Developing a Clinical Schools Experience: The Politics and Practice of Changing Teacher Education in Scotland

• In Event: Clinical Approaches to Teacher Education: Connecting Research in Ireland, the United States, Scotland, and Australia

Abstract

Re-thinking the teaching profession has proved challenging. Responding to current political imperatives to establish a more publicly, professionally and politically engaged model of teacher education (Donaldson 2010), the University of Glasgow set out to create a clinical model. Drawing on the work of Cochran-Smith (2005) and Elmore (2009), and influenced by earlier attempts at Melbourne and Oxford Universities (MacIntyre & Hagger, 1993), our purpose was to create and evaluate the efficacy of a new model that would sew the university education into the practice communities of local government and schools. This presentation reports and reflects on that attempt.

For a complex concatenation of political and economic reasons in 2009, Scotland experienced a precipitous decline in the number of places available for newly qualified teachers. What began as an issue of over supply was almost immediately transformed into a concern about the quality of teacher education. There had been two earlier attempts to review teacher education in the early 2000s, but both faltered on the rocks of institutional torpor. In the interim, Scotland had witnessed a decline in its PISA scores and the latent political desire to re-imagine teacher education was re-ignited. Consequently, the Scottish government established a third review. This review was to precipitate an on-going re-think of teacher education from student to senior professional and the professional partnerships needed to secure it.

Using Actor Network Theory (Law 1992), policy analysis and a series of qualitative strategies (interview, pre- and post-change questionnaires and review), this paper traces and analyses the key moves in creating a radical break with extant local models and the implications of these moves for professional and institutional relations.

Analysis and Results
Our analysis is divided into three parts.

In part one we examine:
· the politics of change in teacher education
· the ways in which curriculum and structural change is instantiated and the concomitant interface between the political and the pedagogical
· how different actors (including institutions) engage with the process of curriculum change
· how different professional groups/institutions position themselves with regard to change
· structural and systemic obstacles to change.

In part two we explore:
· the curriculum response to political change
· the politics and practice of partnership development
· the shape of research informed curriculum change.

In part three we present the findings of our qualitative analysis of:
· student attitudes (most especially with respect to pedagogical efficacy)
· university staff
· school staff
· local government attitudes.

With regard to each part our analysis the role of actor-network theory (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010) helps to understand not only how human actors engage with each other but also the way in which institutions and emerging technical structures and systems are structured and constructed with respect to each other. We look at the consequences of these moves for facilitating change in teacher education. Our qualitative data help understand how the clinical model positions students with regard to both emergent ideas and institutions.

Authors

• James Charles Conroy, University of Glasgow

• Moira Hulme, University of Glasgow