Developing Teaching in the "University Classroom": The Teacher as Researcher when Initiating and Researching Innovations

The teacher’s role in the university classroom has traditionally been to present the syllabus to listening students. In Norway new rules have been introduced for the activity in this classroom. The overarching goal for the teaching is to organize a learning situation that makes the students active learners. The article deals with the teacher as a researcher, and focuses on how innovative actions can be implemented by the teacher and studied from a researcher point of view. The text presents cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) as both the theoretical framework for the organized actions in the classroom and as an approach for studying the classroom processes. The article gives an overview over a material that can be gathered in a classroom characterized by student activity. It ends by reflections on how development in one classroom can be transferred to other classrooms. Since teaching on the university level started, the instructor's role has generally been to present subject material to listening students. Today's prevalent learning theories in the constructivist tradition find that learning occurs in interaction between people and the world or the surroundings they live and interact in. Hence, activity should have