In recent decades, most Nordic countries have seen reforms in their teacher education programme, giving rise to an ongoing debate on these programmes' content, structure, and quality. As part of a recent reform of teacher education in Norway, new Master's-level programme have been introduced to educate teachers for grades 5-10, whereby pre-service teachers (PSTs) take specialised content courses and undergo field placements twice a year. The purpose of this paper is to determine the effects of the specialised content courses on student teaching. In this study, we used a survey design to collect quantitative data from PSTs and qualitative data from mentor teachers. PSTs teaching subjects they specialised in had a more positive teaching experience related to perceived learning outcomes in subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. The data from mentor teachers reinforce this finding; they reported that PSTs who taught subjects they specialised in showed faster learning progressions, were better at using different instructional strategies, and reflected more during guidance. The link between the specialised content courses and student teaching increases the coherence of the programme.

From 2017 the Norwegian teacher education in primary and lower secondary school will be a five-year master education. UiT - The Norwegian Arctic University started a master education already in 2010. The main differences between the old and new program are: increased credits in both pedagogy and the master subject, more emphasize on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and more focus on the master subject early in the education. In this case study, teacher supervisors evaluate students’ knowledge in their school practice. All teacher supervisors in the study with practice from both former and new education, experienced that the master students had increased subject matter knowledge and PCK. These changes in preservice teacher knowledges can possibly be explained by changes in the education program. Our results show that early emphasize on subject, increased focus on PCK and subject matter knowledge are important features in the development of the pre-service teachers’ professional knowledge.

English title: Norwegian master educations in natural science for lower secondary school – large differences in courses offered and size of master thesisCurrently, the majority of students in lower secondary school teacher education take a four-year education in Norway. From 2017 this education will be prolonged to a five-year master education. In connection to this, there is an ongoing debate in Norway about the content of the new teacher education programs. In 2010, the Arctic University of Norway (UiT) began the first integrated five-year master education for lower secondary teacher education students in Norway. This program is described in the article, with a focus on the subject natural science in the 5–10 level education. UiT has made progress regarding the difficult link between the student’s school practice and their education at the University. As teacher educators, we experience that the new education also seems to give the students a higher identity and motivation towards teaching natural science. There are four teacher education colleges/universities in Norwegian offering a master degree in natural science/pedagogical content knowledge for teachers in lower secondary school. These master educations are relatively different in structure, and especially the subjects offered and the size of the master thesis is considerably different.