Chapter 38
Researching Teacher Education Policy:
A Case Study from Scotland
Aileen Kennedy
38.1 Introduction
Teacher education policy across the United Kingdom as a whole suffers from a lack
of sustained and systematic research, both to inform its development and to evaluate
its enactment, a point highlighted by Christie et al. ( 2012 ) in their report for the
British Educational Research Association. In Scotland, a small country with a
population of approximately 50,000 teachers, and eight universities offering teacher
education, this situation is equally marked. While there are some exciting devel-
opments happening in Scotland in terms of teacher education policy, there remains
very little research employing a policy studies approach. This chapter seeks to
analyse what research there is with a view to identifying gaps and barriers that
might support a more focused future research agenda. It should be acknowledged
that the situation in relation to policy research in teacher education is mirrored in
education research more generally, being limited in its impact due to its small-scale,
fragmented and non-cumulative nature (Whitty 2006 ). This is exacerbated by the
tendency for a significant proportion of teacher educators to focus on localised,
action research type scholarly activity, compounded by a lack of funding from
government and research councils (Brown 2008 ).
This chapter takes a case study approach in reviewing studies published after
2010 that focus on the analysis of teacher education policy in Scotland. 2010 is
significant for Scotland as it marked the instigation of the widest ranging review
and proposed policy reform of teacher education in recent history—‘the Donaldson
Review’. The chapter provides an overview of the range and type of policy studies
carried out as well as providing an analysis of the methodologies employed, before
providing an overall assessment of the current state of policy studies research in
A. Kennedy (&)
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
©Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017
M.A. Peters et al. (eds.),A Companion to Research in Teacher Education,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4075-7_38
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