Fall is officially here in Oslo, and that means it’s time to share pictures of autumn in Oslo to make the pumpkin-spice-latte-drinking, Taylor-Swift-Folklore-Album-obsessed, Halloween-cheugy-crowd jealous. See below.
With the crisp autumn air and steadily decreasing amount of daylight, I’ve adopted some of the hygge (cozy) approach that Americans admire so much about the Scandinavia: wrapping myself in heavy blankets to watch The West Wing for the umpteenth time, enjoying gatherings at the dinner table with a few new friends and too many bottles of wine, and sitting down in a coffee shop to read a good book. Most recently Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time - who knew spider feminism would be so compelling?
I’ve also come to understand the Norwegian phrase, ‘’Det finnes ikke dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær!’’ which translates to ‘’There is no bad weather, only bad clothes!’’ Waterproof jackets, multiple layers, and wool are daily essentials for a blissful hiking trip or evening out on the town with friends.
The street I live on in the St. Hanshaugen neighborhood.
Fun with Fulbrighters at Oktoberfest Oslo!
Hiking with friends near Sognsvann
Graveyard near my apartment.
The fall colors are quite stunning here.
The changing weather comes at a convenient time as I’m beginning to feel settled here in my home for the year, and while making progress on my research feels ever more urgent.
Digging into the research
I mentioned in my first post about why I’m in Norway for my research, but there’s a bit more to why being here right now is important. I explained how the country introduced sweeping reforms to teacher education that stand in stark contrast to the educator-preparation landscape in my home state of Texas, and a key assumption of my research is that there will be policy recommendations I can bring back to the states. But what exactly did Norway do? What were their goals? Why is now the right time to be here, and why couldn’t I do this from an office in the US? And how do I plan to gather the information to evaluate the impact of these policies?
Norway introduced these reforms in 2017 with three primary goals:
Improve the quality of teacher preparation
Elevate the professional status of teaching, and
Make teacher education more attractive and improve retention.
To accomplish these goals, these policy reforms included a number of specific actions that took place in the Norwegian government, universities, and public schools. Some of the biggest changes included raising entry criteria for admission to teacher education programs, redesigning coursework to have a more rigorous foundation in theory and practice, and requiring students to complete a five-year integrated master’s degree program for most teaching positions. These changes made Norway’s teacher education program one of the most rigorous and longest pathways to becoming a teacher in the world. They’re also influenced by a historical and political context marked by international rankings and increasingly neoliberal reforms.
For my research, I ask the question ‘’What implications do Norway’s recent policy reforms to teacher education have on the retention, attrition, and preparation of new teachers?’’ Part of why this is such an opportune time to be physically present in Norway is that the reforms were instituted in 2017, which means that the first cohort of teachers graduating from the new five-year integrated master’s programs just completed their first year in the classroom. I’ll spend the month of January interviewing teacher candidates, new and veteran teachers, administrators, teacher educators, researchers, and policymakers, and then conduct a qualitative analysis to identify potential policy recommendations.
For this year, I’m working with Dr. Inga Staal Jenset in the Institutt for lærerutdanning og skoleforskning (Institute for Teacher Education and School Research) at the University of Oslo (UiO). While most of the researchers here are focused on schools and teachers, Inga’s research is unique in that she examines teacher education itself, investigating how certain practices might lead to better-prepared teachers. She’s also a gracious and patient advisor, and I’m so fortunate to learn from her expertise and wisdom.
As part of my stay here, the department extended an invitation for me to join the SISCO research group, which much to my dismay is not named after the American musician who sang a popular early 2000s song about undergarments, but instead is an acronym for Studies of Instruction across Subjects and Competences. I apologize to all the millennials and Gen-Xers reading this who now have that song stuck in your head. SISCO is composed of faculty and PhD students working on a number of fascinating projects, many of which utilize years of video data they’ve collected from hundreds of classrooms around Norway. Every two weeks, we gather together and a member of the group presents their current project while it is still in progress. The team then interrogates the research by tearing apart assumptions, pushing back on claims, and posing questions the presenter may not have considered. While all of this might sound antagonistic, the whole affair is quite collegial and built on shared trust, and the team is working diligently to build an international reputation for research of the highest quality. I learn so much from these discussions, and have so far successfully resisted the ‘‘maybe I should do a PhD’’ train of thought.
SISCO research group meeting.
I’m still in Phase I of my research, spending most of my days in the office reading any book, article, or government document I can find that explores teacher education in Norway.
View from my office across the main square at UiO.
The office I share with two other PhD students at the Institute.
Norse nibbles
Last month was election season in Norway, and I was most struck by the practice of Skuleval. Skuleval is the national system of school elections held by the Norwegian Ministry of Education since 1989, but has its roots in Norway since the end of WWII.
During Skuleval, almost 400 high schools across the country participate in a mock election (about 70% of the total number of high schools). In the weeks leading up to the election, students engage in political discussions, learn about democracy, and gain knowledge about political trends. The results of this election are then shared on the news, and give important insight about the views of future voters. In the US, it is a common practice for individual high schools and sometimes middle schools to host their own mock elections in presidential years, but the level of national coordination in Norway puts the US to shame.
Source: https://sikt.no/skolevalg
This year, the center-right Høyre party and the right-wing populist party Fremskrittspartiet (Progress Party) gained significant ground, up 20% from the last election. The gains in right-wing votes mirror those of adult voters as nationalism and populism are gaining ground in the West.
While Norwegian politics certainly differ from those in the US in many foundational ways, but here are a few important insights:
The colors are opposite: Left-leaning parties are red, and right-leaning parties are blue
Major Parties: there are two major parties, Arbeiderpartiet (Labour Party) and Høyre (Conservative Party). Together however, these parties occupy less than 50% of the vote, so they have less power than Democrats and Republicans in the US.
Other Parties: The parliamentary system leads to more types of political parties, with a few interesting idiosyncrasies:
There is a party called ‘’Venstre’’ that literally translates to ‘’left,’’ but they’re really a center-right party in Norway.
Some of the parties form to address a singular issue, such as the Pasientfokus (Patient Focus) party.
Youth Parties: Most political parties have a youth party as well, who play a major role in putting on the Skuleval.
When talking about youth parties and youth political engagement in Norway, you shouldn’t ignore the terrorist attack on Utøya island in 2011. On July 22nd, a right-wing white nationalist disguised as a police officer targeted a summer camp of children from the Arbeidernes ungdomfylking (Youth Labour Party), killing 69 and injuring 66, most of whom were children. One survey found that 1 in 4 Norwegians knew someone affected by the attacks. If you are ever in Oslo, I encourage you to visit the July 22nd Center, a museum dedicated to telling the story of the survivors and educating visitors about the origins of this horrific attack.
July 22 Center in Oslo, where they have a gallery of all the front page stories from newspapers around Norway and Europe.
The timeline of events on July 22nd. The museum also has a number of other powerful galleries, sobering video interviews with survivors, and expert educators who facilitated a great session for our group from UiO.
Many of the children killed that day would now be leaders in the Labour Party, which just lost significant ground to the more right-wing parties. I wonder how things would be different in Norway if their voices were still here.