Teaching is a craft and it is best learnt as an apprentice observing a master craftsman or
woman. Watching others, and being rigorously observed yourself as you develop, is the
best route to acquiring mastery in the classroom. (DfE 2010 )But if we are indeed looking to education leading transformation, we surely need a
more ambitious view of teaching and teacher education. To what extent one needs
to adopt a transformative model of teaching in order to promote education as a
transformative force is a key question for discussion at this symposium.
45.3 The Reform of Teacher Education
In his account of the lessons from Finland, Sahlberg ( 2011 ) is in no doubt that the
standing of the teaching profession, the commitment to high-quality teacher edu-
cation and continuing development and the reasonable remuneration of teachers are
among the factors that are likely to have had a positive influence—even if he is no
more able than the rest of us to demonstrate more than a correlation between these
features. As we shall see, actually demonstrating a causal link, let alone a full
explanation of this relationship, continues to be a very significant.
I have often made the argument that in order to understand a particular teacher
education system as it currently exists it is necessary to consider the history, culture
and politics of that society (see TEG 2016 ). I would now add very wholeheartedly
that the economy of the society is also an important factor in shaping the system.
So, if we need to look at all four of these to understand a teacher education system,
we may also expect the system to have an influence on the future economy, culture
and politics of that society. In other words, there is a dynamic relationship between
teacher education and society. Teacher education is both shaped by but also
influences the society. Indeed that is why a maxim that is important to me, espe-
cially in undertaking comparative work in teacher education research, is‘by their
teacher education ye shall know them’.
For, through reviewing and analyzing a nation’s teacher education system we are
appraising what it is that teachers should know, what they should be able to do and
how they should be disposed, in order to help in the formation of the future adult
citizens of the society, in perhaps 10–20 years time. Teacher education may be
taken to be highly symbolic of how a society sees its future and is therefore highly
indicative of its underlying values. Perhaps it is a realization of this that has turned
teacher education into such a centre of political interest in the past 20–30 years in
many countries. It should therefore be no surprise that across the globe we have
seen increasing numbers of reviews, reports and reforms of teacher education over
recent. In my travels around the UK, as well as in the USA, Austria, Norway,
Turkey and recently Russia there are major reforms going on in teacher education.
And of course the same is true in Australia, of which more towards the end of this
paper.
670 I. Menter