The development of teacher education is integral for maintaining the high quality of instruction in schools. The Ministry of Education and Culture has been funding for the past three years innovative and robust research-based projects that aim to develop teacher education. In the year 2018 the project “21st Century Skills, Multiple Literacies and Developing RE Teacher Education” was selected as one of such projects and was awarded 300 000 funding for 3 years (2018 – 2021).
For the past years teacher education has been developed in light of phenomenon and skills based learning. However, traditionally the Major studies of subject teacher have been devised to serve expertise on contents better than the actual task requirements of the subject teacher. The development of the education of the subject teachers as a whole is important as 4/5th of the academic studies of the subject teacher take place elsewhere than in teacher education.
Furthermore, as societies become more multicultural and pluralistic, the skills requirements with regards to religion and beliefs have become and are becoming more demanding. For instance, the RE teachers need skills for leading dialogue concerning religions and beliefs, and teaching about religious literacy as part of multiple literacies.
The comprehensive teacher education is to be evaluated and developed research-based and in collaboration with different actors while recognizing the viewpoints of the practitioners. This is what this project is about.
