whether the new-found freedoms can be used to further alternative educational
projects? The development of research-rich teacher education programmes, such as
those that involve research-informed clinical practice, could be one such case in
point.
Additionally, there is an urgent need for evidence about the efficacy of the
growing diversity of approaches to teacher education in relation to the challenges of
preparing teachers for twenty-first century schools. Not only is the attack on con-
ventional approaches to teacher preparation frequently ideologically driven and
lacking in a strong evidence base, so too is its defence. Research on the impact of
different modes of teacher education and their implications for teacher profes-
sionalism, along the lines of that carried out in England in the 1990s (Furlong et al.
2000 ), now needs to be undertaken as a matter of urgency in the changing land-
scape outlined in this chapter. The Institute for Fiscal Studies and the UCL Institute
of Education have already embarked on a project to compare the costs and benefits
of different models of teacher education in England (see Allen et al. 2014 ).
Meanwhile, Bath Spa University and Birmingham University are engaged in
broader comparisons of the nature and impact of different approaches. Similar
studies are planned in Australia and in the USA, where colleagues at Teachers
College Columbia University are undertaking some research specifically on the
nature and impact of‘research-rich’programmes of teacher preparation.
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