In Norwegian teacher education a new reform was initiated in 2017 aiming at developing what is called “Teacher Education Schools” (The Ministry of Knowledge, 2017). The aim is to develop professionally relevant teacher educations by strengthening the quality of student teachers’ placement periods and teaching practice in schools. Another aim is to stimulate cooperation on research and development, and to strengthen the professional relevance and quality of teacher education and the institutions.  Both previous experiences and methodological and epistemological arguments have long pointed towards a shift in this direction (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Eikeland, 2012a).

The regional education authorities in Oslo and Akershus and a group of researchers in the Department of vocational teacher education at the OsloMet University developed the Action research project LUSY (teacher education schools in vocational teacher education), aimed at developing vocational teacher education schools with three vocational upper secondary schools (VET), with funding from the Norwegian Research Council. The main aim for the project is to develop a binding and lasting cooperation between the schools and OsloMet to create the best possible vocational teacher education and VET. The intention is to form binding and lasting cooperative structures between VET and OsloMet University.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight and discuss what education practical teachers need in order to strengthen the quality and professional relevance of teacher education. The background is empirical examples from the action research project LUSY. Practical teachers (teacher trainer/supervisor) are teachers who guide teacher students in their pedagogical practice in schools.

The research questions are about the practical teacher's competence - what their work tasks need to be, what content is identified as necessary for the education of practical teachers, how the education is organized and how practical teacher education (supervisor training of practical teachers) can contribute to strengthening the connection between the educational institution and the field of practice in teacher education. The empirical results are based on experiences from planning, implementation, and assessment of a school-based practical teacher education (course) for schools and practical teachers who are participating in the LUSY-project.

A professionally relevant education can be defined as being characterized by a close coherence between content and tasks in the profession and the educational content. Such education is largely in accordance with the competence demands of the profession (Hiim, 2017; Sylte 2020). There’s a multitude of research indicating that insufficient professional relevance is a challenge in teacher education as well as in professional education in other areas. One of the reasons seems to be that collaboration between educational institutions and professional workplaces is not sufficiently developed (Canrinus et al., 2015; Heggen & Smedby, 2015; Hiim, 2013; Sylte, 2020; Young, 2004).

The project is based on a holistic, multi-dimensional understanding of knowledge where professional knowledge have many forms. Much research on VET is based on a concept of competence that is frequently defined as a holistic set of knowledge, skills and attitudes applied to solve specific tasks (Koenen et al., 2015; White Paper 28, 2015-2016).  However, the use of the concept of competence in VET is often unclear and varies (Lester & Religa, 2017). A main aim in the project is to show how professional knowledge is constituted, and how the organization of collaboration between educational institutions and fields of practice can be strengthened through the projects first innovation, the school-based practical teacher education.

Epistemological analyses of professional knowledge based on pragmatic approaches pose the theoretical framework of the project (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1987; Schön, 1983; Sennett, 2008). Connections between theories of professional knowledge, organizational learning, and professional didactics will be investigated (Eikeland, 2012a; Hiim, 2017; Sylte, 2020).

The project will mainly be carried out as action research, led by the authors of this paper. Action research means that research and development are integrated in social, organizational, or educational “experiments” or development projects (McNiff & Whitehead, 2006). The approaches to action research that will be used in this project are built on pragmatic and partly critical epistemology (Eikeland, 2012b; Hiim, 2010). Action research implies that knowledge is developed through collaborative and systematically documented processes of planning, carrying out, reflection and evaluation between teacher education institution, schools and companies. Action research requires voluntary participation by all people concerned in different phases of work. The research in the project as a whole is about developing practice-based knowledge about how cooperation between teacher education institutions and VET-schools can be organized to achieve a holistic, professionally-based education of vocational teachers, and what obstacles and opportunities are faced. An important goal is to develop and test an organizational and didactic strategy for cooperation between educational institutions and fields of practice more generally (Eikeland, 2012b). The aim of the project's first innovation, which this paper is about, is to develop knowledge about the organization and content of a school-based practical teacher education (course) that qualifies them and the school as a whole to contribute to strengthening professional relevance and holistic competence in teacher education. At the same time, the course should function as a meeting place where practical teachers and teacher educators can learn from each other's experiences and knowledge. The schools and the university were to work together to plan, implement, assess and further develop the course for both vocational teachers and general subject teachers who teach in vocational education in secondary school (VET). The course was organized with five sessions at one of the participating schools. Common understanding was to be developed and regular meeting places established for the practical teachers at the school, and teacher educators. The participants in the LUSY-project are the project management group consisting of two teacher educators/professors/authors and 12 teacher educator colleagues at the university. Around 140 teachers and managers from one of the participating schools are participating in the project's first innovation, which this paper focuses on. The project is organized in sequences with systematic planning, execution, evaluation, data collection and documentation. Documentation from the sequences (plans, logs, reports, students’ tasks etc.) will be the documentation basis in this paper.

Concerning development results, we expect new and more structured forms of collaboration between our vocational teacher education institution and VET-schools. The structures may concern collaboration between teacher educators and practice teachers. More structured cooperation is needed on placement periods in schools. The same goes for contents in vocational teacher education and VET. By development of these collaborative structures through the school-based course, our tentative results point to relevant knowledge of what the practical teachers` work tasks need to be, what content is identified as necessary for the education of practical teachers, how the education should be organized and how practical teacher education can contribute to strengthening the connection between the educational institution and the field of practice in teacher education. Our tentative results point to the necessity of a school-based course (15+15 ECTS) for practical teachers that focuses on guidance related to the development of comprehensive vocational teacher competence. This implies that the practical teacher facilitates the students gain experience with planning, implementing, and assessing teaching, and handling the challenges it entails. In addition, students need to learn what comprehensive vocational teacher competence involves, such as colleague collaboration, and school development through colleague guidance. This highlights the necessity of the teacher education school as a learning organization with qualified practice teachers where the school as a whole is responsible for the students' pedagogical practice together with the practice teachers. Collaborative structures for research and development projects are also necessary. The development- and research processes in the project as a whole and in this innovation will result in new practical results and documented knowledge on possibilities and challenges concerning collaborative structures and content between institutions of vocational teacher education and VET-schools.

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