primary and lower secondary school teacher education in 2019/20.
This decision, resulting directly from a recommendation made by the group, which advised that institutions are already experiencing enough pressure owing to the introduction of the new five-year programmes, will instead see some form of programme evaluation after 2020.
“The expert group’s input is important,” says NOKUT Director General Terje Mørland. “They have met many from the teacher education communities and have argued convincingly that supervision is not the right thing to do now…All in all, we choose to wait a little and evaluate which measures from NOKUT can best raise quality in teacher education in the coming years.”
The international group will continue its work into teacher education reform and the introduction of Norway’s five-year master’s programmes during 2019, with a final report expected at the end of the year. Members include Professor Marilyn Cochran-Smith (Boston College, USA), Professor Mikael Alexandersson (University of Gothenburg, Sweden), Dr Karen Hammerness (American Museum of Natural History, USA), Professor Viv Ellis (King’s College London, United Kingdom), Associate Professor Lexie Grudnoff (University of Auckland, New Zealand), Professor Alis Oancea (University of Oxford, United Kingdom) and Professor Auli Toom, (University of Helsinki, Finland).
