The transition from education to employment is experienced as challenging for many candidates from professional study programs. There are ongoing debates on how the relationship between theoretical and practical knowledge should be conceived and approached (Eraut 1994). In Norway, these debates have become particularly relevant for teacher education due to changes in structure and content within the teacher education programs.

Much of the international research on initial teacher education (ITE) has been preoccupied with how the instruction of teachers should be organized. According to Zeichner (2014), two different strategies have emerged: one is to strengthen the dominant university based system of ITE, whereas the other is to promote a greater deregulation and privatization with shorter teacher training routes taking place mainly in schools. The former has beem the prevailing strategy in Norway the past years, as opposed to earlier ITE, which was shorter and more practice based. (Brekke, 2010). Inspired by Finland, ITE in Norway will from 2017 be taught at Masters level (MA), extending to a five year program,

UiT, the Arctic University of Norway (UiT), launched a national pilot program in teacher education (Pilot in North, PiN) in 2010; a five-year long research-based MA, divided into two programs adjusted to the Norwegian educational system: 1st -7th and 5th – 10th grade. The first 61 students graduated in the spring of 2015. PiN adopted central elements and structural traits from the Finnish MA as it was established in 1979 (Hansén, Sjöberg & Eilertsen, 2014). Since establishment, Finnish ITE has kept to the same conventions, strongly emphasizing progressive development of research competence for students. A principle focus for PiN has been that research orientation and research knowledge can serve to support teachers’ professional skills and develop their abilities to make conscious use of adequate analytical tools in order to de-construct problems and re-construct solutions.

The purpose of the study is to investigate how the first Norwegian MA students experience practicing their profession in schools. The study is part of a five-year longitudinal research project, illuminating professional development of teachers at the beginning of their careers, and how their knowledge from ITE sustains and develops. Based on data from this first and the two following cohorts, the aim of the study is to investigate early career teachers’ (ECT) experiences of research-based teacher education in relation to the reality they meet early in their career.

Research questions:

-     How do ECTs experience that their research-based knowledge from ITE really is received in the professional community?

-     How do ECTs’ professional competence develop early in the career?

The study will attempt to explain how newly educated teachers with conceptual knowledge experience a work situation in which contextual knowledge is dominating (Muller, 2009, Afdal & Nerland, 2012). They are in a practice community where beginners have a peripheral position (Lave and Wenger, 1999). New concepts of teacher professionalism are constructed both by the government and from within the teachers’ union, and according to Mausethagen & Granlund (2012:805), “The government “emphasises teacher accountability, research-based practice and specialization. By contrast, the teachers’ union highlights research-informed practice, responsibility for educational quality and professional ethics”.

In focus here is how ECTs experience that their research-based knowledge foundation is received by the professional community. Based on empirical findings, and drawing on results from the Finnish MA program, we will discuss professional knowledge development in the encounter with professional employment. Although the Finnish research-based teacher education has received much praise, it has also been criticized (Hansen et al, 2012; Hökkä & Eteläpelto, 2014) for weighing social sciences heavier than the carrying out of own individual research (e.g. Heikkinen, Jokinen & Tynjälä, 2012).

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