Arts and Cultural Education in Iceland : Professor Anne Bamford

We try to do professional development. The municipality pays the salary of the teacher but not the fee for the
course. 75% of our teachers are qualified. Only half of the music teachers are qualified. It is a problem for us as
we are quite isolated and the university does not provide arts education online. In 1992 I did my training online.
There were 100 teaching students all studying online that year. I don’t think you can do your training online any
more. You have to actually go, and that is really hard from here.
There is great strength generally in offering distance education, but it doesn’t work well for the arts. We need
blocks of practical time.
Widely reported was the lack of the teacher’s (or trainee teachers) own artistic and
communication skills. Furthermore, it was argued that students leaving teacher education
possess a lack of understanding of the creative or artistic process and an absence of awareness
to the aims or benefits of artistic and creative education. There is also an absence of any notion
of a theoretical underpinning or philosophical positions on the arts learning. While these
perceptions are not always correct, there is a perceived need for more trained arts educators in
the school system – “The need for professional education is very pressing. We dream that we
might be able to prepare creative teachers. We need a sort of “open university” for the arts.”
Listings of courses for the 2008-2009 school year (August - May/June) for pre-school
teachers in the Hafnarfjörður municipality showed a total of 122 offers, of which only two had
anything to do with the arts – a two hour lecture/discussion on music in pre-primary schools
according to the official curricula, and an introduction and discussion on the teaching of the arts
in pre-primary schools. Another point of interest is the number of courses (about 30) directed at
pre-primary school staff that do not speak Icelandic – indicates high number of immigrants
working in pre-primary schools. In the introduction, the booklet of offers points to other sources
of professional development for teachers. It also mentions that teachers and staff can apply for
financial support regarding professional development to their labour union.
Although somewhat limited, professional development programmes do exist in the arts and
in a general sense, the professional development of teachers is well supported in Iceland. Upper
secondary school teachers should use 80 hours of the summer break towards professional
development. There are several funds they can access and they can apply for grants. There is
also a ministerial fund that allows up to 30 teachers to have a one year sabbatical to undertake
further study. In compulsory school, municipalities pay 1.72% of monthly salaries to a fund that
individual teachers can apply to for their professional development. Through this system, there
are many funds available. The municipal agreement states that compulsory school teachers
should do 150 hours of continuous education every two years.
Early years’ teachers have far less time for continuous education but tend to take courses in
their own time. While in theory the options are available for teachers to decide, in many schools
principals make the decision. The choice of courses is also dependent on what can be offered.
Some schools subsidise the time for teachers to attend professional development while the
general pattern is that the school pays for the subscription to the professional development but
the individual teacher goes in ‘their own time’, either over the summer or Saturdays. It was also
the general pattern that travel to professional development course was refunded by the school.
Teachers were generally quite critical of the standard of professional development.
Professional development courses are isolated ½ or 1 day events and generally do not articulate
into further learning pathways. Teachers complained that they were not always given the choice
of courses to attend and that where a choice was given, there were very few options in the arts.
Other criticisms included that the courses did not have a practical application or that the
presenters were out of touch with the reality of the classroom situations. The courses also
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