As researchers in teacher education institutions we are
facing
ideological and
economic
shifts involving
restrictions on
the possibilities of influencing
themes and
methodologies for research projects

Braathe, Hans Jørgen

Otterstad, Ann Merete

Open Digital Archive at Oslo and Akershus University College

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RESEARCH BASED TEACHER EDUCATION; DISCURSIVE 
POSITIONING OF TEACHER EDUCATORS IN NORWAY 
Hans Jørgen Braathe and  Ann Merete Otterstad 
Oslo and Akershus University College 
As researchers in teacher education institutions we are facing ideological and 
economic shifts involving restrictions on the possibilities of influencing themes and 
methodologies for research projects.  
BACKGROUND 
Over the last two decades there have been political discussions on the quality of 
teacher education in Norway, both for schools and for Early Childhood Education 
and Care (ECEC). This has resulted in a new specialised teacher education for 
primary and lower secondary school implemented from 2010, and a new revised 
teacher education for ECEC, starting in 2013. One common aspect is that a greater 
focus is placed on rhetoric’s around a research based education. Our proposed 
project is investigating the term research based education and how this conception is 
positioning teacher educators as researchers. We have previously, through document 
analysis, examined ideological underpinnings for these new teacher education 
reforms (Braathe, 2012) and have found that travelling neo-liberal discourses been 
taken up, merged and transformed in relation to the Norwegian egalitarian school and 
kindergarten traditions. 
THE GOVERNANCE TURN 
Ozga (2008), and others, have pointed to the emerging new neo-liberal governance 
and defined it as a shift “from centralised and vertical hierarchical form of regulation 
to decentralised, horizontal, networked forms” (p. 266). The new governance 
produces a range of sophisticated instruments for the steering of education policy; 
standardisation, quality benchmarking, and data harmonisation. Governance shades 
into governmentality, particularly here, in our project, through attendance to the 
interdependence of governing and knowledge production of mathematics education. 
The new governance promotes the collection and use of comparative data on 
performing as a way of controlling and shaping behaviour of students and educators. 
These regulatory mechanisms “act as ‘political technologies’ which seek to bring 
persons, organisation and objectives into alignment” (p. 266). 
Norway is strongly influenced by this turn in governance by international 
comparative studies and by the European harmonisation programs like for example 
the Bologna Accord. In this process education has been translated into learning. This 
transformation of the field of education is happening at the level of populations and 
institutions through the reshaping of the old institutions of schooling and post-
compulsory education and their replacement with designs for lifelong learning 
(Braathe & Otterstad, in press). It is happening at the level of knowledge 
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management and knowledge production and policy making, including the steering of 
research, and “it is happening through the new connections between governing and 
the creation of new political instruments that are devoted to the creation of data and 
to constant comparison of data about performance” (Ozga, 2008, p. 267). 
Ozga (2008) also points to three key elements in this process that have direct bearing 
on the research quality relationship on which we are focusing. They are data, 
comparison and the role of experts. In this logic there can be no quality without 
comparison, and data become the resource for comparison. Ozga claims that “Experts 
develop the new political technologies through which comparison is made possible” 
(p. 267).     
THE QUALITY ERA 
Norway entered the Quality era in educational policy influenced by travelling neo-
liberal discourses during the 1990’s (Braathe 2012). One important influence and 
driving force was Norway’s participation in the PISA international comparative 
studies. Following Ozga (2008), PISA is one of the most influential representatives of 
the political technologies. PISA results for Norway were mediocre both in Reading, 
Mathematics and Science. Since then quality of the educational system has appeared 
in all discourses from Kindergarten to University studies, mathematics education has 
received special interest. Research in mathematics education in Norway has during 
the last ten years directly addressed aspects of quality, producing data for 
comparison, either qualitative or quantitative (Hopfenbeck et al., 2012). Increased 
focus on mathematics education research is based on the identification of 
shortcomings in current practices. This has resulted in implementation of new 
approaches, which are frequently accompanied by a conceptualisation of ‘progress’ 
as moving towards an ‘ideal’ or improved state of affairs (Tzur et al., 2001). Recent 
policy in Norway aimed at educational improvement prioritises the development of 
high quality teaching as a means of addressing perceived underperformance in the 
school system. 
In 2008 the Government put forward a Strategic Plan for Educational Research 
(Ministry of Education, 2008). In this, the Government is taking up the language of 
the governance turn, identified by Ozga (2008). The point of departure for the new 
strategy is that “[w]e know that the learning in school is too low, and that the 
students’ abilities in reading, writing and mathematics is reduced, [and w]e know that 
student teachers do not get good enough knowledge on how they as teachers shall 
find, evaluate, and make use of results from educational research.” (Ministry of 
Education 2008, p. 4, our translation). Additionally, these rhetorical questions are 
asked: “Are we using the resources well enough?… Do we get enough out of the 
economic investments?” (p. 4, our translation). As an answer the government put up 
some priorities as a strategy for resolving these political challenges: 
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The Government wants to: 
 Strengthen and prioritise research where the traditions are weak in Norway, such 
as effect-research, longitudinal studies, and empiric research based on 
quantitative data. 
 Follow up work with data on individual students. 
 Strengthen the scientific competence on pedagogical measuring by establishing a 
unit for psychometric research. 
 Consider if it, within the regulations for buying research assignments, is 
appropriate to prioritise some research environments to build specific research 
competencies. (Ministry of Education 2008, p. 14, our translation) 
In addition, the universities and colleges engaged in research shall disseminate the 
results that lead to innovation and value creation, based on these. Politicians require 
that educational institutions shall provide updated research. In teacher education this 
means that the kindergarten and the school, as fields of knowledge, are challenged 
more than ever both in content, and in methodological and theoretical perspectives. In 
this official publication politicians require that research contributes to performance, 
innovation and value creation by signalling that teacher education institutions shall 
become accountable for this.  
Such a shift is perceived to stand in contrast to individual researchers’ ‘research 
interests’, possibly because education research can be said to have been driven out of 
researchers' autonomy and a tradition of democratic right to free research. This 
discursive shift creates some dilemmas, such as concerns about the research to be 
controlled from above and/or the research ethics guidelines for educational research 
to follow.  
METHODOLOGY  
Our project is based on documents like governmental White papers, strategic 
research-political documents both governmental and from the Norwegian Research 
Council, as well as evaluation reports on educational research in Nordic contexts, as 
text-based data for analysis. A general remark to the content of public publications is 
that they come with recommendations for investment in strategies for qualitatively 
good research, ie the strengthening of research communities at teacher training 
institutions. In addition, emphasis is placed on the findings that students during their 
studies do not get enough knowledge about teacher educators’ research projects. We 
want therefore to investigate discursive formations of qualitatively good research 
articulated in these documents in relation to the new political technologies pointed to 
by Ozga (2008).  
By analysing education policy texts on research-based teacher education from 
discursive perspectives, this means that we look at education as a language-based 
community. A language-based community consists, according to Foucault (2005) of 
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the practices or discursive regularities contributing to individual research perspectives 
getting dominant position of power. Texts and text sections can serve as active 
participants, here related to national regulations for teacher training and knowledge 
and selected documents. Documents with its text, add premises for discursive 
production of research-based teacher education. We use Foucault’s discursive 
thinking by looking critically for production of research power and research 
knowledge. Foucault argues that the statement can be read as discursive regularities. 
By examining specific methodological concepts regarding research in mathematics, 
we track some regularly discursive units/formations in the text material through the 
statements used. We are looking in the texts for surrounding linguistic designating 
nodal points, to look for patterns that help to create a certain discursive order around 
the selected concept, here mathematics education research projects. A discursive 
order of thinking implies a monitoring role and a position of power. This means that 
when the research-based teacher education is written into the documents, there is a 
diversity of actors and networks embedded in maths research that are keeping track 
of discourses on which research is in dominant positions. It is the different players we 
are interested in identifying in this project.  
REFERENCES  
Braathe, H.J. (2012). Discursive positioning in Norwegian teacher education: Shifting 
from cross-curricularity to skills-based subject specialisation. International 
Journal of Educational Research, 55, 26-36.  
Braathe, H.J., & Otterstad, A.M. (In press). Lifelong Learning as Enactment for 
Education in Norway: ‘From cradle to grave . . .’ Procedia Social and Behavioural 
Sciences, Elsevier. 
Foucault, M. (2005). Vidensarkæologien. Århus: Philosophia. 
Hopfenbeck, T.N., Kjærnsli, M., & Olsen, R.V. (2012). Kvalitet i Norsk skole. 
[Quality in the Norwegian school] Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. 
Ministry of Education (2008). Kunnskapsdepartementets strategi for 
utdanningsforskning. Kunnskap for kvalitet 2008-2013. [The strategy of Ministry 
of Education for educational research. Knowledge for quality 2008-2013.] 
Retrieved on 20 August 2012 from 
http://www.regjeringen.no/upload/KD/Vedlegg/Forskning/Utdanningsforskning/St
rategi_for_utdanningsforskning_F_4250_2010.pdf  
Ozga, J. (2008). Governing Knowledge: Research steering and research quality. 
European Educational Research Journal, 7(3), 261-271. 
Tzur, R., Simon, M., Heinz, K., & Kinzel, M. (2001). An account of a teacher’s 
perspectives on learning and teaching mathematics: implications for teacher 
development. Journal of Mathematics Teacher Education, 4(3), 227-254. 
 


Research based teacher education; discursive positining's of teacher educators in Norway.

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Research based teacher education; discursive positining's of teacher educators in Norway.

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