allocation of resources in the presence of public and private goods he was highly
influential in developing thefield of welfare economics based largely on Keynes’
ideas.
Given that a public good is a consumption good that individuals can enjoy
without reducing its availability or enjoyment by others then the classic examples
normally taken to exemplify this concept include education, high literacy levels,
knowledge and information. Public education is deemed a public good: it is funded
by the state because it is argued it has multiple societal benefits spread in terms of
citizenship, employment, economic prosperity, innovation and creativity, health,
social cohesion and mobility. Teacher education insofar as it is provided by the
state, then, would also be seen to fall under this concept. If it is in the public good
and public interest that the state provide for well-informed citizens for the smooth
function of democratic governing, the general improvement of health and welfare of
the general population, economic prosperity and so on then if also follows that the
state needs to provide and ensure that teachers themselves are well educated. If the
success, improvement, effectiveness and achievement of public education depends
upon the quality of the teaching force then teacher education can be seen to be a
significant part of the question of education as a public good. If teacher education
can be seen to be part of a complex public good then clearly it is also the case that
teacher education research can also be so regarded.
Froese-Germain (2013) of the Canadian Teachers’Federation author“Reframing
Public Education as a Public Good”usefully refer to Keeping and King (2012) who
state that“public education is a deliberate model of the best that a civil democratic
society can be. This is not accidental, or occasional, or a matter of convenience.
Public schools look and function like the democratic, civil, pluralist society of
which they are an integral part.”(p. 17).
Froese-Germain (2013: 1) refers to Keeping and King (2012: 17) to state the
other characteristics of public education:
- All children have a right to be included in public education, and the community
has a responsibility to be inclusive: every adult in a community has both a right
and a responsibility to be involved in the education of all children, not just their
own or their grandchildren’s. - Public education celebrates diversity. Children should be educated together,
not in order to try to make them all the same, but so they may come to value
everyone’s unique individuality. - Public education supports social mobility because a democratic society will fail
if it does not constantly strive for greater fairness, ensuring that every child has
the opportunity to benefit from its public education system, regardless of
economic status.
Interestingly in this regard a recent paper by Dittmar and Meisenzahl (2016) that
inquires into the origins and impacts of the state as a provider of public goods one
of thefirst studies to examine the“new municipal legal institutions established
Europe’sfirst large scale experiments with mass public education”beginning in the
1500s demonstrate the positive impacts of educational public goods for city growth
and human capital development:
414 Part V: Teacher Education as a Public Good