Teacher Education of the Future: Trends and Possible Scenarios in the Nordic Context

Abstract

This chapter uses current trends to outline possible scenarios in teacher education programmes in the Nordic countries. The starting point is that, aside from Finnish teacher education, teacher education programmes in Nordic countries have almost never been considered genuinely excellent. Therefore, teacher education has become a policy problem. As the developmental features of today’s teacher education in the Nordic region are deeply complex and partly characterized by inherent tensions between contradictory considerations, making predictions is a daunting task. There is considerable diversity among teacher education programmes in Nordic countries, and future developments might take several paths. Therefore, one cannot talk about a single current or future model for Nordic teacher education.

Several premises for discussing the future of teacher education are considered in this chapter, including the idea of a knowledge economy and an emphasis on equality values. Policy-making is often set within general critical discourse about teaching and teacher education. The question is how teacher education institutions will respond to the various challenges that exist. In this chapter, trends and possible scenarios for teacher education in the Nordic context are discussed on the basis of a complex theoretical framework.

1 Introduction

This chapter uses current trends to outline some possible scenarios in teacher education programmes in the Nordic countries. As the developmental features of today’s teacher education in the Nordic region programmes are deeply complex and partly characterized by inherent tensions between contradictory considerations, making predictions is a daunting task. Of course, future developments cannot be discussed with full or even a reasonable degree of certainty.

As shown in the Chaps. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11, there is considerable diversity in the Nordic countries’ teacher education programmes, and future developments can take several paths. Therefore, one cannot talk about a single model for Nordic teacher education, so these considerations have to be understood as broad descriptions that must be considered with a critical eye. The readers are invited to use the descriptions to form their own opinions.

The starting point of these considerations is that the teacher education programmes in Nordic countries have almost never been considered genuinely excellent. Therefore, teacher education has become a ‘policy problem’. The exception is Finnish teacher education, which has been rated as ‘outstanding’ and ‘excellent’ (Barber & Mourshed, 2007; The British Educational Research Association, 2014; Darling-Hammond, 2017; Mourshed et al., 2010). Despite this, there are small quality differences among the Nordic countries’ teacher education programmes, as far as student teachers are able to assess quality (see Chap. 11, Christophersen et al., 2017, and Elstad et al., 2021). However, it is conceivable that professional assessors will be able to find greater quality differences than what might be measured through student teachers’ satisfaction indices.

The national cultures and histories of each Nordic country retain a strong shaping influence on the education systems. In the cases of the autonomous areas of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, the authorities of these areas determine the curriculum for teacher education within the four-year teacher education. But the Nordic countries have borrowed one another’s political and policy measures (Chap. 2). Comparative teacher education research can find similarities and differences among the individual countries’ educational systems that can be used as evidence in policy making (Sanderson, 2002). Those responsible for shaping a nation’s education policy will naturally want improvements.

The first premise for discussing the future of teacher education is the idea of ​​the knowledge economy (Powell & Snellman, 2004). In principle, each nation operates as a more or less independent player in a set of relations among countries. International politics can be understood as a struggle for power among states (Waltz, 2000; Blachford, 2020). Countries’ interactions have grown to some extent through agreements, trade and migration, and relations typically have become closer via ‘network governance’ (Ball & Junemann, 2012). However, each country remains a competitive entity, and its economic development will be influenced by (among other things) the knowledge base of a critical mass of its population: workers, innovators, managers and so on (Powell & Snellman, 2004). Despite the highly complex mechanisms between the economy and education, the school plays an important role in facilitating the development of the knowledge base of citizens (especially knowledge-intensive jobs), future employees and innovators to succeed in a future that is uncertain and unknown (Hanushek & Wößmann, 2020). There is a widespread notion that the quality of a school’s contribution to student learning depends on the quality of that school’s teachers (Chetty et al., 2014; Rockoff, 2004). Thus, teacher education indirectly plays a role in maintaining the knowledge economy, at least on the rhetorical level. Education is a key to economic prosperity.

Teachers’ work in the Scandinavian countries has periodically been covered in public reports about schools and the teaching profession, including in the 1990s. This has changed to some extent in our time, in the sense that current public documents have credited the teachers’ work as being of great importance to learners’ learning progress (e.g., White paper no. 112008/2009; Regeringskansliet, 2021). Therefore, teacher education has also become an even more important issue in political debate today compared to 40–50 years ago. Teacher education’s annual production of newly qualified teachers means that change is relatively limited in the short term; it takes 45 years to produce an entirely new portfolio of teachers. Nevertheless, teacher education is important, as it lays the foundation for newly qualified teachers’ competence to practice their profession. Learners’ learning is measured, inter alia, by large-scale international surveys, to which each country’s politicians attach great importance. International actors (for instance the OECD, the IEA and McKinsky) have promoted different kinds of measurements and evidence in an attempt to influence practices through the promotion of what Helgetun and Menter (2022) have called cultural-cognitions in education. The league tables of student performance have become central in both the political sphere and the public conversation about school and education. To perform better, the focus is often on successful solutions (‘the world’s best’; Barber & Mourshed, 2007; Mourshed et al., 2010) that can serve as inspiration and thus the basis for policy and funding. In this context, international actors are important in promoting the development of teacher education in their desired directions (see Chap. 14).

The second premise for discussing the future of teacher education is the Nordic countries’ emphasis on equality values (Blossing et al., 2014). The school should provide students with equal learning opportunities. One implication is that the lack of qualified teachers will make it difficult to achieve such a goal. The lack of teachers with adequate qualifications poses a challenge to varying degrees in the Nordic countries, with Sweden facing the greatest challenges (Chap. 3). In the worst-case scenario, teacher shortages can weaken the national ambition of providing schoolchildren with equal learning opportunities.

As an institution, the school has historically been important in certain countries’ efforts to create a national identity (especially in Norway, Iceland and Finland in the 19th and 20th centuries). Nation building occurred under the auspices of (among other things) the school in a situation where a young nation lacked a recent history as an independent state.

It is an open question whether nation building will be replaced by supranational visions of a future where every country’s situation depends heavily on those of other countries. Thus, contributing to the formation of a national identity under the auspices of the school could be replaced by promoting global unity, creating world citizens (OECD, 2018), European citizens (Ritzen et al., 2016) or at least Nordic citizens: Vision 2030 declares that the Nordic Region should become the most integrated region in the world. Do these visions reflect transnational intentions? In that case, we would move away from the nation-state and devalue ​​national citizenship in favour of Nordicism and globalism (Trägårdh, 2019). If this were to occur, the Nordic countries’ school systems will surely undergo significant changes geared toward the enrichment of the national welfare for the benefit of global welfare.

The vision of the Nordic social contract (reciprocity in benefits between the state and the individuals, all citizens regarded as equal, the requirement for every able person to contribute by working, etc.) is distorted in the direction of hybridization (Trägårdh, 2018). One possible inference is that the vision of a Nordic citizenship has increasingly been raised as an idea, but it is too early to tell whether this kind of thinking will be consolidated further. It is an open and unresolved question whether the Nordic region is on its way out of the post-war welfare state and into something else we do not have clarity on now. There are emerging features (for instance increasing proportion of pensioners, social security recipients et cetera) that can possibly undermine the established welfare schemes in the Nordic region.

Teacher education has to be regarded as a subsystem of each country’s education system. Although large-scale international surveys on teacher education are in short supply, teacher education institutions have to some extent been treated as scapegoats by politicians and educational administrations. As shown in several other chapters of this book, teacher education has been criticized from a variety of perspectives. Policy-making is often set within a general critical discourse about teaching and teacher education. The question is how teacher education institutions will respond to these challenges. In the following section, I reflect on this issue on the basis of a complex theoretical framework.

2 Theoretical Framework for Discussion of Possible Scenarios

The theoretical framework for the approach in this chapter is divided into three levels: (1) the transnational level (Chap. 14; Martens & Jakobi, 2010); (2) the institutional level, with external and internal dynamics (Olsen, 2007); and (3) interactions between teacher education institutions and practice schools (Lejonberg et al., 2017).

2.1 Globalization as a Trend and its Impact on Teacher Education

Despite the impacts of globalization, the decision-making framework for policy making remains national. The national cultures and histories of each country still retain a strong shaping influence on education (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). The Nordic countries’ teacher education programmes have distinct national features or features distinct to the autonomus areas (Chaps. 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8). Moreover, some variations exist within each Nordic country. Nevertheless, it is possible to envisage a convergence in the direction of increasingly university-based teacher education institutions across the region. The first temporary vicarage seminars for teachers became institutionalized teacher training seminaries over time. Teacher seminaries have been turned into colleges, which have later been incorporated into universities (though to varying degrees). This evolution is named a universitisation trajectory.

Among politicians and key decision makers in the university domain, there is a strong belief that large entities are favourable, and synergy processes are expected to create large, powerful entities through mergers. Furthermore, there is an increase in profiled institutional initiatives as a consequence of institutional leadership. These initiatives may help an institution’s branding, but this tendency does not appear to be strong for teacher education. In Finland, Iceland, Greenland and Faroe islands, the process has been completed, only university-based teacher education is offered. The extent to which teacher education institutes are integrated into universities, is another question. In Sweden and Norway, it seems likely that the process will be completed in a few years, while Denmark (without the Faroe Islands and Greenland) has considered the university path but has chosen a different direction. Although the Danish choice is an outlier, the universitation intention for teacher education looms large elsewhere. The five-year university model will be in accordance with the Bologna Declaration with its emphasis on the master’s degree as a competence requirement for the teachers of the future. In terms of content, it is the Finnish model that has been a source of inspiration and paradigm to a large extent for the other Nordic countries, with teacher education understood as a research-based curriculum.

However, there are signs that teacher education in Iceland is being adjusted away from the model introduced about ten years ago (see Chap. 8). In other words, developments can prove to be uneven, with each country having to find solutions to the challenges that it faces. If the convergence assumption holds true, this can be viewed as a manifestation of globalization mechanisms, of which the OECD is the foremost promoter. This is especially true in schools. But comparison of teacher education attainment across the world has only happened once (the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics, TEDS-M).

One possible scenario is that a balance will be sought between maintaining some national features and opening the door wide to globalized influences. The liberalization of the labour market in European countries can be expected to continue, which could contribute to market mechanisms in the labour market for teachers, with those educated in another country migrating to where job vacancies exist and wages are sufficiently attractive. In Norway, teacher salaries are among the highest in Europe and the Norwegian salary level offer incentives to attract teachers from other areas of Europe to specific geographical areas of Norway. On the other hand, Icelandic and Swedish teachers express less satisfaction with their salary and these countries do not offer strong incentives to attract teachers (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2021).

Further stronger inputs from international student teachers and teacher educators can also be expected. There is a rapid increase in international mobility, and further harmonization of specific requirements seems inevitable. The trend towards increased globalization may create additional needs for tailored solutions for complementary teacher education for migrants. The Swedish employment based route (KPU) with a new shorter supplementary pedagogical education is an example. Mastery of the country’s official language does not seem to be an annoying limitation. That trend is also marked among teacher educators by certain concepts and models gaining ground, such as English becoming the lingua franca of teacher education research. Teacher educators are also increasingly educated in other countries. In the long term, will it also affect the language of communication in the Nordic countries’ teacher education programmes? There are currently courses for teaching in English, but they remain an exception for the time being.

At the level of educational bureaucracy (governments), some transnational organizations carry out their work through networks (governance). One example is the OECD, but other organizations also fall into the transnational category (e.g., UNESCO, World Bank). The most closely related governance mechanism is the change in the education bureaucracy’s policy pursuit (Martens & Jakobi, 2010). Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Progress in International Reading Literacy Studies (PIRLS) and national tests provide the educational bureaucracy with the necessary information to drive the levers of policy execution. Another possible influence is through policy coordination across sectors and countries, and the structure of teacher education programmes in individual European countries is becoming increasingly similar.

The third mechanism that can be observed as a result of coordination is policy convergence (Martens & Jakobi, 2010); the content and structural variations among teacher education programmes are decreasing. One factor that refers to convergence is the autonomy of teacher educators and teacher education institutions. Overall, however, the conclusion is that further pressure in the direction of globalization can be expected, but certain national features will persist in the Nordic countries’ teacher education programmes. The relative significance of nations and globalisation is unclear. ‘Vernacular globalisation’ expresses the ways in which international policy trends become mediated by national politics and cultures as they are instantiated in particular settings (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). The national cultures and histories of each country will still retain a strong shaping influence (Menter et al., 2019).

2.2 Institutional Dynamics of Teacher Education

Here, I use Olsen’s (2007) four stylized ideal-types (Weber, 1949) as theoretical anchors for the interpretation of possible scenarios. First, teacher education in Nordic countries is governed by each country’s educational bureaucracy or administration. The word bureaucracy is not used in a derogatory sense in this chapter. The purpose may ideally be an effective administrative control of a sector, down to the individual institution, which in turn is built up as a hierarchy where the lower levels are managed by more senior levels.

Teacher educators have a Janus face: On the one side teacher educators at the university departments have to adapt to the premises, expectations and norms of the university world. On the other side, teacher educators cannot possibly succeed unless school staff and those who are being trained as teachers find the content of the training to be relevant. The positioning of research in relation to practice shapes a tension. Expectations in Minerva’s world in Nordic countries are connected to target figures for publication points, citation indexes and the international relevance of research. Teacher educators are to day increasingly incorporated into the universities’ meritocratic structures. The values ​​of those who form part of the professional community of teacher educators are maintained by having a common identity rooted in competence and assured through education, guided training and initiation into a professional culture. The relationships among community members are characterized by collegiality, collaboration and an appropriate attitude to merit through research and development (R&D) work. These are bottom-up processes that can lend greater practical relevance to teacher education or to even more academic content in teacher education. Several mechanisms are possible. The meritocratic system of the university community, with its emphasis on research, has affected the meritocratic system of teacher education institutions, as an increasing number of institutions have been incorporated or converted into universities. The question is how a greater research orientation influences the work of managing teacher education’s teaching and guidance. A tension arise easily between a professional mission and an academic mission of teacher education.

The ideal type of ‘Co-influence of student teachers’ has its origin in an expanded vision of democratic co-influence in the arenas where individuals are participants. Student empowerment can manifest itself as a legitimate requirement for participation in formal decision-making bodies, in planning and even in the ongoing operations of interactions between teacher educators and students. Student participation in governing bodies’ decision-making processes is a reality that is not going away. Furthermore, responsiveness to the students’ current preferences and perceptions of reality will be sharpened through complaint schemes, expressions of opinion in the media and the like. One example is the Norwegian authorities’ responsiveness to individual student teachers’ criticisms that are reported in newspapers; it is said that practical educational education, ‘especially from student teams, has been criticized for maintaining a low level of quality, including limited relevance for later professional life’ (Ministry of Education, 2014, p. 57). Communication via social media may reinforce the tendency to view teacher education from a consumer perspective, and teacher dissatisfaction with teacher education may find a powerful social medium. So far, the Nordic student organizations have not organized schemes such as ratemyprofessors.com (Otto et al., 2008), but it is only a matter of time before this happens. When it does, the student’s user perspective will be even more relevant.

The fourth cell in Fig. 15.1 deals with marketization or market-based policy. Among the European countries in the 1980s, England chose a decentralized teacher education model that emphasized apprenticeship in schools. Since 2010, the role of universities in teacher education has been further marginalized (Menter et al., 2019). A new market review arrangement arises in 2024. Admittedly, school-based teacher education in England must still have an academic affiliation, but several reputable universities have stopped providing teacher education because of uncertain framework conditions; for example, funding is secured only three years at a time. The English Inspectorate’s assessment of quality in the Teach First programme (Chap. 13) has been ‘outstanding’ across all quality dimensions (the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills, OFSTED, 2015). Teach First Denmark has also received a very good rating from an external panel of experts (VIA University College, 2018, 2019). This means that the expert panels used in these two cases do not appear to emphasize the academic merits of teacher educators. Is this a sign that community controllers are not emphasizing the expectations of the academic world? The operations of the teaching profession are understood in English education policy as the practice of a craft (Department of Education, 2010). Teach First, through which the programme operates in England, is an example of a market-oriented model for teacher education that has now become dominant. We do not know whether anyone foresaw the development path that teacher education in England would take.

Fig. 15.1

Institutional dynamics of teacher education institutions as the balance point between four different ideal types. (Adapted from Olsen, 2007)

The English government has yet (Department of Education, 2021) decided that there are issues of quality with initial teacher education programmes and therefore set in place a ‘Market Review’ led by a group of ‘experts’. The aim of a market review arrangement (with delivery from 2024) is to make well informed, evidence-based recommendations on how to make sure: all trainees receive high-quality training. Furtermore, the teacher education ‘market’ arrangement will maintain the needed capacity to deliver enough trainees and is accessible to candidates. The chair of the expert group, which proposed the market review arrangement, is determined to see through some very radical policy recommendations. The report (Department of Education, 2021) has managed to unite universities, providers of school-led teacher education, teacher unions, headteacher organisations, the Chartered College of Teaching and Universities Council For the Education of Teachers in opposition to the proposals but these opposition voices were not listened to when the government made its decision. One question is: will the English case set the agenda for market driven reforms in teacher education in the Nordic region? The answer is: we do not know.

The Nordic region, except Finland and the Faroe islands, experience a general shortage of teachers, sometimes exacerbated by imbalances in their distribution across subjects and geographical areas, an ageing teacher population, dropouts from the profession and low rates of enrolments in teacher education programmes (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2021). To tackle teacher shortages, some Nordic municipalities offer incentives to attract teachers to specific geographical areas.

In the Nordic debate, it is quite rare to find explicit arguments for market solutions in teacher education, but the arguments that do occur tend to be most frequent in circles that are faithful to the tenets of economic liberalism. The Swedish think tank Timbro (2019) argues that ‘private actors should have the opportunity to conduct teacher training’, as does Smedjan (Svanborg-Sjöwall, 2018) and the newspaper Bulletin (Birgersson, 2021). These market-friendly organizations hold that teacher shortages can be solved by the market because they have the perception that private schools are a) successful because their students have high grades and b) that they have very good teachers. Private foundations might be freer in relation to the state and thus have the opportunity to put greater focus on the profession rather than the school’s part in building an equal society. Is private teacher education possible? Although it does not (yet) exist to any significant extent, there is no ban on private teacher education in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Private teacher education was a significant activity (about 64% of all trained teachers) in Denmark in the years 1862–1894 (Skovgaard-Petersen, 2005). This shows that marketization of teacher education is not an unknown phenomenon at all.

There are also technically several private teacher education institutions in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Jönköping University in Sweden, NLA University College in Norway, and The Independent Academy for Free School Teaching in Ollerup in Denmark are accredited private university colleges (but are private foundations). A new situation will arise with private profit-seeking companies which aims to establish itself in the teacher education market. So far this has not happened.

A number of sectors that have traditionally been managed by public monopolies – such as those in the transport and health sectors – have been put out to tender. There are even some examples in primary and lower secondary schools. In Norway, the municipality of Oslo has chosen to announce an outsourcing competition for school management education. Teach First Norway is subject to the municipality of Oslo (while formal teacher qualification is under the auspices of the University of Oslo). The OECD also recommends that countries invest in ‘alternative paths into the profession’ (2019, p. 39). Currently, the Teach First programmes in the Scandinavian countries have modest profiles and participation rates (Chap. 12). Although market-oriented solutions do not seem to be a likely scenario at the moment, they cannot be ruled in the future.

The dimensioning and management of teacher education are still regarded as national responsibilities (although from a political point of view, an arm’s length distance is sometimes created for the problems that arise due to national policy). In the Scandinavian countries, many politicians are not satisfied with the quality of teacher education. Politicians recognize the challenges of teacher education and are to some extent willing to provide the sector with more resources to solve its problems. In other words, politicians in the Nordic countries feel responsible for dimensioning and quality in teacher education. In Denmark, the authorities are willing to put greater financial pressure on the education sector than is observed in the other Nordic countries, partly through demands for savings and partly through demands for reallocation of funds based on performance. Denmark is the only country so far that has been willing to use institutional accountability as a tool in higher education. Finland is not as inclined towards reform as the other Nordic countries (see Chap. 5), but at the time of writing, the education authorities in Norway, Iceland, Denmark and Sweden are willing to show some patience with the teacher education sector. The Finnish education sector has not been affected by many reforms and stands out on this point in that the various educational institutions are delegated much of the decision-making power.

The four stylized ideal types are based on assumptions that make it unlikely for any of them alone to fit well as a description of current practices. Different trends can be identified, as can variations and contradictions that make it more plausible to consider the four ideal types as different aspects of university organization and its management (Olsen, 2007). The students’ interests are represented on the boards of the Nordic countries’ teacher education institutions, but the balance between bureaucracy and professional communities (see Fig. 15.1) is more interesting. Will this balance shift in the direction of greater administrative control, or will market-oriented solutions win out? How will students’ interests represent themselves in an even more digitized future? We do not know.

On one hand and subject to nuances, teacher education in the Nordic region (outside Finland) has been repeatedly reformed. In essence, any reformer deals with dissatisfaction; teacher education has probably never been considered satisfactory. On the other hand, reforms legitimize the existence of the regulating party; why should there be a growing public sector of ministries, directorates, state control bodies and the like without subjecting the very purpose of the regulation to forced change? Career advancement is ensured through a constantly saturated public sector (Niskanen, 1975). The bureaucrats’ self-interest, utility maximization, and other non-wealth-maximizing considerations affect their decision-making. This is a little explored area.

Institutional blossoming, combined with access to external funding for centres of outstanding teaching, is added to the range of tools that show tangible results of policy decisions that are interpreted as successes. The idea of ​​centres for excellent teaching has spread from Norway to other countries. If we consider only the number of frontline workers (i.e., teachers), we have never had as large an education sector as we do today. When an economic ‘rainy day’ occurs, the question of cuts and the efficiency of the education sector is raised (for instance, in Finland, Myklebust, 2021).

However, reforms can also be viewed in the context of the dynamics between governing bodies; if different political wings have different medicines for the ailment to be cured, there can be a yo-yo effect. The exchange of government power, for example, between the left and the right can in itself create the need for change to mark an incoming government’s ability to describe new political changes as reforms. Nonetheless, cross-party agreement across established political wings has also occurred (e.g., in Denmark and Sweden), which has meant political consensus on teacher education policy and school policy.

In an age of recurring reforms, a rational response at the institutional level may be window dressing; a wise leader may not unnecessarily torment those who carry out the core business, but they make themselves visible to embody the desirable attributes for the organization’s success and survival in ways that are observable by the outside world (Røvik, 2007). In many cases, the challenge may be to find a pragmatic, justified balance between above-cells in Fig. 15.1. The conclusion must be that national authorities will continue to recognize their responsibility for teacher education and try to deal with the challenges of teacher shortages and quality failings through the politically implemented policies that will appeal to teacher educators and teacher education institutions. Quality assurance will continue to be important, and traditional benchmarking may even expand its scope. Whether other Nordic countries will follow the Danish experiment with a clear-cut institutional accountability arrangement remains an open question. There has been borrowing of political and policy approaches among the Nordic countries in the past, but there is no automatic assumption that political expectations will have severe consequences. Market-based solutions have a weak tradition in the Nordic countries’ teacher education programmes. However, we cannot ignore the fact that the elected authorities can establish the framework conditions for market-based solutions for teacher education in situations where the teacher shortage challenge seems insurmountable. If this issue occurs, then Sweden will be the most interesting case to follow. Will Sweden adopt a school-based teacher education to solve its teacher shortage problem? If so, the question is: Is the Swedish trajectory an outlier or a pioneer in the trajectories of policymaking for teacher education programmes in the other Nordic countries? We do not have the answer to this question.

2.3 Partnership and Roles in Teacher Education

The third component of this chapter’s theoretical framework concerns the interactions between teacher education institutions and the school sector. The endemic tension between professional and academic mission (Labaree, 2018) is embedded in teacher education arrangement in the North. School practice has always been central to teacher education in the Nordic region programmes (see Chap. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11). Nevertheless, in recent years, a certain right to talk about a change of practice in universities’ teacher education programmes has emerged, in the sense that teacher educators’ recognition of the importance of practice may have increased (Lawn & Furlong, 2011). Partly, the element of school practice has been amplified through legislation. Partnership with schools means quite different things in different models (Mutton et al., 2018). One illustration could be teacher education in England and Scotland, both of which use the so-called partnership models. In Scotland, reflexive practice is considered good, and practices are jointly exercised in partner schools in what is called professional education (Donaldson, 2011). In England, the practices for schools can best be understood as those of craftsmanship (Department of Education, 2010). Thus, the student teacher becomes understood more as an apprentice in a school using a teacher education model that contains fairly modest elements of campus teaching. The rhetoric of the partnership idea in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland is more like the Scottish teacher education model than the English one. In different ways, partnerships are being sought. Finland’s has been around the longest: it has training schools and a network of selected field schools. The Finnish training schools have a designated role in research and development. The relationship between training schools and teacher education institutions is somewhat different in Denmark, where the schools have a more independent function in the partnership than appears to be the case of the experiments involving university schools in Norway and to some extent in Sweden.

In many teacher education programmes, the traditional model for the connection between theory and practice first applies the theoretical focus, followed by a short-term practicum (where the student teachers observe and practice some teaching), then a return to the theoretical focus, before a long-term practice stage (internship), in which student teachers try to perform as teachers under the guidance of a teacher or school-based tutor. Teacher education is usually completed with another theory-based phase and a final examination (Hammersnes, 2013). The main premise of organizing education in this way is that the teacher education institution has formal responsibility for the whole programme as the dominant party in an asymmetrical relationship between the institution and the training schools. The traning schools are usually cooperative parties in a scheme where the teacher education institutions generally play the lead role. Agency theory predicts that the non-conformity between the principal’s and the agent’s self-interests leads to the agent’s choice being a poor option for the principal (Lejonberg et al., 2017). One possible case may be when the training school chooses a student teacher who is not best suited for the assignment.

An intriguing idea in the debate about ideal teacher education is to understand partnership as a hybrid model between two more or less equal partners – universities and training schools (Zeichner, 2010). This partnership model has several reasons that recommend its implementation, and a variety of partnership models already exist. In some universities, partner schools have been established, having qualified through an application process for the term ‘university school’; they cooperate relatively closely with the teacher education institutions. Additionally, there are individual agreements with other schools for the implementation of student practice. Renewal efforts over the last decade involve striving to create a ‘third space’ in the university–school relationship (Arhar et al., 2013; Bier et al., 2012; see also McDonald et al., 2011). To be successful, this renewal must involve commitment and a willingness to change from both universities and training schools. Nevertheless, whether these collaborations work in accordance with the ideas embedded in the ideal model of a partnership is an empirical question.

The conclusion must be that the idea that the teacher education institution should be the principal in cooperation with practical schools remains strong in the Nordic countries. Nonetheless, institutions are often encouraged to deepen their cooperation with practice schools in the direction of a somewhat more equal relationship between the parties. On one hand, it seems likely that these types of trial will continue and likely increase in number. On the other, it seems unlikely today that the authorities in the Nordic countries will consider school-based teacher education courses in the manner of English teacher education.

3 School Development and Teacher education’s Need to Change

Teacher education should be the starting point in the professional practice of a successful teacher. The content of teacher education will have to reflect changes in the teacher’s work, preferably ahead of or leading the change processes that occur in schools. In this section, we cite some brief examples of trends in school development and society’s expectations of teachers’ job performance. Here, the examples can be understood more as ideal models than empirical descriptions. First, school development is discussed in connection with digitization and an example that shows the restoration of the classic school model and strengthened teacher authority. Thereafter, legalization is discussed in connection with school activities that have an impact on how future teachers can exercise their role.

The intentions behind the new Kviberg School in Sweden can serve as an anchor for discussing the changes required in response to teacher education’s need to qualify future teachers to work in in this type of school. The municipality of Gothenburg describes the school as ‘a school of the future’. The traditional ‘grammar of schooling’ (Tyack & Cuban, 1995, p. 85) is based on the idea of ​​teaching different subjects in relatively short blocks (typically 45 minutes) in classrooms for age-appropriate classes. At Kviberg School, however, this scholastic ‘grammar’ is broken down for more individualized solutions. Classrooms are considered outdated; instead, students instead work with iPads in open work areas. A ‘maker-space’ (a kind of information and communications technology workshop) is arranged in which students learn how to work with 3D printers and use their own iPads to communicate with teachers and other students. Each student should have a personal work schedule, and students work in age-matched groups. The school’s idea is based on the four C’s: ‘communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking’ (Kviberg School, 2019). Content knowledge is not among these C’s. At the intention level, this type of school development can be thought of as extremely individualized facilitation of learning, where students primarily work with their own iPads in a kind of network model that changes both the roles of both teachers and students (Siemens, 2008). In principle, it is conceivable that a student could sit at home and carry out all the learning activities and associated communications on purely virtual channels. There are many analogous cases of school development in the Scandinavian countries.

In contrast to the modernization of the school exemplified by the Kviberg School, Michaela Community School in London (Birbalsingh, 2016) was launched as a protest against school development trends amidst riots and social problems in one of London’s poorest areas. Here, the ‘grammar’ of the traditional school is restored as a counter-reaction to disciplinary slippages; there should be calm during school hours. The learners – unless told otherwise – sit at their desks. Teaching takes place in clearly separated time blocks in classrooms for learners divided into age cohorts. Michaela Community School seeks solutions based on teacher authority and control. The timetable has fixed weekly lessons for teaching the various subjects, with teaching carried out in classrooms where the desks are arranged in rows. The school focuses on academic knowledge and discipline throughout the school day. Its ‘no excuses’ strategy means that even minor misconduct has consequences (Birbalsingh, 2016). All teachers at Michaela are committed to this strategy. The school year starts with practicing common rules. An example of a goal is for students to remain in their seats for 30 seconds after the bell rings.

Every day, lunch is served to both students and teachers. All students are assigned places to prevent cliques from accumulating around the lunch tables. Students also have duties; one serves the food to everyone around the table, another pours water for everyone, a third clears the table after the meal and so on (personal observations). The lunch is led by a teacher at each table. The topic of conversation may be current events, literature or natural phenomena. The purpose of conversation during lunch is to cultivate a repertoire with stimulation of factual arguments, learning to take responsibility for common tasks and so on. The school has received a lot of positive attention for its outstanding results and student performance (OFSTED, 2017; Weale, 2019), along with some criticism (Williams, 2016). It is mentioned here because some schools in the Nordic countries are following similar ideas of strict regulations, such as students shaking the teacher’s hand when entering the classroom. How strongly the conservative restoration of an old-fashioned school model will spread in Nordic countries remains to be seen, but the restoration of teacher authority may be reinforced, given the number of discipline problems and incidents of violence against teachers in Nordic schools (OECD, 2019a).

Between these two extreme cases, other examples show a continuum of approaches. The question is whether the emphasis in school development will be towards a progressive modernization of the type represented by Kviberg School or towards a conservative restoration where traditional subjects, knowledge acquisition and discipline are emphasized. If the development moves towards dissolving what we know as fixed structures in the school (subject-specific schedules, teaching in classrooms with the teacher leading the session, exams, etc.), we may witness the beginning of the end of the institution that we have long known as school. If that happens, there will be profound implications for teacher education. A former headmaster of Kviberg School stated that teachers recruited for the new school would have to be urged to become pioneers. This signaled that the school administration wanted to appoint a specific type of teacher.

Can teacher shortages be alleviated by individualizing and digitizing teaching? Every student receives a work plan with his or her expected progress laid out. Students are given digital learning opportunities, with teaching sequences available in an online portal. Virtual (but still somewhat ‘intelligent’) feedback and guidance can be provided through digital platforms. Such solutions may also include feedback from real mentors. Anyone who envisages a forced development of the school in this direction will have to recognize that such a school will be a long way from what we have hitherto understood as school.

It is part of the story of Kviberg School and other pioneering schools that new ideas elicit counterarguments from parents and politicians and incite community debates. How radical school development will be is an open question. Elstad (2016) analyses a case of school development (through a focus on computers for all students) that went in reverse, while Hauge (2016) explains a case of school development that has been a continual process of in-depth digitization. On one hand, several types of mechanisms can occur through modernization that combines information and communication technology with the new working methods. On the other hand, new trends have also been replaced by the restoration of established school practices. Thess types of development have implications for teacher education, but the implications of modernization for teacher education are uncertain. Either way, the digitization of school activities is something for which teacher education must prepare to an even greater extent. Political rhetoric expresses the expectation that teachers should develop their own professional digital literacy skills, and teacher education programmes in all Nordic countries are concerned about this issue.

4 Increased Legalization and its Implications for Teacher Education

Another trend in Scandinavian countries is the increased legalization of matters related to school activities. For example, legalization can be manifested through strengthened student rights. This is a result of political decisions that have been accelerated through reports of alleged teacher bullying in school. Strengthened student rights affect the balance of power between teachers and students, where the teachers’ transactional position (Elstad, 2002) is weakened. Enhanced student rights have been and appear set to be further institutionalized, which may be illustrated by an example. The Child and Learner Ombudsman (BEO) has become a participant in the Swedish School Agency’s activities. The BEO must counteract abusive treatment and safeguard the rights of students. An example of a sanctioned action on the part of the National Agency for Education (with a fine of SEK 15,000, or well over 1000 euros) concerns ‘Carina’, a teacher who physically removed a disruptive student from the classroom. ‘The student had not behaved properly and was very loud during the lessons. Therefore, the teacher saw no other way but to grab the student and lift him out of the classroom’ (GT, 2019). The attention given to the case contributed to the school’s desire to dismiss Carina, who chose to quit before her dismissal. Similar incidents have been appealed in the Swedish legal system, as exemplified below:

When a learner refused to move from a couch that blocked the way in a rest room, the learner was physically moved by a teacher. Both the district court and the court of law considered that the intervention was justified. However, the BEO now appeals the case to the Supreme Court and demands that the student receive SEK 10,000 in damages from Lidköping Municipality. (GT, 2019).

A similar strengthening of learner rights has also occurred in Norway through the 2017 changes to the Education Act. These changes were based on the Djupedal Committee’s report. That committee understood ‘violations’ as an umbrella term for words or actions in which a person’s dignity is violated. It is enough that an episode or incident leads to a subjective feeling of discomfort for the student in question in order to trigger an obligation for the school. For example, in a Norwegian high school, a decision was made that a teacher had offended a student by making the latter focus on the time (Norsk Lektorlag, 2017). In other words, violations can also include extremely sensitive perceptions. This new legalization trend in Swedish and Norwegian schools has implications for the content of teacher education; teachers of the future must be extremely cautious about exhibiting behaviours that can provide a subjective experience of learner discomfort. This offers guidance in the direction of a more facilitating teacher behaviour. It remains an open question whether this trend can be reversed through political decisions based on the increasing reports of violence against teachers in Scandinavian countries (DF, 2017; Jarn, 2018; Skagen, 2019). If such a reversal occurs, it could be perceived as a move towards a conservative restoration of teacher authority. While measures can certainly be expected to curb violence against teachers in the Scandinavian countries, the precise kinds of measures that will be implemented are not yet known.

5 Teacher Education Institutions and Management of Educational Research

One possible scenario is that educational research about and in teacher education institutions and assessment research are moving in different directions (Menter & Tatto, 2019). Some trends towards a split can be observed in the literature that is cited in public studies on teacher education. It can hardly be said that the studies refer to a broad portfolio of teacher education research (although some examples show that public investigations have a broad review of research; see, e.g., SOU, 2018, p. 17). It is investigative research that is often referred to in white papers.

The management of educational research takes place, among other things, through criteria for research funding. For example, such criteria may emphasize practice closely situated to research or research using quantitative methods or close collaboration with schools. This is ensured by appointing designated decision makers from user organizations to determine which research projects will receive public funding. It is remarkable that professionals from disciplines other than educational theory and didactics (e.g., people with professional backgrounds in economics, political science or sociology) have been allocated substantial funds through these open calls. This means that the differences between the phenomena to be explored and the professionals’ subjects are porous; social science disciplines other than educational theory and subject didactics have penetrated the field of educational research and to some extent outperformed the pedagogues’ research applications. No educational research by educationists is cited or rarely cited in these economic analyses af education (for instance Gansle et al., 2012; Goldhaber et al., 2013; Goldhaber, 2019; Sass, Semykina & Harris 2014). The question of whether this is related to the discrepancy between the research interests of educators and what is demanded from the educational policy perspective is unclear.

In any case, it is a fact that the educational authorities have established R&D units that will contribute to national and international competence development within educational metrics. These may be entities that also act as advisors to the educational authorities. Here, too, much of the recruitment takes place outside the ranks of educators. These developments would hardly have occurred if the educational authorities were satisfied with the educational research that was actually conducted. The conclusion is that the research position of the teacher education communities is uncertain in relation to both politics and practice.

In sum, this means that research in teacher education communities and other educational environments can be challenging (Menter & Tatto, 2019). However, the situation may differ in some countries. Alternative expertise is being developed elsewhere than at universities (f. ex. https://researched.org.uk/). Furlong (2013) makes the point that educational research in England is significantly influenced by the fact that universities have lost control of much of teacher education. The situation in 2022 shows a further loss of control.

It is uncertain how the teacher education communities in the Nordic countries would be able to position their research to make a stronger appeal to those who practice teaching in schools on one hand and the funding authorities on the other. One possible scenario in the Nordic context could be that educators’ research could gravitate towards more esoteric phenomena and away from practical issues. There are a number of indications that this is happening (Eklund, 2008). Another is that an enforced practical closeness to schools will contribute to ensuring relevance in teacher educators’ teaching, external course practice and R&D work. There are also opportunities for creating arenas and communication channels where teacher educators and school people could meet. Examples are the Danish journal Paideia and the Norwegian journal Bedre skole. A probable scenario involves considerable diversity regarding the question of research facilities among those who work with teacher education and who thus have a research obligation. It is unclear what the broad trends will be, but teacher education researchers in academic environments seem to have irrevocably lost their former monopoly position.

Developments in England show that it is not a matter of course that educational politicians and the educational bureaucracy choose the teaching staff of universities as discussion partners to pursue educational policy and the organization of teacher education research. The Market Review arrangement is intended to use a new infrastructure for teacher education (the Institute of Teaching):

The Department of Education at Oxford is recognised as a world-leader in educational research and interns have access to and are able to draw on the expertise and experience of our academic staff in a range of different areas. … We do not believe that a similar infrastructure exists at the Institute of Teaching, and therefore question whether postgraduate awards validated by the institute will carry the carry the same reputational rigour (University of Oxford, 2021).

There is a need for continuing education of school, teacher education and education bureaucracy staff. The conference sector often draws speakers from outside the teaching staff cadre. The reasons for this are difficult to specify, but one possible interpretation is that conference organizers want to line up with well-known people, including ‘superstars’, who know the art of delivering appealing messages. The tendency seems to be that popular messages are presented without embarrassing considerations of evidence for strong claims (personal experiences). Nonetheless, these superstars can sometimes refer to investigations with strong evidence. The conclusion is that the teaching position of the teacher education communities is uncertain, and it cannot be ruled out that this is about the fact that teacher education research has uncertain pragmatic relevance to the field of practice.

6 Instrumentalist Trend?

Instrumentalist ideas have emerged and disappeared at irregular intervals in the history of teacher education. The latest examples of instrumentalism are linked to actors outside the teacher education community who call for a ‘system for sharing quality-assured and research-based teaching and learning programmes for student teachers’ (Stortinget, 2019b). This is part of a pervasive international trend. For example, the OECD is in the process of building Global Teaching InSights, which is a ‘global video library of teaching’ (2019). The increased interest in reverse teaching may be complementary to this potential trend. Student teachers gain access to a bank of educational content that they can use flexibly. This can free up time for more individual or group-based guidance in teaching situations. Thus, instrumentalism can go hand in hand with the digitization trend in schools.

The teacher can become the executive technician who implements ready-made arrangements. To some extent, feedback to students can also be digitized and even automated (Kulik & Fletcher, 2016). However, it is difficult (at least for me) to envision a fully automated content delivery (where content explanations and lectures are fully digitized and can be listened to and viewed as appropriate by the student) and feedback practices (automated but ‘intelligent’ feedback). In this case, such development of automated functions will affect both the need for teachers (including teacher educators) and the actual execution of the teacher’s role. The contrast to the teacher who initiates completed programmes or components of completed programmes is the teacher as the reflexive, autonomous professional practitioner. Between these two contrasting positions lie several intermediate positions in which the teacher appears as an autonomous figure who composes his or her teaching from a rich menu of tools. The conclusion must be that an instrumentalist trend will likely affect the work of the teacher education cadre, but the range and the depth of this change impulse are uncertain.

7 Conclusions

In this chapter, the complex and dynamic relationships and tensions among teacher education research, transnational trends, national policy practice and teaching practice are discussed. The impact through globalization processes has prevailed in education in general, including teacher education, but certain national characteristics still exist at a time when the pressure of globalization has been exerted to its fullest extent (Menter, 2019). The pace of change is rapid, but it is uncertain whether the development trajectory will behave as a linear process. A complete eradication of national peculiarities is difficult to imagine. It is plausible that some national differences among the Nordic countries’ teacher education programmes will continue to exist. Moreover, the variations within each country are quite large, but further convergence in structure (and to some extent content) can probably occur. It can be assumed that the teacher–student exchange among European countries will accelerate beyond what we observe today. However, the requirement for adequate proficiency in each country’s language(s) may limit this tendency to some extent. This is particularly true for teacher education at the lowest elementary school level, where genuine mastery of the learners’ mother tongue is particularly important.

I also dare to believe that cross-country mass migration trends will cause the common European labour market for teachers to flourish and thus to a greater extent, through market mechanisms, where a shortage of skilled labour in one country may attract applicants from other countries. This phenomenon is currently occurring to a considerable extent in the labour market for doctors, and it seems likely that the labour market for teachers will also be further ‘Europeanized’ to a greater extent than is the case today (Fig. 15.2).

Fig. 15.2

The larger historical-social setting for teachers’ work and teacher education. (Adapted after Cochran-Smith et al., 2016)

Established approval schemes for teacher education from European countries already make this possible. As mentioned, there may be some practical barriers associated with language and possibly culture, such as the willingness to shake hands. The provision of additional components for those educated outside Europe is also an indication that the portfolio of teachers will be characterized by an even greater degree of international recruitment. However, it is uncertain what the long-term consequences will be, but the labour market for teachers in the Nordic countries will likely be of interest to teachers from outside Europe. The labour market for teachers will therefore be further globalized.

Educational systems must ensure that today’s young people learn what it takes to succeed in the society of the future. Possible implications are increasingly diverse population of learners and probably growing school equality. This means that teacher education must prepare teachers for diversity and equal opportunities for learning (Cochran-Smith et al., 2016). Rapid change processes related to technology development and labour needs, population development and migration and market development in an increasingly globalized economy redefine society’s need for skills, which requires updating and adequate educational changes (OECD, 2019). The a knowledge economy is a powerful image, while the realization of Nordic equality values ​​in school practice is under pressure. If the realization of equality values ​​is further weakened, for example, in Sweden, the readers may find that the quality characteristics of what has been called the Nordic school model in this book may decline?

Teacher education has over time conquered the inner sanctum of the universities in the North (except Denmark) because the universities expanded their scope of mission (Elstad, 2010). Universities have mostly today a strong commitment to teacher education through their civic aims and values. But this is not an obvious truth: In England, this process seems to be reversing as elite universities will avoid teacher education in the future. So far, we do not see any similar indications in the Nordic region.

The Nordic countries recognize the national authorities’ responsibility to provide an adequate number of teachers of sufficient quality. Finding solutions to the schools’ needs by arranging market-oriented teacher education systems (compare the success of Teach First in the UK and similar market arrangements for teacher education in countries like Chile, Mexico, Pakistan and the United States; see Tatto & Menter, 2019) seems unlikely in today’s context. However, it is notable that key players in private schools perceive themselves to be allied with Teach First institutions in a kind of struggle against the established education system (see, e.g., Birbalsingh, 2016, p. 12). Privatization in schools and teacher education seems to go hand in hand in some countries. The Scandinavian Teach First institutions’ production of teachers is currently very modest, but the phenomenon does exist (Chap. 13). The educational authorities so far seem to have the patience and confidence in the established teacher education institutions’ ability to find solutions to the aspects of quality that have been criticized. However, no one predicted the development of school-based teacher education and market-based solutions like Teach First.

One aspect of uncertainty for state-funded teacher education in the established institutions arises when recognized crises occur, such as a lack of an adequate number of teachers with credentials in Sweden. As Sweden has liberal market-designed school system, it cannot be ruled out that it is easier to generate market solutions in Sweden than in other Nordic countries. Some believe that market-oriented solutions ensure access to an adequate delivery of professional teaching. This possibility should be viewed in the context of the digitization of schools under the auspices of collaborative ICT groups. For example, the Swedish company Nationalencyclopedin (together with Sana Labs) has developed digital aids in mathematics that are tailored to each student (Billing, 2018). The tool is already used in several Swedish municipalities’ schools. Similar developments can be envisaged for the large Swedish school enterprises. One possible scenario is that these types of technological solutions could be used to alleviate the lack of teachers with adequate teacher identification (Svanborg-Sjövall, 2018); teachers with adequate credentials can benefit from centrally designed teaching programmes while assistants without adequate credentials support each student’s learning work. The Swedish educational system would then benefit from economies of scale when a resource (qualified teachers) is scarce. These types of ideas are based on notions about the radical renewal of the educational system in which each student will be provided with an individual curriculum and adequate technological equipment for personalized support (Siemens & Conole, 2011).

Even physically present interaction can be replaced with digital communications. This type of development is not yet comprehensive and extended, but the trend cannot be ignored. Teacher education can be reformed in a similar way, with content delivered through video recording of lectures, allocation of digital learning resources through digital platforms, implementation of online communication (including virtual tutors), scanning of student work to reveal plagiarism and so on. Automation of teacher education can entail scaling changes in the form of cost savings, and significant rationalizations are possible. It is worth recalling that the digital revolution outlined here has not yet been implemented in teacher education in the Nordic countries. The question is when the digital revolution will occur in Nordic countries’ teacher education programmes. What will it mean for the content and structural character of the teacher education programmes we know today?

Despite the criticism of university-based teacher education models, that approach appears to have emerged victorious on virtually all fronts in the Nordic countries, with the exception of Denmark. This trend means that the campus component of teacher education is becoming increasingly academic. While the previous recruitment of teacher educators often came from the training schools, a new cadre of teacher educators with academic credentials has entered the teacher education institutions. Many of these new teacher educators have never practised as teachers themselves, but they often have doctorate degrees. The teacher education offered by the universities thus stands with one foot in each camp (Maguire, 2000). The university units must adapt to the virtues, expectations and norms of the university domain. These expectations are related, among other things, to target figures for production of publication points, citation indices and the international orientation of research.

At the same time, university teacher education cannot succeed over the long term without the professionals in the schools, and those who are educated as teachers must perceive the content of that education as relevant to real-world teaching to a reasonable degree. Success in being relevant to the school world – that is, to students who judge the quality of education from their own perspective – while being successful in the increased scope of relevant research in international channels requires balancing contradictory and even conflicting impulses (Elstad, 2010; Goodson, 1995).

One potential danger that cannot be overlooked is that it is possible to bridge the gap between the campus teaching theory base and the field of practice theory to a limited degree. However, the two-part career paths for teacher educators can mitigate the challenges when calling for more methodology in teacher education’s campus teaching. Partnership solutions can also alleviate the internal tensions between academic teacher education and the consideration of practical closeness to the core mission of schools (Mutton et al., 2018). However, a retreat back to teacher seminaries does not seem very likely, although approaches similar to the school-based teacher education system implemented in England cannot be completely excluded. The term university obviously has prestige in the Nordic countries. The Finnish teacher education model for research-based practice appears to be a strong source of inspiration for other Nordic countries. A possible exception is Iceland, where problems with the dropout rate of student teachers could lead to a policy shift that helps avoid the research-based master’s thesis conflict with school issues (Chap. 7).

A challenge in all Nordic countries is the need to perceive teacher education and teacher learning in the first years of practice in a wider context. Some scholars argue that teachers’ continuous development must occur under the direction of the school without contact with teacher education institutions (Lemov, 2015). There will likely be a stronger focus on support functions for teachers (known as ‘induction’) in their first year of practice (OECD, 2019). One possible Nordic scenario may mean expanded tasks for today’s teacher education institutions. Another scenario is that other actors (e.g., course solutions provided by private actors or municipalities) may see to these types of tasks. Anyone interested in the future of teacher education will experience exciting times ahead.