44.3.3 England
A period of sustained economic downturn, from which the UK is only now
emerging, has had significant effects on provision for teacher educators’profes-
sional learning in England since 2010. Wide-ranging, politically enforced changes
to schooling, caused by concerns about the international competitiveness of the
English education system, have meant that state schools are in the process of radical
change and fundamental fragmentation. There have also been significant changes or
‘reforms’to ITE and serving teachers’Continuing Professional Development, with
market-led models put in place and schools given considerably more responsibility
for leading teacher education and research in both areas. All of these factors have
impacted on teacher educators and the provision for their professional learning.
One clear consequence of the switch to a‘school-led’system of ITE has been the
emergence of a new occupational sub-group of school-based educators with
growing confidence and authority in their‘second order practice’(Murray 2002 ).
The emergence of‘Teaching Schools’as recognized centres of excellence, with
government funding available to support school-led ITE programmes and
school-focused research and development projects, has greatly increased the pro-
fessional learning opportunities available to school-based educators. Some (but by
no means all) of these educators still work in partnerships with HEIs to implement
and develop their ITE and research programmes. Such partnerships often bring
further professional learning opportunities for all the educators, as detailed below.
A further consequence of the‘reforms’has been the closure of some university
programmes and subsequent redundancies for a number of HE-based teacher
educators. The absence in England of a strong professional interest group or
national community of teacher educators, like VELON in the Netherlands or
VELOV in Flanders, has been notable in recent attacks on HE-based pre-service
programmes and on many teacher educators. This has often resulted in communal
senses of marginalisation and powerlessness to defend the value of teacher edu-
cators’work. Despite these factors though, at the time of writing, most teacher
educators in England are still based in or closely linked to a HEI.
Institutional provision for the professional development of HE-based teacher
educators is very important. Provision varies greatly, but, in general, academic
development programmes have been influenced by a growing acknowledgement of
the importance of high quality of teaching in Higher Education. This has led to
widespread generic teacher training and induction programmes for all new aca-
demic staff. In some institutions, all academics, including teacher educators, are
also required to go through the various procedures around accreditation against the
generic Higher Education Academy (HEA) Professional Standards Framework. All
of this provision though, offers limited potential for the development of teacher
educators’pedagogy and research development, unless programmes or accredita-
tion procedures allow space for personal practice and enquiry as a teacher of
teachers. Many programmes have, however, succeeded in using these generic
660 J. Murray et al.