Design for learning: teacher educators as policymakers?

Purpose Since 2017, partnerships between teacher education and schools have been prioritized to enhance competence development in Norway. In this context, teacher educators are tasked with designing different kinds of learning resources for schoolteachers. The study aims to shed light on the process of designing a learning resource for interdisciplinarity in schools, which is a core element of the National Curriculum LK20. Design/methodology/approach The participants in this study were three teacher educators who collaborated digitally over a period of 16 months. The data are based on transcripts of six of the 10 meetings and supplemented by notes and minutes. By using frame analysis as the theoretical framework, the analysis zooms in on the microprocesses that evolved during the collaboration and the course of the design process. Findings The findings show how the teacher educators framed interdisciplinarity in the learning resource and how they focused on reflexivity as a way to ensure robust competence development in schoolteachers’ praxes. The study also shows that without the opportunity to collaborate directly with the schoolteachers may have been regarded as local policymakers instead of partners in the learning process. These insights suggest that there was a gap between the goal of mutual benefit from the collaboration articulated in the decentralized strategy and the design realities with which the teacher educators were faced. Research limitations/implications This paper illuminates a partnership with minimal contact between teacher educators and teachers in schools. Other forms of cooperation will be able to show examples of competence development that, to a greater extent, form the basis for more equal partnerships. Also, the study does not pay attention to how partnerships or the design of the learning resource contribute to raising competence within teacher education. Practical implications The paper questions an approach to partnership where dialog and interaction between the partners are limited, and whether the design of generic learning resources can be accurate enough to contribute sufficient learning opportunities for schools without sufficient knowledge about the local context. Originality/value The paper shares explicit insight into teacher educators’ collaborative practices and processes of meaning making behind a learning design.