Envisioning Norwegian teacher education for public good professionalism: a curriculum policy analysis

Teacher education (TE) policy is often caught between preparing teachers as agents of social change and a narrow ‘teacher effectiveness’ paradigm. This article examines this tension in Norway, where egalitarian traditions meet global neoliberal accountability discourses. Analysing the pivotal Norwegian TE curriculum policy document, Stortingsmelding nr. 11 (Minstry of Education and Research, 2008–2009), the study uses the Public Good Professionalism (PGP) framework as an analytical lens to assess the extent to which the policy enables the development of teachers as transformative public good professionals. We employ an AI-assisted deductive content analysis using a multi-coder ensemble of nine GPT-4 assistants configured with diverse parameters (temperature and top_p) to provide a parametric stress-test of the coding scheme. Findings reveal a significant discrepancy between stated social equality goals and substantive content. Capabilities explicitly addressed in policy (e.g. Informed Vision) show high ensemble convergence but are instrumentally reframed, stripped of their transformative potential. Conversely, capabilities essential for social justice (e.g. Social and Collective Struggle) show the lowest convergence, reflecting their marginalization. The study concludes that the policy prioritizes a ‘proficient technician’ over a ‘public good professional’, revealing a fundamental structural barrier to socially just teacher education in Norway.