The brief overview above of some trends in the research on teachers, teaching, and teacher education shows a field with diverse, broad, and manifold perspectives. It shows a movement and a paradigmatic shift from an emphasis on quantitative to qualitative research. It also displays a move from a focus on behavioral perspectives to more relational, contextual, and interpretive research. The research overview of the Finnish case gives an image of a systematically developed and structured research effort on teachers, teaching, and teacher education, which is closely related to trends in international research. There is a significant body of research on didactical issues, especially on the processes around teachers’ thinking and students’ learning. In the Norwegian case, more exploratory studies have been conducted, but there are fewer contributions to a systematized, scientifically developed body of research. However, it seems that there was an increase in profound research on teacher education in the 2000s.
The review of relevant research for approaching the context of influence in and for
teacher education, first and foremost, confirms a lack of conceptual, empirical, and
Work reviewed from the US shows, first, that the development of teacher education in not only happening in the official policy arena, but also in research and in the media. All of these arenas are asking diverse questions that influence teacher education, ranging from the attributes of teacher education and effectiveness to the knowledge basis and the outcomes. Secondly, the work of Cochran-Smith shows that rhetoric in politics is important for the development of teacher education, and that the development process of teacher education is particularly complex. Two main arguments are given in this review. First, there are many voices and perspectives that contribute to the national discussions and developments, and, second, there are strong international influences as well. This calls for further research that focuses particularly on the area of teacher education policy making. It also shows a need for comparative studies, where both national and international influences are made visible.
The review of research in the context of text production for teacher education shows that specific forms of curricula in higher education create different discourses in curricula. The review also describes different argumentations concerning what is regarded as important for the effectiveness of teacher education programs. The review also accounts for different conceptions of teachers’ relationships to knowledge, and of how these relationships ought to be understood. In sum, the review shows that the composition and organization of knowledge in teacher education curricula is complex and manifold, and that it varies greatly among different teacher education models. Comparative studies involving some of the Nordic countries show that different approaches, levels of analyses, and selection of cases for comparison provide different results and information about teacher education curricula content. It also shows that different teacher education programs hold different knowledge structures and legitimate knowledge in different ways. This review also indicates that there may be considerable differences in the selection and organization of knowledge in teacher education curricula internationally. The inclusion and construction of knowledge in teacher education curricula are not straightforward processes. In fact, the selection and organization of knowledge construct rather different teacher education curricula content, and, to some extent, different professional knowledge bases for teachers as well. To increase our understanding of teacher education, there is a need for more focused and detailed studies on specific aspects, such as the knowledge dimension, in teacher education curricula. Therefore, this thesis takes a closer look at curricula content, searching for differences in the composition and organization of knowledge. McEneaney and Meyer (2000) have, from an institutional perspective, developed an argument for global isomorphism in higher education curricula
form and content. This thesis, however, argues that there may be significant and important differences in how knowledge is organized in different types of teacher education programs.
The review of research on how teacher education matters in the context of teaching
practice reveals some elements that are important for the effectiveness of teacher education.
The review also reflects an increased interest in the knowledge dimension of teacher education. However, little research has been conducted that examines how differences in conceptual and epistemic orientations of teacher education programs actually manifest themselves in novice teachers’ professional orientations. Moreover, as the research on different types of educational programs and their implications is dominated by studies conducted in the US, it is not clear how they relate to a Nordic context or what a research- based or a general professional program would mean. What types of knowledge discourses actually emerge and guide novice teachers’ orientations at work remains an empirical question. The present thesis aims to contribute to filling this gap by examining how knowledge relations come to the fore in novice teachers’ stories and by discussing teachers’ knowledge affiliations in relation to differences in the epistemic profiles of their teacher education programs.
From this review, I will summarize three needs to which my research responds: (1) the need for more research on policy making for teacher education; (2) the need for more extensive research on epistemic relations and the organization of knowledge in teacher education programs and the effects of such, and (3) the need to study structures and relations and to include different perspectives of the educational system, influencing the process and content of constructing knowledge for the teaching profession. I also aim, in this thesis, to look into the complex mutual relationships between three specific contexts in the construction of knowledge for the teaching profession: between ‘the context of influence,’ ‘the context of text production,’ and ‘the context of practice.’
4 Analytical framework
The analytical framework in this study is developed with the aim of being able to account for both policy processes and the organization of knowledge in curricula and novice teachers’ relations to knowledge. The structure of this chapter is as follows. First, the ground for the analytical framework is prepared and delimited. Second, analytical concepts
concerning structures, actors, and rules in policy making (the basis for the analyses in article 1) will be elaborated. Third, the framework for approaching the organization of knowledge in teacher education curricula and novice teachers’ knowledge affiliation is provided (the basis for the analyses in articles 2 and 3). Fourth and finally, some cautious links are drawn between the different elements of the framework, focusing on the processual, relational, and contextual character of structures, actors, and rules in developing knowledge for the teaching profession.