Institutions of formal education in Europe are characterised by increased cultural and linguistic diversity when it comes to the student population. Considering that such a trend is only expected to grow due to transnationalism and globalisation, teacher education programs must be continuously re-evaluated and redesigned in order to remain relevant and responsive to sociodemographic changes. More specifically, teacher education programs must be able to prepare teacher candidates to work effectively with heterogenous groups of students in ways that support the learning of all students and affirm their identities within growing neoliberal and neoconservative discourses (Alford, 2014). In Norway, classroom composition has also become more diverse, primarily due to a higher number of students of a transnational background, whether through forced or voluntary immigration (Hilt, 2017). Indeed, this and other pressing trends have been identified by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research (2018) in a report titled Teacher Education 2015: National Strategy for Quality and Cooperation in Teacher Education that includes key areas for the improvement and development of teacher education in Norway.

            This paper explores teacher candidates’ experiences of preparation for the changing nature of the teaching profession that is informed by increased student diversity. The guiding question for this paper is as follows: What are teacher candidates’ perceptions and experiences of the preparation they receive from their Norwegian teacher education programs in relation to teaching in diverse classrooms? To answer this question, this paper draws on a case study with four teacher candidates from a teacher education program at a Norwegian institution of higher education. A conceptual discussion of some of the fundamental tenets of a socially responsive teacher education program will be presented by considering Darling-Hammond’s (2006) conceptual work on teacher education. This includes two main areas: the “what” and the “how” of teacher education.

            In the first area, the focus lies in knowledge on the part of (future) teachers that is tied to the improvement of the learning experiences of students. This includes knowledge about learners, how they learn in different contexts, what the curriculum constitutes of in terms of content and expectations, and what teaching skills should be prioritised to teach the content to students of diverse backgrounds, in diverse situations, and with different needs. The second area goes beyond simply the design of a teacher education program in terms of course selection and sequence. Opportunities for teacher candidates to integrate, reflect upon, and apply their knowledge continually and meaningfully in the classroom are of great consequence for how and why teacher candidates become teachers.

            This paper will also present a review of the Norwegian context of (teacher) education. Subsequently, the methodological design of the study will be introduced. This paper is concluded with a discussion of the findings and their implications for teacher education programs in Norway and similar contexts.

This case study is part of a larger project with teacher candidates enrolled specifically in language teacher education programs for the secondary and upper secondary grades (Norwegian: lektorutdanning i språkfag). Following ethics approval by the national research council, participants were recruited through an email invitation. The invitation was distributed to the main student organisation associated with the teacher education program at East School (pseudonym). Four students were invited to participate considering the research aim of understanding experience in-depth and the research design of describing personal experience richly (Frankel & Devers, 2000) in a manner that was also manageable in terms of the volume of data. The students were chosen on the basis of their year of study, thereby presenting an overall distribution of experience across the years constituting teacher education program: from years 1, 2, 4, and 5. All participants were studying to become teachers of English. The small sample and the case study design are not meant to generate generalisable findings. For three months in 2022, two semi-structured interviews in English were conducted with each participant. Semi-structured interviews were employed to ensure that topics of concern were explored, while simultaneously allowing the conversation to lead to other topics (Richards, 2009). Each interview lasted approximately one hour and consisted of topics related to becoming a teacher (e.g., interests, educational background, representations of the teaching profession) and completing a teacher education program in Norway (e.g., course load and content, expectations, challenges). All interviews were transcribed and read multiple times by the researcher for familiarisation. A process of thematic coding (Braun & Clarke, 2012) was then employed to identify units of meaningful data, which were coded descriptively. The coded data were subsequently grouped thematically within each participant’s transcribed interview, thus helping to create a “profile” for each participant. Themes reflected key topics of previous research literature or emerged organically through the analysis. The analysis was concluded by reviewing themes common across participants’ interviews, or in other words, across all students’ experiences.

Generally speaking, but to differing degrees, all students reported being satisfied with many aspects of their teacher education program. However, the analysis of interview data pointed to three overarching categories whose findings directly answer the guiding question for this paper. These categories will be reviewed individually in this paper, but are interconnected in relevance. The first category illustrates the students’ overall experiences and perceptions of learning subject content in the teacher education program. The students reported encountering a superficial presentation of course content while not having enough opportunities to engage with it meaningfully and collaboratively. The second section focuses on topics related to the practicum: it demonstrates that students felt unprepared for the practicum by lacking guidance and training in how to connect and identify concepts and situations previously learned in their courses. The final section reveals the need for better intercultural training from a pedagogical perspective. The students reported not knowing how to work with cultural and linguistic diversity and expected more intercultural training from their program. This paper contributes to the ongoing research and discussion revolving around teacher education programs in a time of increased diversity. It is of particular relevance to institutions facing challenges in how to better prepare and retain teacher candidates in programs of teacher education in Norway and abroad. This paper offers theoretically and empirically-informed insight into areas of improvement so that teacher education programs can remain relevant and responsive to society.

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