ResearchArticle
The Icarus Effect Rephrased: Range of Semantic Gravity and
Forms of Knowledge in New Norwegian Teacher Education
Erik Bratland and Mohamed El Ghami
Faculty of Education and Arts, Nord University, 8700 Nesna, Norway
Correspondence should be addressed to Mohamed El Ghami; mohamed.el-ghami@nord.no
Received 29 March 2021; Revised 28 June 2021; Accepted 17 July 2021; Published 24 July 2021
Academic Editor: Eddie Denessen
Copyright © 2021 Erik Bratland and Mohamed El Ghami. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons
Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
In the 2000s, several major education reforms have been implemented in Norway. e reform in the teacher education is heavily
inspired by the Finnish model, with introduction of a new research-based content, with the aim of developing a new type of
professional knowledge, as a basis for teachers’ professional practice. Drawing on Maton’s Legitimation Code eory, this paper
explores the tensions in the new Norwegian teacher education, between knowledge and ways of knowing, by examining students’
practices, expressed in students’ research and development papers in the new teacher education. e paper refutes a one-di-
mensional concept of experience-based practical knowledge in the teacher education and argues that professional knowledge is
based on practices that are informed by specialized and theoretical knowledge.
1.Introduction
e school and teacher education in Norway and the Nordic
countries have for a long time been characterized by a special
type of reform pedagogy. is pedagogy, also referred to as
progressive pedagogy, has major implications for the or-
ganization of the learning processes and for the perception
of knowledge in education [1–3]. e reform pedagogy’s
ideas about learning and knowledge can be characterized as
reflecting what Maton called a “subjectivist doxa” [4], which
finds decisive inspiration in various learning theories, not
least constructivism, and where knowledge is basically un-
derstood as mental processes “in the head of persons” (see
[5] (pp. 1)). In recent decades, the hegemony of the pro-
gressive pedagogy in schools and teacher education has been
strongly challenged [6, 7], which is particularly associated
with the introduction of international large-scale surveys in
Norwegian schools: Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA), Trends in International Mathematics
and Science Study (TIMSS), and Progress in International
Reading Literacy Study (PIRILS). ese large-scale surveys,
which were initiated by international organizations such as
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), herald a new era for the Norwegian
education system. e results of the large-scale surveys, and
in particular the PISA surveys, gave legitimacy to significant
changes in Norwegian education policy in the early 2000s,
with subsequent reforms in schools and later in teacher
education. e conversion of the Norwegian teacher edu-
cation to a five-year master’s education received decisive
impulses from Finland, a country that can show good results
in the international PISA surveys [2, 8]. In the same way as
the Finnish model, the new Norwegian five-year teacher
education will emphasize a scientific and research-based
content, with the aim of developing a new type of profes-
sional knowledge, which will provide a new foundation for
teachers’ teaching practices in schools.
e new five-year teacher education was launched in
2017, and so far, there is limited research on the effects of the
new five-year teacher education in Norway. As mentioned,
the reform introduces a new scientific and research-based
foundation for students’ professional practice. A central
research focus is related to the question of students’ un-
derstanding of knowledge in the new teacher education, and
whether knowledge is reduced to knowing in students’
knowledge practices. Based on Maton’s Legitimation Code
Hindawi
Education Research International
Volume 2021, Article ID 9982339, 7 pages
https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/9982339