In the Nordic countries, teacher education programmes are shifting towards a research-based design, thus placing new expectations and requirements on teacher educators. In this study, we aim to explore teacher educators’ understanding of professional knowledge in research-based teacher education. We interviewed 16 Norwegian and six Finnish teacher educators. The teacher educators’ views of professional knowledge could be divided into two main categories – academic characteristics and personal characteristics – and three dichotomies were discussed: educational sciences versus subject sciences, research versus teaching and collaboration versus autonomy. Teacher educators come from various backgrounds and bring different experiences into teacher education. Thus, their understanding of professional knowledge in research-based teacher education seems to be dichotomous and multifaceted. The dichotomies that were uncovered and the tensions between them provide the foundation for further development of teacher education in Norway and Finland.

Learning science outdoors can enhance the understanding of theoretical scientific content taught in the classroom. However, learners are rarely afforded the opportunity to go outdoors to learn chemistry. This study investigates how problem-based learning outdoors can facilitate the understanding of basic chemistry in teacher education. A teaching unit was designed according to which student teachers at two Norwegian universities were asked to examine and identify corroded metals in the nearby outdoor environment and propose solutions to avoid this corrosion. Video data from this task were collected by using chest-mounted cameras for four groups of student teachers ( N = 17). A thematic analysis of the videos yielded four themes related to the student teachers’ use of content knowledge and experimental competence. Based on these findings, three learning opportunities were deduced for how the nearby outdoor environment allows learners to use everyday phenomena for learning basic chemistry. First, the availability of different corrosion incidents allowed the student teachers to choose and solve one of interest to them. Second, the proximity of the outdoor location to the classroom enabled the seamless continuity of discussions when switching between the learning arenas, and allowed for different approaches to solve the task. Third, being asked to conduct analyses outside customary laboratory routines led to an unexpected awareness of health and safety issues among the student teachers, indicating that outdoor chemistry is an overlooked opportunity for teaching these.