I have been engaged in collaborative, long-term research partnerships with international colleagues for almost 20 years. I have been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Leiden (2006-2007) in the Netherlands. I applied for a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award and spent a year (2009-2010) at the University of Oslo. My Norwegian colleague, Dr. Kirsti Klette, and I applied for funding from the Norwegian Research Council and were awarded a grant for a five-year research study, the CATE study, which included gathering comparative data from Norway, the U.S. and Finland. Alongside that funding, I was offered a position as a Visiting Professor at the University of Oslo, a position I held for almost seven years while engaging in this research. During that period, I also joined a team led by Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond, then at Stanford University, to develop a set of case studies of teacher quality around the world that would each involve in-country authors paired with U.S. authors. I conducted the research and co-wrote the case of Finland with two Finnish colleagues, Dr. Raisa Ahtiainen and Dr. Pasi Sahlberg. This work led to a Visiting Professor position at the University of Helsinki (2014). In turn, my growing focus on policy in teacher education led to additional opportunities. In 2017, I was invited to serve as one of seven international advisors for an Advisory Committee advising the Norwegian Ministry of Education on a major teacher education reform.

NOKUT International Advisory Panel on Teacher Education in Norway (2017-2020) Chaired by Dr. Marilyn Cochran-Smith and composed of international scholars in teacher education, the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) International Advisory Panel on Teacher Education in Norway was established in connection with the Norwegian government’s introduction of five-year integrated master’s programs for primary and lower secondary education. The purpose of the advisory group was to help ensure that the change in degree structure results in high quality educational experiences for teacher candidates. The advisory group also had a broader task: to help further improve teacher education at the primary and lower secondary levels by describing how to improve Norwegian teacher education institutions overall. Our report, Transforming Norwegian Teacher Education, was published in May 2020.