This paper explores how digital competence and digital technology are addressed in Norwegian early childhood teacher education (ECTE). The aim is to provide a national overview of the ECTE institutions' programme and relevant course plans to identify how the preservice teachers are being prepared for their future professional life as digitally…

This article presents a study of an educational experiment conducted at the early childhood education programme at UiT, the Arctic University of Norway. As COVID-19 made social distancing an issue, the traditional practicum in kindergartens was moved to online platforms. Constructive alignment was used as an analytical framework to investigate the…

This paper is the first in a series of three studies that explore the pedagogy used in the Norwegian and Russian early childhood settings by examining texts that are part of the syllabus in two early childhood teacher education programs that participated in our project with student international exchanges. The study explores how Mikhail Bakhtin's…

Reform in higher education is on the agenda worldwide, and there is increasing political interest in the content of study programmes. This article looks at the policy process leading to the new national curriculum regulation (NCR) for kindergarten teacher education (KTE) in Norway in 2012. The following questions derived from Kingdon's Multiple…

Knowledge and skills in observation form part of the qualifications a kindergarten teacher needs to become a professional. In this article, I will focus on the theme of observation in kindergarten teacher education (KTE) in Norway. One of the largest educational institutions in the country is used as reference for this study. By means of document…

In this paper, the objective is to explore the area of pedagogy in the reform of kindergarten teacher education (KTE), which was implemented in 2013 in Norway. The data material is based on semi-structured interviews with 41 educators from six focus groups, and is analysed with a hermeneutical approach. The main findings is presented in three…

This partly descriptive, partly critically reflective, argumentative article analyses the Norwegian kindergarten teacher education program through the three concepts that are mentioned in its national guidelines: research-based, profession-oriented, and practice-related education. An inseparable correlation between these at the level of higher…

This paper reports on student experiences with an interdisciplinary project entitled "The Difficult Conversation", the aim of which was to develop professional competences linked with parental cooperation in heterogeneous social contexts, ethical reflection, pedagogical tact, and judgment skills. Student experiences with the project were…

This paper investigates an institutional practice of the educational conversation that is a part of the undergraduate kindergarten teacher education program at a Norwegian university. The formal goal connected to this practice is to facilitate students coping with their courses of study. Thus, this paper reconstructs the perspectives of the…

This article presents Norwegian and Croatian students' perspectives on conditions for their professional growth during undergraduate kindergarten teacher education. The data gathered through focus group interviews are theorized using the cultural-historical wholeness approach that identifies institutional conditions for the development of certain…

The purpose of this article is to carry out a critical inquiry of comparative education by using an example of a comparative programme within kindergarten teacher education in Norway. The article discusses the inclination, in cross-cultural comparative studies, to emphasise cultural essentialism, to evaluate educational practice from a…