In teacher education, the meaning of being a competent teacher is seldom made a problem but rather assumed to be the consequence and final result of the education. It is taken as natural, that student teachers after having passed the exam are qualified, not only formally but also in reality, to be a competent teacher. But what about the fact that student teachers need support to develop an own professional identity, that works for them? By reason of teacher educators and supervisors earlier educations and despite long experience of teaching they can miss adequate tools for analysing and reflection. For sure, experiences can be strength, but as their teaching is based on earlier educations, it can also be fairly traditional. As it can be hard to have a critical mind to the reality you are a part of, the risk of conservation of old values and teaching methods can be high. Further more, there seems to be something missing between the theoretical courses and the practical periods during the teacher education. May be teacher educators and supervisors not are aware of the differences that will appear, when theoretical knowledge will be applied to practice? A first step for a modify can be that the ongoing social changes, which are mirrored in the society as well as in school and influence the teacher’s role as well as the opinions about what supports good learning, ought to be more focused in teacher education. During their practice periods student teachers are concerned with forming their new identities from being a student teacher to become a teacher. This is a very special process as student teachers are in the position of being both teachers and learners and to a high degree; they are in dependence of their relationships with their supervisors. Usually it is expected that the supervisors will support the challenging of student teachers` perspectives, enhance reflective and analysing attitudes and contribute to new constructions of thinking. To make that happen, student teachers ought to be encouraged to examine different aspects of teaching and learning in pedagogical terms, regarding to the current context. However, it is not uncommon that supervisors focus on teaching pupils instead of supporting their student teachers. That means that student teachers can be left on their own using the trail-and-error method.

By using different research methods in their studies, the researchers want to highlight the topic from different perspectives to get deeper understanding on what constitutes a professional teacher and how the gap between teacher education and the first time as a teacher can be overlapped. Results from interviews, questionnaires and literature studies, concerning teacher students and beginner teachers, will be presented in the symposium.

The results from these studies can contribute to increased interest of different methods for development of teacher education and the practice periods. Further more, as the work situation for novice teachers as well as factors that support their professional development will be focused, new directions for teacher education, supervisors and schools, that can contribute to novice teachers´ professional development and willingness to retain in school, can be found. From the results it is obvious that student teachers` opinions about a teachers` role and competence not always are in accordance with results that can be expected after they have passed their exam.