Learning to Teach in England and the United States

The Evolution of Policy and Practice

Maria Teresa Tatto, Katharine Burn, Ian Menter, Trevor Mutton, Ian Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317391012
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Learning to Teach in England and the United States studies the evolution of initial teacher education by considering some of the current approaches in England and the United States. Presenting empirical evidence from these two distinct political and historical contexts, the chapters of this thought-provoking volume illustrate the tensions involved in preparing teachers who are working in ever-changing environments. Grounded in the lived experiences of those directly affected by these shifting policy environments, the book questions if reforms that have introduced accountability regimes and new kinds of partnership with the promise of improving teaching and learning, have contributed to more powerful learning experiences in schools for those entering the profession.

The authors consider the relationships between global, national and local policy, and question their potential impact on the future of teacher education and teaching more generally. The research adopts an innovative methodology and sociocultural theoretical framework designed to show greater insights into the ways in which beginning teachers' learning experiences are shaped by relationships at all of these levels. A key emerging issue is that of the alignment – or not – between the values and dispositions of the individuals and the institutions that are involved.

This book will appeal to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of teacher education, comparative education, higher education, and education policy and politics.

Part I

Learning to teach

Theory, methods and contexts

1 Introduction and background

Learning to teach has long been recognised as a developmental process that is highly complex and demanding. This learning involves adopting and developing several identities in order to negotiate the tacit or explicit rules and demands of different institutions and social practices. In addition to their own experiences as students themselves, student teachers may learn: from their peers; from the expertise of other teachers operating in particular settings; from their own pedagogical interactions with young people and their reflections on practice; from critical incidents involving mistakes made by themselves and those teachers they observe; or from testing and critiquing theories in practice. They learn in the social and cultural settings of schools and universities as well as at the desks where they complete academic assignments. They also learn at particular historical junctures within particular teacher education programmes and partnership schools that are reacting to policy changes as well as political constraints and demands. The development of these student teachers is both intensely personal, and highly social, requiring almost constant interaction with other adults and children.

A series of research studies has explored these and other aspects of learning to teach and whilst there seems to be agreement that the process is developmental, complex and deeply personal, there is lack of consensus in other areas. Some scholars document development as occurring in discrete stages (Berliner, 1994; Feiman-Nemser, 2001), whilst others argue for a non-linear and more complex model (Huberman, 1992; Maynard & Furlong, 1993, 1995; McIntyre & Hagger, 1993; Rusznyak, 2008; Shulman, 1986, 1987). Studies exploring the situational nature of learning to teach have argued that teacher education programmes’ impact on student teachers is exiguous (Berliner, 1994; Feiman-Nemser, 1983), only to revise their position in later work (Berliner, 2001; Feiman-Nemser, 2001), and more recently rigorous studies have found that teacher education programmes have an important influence on knowledge outcomes depending on the programmes’ selectivity and the opportunities to learn (Darling-Hammond, 2006; Tatto et al., 2012). Other studies have shown the nuanced ways in which schools may support or undermine learning and how individual student teachers in the same schools may undergo dramatically different experiences (Burn, Hagger, Mutton & Everton, 2003). Scholars have also explored the delicate balance and degree of collaboration that must exist amongst the different institutions in which teachers learn to teach, revealing a wide variety of arrangements and results (Furlong, Barton, Miles, Whiting & Whitty, 2000; McIntyre, 2006; Holmes Group, 1986; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999) as well as different reactions to policy demands (Cochran-Smith, 2001). Other studies have extensively documented the deeply personal and affective aspects of learning to teach (Hammerness et al., 2005; Hobson et al., 2008; Lortie, 1975; Calderhead & Robson, 1991). New understandings of how individuals learn, and of how institutions accommodate increasingly complex internal and external demands influenced by global forces, make this an important moment to examine learning to teach within a socio-historical and comparative framework.

This book presents evidence from the two distinct historical, political and social contexts of England and the United States to shed light on the ways in which the professional education of teachers is being reshaped by rapid, contemporary changes in teacher education policy. We consider how the contributions of the two main sites of learning for student teachers – the school and the university – play their respective parts in the various new dispositions that have been arrived at (see Dewey, 1904/1965). We argue that student teachers face at least two social situations of development (Vygotsky, 1987) as they begin to teach: one from their position as learners within the academic environment of a university; and another as novice teachers within the specific professional contexts of their placement schools. Their engagement with these social situations may be influenced by factors such as their previous experience of education and their existing and possibly naïve understanding of social and cultural norms in addition to their cultural capital from family and community. These social situations intersect in complex and dialectical interplay between theory and practice. The sociocultural research framework developed in this book enables us to explore student teachers’ acquisition of the knowledge and the psychological tools required for effective pedagogy and their engagement with the cultural assumptions that govern what are deemed to be appropriate ways of being a teacher in a particular school and in society as a whole. We focus on the education of future secondary level teachers as a window to examine these questions as such teachers are expected to attain deep knowledge of the particular disciplines and to be able to teach them to a diverse population of pupils.

The book also examines how policy affecting teacher education is constructed and examines the evidence that is currently used to support such policies. We explore, for example, through documentary analysis and our empirical data whether or not the surge of market models, standards and external systems of quality assurance in the two countries has contributed to more powerful teaching and learning in schools and in university-based teacher education programmes. We begin by addressing the issue of initial teacher education more broadly as a policy problem before considering specific policies and practices in the two nations in more depth in future chapters.

Initial teacher education as a policy problem

The education of teachers has generally been seen as a key policy tool to improve the quality of education (McKinsey & Company, 2007; Tatto, 2007/2009). There is much research evidence internationally that shows that good teachers make a difference to the schooling of children (e.g. Hattie, 2003). Less agreement, however, exists about the level and depth of the knowledge that high-quality teachers require; arguments as to whether teachers are ‘born’ or ‘made’ lie at the centre of the controversial nature of teacher education (Lortie, 1975). Much debate also exists about what form of initial teacher education is required, with initial teacher education in England, in particular, subject to radical and ongoing reform.

The question of how, where and by whom teachers are educated reveals fundamental societal views about the purposes of education, the knowledge that is valued and the teacher’s role in this dynamic. Understanding past and current changes in teacher education provides a window into the nature of the state and into its theories and assumptions as to how societies and its citizens are to be transformed, whose culture and knowledge is to be transmitted and the role of education and the economy in this process (Cochran-Smith & Demers, 2008; Judge, Lemosse, Paine & Sedlak, 1994; Menter, 2016).

As the school curriculum becomes more complex it is important to understand how the diversification of teacher education can support the development of the knowledge required of teachers (McKinsey & Company, 2007; Menter, 2009; Tatto et al., 2012). Burn, Hagger and Mutton (2015) argue the need to acknowledge the complexity of this learning, focusing not merely on the different kinds of knowledge that teachers need to be an effective professional but also on the process of learning to teach, which requires the sustenance of a dual identity as both learner and teacher.

In England and the United States, teacher education programmes, schools and teachers have been under intense scrutiny over the last 10 years in light of political concerns that pupils are underperforming when measured against world standards. However, the evidence provided by recent international comparisons such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) indicates that pupils in England are achieving above average in science and just above average in mathematics and reading and that the level has been maintained over the last 10 years. Seventy-one countries participated in PISA 2015, including all members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The average science, mathematics and reading scores of pupils in England have not changed since 2006. Our 15-year-olds continue to perform significantly above the OECD average in science whilst they remain at the OECD average for mathematics. For the first time in 2015, pupils in England perform significantly, but only just, above the OECD average in reading.

(Jerrim & Shure, 2016, p. 4)

In some exercises, such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), England has shown steady improvement in the mathematics achievement of their primary level pupils (Year 5, aged 9–10) since 1995, the point at which TIMSS began tracking countries longitudinally, whilst secondary level pupils (Year 9, aged 13–14) showed significant improvement between 2003 and 2007, stayed about the same in 2011, and again improved in 2015.¹ The study shows that those pupils with higher average achievement had teachers who reported ‘lower levels of teacher challenge (with challenge defined as having too many teaching hours or difficulty keeping up with curriculum changes)’. Yet the same study also found that ‘teachers in England report relatively challenging teaching conditions … [and that] job satisfaction among Year 5 and 9 teachers in England is low compared to teachers in most countries’ (Greany, Barnes, Mostafa, Pensiero & Swensson, 2016, p. 13). Indeed, there is considerable evidence suggesting that many teachers in England have become very disenchanted with their work, with almost a third leaving teaching within 5 years of qualifying.² According to a YouGov survey carried out in 2015 for the National Union of Teachers, around 60 per cent of teachers were considering leaving the profession in the next 2 years.³ Yet neither the positive nor the negative outcomes such as these have been examined in relationship to England’s sweeping reforms in teacher education.

England’s higher education monopoly of teacher education was broken in the early 1980s under the Thatcher government; allowing the market to operate in the provision of teacher education and facilitating an important role for schools in the education of future teachers (see Judge et al., 1994). Later, under the Labour administrations of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the nature of the teaching profession and of professional knowledge was re-defined and reforms were introduced, which resulted in a further move away from higher education and towards schools which were seen as responsible for defining best practices within a national framework (Furlong, 2008). Currently, the system of teacher education in England is highly diversified. According to Furlong (2008), by 2008 there were 36 different routes by which to enter the teaching profession, including Teach First and the Graduate Teacher Programme, and more recently, School Direct (both salaried and fee-paying options) and Troops to Teachers, all contributing to the creation of new models of teacher education. According to English scholars the ‘technical rationalist vision of teacher professionalism’ that has tended to predominate within the new models stands in sharp contrast with other approaches that see teachers’ professional knowledge as capable of supporting inquiry and innovation in schools. A study carried out across England between 2015 and 2016 came to the conclusion that not only is the system now incredibly complex, it is extremely difficult to obtain the full range of data required to make sense of what is actually being provided (Whiting et al., 2016).

Similarly, in the United States, teacher education has become far more diversified in the past 20 years than ever before. There has always been a variety of approaches to teacher education across widely varying institutions, but the programmes now include an even broader range of institutions and a wider range of theories of teacher learning. As occurred earlier in England, concerns with the quality of teaching and student learning resulted in an increase of regulatory policy in teacher education. The latest attempts at policy intervention were the proposed federal regulations to evaluate the quality of teacher education using as the ultimate criteria for success the results of student achievement tests (USDOE, 2014). Whilst these regulations were rescinded on March 2017 under a new administration, the individual states are still required under Title II of the Higher Education Act (USDOE, 2016) to report outcomes and other evidence of programme quality. As in England, the TIMSS results in mathematics show steady improvement over the years, with the highest improvement yet between 2011 and 2015 for both primary and secondary pupils. Yet the general discourse of crisis in education and particularly as concerns teachers, which began in earnest as a result of the A Nation at Risk report in 1983, continues to ignite policy change, often without the support of evidence (USDOE, 1983).

In contrast with England, market-driven alternative routes to certification in the United States have had a more arrested development since they first emerged in the early 1980s, and whilst some models have found fertile ground in other national contexts, most notably Teach for America, the majority of teachers in the United States (close to 90 per cent) are prepared in traditional pre-service programmes in higher education institutions (HEIs) (USDOE, 2015). Nevertheless, ongoing concerns with teacher quality have fuelled criticism of traditional teacher education programmes and continue to stimulate the growth of alternative approaches.

Remarkably, given the similarities with policy trends in England, there has been little exchange between these two countries regarding their approaches to teacher education, their rationale for those approaches, or the kinds of teachers that are now entering practice as a result of these policy and programme changes.

One of the purposes of this book is to study the evolution of university-based teacher education, and emergent alternative approaches in England and the United States with an emphasis on the last 10 years and their consequences for the future of the profession in these two countries. England is chosen as a focus, as opposed to the United Kingdom as a whole, because each of the four nations in the United Kingdom has separate, devolved education systems and demograph...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Part I: Learning to teach: theory, methods and contexts
• Part II: Case studies of learning to teach in specific contexts
• Part III: Comparing trends, contradictions and future trajectories
• Index