The Norwegian 1.Lecturer – Shunned or Lost and Found?

Abstract

Norwegian higher education has for a number of years had a system of two career paths for academic teachers. The path requiring a doctoral thesis and qualifying via doing more research to a professoriate was moulded primarily at the University of Oslo. The other path became accepted at a later stage, and encompassed academics who won their merits through teaching primarily. The difference in status we describe by the two terms: “the high road and the low road”. Our argument here is that these two careers are complementary, and that further work needs to be done to make the status and desirability of the two paths more equal. The paper aims at describing how a fuller acknowledgement of the “teaching” path from a lecturer to an elevated status of 1.lecturer will improve the quality of teaching and improve collaboration and co-creating of good programmes for dissemination and training in both disciplinary and professional studies. A professional doctorate dedicated for teachers in higher education might be the viable middle road.