Developing teacher capacity to succeed with every pupil requires rethinking in Initial Teacher Education, ITE (McDiarmid & Clevenger-Bright, 2008). In Norway, as in many other European countries, there is a tension between the regulation for initial teacher education emphasis on creative and aesthetic learning approaches in all subjects and what the student teachers’ experiences in their study programs (Sæbø, 2005).  

Teaching requires teachers’ deep content knowledge, teaching skills, knowledge of students and child development, as well as a desire to learn and learning skills (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005).  The idea that learning occurs as a product of "transmission" of knowledge remains a common conceptualization of learning, although Norwegian and European school reform efforts continually attempt to move beyond the transmission model. This approach to learning has been questioned by sociocultural scholars who propose instead that learning is a process of transformation of participation in ongoing cultural activities (Rogoff 1990, 2003; Lave & Wenger 1991/2003). Learners engage collaboratively with others in the social world (Rogoff et.al., 2003), and art/drama based creative approaches to learning strongly link to socio-constructivism, include students as active participants when learning and can strengthen teachers teaching skills and students learning (Sæbø, 2009, Sæbø & Allern, 2010).  In European countries the research interest in creativity and aesthetic learning processes is growing (Austring & Sørensen, 2006; Craft, 2005; Fisher & Williams, 2004; Hohr, 2005; Sæbø, 2009). The quest for quality in art based teaching- and learning processes as decisive for students learning, is further researched in the UNESCO report “The Wow Factor” (Bamford, 2006). A national evaluation of teacher education programs in Norway (NOKUT, 2006) documented the need for ITE to strengthen relationships between colleges and field practice schools.

This paper examines how student teachers in ITE experience their training in drama as a creative and aesthetic learning approach in teaching and learning; as a combination of university study and field practice.

The research questions to answer this problem are:

How do student teachers experience that

- drama can help develop needed creative teaching skills?

- the drama training prepared them for the field practice in school?

- drama as a creative and aesthetic learning approach can help teachers to succeed in teaching and students to succeed in learning? 

The conceptual framework draws on:

-    the concept of creativityand aesthetic learning processes in education as a current focus, internationally trough “Road Map for Arts Education” (UNESCO, 2006),  “Education at a glance” (OECD 2009) and national trough “Creative Learning” (KD, 2007).

-          learning as a student active, creative and collaborative process founded on a socio-constructivistic concept of knowledge and learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991/2003; Sæbø, 2009)

-          research that suggest a positive coherence between creative aesthetic ways of learning and the learning outcome for all students and especially for the underprivileged (Fiske, 2002; Stevenson & Deasy, 2005).

-          research that documents that teachers do matter, and both what they do and how they do it matters for their students’ academic and social learning (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005; OECD, 2005).

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