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‘What we wanted to do was to change the situation’ Distance teacher education as stimulation for school development in Iceland ► About the author ► Key words The article describes the origin of a distance programme for teachers first offered at the Iceland University of Education in 1993 in response to a lack of qualified teachers in rural Iceland. Student teachers were teaching in their home districts while enrolled in the programme, which was organized as a combination of cam-pus-based sessions and home study, communicating with university lecturers via the Internet. The purpose of the article is to enhance understanding of the incep-tion of the programme and shed light on the way in which student teachers ’ partici-pation in the distance programme enabled them to stimulate school development. Document analysis reveals the importance of the interaction of different factors i