Policy and practice within the United Kingdom

2013

2013

Across the four jurisdictions of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) initial teacher education (ITE) is under active development, with its content, location, control and quality often the focuses of sustained debate. Statutory and professional requirements for the sector inevitably reflect differing assumptions about teaching, teacher knowledge and governance. In exploring ITE across the four jurisdictions, this paper reviews policies and practices through two major focuses: first, the relationships between the declared teacher Standards (competencies/ competences) and research-informed teacher education provision; second, the ‘turn or (re)turn to the practical’ in teacher education, including policy declarations, changes in practices, and emphases and effects of the discourse(s) of relevance.

Teacher Education Advancement Network Journal, 2017

This paper documents the evolution of attempts to codify and standardise teachers’ work in England with particular attention to how this phenomenon has impacted the Initial Teacher Education (ITE) sector. In recent decades the teaching profession in the UK has undergone various iterations of competency criteria, culminating with the current policy, the Teachers’ Standards (TS) (DfE, 2011). Discussion focuses largely on the most rapid period in the evolution of competency-based approaches from 1997 to the present, analysing aspects of the political landscape which have precipitated this rise. Two key themes evident in, and precipitated by, the Teachers’ Standards policy initiative are discussed: i) the political necessity for a reductionist view of teaching and learning and ii), the centrality of the teacher. It concludes by imagining how, taking these themes into account, the policy could evolve to become more useful to both teachers and pupils.

Scottish Educational Review

This article presents the conceptual analysis which forms the background to an empirical comparative study which is currently in progress. The study compares the initial preparation of secondary teachers offered in three postgraduate courses in France, England and Scotland respectively. It aims to investigate and compare the conceptual frameworks for initial teacher education (ITE) which underpin these three training programmes. The conceptual framework for ITE corresponds to underlying conceptions of the role of the teacher; of teaching as a professional activity; of what constitutes good practice; of the process of learning to teach and how best to support it. “I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.” Sherlock Holmes

Educar, 2004

En els últims trenta anys, hem assistit a una reconsideració radical de la manera com els llicenciats universitaris han estat iniciats en l'ensenyament a Anglaterra i Gal·les. Malgrat que es tracti d'un breu espai de temps, és possible discernir un canvi significatiu en la manera com s'ha tractat de portar a terme un canvi en aquest aspecte de l'educació.

Oxford Review of Education, 2015

This paper examines the roles of research in teacher education across the four nations of the United Kingdom. Both devolution and ongoing reviews of teacher education are facilitating a greater degree of cross-national divergence. England is becoming a distinct outlier, in which the locus for teacher education is moving increasingly away from Higher Education Institutions and towards an ever-growing number of school-based providers. While the idea of teaching as a research-based profession is increasingly evident in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, it seems that England, at least in respect of the political rhetoric, recent reforms and explicit definitions, is fixed on a contrastingly divergent trajectory towards the idea of teaching as a craft-based occupation, with a concomitant emphasis on a (re)turn to the practical. It is recommended that research is urgently needed to plot these divergences and to examine their consequences for teacher education, educational research and professionalism.

1997

Perceptions vary between researchers and the British government as to the adequacy of initial teacher education in England and Wales. Based on the data from the Modes of Teacher Education (MOTE) project the researchers find a higher level of satisfaction from teachers than that claimed by the government. The MOTE project studied the origins, nature, and effects of reforms of initial teacher education in England and Wales between 1991 and 1996. The reforms increased the amount of training carried out in schools, required universities to work in partnership with local schools, and introduced a common list of competencies to be demonstrated by all beginning teachers. Three models of partnership are identified and discussed: collaborative, higher education-led; and separatist. Results from the surveys indicated a high level of school based teacher involvement in course design and interviewing, but course leadership remained the responsibility of university-based tutors. The school-centered initial teacher training (SCITT) run by a consortium of schools, and launched by the British government, was the only program where there was teacher involvement and responsibility. The reforms are considered in light of changes in styles of teacher professionalism. (Contains 26 references.) (SPM)

National Association for the Teaching of English website , 2013

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc eBooks, 2017

2012

After a sustained period of relative calm, Initial Teacher Education and Training (ITET) in Wales has seen much change in recent times since devolution and all the indications are that this change agenda is likely to escalate in both the short and long-term. In order to understand what has been happening in the ITET field in Wales, our paper sets out to achieve three things: First, it will contextualise the changing ITET, political, social and economic climate within Wales. Second, it will present ITET data for Wales from the onset of devolution to the present time .Thereafter, these data will be and compared and contrasted. Third, we will attempt to project our findings forward in an era which may result in the longer term, at best, to ITE in Wales becoming further fragmented to, at worst, being decimated or changed forever from the more traditional scene which was apparent in both Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom (UK) since the Robbins Report aftermath in the late 1960's.