From learning about diversity to enacting diversity-responsive teaching: preservice teachers’ experiences in Norwegian initial teacher education

Abstract

Preparing teachers for increasingly diverse classrooms is a central responsibility of initial teacher education. This qualitative study explores how preservice teachers in Norwegian initial teacher education experience learning to interpret and respond to learner variability, with attention to the relationship between campus-based coursework and school-based supervised professional training. Diversity is conceptualised as a relational and contextual feature of classroom life rather than as an attribute of particular pupils. The study therefore examines how preservice teachers learn to interpret learner variability, participation patterns, and support needs as pedagogically meaningful. The study draws on two focus group interviews with eight third- and fourth-year preservice teachers in Norwegian primary and lower secondary teacher education programmes. The data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis, with attention to participants’ accounts and meanings constructed through focus group interaction. The findings suggest that participants valued diversity-related coursework and school-based experience, but often struggled to connect diversity-related principles with pedagogical action. Short and fragmented placements constrained opportunities to develop contextual knowledge of pupils and interpret how learner variability and classroom arrangements shaped participation and learning. Mentoring supported pedagogical reflection and professional judgement when feedback was timely and connected to classroom events, but such opportunities were uneven. Participants also reported varying opportunities to connect coursework with observation, lesson planning, teaching, feedback, and reflection. The findings concern participants’ reported experiences and do not demonstrate actual classroom noticing or teaching practices. The study argues that preparation for diversity-responsive teaching requires coherent, practice-oriented opportunities to develop contextual knowledge, professional noticing, reflective judgement, and pedagogical decision-making across university and school settings. Enactment coherence is proposed as a tentative heuristic for examining whether diversity-related principles become connected to pedagogical analysis and action in initial teacher education.