The Relevance of Immigrant Teachers' Experiences to Developing Professional Identity during a Teacher Requalification Program in Norway

Abstract

As a result of increasing immigration to Norway and other European countries, many higher education institutions see a need to customize their educational programs or establish requalification programs for immigrants with professional backgrounds from their home country. This chapter explores how immigrant teachers in requalification programs in Norway relate their prior professional experience to developing their professional identity in the requalification process for becoming teachers in a new country. This study shows that although the immigrant teachers' prior experiences come from school systems that differ significantly from the Norwegian system, their ideological beliefs and values seem to be compatible with the values rooted in the Norwegian school system. With respect to the theoretical concepts of boundary crossing and transformative learning, we identify potentially critical content that should be emphasized in the curricula for requalification programs for teachers.