The Politics of Teacher Education Reform in Ireland: From Contentment to Concern

• In Event: The Politics of Policy in Teacher Education: International Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives and Significance to the Field

In July 2011, the Teaching Council in Ireland published regulations specifying in detail how teacher education programme providers will need to significantly reconfigure initial teacher education. These regulations were the culmination of four years of research review and consultation during which Irish society shifted abruptly from Celtic Tiger contentment to banking and financial sector-led concern and turmoil. As such, the Teaching Council-led teacher education review during the period 2007-11 at both primary and post-primary was undertaken at a time when, even more so than ever, policy makers were contemplating how the education system might yet again act as a source of solace in dire times as well as act as a springboard for future economic recovery. The solace and springboard theories were swiftly written off with the publication of the PISA 2009 reading literacy results, which led to a crisis of confidence in educational standards (the scores for Ireland’s fifteen year-olds reflected the largest drop in raw score terms as well as rank order – 5th to 21st).

Perspectives and Analyses

This paper examines the context, processes and outcomes of this review and reform in order to identify how the dynamics of teacher education in Ireland were understood, and also how this review process can be framed in terms of contemporary politics of teacher education reform (Cochran-Smith, 2005; Darling-Hammond, 2010; Furlong et al, 2009; Tatto, 2007) and policy borrowing and lending (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004). The paper focuses in particular on how a combination of circumstances including a ‘comparative review’ of teacher education (Conway et al, 2009), a crisis of confidence (albeit contested) in educational standards, a long standing belief in the power of the education to support the “smart economy,” and wider economic turmoil led to a particular set of reforms in teacher education in 2011. In examining the dynamics of TE politics in Ireland, this paper focuses in particular on the inter-related aspects of initial teacher education, induction, professional standards/competences, and accreditation of ITE (Conway et al, 2009) – all four of which were the focus of the Teaching Council-commissioned report on teacher education in nine countries.

Findings and Implications

This paper draws both on the lessons from the nine-country study as well as on the unfolding nature of the subsequent debate and decisions over the last three years (2009-12). In this regard, we focus in particular on debates and decisions vis-à-vis what constitutes quality in ITE as reflected in the new regulations for teacher education providers (July 2011), the recent articulation of teacher education programme learning outcomes (July 2011) as well as recently commenced ITE accreditation by the Teaching Council including the publication online of four reports following programme reviews (2010). This case study illustrates the political dynamics of teacher education reform processes and outcomes in Ireland. Significantly the case helps us understand the interplay of national and international dynamics shape the politics of teacher education reform and how both ‘local’ arrangements and priorities and cross-national ‘imperatives’ are accommodated.

Author

• Paul F. Conway, University College Cork