Merging Traditions and Emerging Tensions

Abstract The development of teacher professionalism is contextualised in timely and spatial configurations. Historically educational policy and reforms have influenced the development of the teaching profession. In this chapter we discuss how educational policy and reforms in primary and secondary education and teacher education have influenced the construction of the teacher profession in Norway. We limit our examination of this policy—practice nexus starting from the end of the nineteenth century. In analysing policies and politics that have shaped developments of the teaching profession, we focus on three nexuses or connections crucial in any analysis of professional development: Policies influencing (1) the organization of arenas for professional development, (2) the steering, management and organisation of the professional field and occupational practice and (3) the professional knowledge, skills, and standards. We argue that different knowledge regimes in educational policy historically have influenced the construction of the teacher profession and laid foundations for new forms of differentiation within the teaching profession. To meet emerging tensions and new forms of differentiation, the challenge seems to be how teacher education can strengthen research-based and value-based professionalism and how teacher training can ensure that the profession is developing a coherent conceptual framework, a common language, a unified theory, an intellectual community, and a frame of reference for value-based and evidence-informed reflection and action.