Recognizing they must prepare student teachers to work in schools as they are
currently organized LTEs needed to rethink some of their goals and practices.
Marisa (US) was torn
knowing that yes, student teachers are going to be asked to do things and they need to be
considering how far they’ll go, and how they’ll take it up. One example, for me, is test
prep. Not my favorite thing in the world, but children are taking tests regularly and [student
teachers] need to be exposed to how that looks and what kind of thinking they should
consider.Hailey (US) felt the tension in another way. Her course goals were based on an
understanding of literacy teaching (e.g. use of children’s literature and making
literacy relevant) which she felt was becoming less common in many schools (e.g.
schools are worksheet driven with a focus on phonics). She wondered if she was
doing her student teachers a disservice by presenting an approach to literacy they
may not see in schools. Similarly, Rachel (Australia) who was a strong advocate of
the arts and children’s literature despaired because these were vanishing from the
formal government curriculum. From her teaching experience and her research she
knew the value of both and wanted these to continue to be pivotal to her literacy
courses; however, with time at a premium and student teachers wanting many
strategies to teach the formal curriculum she experienced significant tension in
designing her course. She wondered how much should she compromise? Demerra
(US) stated“What we know about literacy learning and what we know about
understanding how children read and write, and what the State is now moving
toward do not match. So what they’re going to see in the schools and what we
espouse as most valuable don’t necessarily match”. Given these tensions and dis-
crepancies the divide between the university and schools seemed to be increasing
which raises a host of questions.
9.8.1 Increased Vigilance
To ensure compliance, many governments created external agencies to monitor
teacher education programs. For example in England:
The Blair government continued with the Conservative government redesign of teacher
education through“quangos”(quasi-autonomous government organisations) such as the
Teacher Training Agency, the QCA, and OFSTED [Office for Standards in Education]
which ensured that little would escape (MacBeath 2012 , p. 73)Many of the participants described these external reviews as stressful, demeaning,
and time consuming. Justin from England felt
the whole process was run by bureaucrats who literally went around with clipboards and
when they asked you questions, unless what you said was something that they couldfit into
the box on the clipboard, there was no response whatsoever. There wasn’t hostility, there
was just blank incomprehension. The only thing that they wanted was words tofill in the
right space to answer the questions that they had in advance.9 You Teach Who You Are Until the Government Comes to Class... 147