Several national evaluations have pointed to severe challenges in Norwegian teacher education, particularly regarding fragmentation and disconnect to practice (Norgesnettrådet 2002, Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education [NOKUT] 2006, Lid 2013, Finne, Mordal et al. 2014, Advisory Panel for Teacher Education [APT] 2020). To meet these concerns, in addition to the restructuring reforms referred above, during the last years, several reforms have been implemented in Norwegian teacher education. At present, there are four main pathways to become a teacher in Norway. All pathways have a designated national curriculum, but common for all Norwegian teacher education is the emphasis on programs that are “integrated and relevant for the profession, and research- and practice-based” (i.e., national curriculum for 5-year integrated secondary master’s program (KD 2013). In this paper, we will focus on the University of Oslo which provides two of the national pathways to teaching in Norway, the 5-year integrated lower and upper secondary master’s program, as well as the one-year add-on program. In the time leading up to the reform, the programs at the University of Oslo met substantial critique from its candidates, echoing national and international critique on teacher education, and arguing it was too fragmented and disconnected to the profession. The critique was uttered in internal seminars and evaluations, but culminated in 2010, with several pamphlets in public university newspapers. Faculty at the teacher education program at the University of Oslo had been considering reforming the program, and a visit to iSTEP in 2010 provided the catalyst needed to begin the reform work. In the years leading up to reform, and through the reform implementation, faculty worked to redesign their overall program and its constituent parts. This included developing an international comparative research project looking at coherence and linkage to practice in teacher education. The group who attended iSTEP included faculty from pedagogy and subject didactics, teacher candidates, and school partners who jointly developed a pilot model for teacher education which was implemented in the fall of 2012. This process also served as a starting point for professionalizing teacher education. As a result of the iSTEP process, faculty developed the CATE study (Coherence and Assignments in Teacher Education) which was funded by the Norwegian Research Council in 2012-2017 and investigated eight teacher education programs around the world.

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