The Transformation of Initial Teacher Education

The Changing Nature of Teacher Training

Ian Abbott, Mike Rathbone, Philip Whitehead

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429755378
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Tracing the development of initial teacher education since the large-scale expansion of the teaching profession after the Second World War to the present day, The Transformation of Initial Teacher Education explores the changing nature of teacher training.

Examining the growth of the 'teaching industry', this book addresses key issues including:

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• the return to an apprentice model

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• the growing importance of schools in initial teacher training

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• the continuing decline in the role played by higher education

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• an examination of the broader socio-economic context of increased marketisiation

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• a reconsideration of the international political factors driving the reform process; and
  
• interviews with prominent individuals who have been involved with the development of policy

Considering the ideas and ideals that have permeated teacher education and how these have shaped the experiences of trainees on a variety of programmes across a broader international context, this book examines the future of teacher education and the changing nature of teaching, providing essential insight for trainee teachers, school staff and any academics involved in teacher education.

1

Introduction

The importance of high-quality teaching in ensuring an outstanding education system has long been recognised. As a consequence, there has been increased interest in many countries in the way in which teachers are trained and are able to access professional development throughout their career. There can be little doubt that the overall quality of the teaching profession and the lessons they provide to their students will have a significant impact on the education system as a whole. High-quality teaching will lead to rising educational standards and an overall improvement in the system. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that the correct building blocks are in place to attract sufficient numbers and high-quality candidates, and to provide them with high-quality teacher training that will prepare them for future careers in the classroom. Hopefully, effective training will also contribute to improved teacher retention and reduce the number of teachers who leave the profession within a few years of qualification.

This chapter will consider the nature of teacher education and the debate between theory and practice, which has been at the root of many of the policy initiatives that have been introduced in recent years. In particular, it will consider the importance of teacher education in reforming education systems and potentially improving pupil outcomes. The significance of political interventions will also be discussed and the ongoing changes in the relationship between higher education (HE) and schools will be considered.

The growth of neoliberalism

Abbott, Rathbone and Whitehead (2013: 132) have outlined the importance of ‘the new and modernisation’ that has been at the centre of public-sector reform in the United Kingdom (UK) and in many other parts of the world. In the 1980s, partly in response to the economic problems many countries had experienced in the 1970s, neoliberal policies were widely introduced. In England this involved the breaking down of the post-war consensus and the development of a market-led system. Education along with other parts of the public sector became subject to the demands of the market, which should be influenced by ‘the logic of the market place’ (Ball, 2003a: 8). It is worth recording that the drive to a market-led system or marketisation was less apparent in other parts of the UK, especially Scotland, as education policy was largely left to the devolved governments to administer.

An ongoing series of policy reforms in England have had a profound impact on the education system. Schools have been given greater autonomy, with new types of school being established, for example academies and free schools. The importance of the local authority has been diminished and schools have been encouraged to compete for pupils and resources. As a consequence of these pressures, new entrants have been encouraged to enter the education market to provide a range of services. In England, new schools have been opened in an attempt to stimulate competition and increase choice. Most significant are the growth of academy schools, often operating as a multi-academy trust (MAT). Academy schools have been given greater freedom and, although funded by the state, are free from local authority or district control. A MAT is comprised of ‘a number of individual schools, but there is one organisation that actually runs the schools’ (Middlewood et al., 2018: 10). Given the growth of these new types of organisation, freed from traditional controls, it is a logical step for them to take a greater role in the initial training and professional development of the teachers they employ. As we will see later in this book, there has been a significant movement away from traditional HE-led teacher education, with a number of organisations such as Teach First and groups of schools now operating their own programmes. Whilst this process can be partly explained by the debate surrounding the relative importance of theory and practice, it is clear that the reform of teacher education is related to wider policy debates surrounding marketisation and choice. This has been mirrored in other parts of the public sector in the UK, especially England, and there has been a permanent revolution as policy continues to change (Hall, 2013).

However, despite the movement to the development of a market in education with choice and competition, there has been a paradox of increased central control over parts of the education system (Ball, 1994). For example, as we will show in later chapters, there has been increased quality control over teacher education in England, through national inspection by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted). Common standards set by central government for teacher education have been established (DfE, 2011). For schools, a whole range of restrictions have been placed on them by central government, including National Curriculum and assessment frameworks, and regular inspection based on national standards by Ofsted.

In reality, a completely free market has not been established in education and we have seen the development of a so-called ‘quasi market’ (Le Grand and Bartlett, 1993). Under this type of market there is limited competition with the state controlling entry to the market, imposing controls on curriculum and assessment and enforcing a national inspection framework. In England, within teacher education this scenario has been long established, as new organisations have been encouraged to provide a range of training routes. People who wish to train as a teacher therefore have a choice of routes and information is provided through inspection reports and various league tables. Providers who fail to recruit sufficient numbers or who fail to meet the required standards are allowed or encouraged to withdraw from the market. In teacher education, HE involvement has declined as new organisations such as Teach First or MATs such as Absolute Return for Kids have entered the market and developed alternative school-based teacher training programmes.

Political interference and the importance of education

The market-led approach in education has developed largely as a consequence of political pressure. A key component of this has been the perceived link between education and economic prosperity. Neoliberal policies were introduced in the 1980s as a response to the economic problems experienced in the previous decade. In the UK, successive governments implemented a succession of policies to deal with the perceived low standards in schools and to create a high-performing education system. There are a number of economic arguments for implementing policies that are designed to improve school standards:

• In a global economy, the UK must be able to effectively compete with other countries.
• Given the UK is not able to compete on the basis of cost due to the emergence of low-cost economies, we have to focus on ideas, innovation and high skill sectors (the so-called knowledge economy).
• To enable the UK to compete, standards in our schools have to be high and rising at least as fast as our competitors.
• The government has a responsibility to ensure that standards continue to rise in schools and colleges and to develop strategies and systems that produce skilled and motivated young people.
• This will involve major changes in the education system in order to maintain our level of economic competitiveness.
• A successful education system will produce young people who are able to make a positive contribution to the economic wellbeing of the country.
• A flexible and skilled workforce will enable the UK to successfully compete in a global economy. (Adapted from Abbott et al., 2013: 136–7)

Given the significance that education is perceived to play in dealing with economic realities, and the threats from global competition, it is hardly surprising that education has become a major political issue. Abbott (2015: 334) has argued that education ‘has become an area of intense key political debate and a significant feature of the party manifesto and any subsequent General Election campaign’. Consequently, education has become more important as a policy area and there has been increasing interference by politicians, often at the expense of education professionals. A key feature of this is the drive to raise standards in schools, and in England there has been ongoing curriculum and assessment reform, in addition to a whole range of policies relating to school organisation and funding that successive secretaries of state have introduced. Given that the quality of teaching is a major factor in determining pupil outcomes and raising standards, it is no surprise that policy reform should eventually focus on the way in which teachers are trained and their wider professional development.

We will return to look in detail at these policies in later chapters but it is worth considering some of the general themes that have emerged:

• Ensuring trainee teachers spend more time in school engaged in teaching and working with pupils.
• An increased role for schools and teachers in areas such as selection, supervision and assessment.
• An emphasis on high levels of subject knowledge for entrants.
• A decline in the amount of theory trainee teachers are exposed to during their training.
• A movement to teaching being seen as a vocational rather than a professional occupation.
• Identification of particular models of teaching and classroom management reducing the amount of experimentation and experience of alternative models.
• Centralised control of teacher education, with a defined curriculum and the imposition of national standards.
• A decline in the influence of HE institutions and their staff.
• A national system of inspection with publication of reports and the development of league tables.
• Problems of teacher retention, especially in certain schools.
• Encouragement for new and alternative providers to compete with existing institutions.
• Development of different models and routes to obtain qualified teacher status.
• The growth of political interference in teacher education policy and practice.

A number of countries, such as the United States, Australia and New Zealand, have experienced some of these developments, but the system in England has exemplified and magnified these trends. The rate of change has been significant and rapid, with teacher education being consistently under attack, especially from politicians of different political parties. What has emerged in England is a fragmented system, with schools now firmly at the centre of the training process. However, as we will see later in the book, schools and the teachers involved in teacher education do not completely accept some of the restrictions placed on the training of teachers. Many teachers take a more rounded view of the training process and are keen to develop a range of teaching models with due reference to educational theory and research. They often provide the trainees with whom they are working with a range of experiences that is at variance with the centrally directed curriculum. As Menter (2016: 11) has argued, ‘there may be a strong cultural continuity across the teaching profession in the UK and indeed internationally, that is not reflected in the differences of political rhetoric in individual jurisdictions’.

Teacher autonomy

As part of the neoliberalisation agenda there has been a systematic attack on teacher autonomy in England. This has taken the form of increased standardisation of the curriculum, assessment and teaching methods employed in schools. Initially, this trend was focussed on serving teachers in schools, as successive governments sought to bring about change with the underlying focus being on raising standards in schools. However, teacher education soon also became a focus for these pressures. David Blunkett, secretary of state for education in the first New Labour government, quoted in Abbott et al. (2013: 138), summed up how a government seeks to transform the education system: ‘We wanted to change standards, we needed leadership in schools, we needed high-quality teaching, we needed to revamp the materials, the equipment, the buildings that children are learning in, we needed to recruit first class teachers’.

A significant part of the drive to reduce teacher autonomy has been the rise of New Public Management (NPM) (see for example Hall, 2013). Middlewood and Abbott (2017: 7) have argued that ‘NPM is a reflection of the reform of the public education system that embodies privatization, increased choice, performance management, use of private sector management approaches and greater accountability’. Through their introduction, these market-led reforms are intended to solve problems in the education system by placing a series of measures and expectations on the people working in the system. Autonomy is replaced by centralised control enforced through a series of performance measures and target setting. As a consequence of these developments, the ability of teachers to develop alternative strategies and for contextual factors to be taken into account has become more limited.

Initially applied to schools, this approach quickly became a feature of teacher education in England, as central government lost any trust in the existing models of teacher education. This has taken a number of forms, including, for example, specific guidance about how literacy should be developed through a particular approach, to the way in which children should be taught to read systematic synthetic phonics. This created a large amount of disquiet amongst teacher educators, who had previously been able to promote a range of reading schemes and to question the effectiveness of systematic synthetic phonics.

Trippestad, Swennen and Werler (2017: 9) have argued that ‘the many waves of reforming teacher education have left teacher education with a diverse and complex struggle coming from both within the profession and the outside, challenging and restructuring traditional modes of teacher education work, identity and position’. The result of these pressures in England and to a lesser extent in many other parts of the world has been to create a crisis of confidence in teacher education. Progressive approaches to classroom practice have been replaced by a re-emergence of traditional teaching and assessment approaches. Target setting, performance management and a greater emphasis on outcomes rather than process have curtailed the ability of all teachers, but especially trainee teachers, to experiment and innovate.

The focus of teacher education

We will describe later in the book how the focus of teacher education in England has changed from being broadly a partnership between schools and HE, often with the agenda being set by HE, to becoming increasingly school-based. Is this an issue, and should there be any cause for concern about this shift of location? There is general agreement that in order to become a teacher a person needs to have first-hand experience of working in a school with young people. This experience is vital in developing the skills necessary to cope and survive in a classroom. However, there is an argument that all you need to become an effective teacher is to have good subject knowledge and practical experience of teaching. The shift of location of the training process to schools illustrates this belief.

We would argue that there is much more to becoming an effective teacher than gaining practical experience, however useful this might be. The ability to reflect, to make use of appropriate research and to experiment and sometimes to fail should all be part of the training process. Failure in a teaching context is a difficult concept, because the teacher is working with children and they have a right to effective teaching. However, often mistakes made by a teacher during their training can lead to improved performance, given time for guidance from an experienced member of staff and given appropriate reflection time. The pressure of an output-driven and performance-management system can make this difficult to achieve. Teaching is not a precise science and being allowed to develop a range of strategies in a safe and supportive environment is essential for professional development. Indeed, ongoing professional development should be at the heart of any teacher education programme. Therefore, a programme involving a number of different participants is required, even in a system increasingly dedicated to work in schools, to bring about successful outcomes for trainee teachers. This should include:

• The opportunity to study and analyse practice in single and double-loop terms, enabling a systematic analysis of the process (Brighouse, 1991).
• Learning from other staff, including everyday opportunities to talk with other colleagues at all levels. This should include informal observations in a range of schools and organisations.
• Specific provision including being mentored, appraised or formally observed during teaching practice. Being given the opportunity of understudying staff or a particular post. Also the opportunity to attend specific seminars, workshops, conferences or structured visits to other organisations.
• External provision, including HE-based, in addition to meeting staff and trainee teachers from other institutions and age phases.
• The opportunity for personal reading, reflection and study. (Adapted from Middlewood and Abbott, 2015: 11)

Given this mixed-methods approach, we would argue that teacher educators have a key role to play in the initial training and subsequent professional development of teachers. However, as we will explain later in the book, their role has had to change and adapt to the new realities of teacher education that have emerged over the last 30 years in England.

Technicians or professionals?

A significant feature of the debate in England compared to many other parts of the world has been the shift from seeing teaching as a profession to it being considered as a technical activity. In Chapter 6 we will consider some of the alternative approaches adopted in other countries. The most striking example is in Finland, which has adopted a strong university-based system that is in almost total opposition to the school-led system being developed in England. As part of the movement to this school-led system, there has also been a strong emphasis on the necessity of trainee teachers to acquire a specific set of skills, which can then be assessed against sets of skills or capabilities (Ball, 2003b and Brown et al., 2014). This development has been at the expense of traits such as reflection, a commitment to social justice and the use of research to develop policy and classroom practice. The reduced emphasis on these traits has resulted in teacher education becoming increasingly one dimensional, as teachers are trained to reproduce particular approaches and achieve targeted outcomes. Diversity across programmes has been reduced, but trainee teachers are able to choose between a range of different routes and providers.

Teachers do need to possess a range of basic skills to be able to deliver effective lessons to their pupils. In any training programme there is a clear need to develop a good range of classroom practices to create a positive learning environment. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The early days of teacher training
• 3. The consensus in education begins to unravel
• 4. Teacher education as a competitive market
• 5. Current government policy
• 6. International perspectives
• 7. Models of provision: higher education
• 8. Models of provision: school-based
• 9. Teach First
• 10. Conclusion
• References
• Index