Competence for development, or complicated development? Transforming schools into learning organizations through Governmental reforms

This article reports from the initial implementation phase of a large school reform initiated by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. The implementation of the reform is facilitated through competence programs offered to school managers and teachers. The subjects covered by these programs were to a large extent decided by the schools in advance, and the programs were conducted by higher education scholars. We analyzed the central reform documents, and identified the main reform goals and the reform?s theories of action. We also analyzed the curricula of three different programs developed by one of the higher education institutions. In addition we talked to the program coordinators and monitored the IT based learning platforms that were used in two of the programs.