The area of a research-based teacher education is an ongoing discussion internationally which reflects complexity and tensions. Key elements are educating student teachers in ways of thinking and acting that stem from the principles and methods of scientific works (Griffiths, 2004), and who have an inquiring attitude to teaching which will also characterize them as professional teachers (Toom, et al., 2010). This raises questions about the relationship between research and inquiry (Healey & Jenkins, 2009) and the compound for educational and professional matters. The following research questions were asked to reveal teacher educators` understanding and attitudes to a research-based teacher education: 1) How do teacher educators understand the purpose of R&D competence? 2) In what way do learning activities between subjects and arenas contribute to developing R&D competence? The informants are teacher educators in one of two cohorts followed by the project. The selection is highly restricted as 9 of 14 teacher educators in the cohort are randomly selected. Three group interviews have been conducted to collectively explore the research questions (Morgan, 1997; Kvale, 2001) and three teacher educators have participated in each of the interviews. The interviews have been carried out by two of the researchers in the TEQ21, who are both connected to other course studies at OsloMet. To take this into account the interviewers sought to have a distant position in the process of interviewing (Ulvik & Riese, 2016). The interviews were transcribed in verbum and a qualitative process of analyzing the transcriptions is in progress (Kvale 2001; Tavory & Timmermans, 2104). The first step of analyzing reveals some preliminary findings: There does not seem to be a shared understanding of the purpose of a research-based teacher education. Associations which emerge are mainly to an OECD-driven international research orientation in higher education and to ideas of a master`s degree as increasing the status of teachers. Research competence is described as research-based knowledge in subjects acquired through reading research articles and writing texts. There is an unclear conceptional understanding of development of competence, but it seems to be associated with acquiring a reflective stance. There are strong interests in positioning subjects, which emerge more as tensions between subjects than common commitment to a transdisciplinary research-based teacher education. There are interests in establishing meaningful collaboration with mentor teachers. On the other hand, mentor teachers are criticized for not having sufficient research-based knowledge in subjects.

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