The place of multicultural education in legal acts concerning teacher education in Norway

Abstract

This paper includes an analysis of legal acts concerning primary and lower secondary teacher education in Norway. The objective is to determine how multicultural education is perceived in these acts–whether it is regarded as a supplementary subject or as a mindset that underlies teacher education. The theoretical framework includes critical multiculturalism and multicultural education theory. A document content analysis approach has been applied during the analytical process, in order to reveal patterns related to culture, diversity, inclusion, multicultural education and multicultural competence. Furthermore, the findings have been placed in the Norwegian context, in order to shed light on the circumstances surrounding the documents. The main findings indicate that multicultural education is assigned a limited space and, according to the legal acts, should be included as a module integrated with the subject of pedagogy and pupil-related skills in teacher education.