Mediating Profession and Discipline

New challenges for teacher education

Abstract

With increased focus on grade school teachers as subject professionals as background, this article articulates and explores some of the challenges and responsibilities that disciplinary scholars of school subjects in a teacher education context face. Using narrative and phenomenological approaches to document analysis as well as qualitative analysis of empirical data from 16 university teacher educators, this article explores ways in which conflict between two teacher education cultures, the old and the ‘new’, can be managed productively to the benefit of teacher students in this new professional paradigm. The article illuminates some of the key conflicts rising from the ‘universitization’ of teacher education (Hudson, 2017), and also some of the ways in which divergent university cultures can support one another, within the context of teacher education in Norway but also with Nordic and international relevance.