Assessment of Pre-Service Teachers' Professional Development in Norwegian University-Based Teacher Education

The teaching practice is considered to be an essential arena for pre-service teachers’ professional competence development in university-based teacher education. According to Norwegian policy documents, assessment is a central principle of the teaching practice, with school-based mentor teachers conducting assessments of pre-service teachers learning and development for both formative and summative purposes. While assessment in the teaching practicum is meant to enhance and assess pre-service teachers’ professional competence development, we know little of what competencies mentor teachers and other teacher educations assess during the practicum. Recent reports show that perceptions of what professional competencies the teacher education should equip pre-service teachers with vary greatly among teacher educators. This study aims to empirically elaborate this knowledge.

Using an institutional ethnographic approach, this in-progress study explores the social organization of assessment and professional competence development from the standpoint of school-based mentor teachers. Through interviews and observations, I will investigate the mentor’s everyday work and experiences with assessing pre-service teachers’ practice. I seek to gain insight into mentors’ assessment knowledge, and the ruling relations of teacher education that influence and shape this knowledge. In a broader sense, the study aims to investigate what professional competencies the teacher education equips future social studies teachers with. In this presentation I will further discuss the implications the findings of the study can have on university-based teacher education, and the insights to be gained from using an institutional ethnographic approach in the field of teacher education research.