Objectives and theoretical framework

The structure of teacher education must be clear and comprehensible to student teachers no less than to teacher educators and the mentors in the field because it helps to understand what teaching entails (Canrinus et al., 2019; Hammerness et al., 2014). A lack of coherence in teacher education between theory and practice in classroom teaching has been criticized (Darling-Hammond et al., 2005). It has also been argued that in the teacher education program, more emphasis is on introducing student teachers to different implementations of teaching methods than on giving them relevant support to practice and reflect on them for deeper learning and professional development (Grossman, Hammerness, & McDonald, 2009; Darling-Hammond, & Oaks, 2019). There is also an indication that mentors focus more on practical issues than on theories when mentoring students in the field practice (Steingrímsdóttir & Engilbertsson, 2018).

The teacher education in Iceland has gone through extensive changes the last years. In 2008 it became a five-year program for all school levels (Government of Iceland, 2019), grounded in a three year undergraduate program (B.Ed., BA or BS) added with two years M.Ed./MT graduate program. (University of Akureyri, 2023). Since 2019 a new law (no. 95/2019) allows for one teaching licence for all school levels. As the teaching profession is cross- disciplinary and consists of both theoretical and practical skills the teacher education is a combination of a theoretical courses and field work. The main part of the field practice is on the 5^th and last year of the studies with a contract with mentors/field schools.

Mentors serves an important role in building up a systematic approach and collaboration between teacher education programs (universities) and the schools (Bjarnadóttir, 2015; Steingrímsdóttir & Engilbertsson, 2018). Icelandic research has confirmed that mentoring can be a key factor in professional development. A significant increase has been in a number of teachers, completing courses in a mentoring program in Iceland. Hence, schools at all school levels  are in the process of developing a sustainable culture of mentoring for teachers’ students and NQTs (Svanbjörnsdóttir et al., 2020).

A questionnaire for teacher students, The Coherence and Assignment Study in Teacher Education (CATE) has been developed to better understand pedagogical aspect of teacher education and students’ perspective on the connection between courses/subject and preparation for the teaching profession. The questionnaire has been used in several teacher education institutions all over the world (Hammerness, et al., 2014). In 2021 the questionnaire was conducted in the two main teacher education programs in Iceland. The main results indicate that students find in general there is a rather good flow and coherence in their study programs and time to learn about teaching methods and enact teaching plans but few opportunities to practice and reflect on real classroom practice in their courses, as such a lack of coherence between theory and practice. To some extent they experience a lack of connection in the field practice to what they learned in their university courses (Gísladóttir et al., 2023). With the aim of understanding the lack of coherence in more detail, the University of Akureyri followed up on the results from the survey.

The objective of this paper is to present the preliminary findings from the study at the University of Akureyri lead by the RQ: How can the coherence between theory and practice in the teacher education be strengthened by further collaboration between different stakeholders?

The research is part of the QUINT research project https://www.uv.uio.no/quint/english/

The study is qualitative (Creswell, 2009) and was conducted through: • focus group interviews with students at the 5th year in the teacher education program, • individual interviews with mentors • individual interview with the project manager for field practice at the university and • overview of syllabus for handbooks and assignments for the field formulated by the teacher education faculty. 36 teacher students attended the program for future primary school teachers 2022–2023 and did their field practice in 31 schools all around the country in the autumn 2022. All of them got a mentor in their schools. The criteria for the sample were all those who had the B.Ed. background (total 13) and their mentors. They all participated. All the interviews took place on-line early year 2023, four focus groups interviews (with 3-4 students in each group) and 13 individual interviews with mentors. The focus group interviews lasted around one and a half hour and the individual interviews from 30 to 40 minutes. They were audio-recorded and transcribed with the consent of the interviewees, thematically analyzed based on Braun et al.’s six-step thematic analysis (2018), examined in context of the results of the CATE questionnaire (Gísladóttir et al., 2023) and the review of the syllabus/documents. The handbooks and assignments were reviewed regarding the learning goals and vision of the education.

Preliminary findings indicate that: • The project manager has the main responsibility towards the field practice in the teacher education program and has regular online meetings with students and mentors but does not visit the field. • That the collaboration between the teacher education and mentors/schools and the field practice can be improved and clarified. • Mentors are not aware of how the teacher education fulfil its role in linking theory and practice in university courses and vice versa, the teacher education (project manager) seems to need more insight in mentors and teacher students’ communication and enactment between theory and practice during the field practice. • The assignments and handbook from the teacher education have relevant information and focus on practical issues, as lesson video recordings, but some instructions and concepts in the handbook could be formulated more in detail for mutual understanding. • In some of the courses, according to students, the academics seems not regularly highlight the connection to the field towards the course subject and students doesn´t have assignments to practice on connected to courses in the long period of field practice at the last year. We expect to gain deeper understanding of students and mentors view on the connection between field practice and learning on campus to be able to strengthen the collaboration between institutions and set common goals for more coherence between theory and practice in the teacher education program. That is an important part for professional learning and development in teacher education.

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