International Perspectives on Teacher Education

Tony Townsend

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780415711807
• eBook ISBN: 9781134911707
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book explores major factors impacting on teacher education in recent times. It uses examples from a broad range of international contributors who compare larger countries such as the USA, England and Australia with their smaller partners: Canada, Scotland and New Zealand, demonstrating the substantial differences existent in all three cases. They also contrast the approaches of the countries that are members of the European Union with those that are not and discuss the special circumstances of developing countries, using Malawi as a case study.

The international dimension of the book allows it to address the impact of globalisation on teacher education, with attention given to subjects such as the implications of rapid technological change, the movement of teachers and students on a global level and the drive to improve standards in various parts of the world. The book asks key questions, such as whether teaching is a craft or a profession and whether teacher educators view themselves as practitioners or researchers. The question of how the profession is viewed from outside is also addressed, highlighting the lack of trust displayed by politicians and communities towards both teachers and teacher educators. The final chapter looks to the future, and considers strategies for dealing with it.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Education for Teaching.

INTRODUCTION

Teacher education: an international perspective

Tony Townsend

University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK

The past 20 years has seen more changes in education than since education systems first became formalised in the mid to late nineteenth century. These changes have been brought about partly by technological developments, partly by increased globalisation and partly by changed demographics. These three factors have created a set of circumstances where the education of all the population has become more critical to the future success of nations and has become urgent because the speed of change continues to increase as time goes by. In terms of technological developments, in just two generations we have moved from the time when the president of IBM argued that there would be a world market for five computers to a time where computers are so much part of our lives that we cannot even remember what it was like before they changed our lives. This has helped to make the world smaller, to globalise the way in which we think about things, as changes in one part of our world resonate into all parts of the world. Whereas once we thought of the local community as our marketplace, as we sold the goods we produced to our neighbours, we now have access to products and services delivered from the other side of the world as well. Some countries have grouped together, such as in the European Union, and these alliances have changed how we live because of their impact on the economies, the employment regulations and, indeed, access to a range of services, in individual countries within the union.

Together, technology and globalisation have speeded up communication from a time when written communications took weeks to move from one side of the world to the other to one where people are texting or twittering at each other from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world instantaneously, and wireless communications (radio) that were once confined to a distance that was based on the power of the transmitter can now be heard anywhere in the world over the internet.

The other main factor to have changed the way in which we think about the world is the changing demographic shape of populations in almost every country. What used to be comparatively monocultural countries are now home to peoples from more than 100 nations and, in some cases, a group from a particular country is large enough to create special issues within their chosen new country. Sometimes these changes have not come easily, nor are they accepted by all, and this in itself can create tensions. Forty years ago, Alvin Toffler coined the term ‘future shock’ to describe how humans respond, mostly uncomfortably, to rapid and substantial change. Now, the changes occurring in the 1970s might be looked upon as being relaxed and gentle, compared to what is happening today.

All of the above has changed the way in which societies have viewed education. Technological developments have taken away many of the jobs that previously went to those who were ‘not so successful’ in school. Now, it is perceived by most people within the world community that a lack of a quality education will consign a person to a life of limited options and even more limited income. In short, for vibrant economies to survive, we need an educated workforce. Added to this has been the issue of massive migration over the past 20 years. It is now possible for someone born in any part of the world to end up being ‘schooled’ in a different part of the world and it is also possible for teachers trained in one part of the world (and more or less specifically for students who live in the country they are trained in) to be teaching in another part of the world, since, as some countries have a surplus of teachers and others have a deficiency of teachers, teachers might now need to move; move town, move state or move country, in order to get employment in the job they were trained to do.

This has created all sorts of stresses on the system of education where, universally, schools are being asked to do more, teachers are asked to achieve more and systems are seeking ways in which this might happen, all within the substantial constraints of no additional, and in many cases, substantially less, money to work with. In many parts of the world, we have seen the introduction of standards, measures of what schools should achieve if they are seen to be successful. Following on from this, we have seen the introduction of standards for teachers and standards for school leaders, both of which have led to a more recent focus on what is happening in teacher education institutions.

The question then can be asked: is there such a thing as a world class teacher education programme? Is there something we can identify as ‘world class’, anywhere in the world, for institutions that are involved in the initial preparation or the ongoing development of the teachers who are expected to provide a world class education for all students? One of the best aspects of globalisation is that we can see what is happening in other parts of the world and extract from it those things that might succeed in our country, or in our system. The starting point for such a task is to look at some countries, to see what they are doing, to establish common threads of excellence and to filter this into a theory that might lead us to success.

This special issue of the Journal of Education for Teaching will attempt to start that journey, by considering what is happening in various parts of the world, and to start the process of developing knowledge about what might work. There are 10 papers in this issue that provide an overview of 10 different countries’ approaches to teacher education. The first six of the papers provide the opportunity to compare neighbouring countries, countries that are close geographically but substantially different in how they approach teacher education. In the first instance, we provide an overview of teacher education in England (MacBeath), followed by a review of teacher education in Scotland (Menter and Hulme). Then we move across the Atlantic to consider what is happening in the USA (Imig, Wiseman and Imig) and Canada (Van Nuland), then head south-west across the Pacific to look at teacher education in Australia (O’Meara) and New Zealand (Ell). One interesting piece about these comparisons in all three cases is the issue of size. England’s population is 10 times that of Scotland, and London, England’s largest city, is larger than the total population of Scotland. The same pattern occurs in the Pacific, where Australia’s largest city, Sydney, is larger than the whole of New Zealand and the Australian population is six times that of New Zealand. Finally, in the Americas the USA has a population almost 10 times that of Canada, but with major cities (New York and Toronto) of comparable size. (Of course, we need to remember that the bulk of the Canadian population is within 150 miles of the US border.) So does size make a difference when it comes to how education, and subsequently teacher education, is viewed and supported?

We then consider teacher education in three European countries, Norway (Munthe, Svenson Malmo and Rogne), France (Lapostolle and Chevaillier) and Portugal (Flores), to consider whether there is a distinctive set of conditions that leads to a different view of what teacher education should be. Finally, we consider the teacher education system in the small African country of Malawi (Chazema and O’Meara), where the formal education of teachers has been carried out for less than 40 years. Is there a difference between mature systems and one that is recent and, if so, what has the new system learned from those that went before it?

Finally, I try to bring together these 10 papers in a synthesising paper, to find some common threads and substantive differences, so as to see whether there is ‘one best way’ of educating teachers towards high levels of student achievement.

Education of teachers: the English experience

John MacBeath

Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

This article considers the impact of recent political decisions on the provision of teacher education and the continuing development of teachers in England. It tracks how successive governments have changed the requirements necessary to become a teacher as circumstances have changed in the country and considers the impact of these changes on higher education institutions. It considers the range of ways in which someone might now become a teacher and the various providers that might become involved in this process. The recent coalition government’s use of the term ‘initial teacher training’ is used as means of identifying how the views of this government differ from others that use the term ‘initial teacher education’ and what this means to both teachers and universities.

The political and policy context

In England, the education of teachers has remained a contentious issue under three successive governments, Conservative, Labour and Cameron’s Coalition, in which the debate is still very much alive.

The terms of engagement were set under the Thatcher government with a frontal assault not only on schools but on the academic establishment which, it was held, had led successive generations up a destructive liberal path. A number of terms had to be removed from the educational lexicon, foremost among them ‘progressivism’, held responsible for the decline in standards. Much of the blame was laid at the door of John Dewey, the progenitor of ‘child-centred’ methods, a notion that was also to be exorcised along with the word ‘caring’, the soft underbelly of progressive and child-centredness, which Margaret Thatcher had personally wanted removed from school-related documentation.

The creation of the Office of Standards for Education (OFSTED) was designed to bring a tougher, more independent review of teaching standards as Her Majesty’s Inspectorate had fallen under suspicion of being too closely in league with the academic establishment and was itself a vehicle through which progressive ideas were being perpetuated. The appointment of Chris Woodhead as Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector (HMCI) was a signal that teachers would be in the front line of radical government reform. Woodhead was a once progressive teacher who had recanted to become, in his testimony to a Government Select Committee:

Prickly, confrontational, arrogant, incapable of working with anyone. Yes that’s me. But it is what the chief inspector has to be if Ofsted is to maintain any semblance of independence. (Woodhead 2002, 108)

Ofsted was to be the instrument through which what Professor Lori Beckett describes as the ‘punitive approaches to school performance’ would become embedded. In her submission to the Coalition Government Education Bill in March (Hansard, March 2011, para. 33) Beckett claimed that the aspiration, expressed by the Secretary of State, to educate every child to a high level (Hansard, 8 February 2011, Column 167) was ‘threatened by the over-emphasis in England, over a long period of time, on educational standards coupled with performance, testing, attainment, measurement, and the punitive approaches to school performance’, resulting in what he described as ‘performance pedagogies’, still unable to demonstrate that they had have any effect on learning and teaching. She added (para. 34) that these in turn had provoked ‘much resistance among disadvantaged pupils, especially those who do not reap benefits and rewards’, so ‘adding to England’s concerns about so-called under-performing schools, which appear too tightly bound to external pressures, targets, inspections, league tables, and threats of closure and/or sponsorship, which tends to prompt crisis management as their modus operandi … All of this is at the expense of time for teachers to consider more productive educational work’.

The period from the early 1980s onward had witnessed a steady growth in government micromanagement of what happens in the classroom through a National Curriculum which mandated not only content but mode of ‘delivery’. Described by one academic, Campbell (1993), as ‘what had been a dream at conception had become a nightmare at delivery’.

The word ‘delivery’ is a significant indicator of government thinking about the intermediary role of teachers between policy prescription and children’s learning. Among teacher educators, this was construed as an attempt to deprofessionalise teaching by challenging teacher autonomy, encouraging restricted, rather than extended, notions of professionalism (Galton 2007).

The Conservative government was determined to put an end to ‘producer interest’, in which, it was claimed, those in higher education had managed the system of teacher education in their own interests. Conservative ministers were determined not to be ‘in thrall to the prejudices of academics’ (Baker 1993, 198). Together with the introduction of a centrally determined curriculum, new agencies were established for determining the initial teacher training curriculum and for establishing teachers’ conditions of service. The manner of determining school budgets was thereafter to be a matter for central government rather than for the local authority.

The implications for teacher education were far reaching. At the very centre of teacher education there had to be a focus on government strategies, less theory and more practice, implementation rather than reading and reflection, less challenge and more compliance.

One consequence of this, as illustrated by the nature of new programmes in England, in which student teachers now spend more time in schools during their initial teacher preparation programmes while higher education institutions have to pay schools up to one quarter of their gross income for their contribution, is that the staffing structure of many university schools of education has been destabilised.

What was described as a ‘war on teachers’ was to prove a continuous thread from the Thatcher to the Blair government and could be read in headlines such as ‘Inspector Attacks Woolly Teachers’ (Daily Telegraph 27 January 1995) and demands that the government should ‘Sack these Failed Teachers Now’ (Evening Standard 5 February 1996). Such rhetoric did not disappear under the Labour government after 1997; indeed, it could be said to intensify, as Tony Blair retained the services of HMCI Woodhead for fear of appearing to be soft on teachers. By March 2010, Labour Secretary of State, David Blunkett, was able to tell a Parliamentary Select Committee: ‘We had a crap teaching profession. We haven’t any more’ (House of Commons 2010).

This view is confirmed by Estelle Morris, Minster for Education under the Blair government, pointing to a political gesture that would convince the public that ‘New Labour’ could be just as tough as its Tory predecessors.

I think naming and shaming of schools gave two clear messages; in the eyes of the public politically it put it on the side of the users of the services, not the producers of the services; and secondly it gave the message to the teaching profession that we weren’t the same Labour Party as last time we came into power but we would have a different focus. (Bangs, MacBeath and Galton, 2010, 23)

The Labour Government 2008 White Paper 21st Century Schools proposed a new licence to teach, renewable every five years, together with legislation that would require all new teachers to undertake a Masters degree in teaching and learning. This was seen by many commentators as marking a watershed in government thinking and policy. ‘After 30 years of policy that has been driven by a mistrust of teachers, this could signal a new age for education policy’, suggested a BBC report in July 2009.

Routes into teaching

Until now, universities, or higher education institutions (HEIs), have played a central role in the preparation of teachers in the UK, either through three- or four-year undergraduate programmes or through one- or two-year post-graduate programmes.

Universities continue to offer three- or four-year undergraduate programmes, which may be BEd, BA, MA or Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE). These admit young people on completion of their schooling if they have achieved satisfactory grades at GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education). These undergraduate programmes have built on HEI–school partnerships, especially for entry into primary schools, in which university courses alternate with periods of in-school practice, visited and assessed by university staff who are tutors for those students when in the university. They have the job of making the links between theory and practice, between what has been taught and what has been learned, and practised, in the classroom.

The PGCE course takes place over one academic year. Part-time and distance learning PGCE courses are normally taken over two years. The full- and part-time programmes are designed for people with sufficient subject knowledge at degree level so that the focus of the course is on pedagogy rather than the subject content. A two-year PGCE (conversion course) is available for applicants who need to update their relevant subject knowledge. Conversion courses tend, however, to be only be available in secondary subjects where there are shortages.

The typical structure, as with undergraduate programmes, is alternating periods of university teaching and classroom practice. The most common pattern has been for primary school trainees to spend at least 18 weeks on school placements, while secondary trainee placements last for at least 24 weeks. These are intended to be shallow-end experiences with trainees spending time observing, co-teaching and being mentor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction: Teacher education: an international perspective
• 2. Education of teachers: the English experience
• 3. Teacher education reform in Scotland: national and global influences
• 4. Teacher education in the United States of America
• 5. Teacher education in Canada
• 6. Australian teacher education reforms: reinforcing the problem or providing a solution?
• 7. Teacher education in New Zealand
• 8. Teacher education reform and challenges in Norway
• 9. Teacher training in France in the early 2010s
• 10. Curriculum of initial teacher education in Portugal: new contexts, old problems
• 11. National and local sources of power: important considerations for teacher education reforms in rural Malawi
• 12. Searching high and searching low, searching east and searching west: looking for trust in teacher education
• Index