Student teachers as co-researchers

‘Student teachers as co-researchers’ is an innovation that connects research and education. This chapter presents the Co-research model, targeted at student teachers in the five-year integrated teacher education (TE) program at the University of Oslo, who were invited into ongoing research projects as part of their master’s (MA) specialization. The innovation was piloted in 2015–2017 and implemented since 2018. The Co-research model builds on and extends the notion of research-based education, moving from student teachers’ consumption of research, toward their active engagement with and in research. As co-researchers, student teachers examine naturally occurring classroom practices from lower and upper secondary school alongside researchers. This chapter presents a longitudinal study on the Co-research model in TE, drawing on the voices and perspectives of co-researchers from cohorts across seven years (2016–2023) through analysis of course evaluations, student teachers’ written reflective quotes as well as dissemination in terms of seminar and conference presentations, trial lectures, project meetings, interviews, podcasts, and blog posts. The Co-research model provides collaboration between student teachers, lecturers, researchers, and engineers for a joint investigation of classroom research, highly relevant for future practices both as teachers in school and researchers in academia.