Internationally, policy-makers emphasize so called evidence based practice in terms of “what works” to improve students´ learning. Efficient education is the new rhetoric, and builds on neo-liberal discourse (Haugen & Hestbek, 2012). In such manner international trends are characterised by strong instrumental focus on teaching and learning (Haugen, 2009, Cochran-Smith, 2012), and teachers` are understood as the key factor, and to be held accountable for student achievement (Cochran-Smith, 2012).

In Norway a lot of attention is given to teachers´ life-long-learning. Nowadays, specific attention is given to how teachers can improve students´ learning outcomes through better classroom management.  Teaching can be based on both practical knowledge and theoretical/research-based knowledge, which may build on different ideas of teacher professionalism.

Bernstein (2000) describes how different forms of knowledge are realised within different discourses, described as horizontal or vertical. Horizontal discourse refers to what can be understood as everyday knowledge or common sense (common as it applies to all). In the context of teacher education, this refers to the knowledge teachers first of all gain through experience. The knowledge of a horizontal discourse is “contextually specific and context dependent, embedded in on-going practices, usually with strong affective loading, and directed towards specific, immediate goals, highly relevant to the acquirer in the context of his/her life” (p. 159). 

Vertical discourses can be described as the opposite of horizontal discourses, as they are coherent, explicit, have a systematically principled structure and are described as either hierarchically organised (as in the natural sciences, searching one truth) or as a series of specialised languages (as in the social sciences or humanities). A vertical discourse with hierarchical knowledge structures “attempts to create very general propositions and theories, which integrate knowledge at lower levels, and in this way shows underlying uniformities across an expanding range of apparently different phenomena” (p. 161). A metaphor for describing this knowledge form is the pyramid.

Vertical discourses with horizontal knowledge structures on the other hand “consist of a series of specialized languages with specialized modes of interrogation and criteria for the construction and circulation of texts” (p. 161). Examples of such knowledge forms are the social sciences and humanities. In sociology, for example, different “languages” are functionalism, post-structuralism, Marxism and so on.  When describing development in the two structures, development in a hierarchical knowledge structure means to create theory which is more general than previous theory. In a horizontal knowledge structure, it is impossible to create a more general theory, as this structure is based on different languages consisting of “different and often opposing assumptions, with each language having its own criteria for legitimate texts, what counts as evidence and what counts as legitimate questions or a legitimate problematic” (p. 162).

In this context I will analyze what knowledge discourses Norwegian key policy documents are built on. My problem statement is: What knowledge discourses can be identified in Norwegian education strategies. How do they relate to different ideas of teacher professionalism?

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