Higher Education as Competence Program Providers in a Nationwide School Reform

In this chapter, we first outline the latest Norwegian school reform and its main intentions. Then we use a case from a university college to illustrate the challenges higher education faces when expected to deliver competence programs that help make teachers and school managers capable of implementing the reform. We demonstrate how these challenges create tension between practitioners and faculty, and between teachers and school managers, and how tension results from expectations of content delivery. We assert that tension is inevitable in learning, especially when multiple actors, professions, and organizations are involved. Thus, we conclude that tension should not be avoided when designing and conducting competence programs, but harnessed as an opportunity for collective learning where faculty members become facilitators as well as co- learners. This, we maintain, will require a change from content to process thinking in higher education; a transformation from a transfer to a learning paradigm. As such, the reform does not only represent a challenge to schools, but also a serious challenge to higher education.