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From 2017, the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) for primary and lower secondary school in Norway changed from a four years education on Bachelor’s level to five years Master’s programme. This study is a longitudinal research project, illuminating professional development of newly educated teachers with a Master’s degree and sustainability of knowledge from ITE in encountering the profession. The University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway, launched in 2010 a national pilot programme in teacher education: a five-year long research-based Master’s degree, from which the first students graduated in the spring of 2015. The data consist of interviews with 19 of the first 61 graduating students from the national pilot programme, conducted shortly after submission of their theses. I addition 12 students graduating in 2016 and 12 in 2017. The study has primarily a qualitative approach, but yearly surveys with the whole cohort will give additional data and a mix-method approach. Similar studies are conducted in both Norway and Finland.

The transition from education to employment is, for many graduates from professional study programmes, experienced as challenging. We will focus on whether having a Master’s degree and completing a more research-based teacher education may affect upcoming teachers’ professional identity and thus make this transition less challenging. In what way do the upcoming teachers with a Master’s degree describe themselves as “professionals”? What are their expectations to their initial years as teachers? How can we interpret this in relation to the current changes in ITE in Norway?

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