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Education research was institutionalized as an academic field at the University of Oslo in 1938, primarily to establish a research-based foundation for education, including teacher education. This initiative resulted in the development of a research portfolio and degree programs that qualified graduates for diverse roles within the education system. In contrast, teacher education institutions—organized through university seminars and regional colleges—were expected to apply research generated at the university while simultaneously cultivating their own knowledge base in collaboration with school authorities, schools, and teachers. Within this framework, pedagogy (and Didaktik in the German tradition) emerged as a bridging discipline, mediating between the university and teacher education institutions. The university contributed a scientific knowledge base grounded in academic research, while professors also engaged in developing practice-oriented perspectives that acknowledged the experiential insights and interpretive understandings of teacher educators, school authorities, and practitioners.
Over the past decades, this shared responsibility of general education at universities and teacher education has shifted significantly. Teacher education has evolved into a scientific, evidence-based field, driven by its integration into universities in the late 20th century, and by substantial investment in research training during the last two decades (Elstad, 2023). Supported by the Research Council of Norway, teacher education programs have established their own doctoral programs (Smith, 2020), participated in general doctoral programs (Ludvigsen & Ulfsnes, 2013), and joined Nordic networks of collaborating institutions. In addition, specified doctoral programs in e.g. science education and philosophy have evolved in parallel, also supported by the Norwegian Research Council. These developments have repositioned general educational research as a core academic field within universities, introducing new disciplinary tracks and educational expectations for evidence-based practices, also for teacher education, while simultaneously diminishing general didactics/pedagogy as a key bridge between academia and schools.
For this reason, general didactics, once central to teacher education, seems no longer to hold the same authority among scholars in this research-driven context, although nuances also can be found by encouraging hybrid approaches (Smith, 2022). The change is a consequence of political strategies and academia itself, and their numerous efforts to change the scientific rationales and the division of labor between general educational sciences and teacher education as an institution and practice (Caspersen & Smeby, 2023). General didactics, appears to have lost some of its significance, not necessarily because of the research field itself, but because of an epistemic drift towards evidence-based knowledge in teacher education institutions. This shift is largely shaped by political strategies and academic reforms aimed at redefining scientific rationales and reorganizing the institutional division of labor between general educational sciences and teacher education as both institution and practice.
This article presents the historical trajectories of general and teacher education in Norway, traces the development and the disciplinary differentiation of doctoral education in Norway from its inception during the 1990s to the present, and examines how institutional and conceptual bridges have been re-constructed between the academic-scientific and practical knowledge domains. It finally concludes by discussing emerging implications of a more evidence-based approach for the field of pedagogy/didactics.
References:
Caspersen, Joakim, & Smeby, Jens-Christian. (2023). Research-based teacher education in Norway – a longitudinal perspective. International journal of educational research, 119, 102177. doi: 10.1016/j.ijer.2023.102177
Elstad, Eyvind. (2023). Teacher Education in the Nordic Region: Challenges and Opportunities (1st Edition 2023 utg.). Cham: Cham: Springer Nature.
Ludvigsen, Sten, & Ulfsnes, Kari-Anne. (2013). Forskerskoler som modeller for forskerutdanning: Progresjon og utvikling av ekspertise. Research schools as models for research education - progression and development of expertise, 36(4), 65-79. doi: 10.3402/uniped.v36i4.23144
Smith, Kari. (2020). Expansive learning for teacher educators-the story of the norwegian national research school in teacher education (NAFOL). Paper presentert ved Frontiers in Education.
Smith, Kari. (2022). Balancing teacher educators' researcherly and pedagogical dispositions - an example from Norway. Asia-Pacific journal of teacher education, 50(4), 328-342. doi: 10.1080/1359866X.2022.2073868
