The pupose of this research is to give an insight into the experience of participants of a new specially organized masters program for B Ed teachers with full authority to teach in compulsory schools. For the first time the University of Iceland offered such a program in fall 2015. According to official directives it was defined as education on a second higher education cycle including a Master´s degree and a research project of 30 ECTS. During the 2015-2016 schoolyear 35 participants signed in and started the program. Before that a survey had been conducted among practicing primary and lower-secondary teachers where 750 participants gave answers to questions about such this  educational offer and 78% said they were interested in the program. Among reasons they gave, were that  they wanted to strengthen their professional status, become more qualified in their professional environment and increase their possibities of promotions in their work. According to the results of the survey the teachers were interested in promoting their professional knowledge regarding ICT, general literacy, mathematical literacy and science literacy. Furthermore they wanted to attend courses about assessment and testing, arts and crafts in compulsory education and finally they wanted to promote their professional performance as class teachers in inclusive education.

The presenter of this paper was among the organizers of the new program. Among the first problems dealt with was how to adjust this new program to the prescibed learning outcomes in the MEd program for general teacher education. Another concern was the fact that most of the students had not attended academic education for some time so they were certainly not as well prepared as the ordinary student attending teacher education. Finally the organizers had to consider the university´s policy in adopting the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) stressing defined competences regarding teachers learning oucomes with respect to praxis and theory (SGSR, 2010). According to them we see teachers first as serving the society effectively (effective teachers) and secondly as professionals basing their work on beliefs and personal theories (reflective practitioners), thirdly as researching their own working conditions (enquiring teachers) and finally as impetuses of development and change (transformative teachers).

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