The Janus Face of Professional Knowledge: What Organizational Principles Are behind the Students’ Perceptions of Professional Knowledge in New Norwegian Teacher Education?

Abstract

Integration of theory and practice is the key element in the research on teachers’ professional knowledge. Traditionally, this topic has created a polarization between practical and theoretical knowledge. The reform in the new Norwegian teacher education has introduced a new and watered-down concept of knowledge and research-based knowledge in education. With the reform, conflicting perceptions have arisen of what we can understand with professional knowledge in teacher education. Based on Maton’s Legitimation Code Theory, and with examples from a study of students’ R&D papers, this paper sheds light on the conflicting concept of professional knowledge in new Norwegian teacher education. The paper refutes a generic concept of knowledge and argues that teachers’ professional knowledge is based on practices that are informed by specialized forms of knowledge in the subject area.

Does Today’s School/Education Respond to Society’s Needs and Expectations of Reality and the Future?

“…Very rapid scientific and technological progress, dynamic social and economic change, turbulent political life and ever-newer facts, events and phenomena in culture are factors that make it necessary to react and adapt to change. Thanks to lifelong learning, people can change their occupation (1) and the nature of their work, improve themselves professionally (Wołk, 2009), react to rapid social and technological changes and new phenomena in the world of culture (Szymański, 2013, p. 155;Bratland, 2019).…”

Epistemic and Nonepistemic Design in Textbooks in Social Studies for Lower Secondary School: Do the Textbooks Facilitate Knowledge Building and In-Depth Learning?

“…In-depth learning is a concept with a long history [18], but the concept has gained renewed relevance in the recent international reform wave, with the introduction of knowledge-based curricula in schools [2][3][4][5]. ese reforms can be seen as a reaction against outcomebased curricula, also referred to as neoliberal education reforms or 21st-century learning [7][8][9][19][20][21][22], which place crucial emphasis on generic skills and competencies. However, the research literature shows that the transition from 21st-century learning to knowledge-based curriculum reform is accompanied by several unresolved issues, including questions about what we can understand with knowledge in education and how skills and competence can be linked to knowledge, but also in the form of unintended results of new variants of "teaching to test," with reproduction of specified content knowledge [23].…”

Teacher students’ legitimation of teaching activities in the L1 classroom

“…Several contemporary empirical studies make use of LCT in order to analyze and redesign teaching and curricula in higher education (see for instance : Clarence, 2016;Gachago et.al., 2021;Maton & Chen, 2017;McKenna & Boughey, 2022;Rusznyak, 2022). The benefit of using LCT is the inclusion of both a theory of knowledge making it possible to confront challenges of enacting disciplinary pedagogies and working with specific bodies of knowledge (Bratland & Ghami, 2021;Winberg et al, 2020) and of the voice, or the gaze, of the actors of the teaching and learning process. The latter seems to be of particularly relevance in Humanities (Luckett & Hunma, 2014).…”