The big questions in teacher education that are both enduring—that is, they have
historical manifestations—but are at the same time also highly contemporary,
include the following:
- The background and experience of recruits into teaching
- The relationship between theory and practice
- The nature of professional knowledge
- The sites of learning
- The respective contributions of the school and of the university
- Curriculum and assessment within teacher education
- The continuum of professional learning
- Assessing the effectiveness of teacher education (see Menter 2015 ).
It may be useful here to offer a brief summary of what has been happening in the
UK to give a sense of how some of these major issues have been debated. 2010 was
a very interesting year for us. There was a general election held in May, which led
to the creation of the Coalition Government, a partnership between the
Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Michael Gove was appointed by Prime
Minister David Cameron as Secretary of State for Education. Remember, however,
that Gove’s jurisdiction for education was not UK wide, it covers only England.
Since the devolutions of the late 1990s, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had
full responsibility for education policy including teacher education policy.
In England then, one of thefirst White Papers that the Coalition Government
produced was‘The Importance of Teaching’(DfE 2010 ). This set out a clear view
of the nature of teaching and indeed of teacher education, as demonstrated in these
extracts:
We do not have a strong enough focus on what is proven to be the most effective practice in
teacher education and development. We know that teachers learn best from other profes-
sionals and that an‘open classroom’culture is vital: observing teaching and being
observed, having the opportunity to plan, prepare, reflect and teach with other teachers’
[We will] reform initial teacher training so that more training is on the job, and it focuses on
key teaching skills including teaching early reading and mathematics, managing behaviour
and responding to pupils’Special Educational Needs.We thus see Mr. Gove fully supporting a simple craft view of teaching and an
apprenticeship model of teacher education—actually he persisted in calling it tea-
cher training—and we now see the dominance of his‘School Direct’approach to
teacher education. This school-led model has led to a small number of universities
withdrawing altogether from teacher education and to a number of others seriously
questioning whether it is worth their while to maintain their involvement.
However, only 2 months later, a report was published in Edinburgh, called
‘Teaching Scotland’s Future’(Donaldson 2010 ). This had been written by a leading
educational professional rather than by a politician, namely the recently retired
Chief Inspector of Education, Graham Donaldson. This set out a very different view
of teaching and teacher education when compared to Michael Gove’s model in
England. Donaldson emphasised:
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